Thanks for the suggestion Joe. It would certainly be helpful, but the idea behind the Blueprint Series is for us to be architects for all the vendors. I don't want to see things turn into a "Witch Hunt" against the vendors who don't do something. It also isn't a spotlight for the current vendors who do certain things well. This is an opportunity for improvement for everyone.

If saying who you're currently using helps you to explain what you're looking for, by all means, put it in your comment.

R&R user.

Email campaign produces many dead email addresses. These bounced emails should be automatically deleted from the system.

Bounced emails have multipe causes for failure. For any emails with a questionable error message, have an fast management single page management area where we can click a check box and edit, delete or re-try as needed

Joe
p.s. Alex, is it a good idea to list what CRM you use at the top as we all have different systems with different issues.

I'd love to see standardization with the ability to send leads from all sources, autotrader.com, cars.com, ebay, etc. to one CRM source but this unfortunately seems impossible as all of these online vendors wish to be the "sole destination" within their own products for this and would be unwilling to have these leads send to a CRM system for the simple fact that it would enable us to track ROI on them on one screen and make it that much easier to track the effectivness of our ad spends with all of these vendors. They all wish to be "stand alone solutions".

Brian - I think you're looking more for an inventory control solution. Check out HomeNet (http://homenetinc.com) for starters. I agree, it would be nice to have all that working inside a CRM, and I think one CRM vendor is working down that path, but there doesn't seem to be a great CRM/Inventory solution out there yet.

While we're talking about inventory, I'll add another one of my wishes (I have tons): I'd like to be able to upload my inventory from a DMS provider or Inventory Control tool such as HomeNet with photos and all details. I don't want a cap on the photos because I'd then like an "ebrochure" feature allowing me to email a professional looking template about a single vehicle (especially a used car).

I'd also like to see a "Dream Car" feature much like Dealer.com's CarFinder (http://www.checkeredflag.com/carfinder.htm), or have the CRM work with my website's CarFinder. But I want to take things a step further than just sending a customer an email saying "your car is here" - I'd like the salesperson to be notified and task be dropped into his/her to-do list to contact that customer. And to take things a step even further, I would also like the option of having it work with potential trade-ins. If customer A wants a 2005 Ford F350 Diesel and another salesperson is appraising one for customer B, I would like either customer A or customer A's salesperson to be automatically notified when one is currently being appraised.

I would like to see some way to track aggressive pricing strategies via a stock number or vin. My current control panels only let's me track a model. I would like a system that compares inventory views similar to the way autotrader tracks your traffic, that way I can see what effects pricing has on different vehicles in stock. I would also like some type of read receipt for my emails and some way to push info to our arkona showroom management on customer contacts, vehicle interests, appointments and demos. While your at it throw in the ability to manage third party sites such as cars.com and autotrader.com from one control panel and if I change something live it doesn't lock out future pushes from our DMS. Maybe current products exist for some of these issues?

I wish the industry would mature to the point where vendors came together to create some standards. I could write a mile on this topic, but won't because I'm not really crazy about doing the vendor's innovative work for free.

Hello hello,

Jeff it was Reynolds we went to Monday night. And while we didn't go to this one, because we had plans with KBB, I heard the Aspen party was great - that will be a must do next year.

I didn't even make it over to the west building - totally missed all of my peoples over there!

And while Jeff likes to beat up on Autobase - they did get most improved booth this year. Worst booth went to this service training company that was literally under a stairwell next to the Paul Cummings booth and I believe they just gave up on Tuesday, bc their lights were off and no one was home.

Anything new? Uh No.

People that I missed that I am mad at - ALEX SNYDER!!!! You are in trouble. We are going to be in VaBeach in April - you better have on your entertaining shoes.

I can back-up Mark on his new DDC facility claims - the new building is nice! I can't imagine a better setup for a progressive tech company - I'm sure it would make some Silicon Valley groups envious.

Let me see if I can explain the layout...

The main part is a huge circle split into four parts to separate the various departments: sales, support, development, SEO/SEM with their prospective managers easily available on the outside of the circle. The middle of the circle has plush couches and vegetation that inspire people from the various departments to sit down together at. The second floor is a loft/balcony where the executives sit, able to see over 90% of the operation just by stepping outside their office door. There is a gym and tennis courts to go along with the casual-dress environment. It is a great place for anyone to work.

What does it mean for us (the dealers)? Happy Dealer.com employees for a start. Since the move, I have noticed an uplift in demeanor from all the people I work with at DDC. I've watched things happen much faster - my requests that need development work are done in days instead of a week or two. I can get tons of answers in one call as the rep I speak to can easily get to whomever has the answers right then. I'm sorry to ramble on about it, but I didn't realize how much things had improved until I read Mark's last post - thanks Mark!

Now a response to Brian....

I think you bring up some very valid and needed points.

Over the past 2 years Dealer.com has made massive investments in our dealer support and account management staff and training programs. I would dare say they are breakthrough in the sense that we involved the State of Vt and various organizations to build a state of the art training solution that allows us to respond better to our clients issues than ever before.

As an example, just this week we added 8 new account managers that will all start at the same time and begin serving our dealers more and more over time as they become better experts in the field. In the past this was impossible since we did not have a large scale training program and the facilities to host it. We can now train anywhere from 1 to 30 people at a time and do it in an environment that is second to none. Our mission and focus is better than ever before since we were in a 4 story building for the first 8-9 years much like Cobalt's and it was a very disruptive environment that did not allow our people to talk in person and get "real" answers fast from each of our respective teams.

That issue was answered this past summer when we custom designed the ultimate customer service and technology center just down the street from our original HQ and created what is now the new Dealer.com home. View the full construction video here: http://sappo.dealer.com/slideshow/

You might ask, does the layout and flow of the various teams and staff really matter to me the dealer? Looking from a distance it may seem superficial and unimportant but I can tell you that will all the incredible talent we have at DDC it could be likened to a college basketball player practicing with his teammates for years and then all of a sudden moving to a new sports complex having direct access to playing Michael Jordan every day instead. The level of each person's game rises dramatically.

As you know we continue to add industry experts to our team to help us with our mission of being the #1 most effective dealer marketing solution possible, our most recent addition was Dean Evans (formerly of Dealix, Ford..etc) that has offered a wealth of expertise to our teams and is even helping to structure better training and education the account managers that assist our clients every day. This will continue as our compensation plans for the industries top professionals are top notch and we will not settle for anyone but the best to join our teams.

We can always do better and that will be our mission in 2008 to deploy the very best possible training, support and proactive care the industry has ever experienced.

-Mark

Mark Bonfigli
President, CEO
Dealer.com,Inc

First responding to Shaun,

Thanks for the clarification and detailed response.

I am assuming you have not seen our TotalControl Product? It actually allows starters to get into the SEM game fast and with proven results with full lead, phone tracking and dedicated landing pages or empowers the expert to create very custom keyword lists and geo-targeted campaigns.

It just makes running things faster and easier than ever...sort of like typing an email with spell checker on. Imagine if you had to grab a dictionary every time you were unsure how to spell a word? I guess my point is that we have created a system so simple to use but so powerful for the advanced user that it simply makes sense for dealers to use this as a platform instead of a generic one like google...etc Even the various search engine's people have remarked how far ahead this is from their own platforms and how much this will help all dealers conduct their campaigns more aggressively.

Let me know if you would like to see it in more detail, I think you would be very impressed!

-Mark

Mark Bonfigli
President, CEO
Dealer.com, Inc

@Mark
I am glad to see you’re passionate about your work Mark. I also have to give props to Jeff and Alex (pardon me if I left someone out) for maintaining a site that is of the quality of dealerrefresh.com that we can hear from the likes of folks that head some of the most important companies in our industry.
I for one do not have the talent or the knowhow of most of the folks on this board, which is why I come here. I want to learn from some of the best in the business. I have accepted the fact that this business will be driven by the internet in the years to come and I am sure everyone that visits this site has similar feelings. As a dealer.com customer I feel as though I am getting value for my dollars spent at dealer.com but as with anything in this business we can always strive for improvement. I have to give it to your support department, Jason is one that comes to mind off the top of my head, he is always willing to help me and improve my business. I have also had numerous other conversations with many folks up and down the dealer.com chain of command and I have to say sometimes I feel as though the only suggestions I get from most of the dealer.com staff involves me or more directly (my dealer) spending more money on something new. This could be my fault for not clearly stating what my issues might be or my lack of understanding this business. One of my first suggestions to dealer.com when we signed up a couple years back was to have better more in depth training not only for me but for the guys or gals that help me (support staff)
One of the basics of my business is to drive home the fact that we are here to serve our customers before and after the sale. I am on the fence about whether dealer.com has the dealer’s best interest in mind? Maybe you can shed some light on this subject for me. Thanks in advance for any help on this matter.

Response for Mark.

Regarding the award... you're welcome. I certainly don't know the percentage of your customers today vs. two or three years ago that are on flash sites. My impression/experience with Dealer.com sites up until the launch of what I believe you call "SmartSites", was that Dealer.com built a lot of flash to compete with BZ. I know that most of the sites Dealer.com showcased in the early days were very much flash sites.

Anyway... I'm not beating you up about flash. In fact, I'm quite glad you're deliberately pursuing search engine friendly sites. Your customers deserve it!

With regards to your new SEM product, I agree that dealers can't create ad campaigns in 10 seconds that automatically produce thousands of keywords for multiple departments. It sounds like Dealer.com has done what many SEM companies have done which is create something for those that can't really handle "total control." For the record, I'm ok with that and completely believe that some dealers are best served by using a great SEM solution. On the other hand, I know dealers that are having such amazing success right now doing everything in-house that they've dropped Cars.com and Autotrader.

There's room for lots of products and services in this space and maybe "TotalControl Search Engine Dominator" is truly amazing but, "total control" still suggests no assistance required.

Thanks again for your response.

My best,

Shaun

"My flip-flop vendor award goes to Dealer.com. It's almost as if they themselves don't remember that they started building websites with heavy flash (I am glad they've turned this corner though). I'm also amused by Total Control Dominator. If a dealer really wants total control of their SEM efforts they simply need to spend some time learning Google AdWords then Yahoo and MSN. That's total control!..."

Responding to the above post:

Shaun,

Thanks for the award!

I am not sure that Dealer.com has never been heavy in flash website design although we did make several flash splash page designs for dealers that demanded them about 4-6 years ago but in general our designs have always been very search engine strong from the beginning. Our flashier designs represented about 5% of the sites we launched during that time frame. When our company was growing and in need of more business we were willing to do the flash designs every so often since they paid well. The truth is that we simply turn these opportunities down now since we have solid metrics and know that don't convert traffic nearly as well as the solutions we have launched over the past 4 years.

With regards to our TotalControl Search Engine Dominator, there is no way the average dealer could create local automotive search engine ad campaigns in 10 seconds like they can with TotalControl and have 8-10,000 keywords launched for any dept at the dealership. Additionally, the tools inside of TotalControl are above and beyond ad words in that they are all automotive specific and give the dealer unmatched control over creating vehicle specific ads for makes and models in stock in a matter of seconds that are fully tracked down to the call recording (at no charge!) What's even better is that there is optional landing pages that can be deployed for dealers that are not using the fully integrated Dealer.com website solution.

I urge you to contact me so I can give you a full walkthrough of this revolutionary new way to advertise all the dealership profit centers,

you will be truly amazed.

Best regards,

Mark Bonfigli
President, CEO
Dealer.com, Inc

[email protected]

I don't really have an opinion about posting CSI surveys on manufacturers websites... If they did, I don't know how much credibility they would have with the customers anyway???? JD Power doesn 't rate dealers, only manufacturers. I just think that these DealerRater type sites are going to gain in popularity especially given the way that DealerRaters process works for both customers and dealers. They give dealers an opportunity to respond to customer complaints before they are posted in an effort to rectify the situation. It isn't simply a post board for customer puke which these things can turn into.

The one thing that is for sure is that customers are over surveyed to the point of it bordering on harassment.

@ Brian T -

my SEM plan is on auto-pilot right now. That's why I'm surprised to see software solutions out in the market to 'optimize' SEM. I login into Google about every other month. I think buying software to do it is overkill.

It took me about 10 hours to complete my plan. I first brainstormed every possible way someone will enter phrases relating to our business. I came up with a list of 700 phrases and then wrote a specific ad FOR EACH PHRASE. I do exact-match. The title of the ad is the keyword. The ad description is the same for all. Yes - it's alot of work in the beginning - but I haven't had to touch it for years. I'm using the long-tail approach. Out of the 700 phrases, only about 200 of them are used by searchers in a given month. Some keywords are only used once a quarter, but ad those up and you get very cheap clicks. (costing .10) You then use your website metrics to figure your ROI. I've maxed out Google. I was paying $0.58 two years ago, now its $0.71 a click.

I don't bid to be in the top position. My average position is 2.9. A click is a click to me. It's a commodity.

I'm now focused on building my organic clicks with a hybrid 'flash +blog' approach.

Jeff,

Thanks for this post. I was not able to attend NADA this year and this is a very valuable resource to tap. I am building a "E-Commerce" Department from scratch and having to look at vendors with a fresh set of eyes. After being in this arena for so long I got settled with my old "stand by's" that I was comfortable using over the years.
Going through this process has forced me to reassess those "stand by's" and look at a new set of "solutions" in order to sell cars. I think many of us, especially myself, get hypnotized by the "functionality" of some solution and don't always focus on the the end result of putting metal on the road.

After being in both worlds now, I think you and Alex nailed it when you said dealer's are lost. However, I fault vendor's as well, in terms of their lack of follow up and support of the products they sell. My old boss is very cynical about vendors getting their contracts signed and you never see them again. I tended to disagree with him at the time, but as I go into a new environment with existing contracts, I see the how the vendors got their contracts and deserted the dealer. I have heard it said that it takes a "Champion" in a dealership to ensure a certain software is utilized sufficiently and to it's greatest potential. That is very true to a point. It is incumbent upon the vendor to do their due diligence and to go above and beyond to service their client.

I compare it to a dealer selling a new car and throwing the keys at customer and saying, "Good luck", and walking away. We know as car guys we are going to do an excellent demo and follow through with an excellent delivery. Moreover, we will follow up with that customer until they are ready to trade in or trade up.

There are a lot of great car vendors in our industry, however, even they at times have to be pushed to make it happen. Their is a a lot of lip service out there. They talk the talk, but don't walk the walk after the ink is dry.

Jeff,

As a point of clarification... was it the ADP party or Reynolds and Reynolds party you attended Monday night? I'm sure both were yawning festivals (especially Reynolds).

Andrew - what would you think of manufacturers posting CSI surveys on their websites?

I agree with Jeff Bonnell. I think that consumer driven websites like Dealerrater.com will eventually be JD Power killers. If you look at the money that manufacturers and dealers spend on follow up geared towards CSI it is crazy. Everything is geared towards dealers covering their rear ends and the manufacturers saying "gotcha - you aren't getting the job done for us." It is crazy. It should be more of a collaborative effort but it isn't. Customers are getting pounded with surveys and it is creating a lot of ill will. We have great CSI and we are constantly following up on people but the fruits of our labor are really not published anywhere for people to see. We just know based on the number of repeat and referral customers we have. We know the value of great service and the impact it has on our business. The problem the manufacturers have is that not all dealer's care about CSI. Every manufacturer is chasing that JD Power score even though the survey sample that JD Power takes is so small that I don't think it is entirely representative of what is going on at the retail level. We work our tail off to achieve the highest recognition from our manufacturer but most customers don't even know what it means nor do they care. We chase the numbers needed to win these awards because we know if we hit it the rest will fall into place (profitability, retention, etc.). I think the recent article in autonews about the Dealerrater.com type sites is highly indicative of where our industry is going. Look at how many people comment about products and services on sites like amazon.com and cnet.com. I know i don't buy a computer or electronic without reading the customer reviews on cnet.com. The prevalence of this type of content is going to have a huge impact going forward. Whether it will be on our own websites or third parties remains to be seen.

The chief economist for the National Automobile Dealers Association expects a bit of a rebound in the second half of the year. Unfortunately he is basing this projection on what he has learned from the past and the issues we face today are very different.

Oil going to $100.00, 125.00 a barrel…or more, the housing market facing issues that are much different than before, the demographics of the boomers looking to unload, the increasing issues with the local, state and federal employees retiring and looking for their money, the military retirees whose number will be a huge one in the next 8 years. The meltdown in the US sub-prime real-estate market has led to a global loss of 7.7 trillion dollars in stock-market value since October. Hard to refinance now to buy that new $55,000.00 Escalade. It will be an interesting next few years for the industry in the US; maybe this is why there was a poor dealer turn out.

The issues America has been watching develop and watching the leaders sweeping them under the carpet are now becoming a issue to deal with. This is just part of the cause an effects… then look at India and China producing vehicles at half the cost as the US Market. It will take great skills for the smart/wise dealers to use to survive this coming challenge.

If anyone wants a real treat for an auto / dealer show check out the ones in China and in Japan. Both will revitalize those who attend. The use of technology is now beginning to unfold in China and I think we will see even more evidence of this in the next show. I think one of the benefits here is most dealers and industry folks do not have a lot of baggage from the past and are open to new concepts as the whole industry is a new concept to many.

Jeff's observations on ADP's event is classic and an indication of where this dinosaur is heading, thank God when that is over. It always amazes me that when I speak to some who have converted to another DMS system the usually say "boy what a difference". It is also a great observation on BZ Results. It is amazing that the faster the rising star the faster the burnout. With their pricing strategy, the fact their technology was old when ADP purchased them. (Reminds me of the timing of Steve Case's sale of AOL to Time Warner, some say perfect.) With the difficult economic times we are facing in America, the decreased business we (many) in the Auto Industry will face the next few years where can BZ go with their 5-6 K a month solution?

Hello to everyone, and especially to Jeff. Lot's of insights in these posts and it's nice to see dedicated professionals pursuing so many answers. I'm afraid I had to miss this year's show - busy replacing (and filling in for) a key employee whom I had to show the door, oh and busy building 3 (three!) pinewood derby cars this year.

I had several confidants who made the trip and had asked them to keep their eyes peeled. but they too returned with "nothing too new" reports.

I don't know much about Dealerflow, but they seem to be tickling at an area that could be poised for huge revision - the comprehensive DMS completely reborn with modern messaging and employee focused operation - merge that with Arkona and take on the world.

BZ dropped the rolling billboards - Good. Maybe that's a telltale we could all find uplifting. That organization has done the largest financial disservice I have ever... ah stop me here.

I would like to float a little prediction. the next big thing - perhaps... for dealerships...a system for developing UGC that allows a dealership's website to demonstrate with credibility - "how we get our customers to tell our potential customers that the experience was a good one when they did business with us."

Like joe says, "My market is the 98% that went somewhere else.
"

The next big thing will solve the puzzle of getting customers to talk to potential customers over the Internet platform. Imagine dealerator.com not as a bitch zone, but as a cheerleading section.

- Jeff

@Jeff:
Any luck on the V-Auto interview?

@ Wayne:
How long does it take to track and tweek your pay to click to hit the .58 Mark? Could the time be better utilized perfecting the Autotrader process? Just some thoughts, I have been intrigued by pay per click, just curious of the R.O.I. money wise and time wise?

Show was slower this time around than in previous years... both in terms of dealer attendance and vendor mega-marketing campaigns. It was the first time in years that I didn't almost get hit by one of thost massive BZResults Billboards-on-Wheels.

More Hispanic talent? I've been in the business a while and agree. Does anyone have a suggestion for a Hispanic Marketing speaker on Automotive? I'm looking for someone for a San Diego May 6 Hispanic Marketing seminar as the keynote/speaker. Please let me know. [email protected]