Thank you for the feedback- both positive and negative. We strive to provide products that satisfy the needs of dealers.

I'm advocating that you consider AutoMart in your advertising mix based on both the quantity and quality of car buyers looking for a car to buy in our products. Because more and more consumers are car shopping online, dealers should and are moving more and more of their advertising dollars online to reach them. I would contend that AutoMart.com is in the top 3 of the most effective online advertising resources currently available. Further, AutoMart Magazine is more like the internet than it is the newspaper- free information. Consumer demand is still high for targeted free distribution photo guides and therefore dealers get a high return on their investment with the magazine, as well.

John, the question was on AutoMart DOT COM, not the print version.

You can try and justify the old school stuff as much as you want. You can't quantify the ROI with print. Don't say you can, because you can't, and I know.

AutoMart.com is a waste of dough just like, AutoTrader.com. They show you all these BS numbers and they do a snake dance for dealers who buy it hook line and sinker. Looks like they set the hook pretty good with you. Sorry buddy, you once were a great linebacker, but you missed the boat on this one.

Print is dead, click & print only exists to prop up the short lifespan of prints viability, don't believe me? ask one of the hundreds of thousands of convienience stores what percentage of their classified vehicle ad books are returned to the vendor every two weeks. I took an informal survey of stores around me last year and it averaged 80% returned and not even looked at. When will online classified vendors realize it's not about "Exposure" blah, blah, blah, it's about making my phone ring from customers. I know how to buy popular in market vehicles & advertise vehicles w/great commentary & 27 photos per car, I know how to price them competitively, we get it. What about delivering a bigger in market audience for my vehicles? How some online classified sites manage to get away w/their price points is beyond me, the whole "Exposure" mantra isn't figuring in the ROI equation, at least not in our books and trust me, we pay attention to this every month. AutoTrader.com and Cars.com have the largest in market audiences, that much is a given, paying anyone from the third fiddle level below is flushing money down the toilet from an ROI aspect based on our ad spends w/Autorader & Cars.com the past year and a half alone, how AutoTrader.com will manage to stay on our radar as a vendor should be very interesting to say the least because unless they re-invent the wheel itself we're slashing them in half if not totally based on ROI alone, let alone taking on a third online classified vendor.

I disagree with the idea that Auto Mart is a waste of money. I've supported the print piece for a number of years and can't argue the number of calls it's producing. The fact that our consumers only find listings from dealerships makes it stand out from some of the others. The one thing they're lacking is mass media recognition. The product works.

I must ask then how do you rate lead providers?

What is most important for your dealership?
Quality of the leads...
Inventory specific
Qulified customers

or
Quantity...
Sheer numbers
Generic New leads
Build a car

or
ROI - but how do you measure it?
Sales vs Cost
Sales vs leads
Other?

Melanie pointed out the reason that AutoMart has an edge...

"What AutoMart.com does best is drive traffic from our website directly to dealer websites. Late stage car buyers want to visit a dealer website when they are making their buying decision- we facilitate that connection."

This is something that you won't get from AutoTrader or Cars.com--they will suppress and restrict your website address so every lead has to pass through their funnel.

This increases the effectiveness of the AutoTrader.com website, but not the effectiveness of your advertising dollar.

Also, the fact that they found your blog and used it to market their site tells me they aren't idiots.

Gary's comment is contradictory...

"Stay away from this one and spend money driving traffic to your dealer web sites or micro sites."

Then you don't want to stay away from this one...right?

Automart.com is a waste of time and money. Don't let them fool you with BS metrics of how many eye balls they get to view your inventory. How many cars does it sell you? Zilch, nada, nunca!

Stay away from this one and spend money driving traffic to your dealer web sites or micro sites.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to weigh in...
We distribute 8 million photo guides of cars for sale from car dealers every month which are free for car buyers to pick up at major retail locations across the country. Those offline copies drive a ton of traffic to AutoMart.com of active car buyers who are looking for more information about the cars that dealers have for sale. We have a very aggressive search engine marketing campaign which contributes to the over 1.5 million car buying visitors to AutoMart.com each month.
What AutoMart.com does best is drive traffic from our website directly to dealer websites. Late stage car buyers want to visit a dealer website when they are making their buying decision- we facilitate that connection. So when measured against other vendors email leads- we won't win, but that's because that's not what we do. We let consumers and dealers connect in any way they choose- whether that be by instant message, phone, email or visiting the dealer's website.
Our best customers tell us that our traffic converts to sale better than any of our competitors. Sounds clique, but we focus on quality not quantity. I belive that is why we are privileged to call thousands of dealers, and top automotive players such as Toyota Certified, GM and AutoNation our customers.
Dealers who use both our targeted print and innovative online packages together enjoy the best results and the most attractive ROI. We believe that it is the two mediums working in tandem that creates the business efficiencies that dealers are looking for.
Melanie Kovach, General Manager AutoMart.com

TJ - we have been asking that same question for over 6 months... Same amount of impressions, emails, and phone calls, but serious discrepancy in price... Since the significant majority of dealers never even measure their ROI, I don't think they (the vendors) know how to handle these types of questions.... Kevin Frye/eCommerce Director/Jeff Wyler Automotive Family

Touting Dealer Satisfaction figures seems to be the norm these days with classified dot coms. The size of the in market audience is where the rubber hits the road. How many eyeballs are being exposed to my vehicles and in turn how many phone calls are being generated from them. I personally don't even consider an email a serious part of measurable metrics anymore, the phone call is it in converting a web shopper to an up and in turn increasing our ROI with a classified advertising product. For us Autotrader.com & Cars.com have been in a consistant dead heat in phone call generation for at least the past year and a half. What I'm wondering is why Autotrader.com charges us twice the rate we pay Cars.com for virtually the same ROI? anyone else in the same box w/Autotrader.com?

We use Automart at one of our locations, and it measured almost dead last for overall ROI for year to date (for internet leads). Beep Beep beat it, Dealix beat it, AutoTrader beat it, etc. I can only share our experience, and we pay close attention to measuring our ROI for all sources and Automart has not been a good performer for us. Kevin Frye/eCommerce Director/Jeff Wyler Automotive Family

this is interesting. i think we will have to reserve judgement on the outcome of this until the program is rolled out in force.

i don't quite think it will be as bad as some expect, but that could be because i'm an optimist !?

Jason -If smart bothers you, wait till you hear what Honda is now requiring!

manufacturers always seem to think they can do a better job then their dealers

make cars (GOOD cars - not good ENOUGH cars)... and leave the rest to everyone else... please.

I have used a number of support centers based operations in the Phillipines and India that work with a number of international companies including Dell tech support. The support is very knowledgeable, the communication/language was no problem at all. in fact I and many have found the experience very rewarding. I have had issues with communicating with automobile sales and service professionals in the States that were more difficult.

The key as always is hire smart and train well. The added benefit is many of these employees are very happy to have stable work at a fair wage.

The perception of call centers for solving tech solutions with clients who maybe more stressed for a number of reasons is not the same as a potential client who is looking for information in making a purchase.

Let it be said there is a need for a solution as the process that is presently being used in the US is not working and when one company finds a solution that will work the others will follow quickly.

Interesting topic. Not sure an national BDC with a call center in the Phillipines or middle east will work. Have you called Dell tech support yet? While the support is very knowledgeable, the communication/language barrier leaves much to be desired.

This reminds me the "governmentalization" of something. By getting a behemoth company involved, it suddenly becomes cumbersome and is not agile to stay current with trends. To wit: As the OEMs are starting to want to go to one website provider, one CRM, etc., they are losing sight that these sales are HIGHLY regional, and what works well in Fort Worth will not produce the same results in Dallas.

Solution? Simple. Put the dealer on the hook for a specific model by putting it in their contract (BDC/Internet, ISMs, BDC only, etc.) and require them to maintain a set number of goals for each to ensure they are working. Or, place a performance bonus for those stores adopting and embracing the concept. Make a model out of them.

Driving it from the top down invariably results in poor adoption and results. Most dealers are highly competitive, so if they are falling behind a peer or the competition, they generally adopt what the other guy is doing to stay close.

Thanks for the article Alex, and continued comments from Lao.

A national BDC through an OEM? Hmmnn...

Believe you are right on with the initial customer OEM contact and scrubbing, then passing it on to the dealerships BDC as a qualified car shopper (are ya taking notes Nissan USA?) lead. Then the OEM follows up with a quick CSI call from an RDR post sale.

Outside of the initial contact and post sales survey from the OEM, the dealership should be responsible for the customer satisfaction of the sale and service afterwards.

Customer retention is going to come from the personalized service of the sales rep that sold the smart car (and quality of vehicle), not from a nationalized, word scripted, OEM call center.

But the manufacturers will never get with the local dealers to get a real pay plan for sales reps to stay there long enough to care about post sales follow-up.

Ok, I know I'm late, but here are my entries for acronym bingo...

BDC = business development center
USA = united states of america
CSI = customer satisfaction index
RDR = retail delivery receipt
OEM = original equipment manufacturer

Eh? eh?

Isuzu has contracted with a third party company to follow up with the leads and coordinate with the dealers in setting appointments and following up with the client.

I do not believe they realize what an opportunity they have here if they expand the program as the clients enjoy the prompt follow up and quality source of information provided, Many clients said when they began "wow we are hearing back" makes you wonder what the ISM's were doing all this time?

I think this could be a path of sucess for Isuzu as they are a quality brand at a popular price, great warranty program and Isuzu is one of the top truck OEM's in the world, they have international brand recongition for quality. Look at the loyal Trooper following. They are under marketed in USA

The "Howard Dean" success factor could be applied here if they approach the market properly.

Isuzu???!!! What are they doing? Inside the United States? How many Isuzu dealers are left?

The older/larger OEM's certainly have the pockets to pull it off, but I wonder if the willingness will be immediate. Toyota, BMW, and Honda have all spoke of straight integration with dealer CRM tools - not just ILM tools like some have already done. I believe this integration will be one of the first steps down this path.

smart, on the other hand, is a new OEM to the States with the ability to start fresh. I asked whether there were plans to integrate with a CRM, but they haven't gotten to that point yet. They did say they want to. I think the success of third party follow-up is a direct relation to the information inside a CRM.

A company like Toyota, Nissan, Mercedes or maybe Ford that has a large international experience (in Asia) will probably be able to be a bigger player in the development of this portion of the industry and lead the way.

A well trained call center in India or the Philippines with proper supervision and the use of today's technology will be able to make this concept model work, really this is no-longer a concept as the model and technology already exists.

The key factor is the training and proper supervision of the call center staff which would be a 24/7 operation. Many of the OEM's already have product training systems and testing in place, they will just need to modify and tweak it a bit.

This will be a “segway” for the OEM’s to be able to develop their sales reach internationally. This will also be a way for the more astute OEM's to bypass some of the "Old School Bagage" some dealership and industry management has about ecommerce and using technology to sell automobiles

The dealerships will have their own staff that would be interfacing with the OEM's that would be on the dealerships payroll. With this model the dealership will become more of a fulfillment center as well as traditional dealership and service outlet.

Isuzu already has a project they just started that is doing a very basic version of this; outsourced to a 3rd party company. They may not be aware of the potential of what they are doing and may not know how to take it to the next level, they may not even be interested??

You're absolutely right Lao! I see a lot of potential for better customer service out of this model. The difficult part is funding a national BDC for a company like Ford and the reluctance of some dealers to not see the positive sides. I saw some push-back from a few dealers at the smart meeting, and these were very pro-active dealers.

I think the older OEM's will start with a merged CRM system to monitor dealer activities, then speculate a national BDC might be the answer. Going back on the costs - how many people would you need to man a national BDC for a company like Toyota? Is that an average of 3 people per dealership? If there are 1,000 Toyota dealers, that's 3,000 new employees.....big bucks!

This is definitely a great time to be on this side of the automotive business with a short memory for the "good old days".

This is only the beginning. As some of the more astute OEMs see the potential and advantages of working more closely with the clients we will see much more of this type of activity from them.

This will be a boon for the OEM'/clients and the dealers who are able to work from this formula, it will save money, time and allow the clients better service (hopefully). This is a great time to be in the industry as there are so many opportunities developing.

I don't believe there is a "No Quote" option. That being said the answer to your question is to become a student and master of the phones. The internet lead is simply an opportunity to begin a dialog with the customer.

I would recommend training programs like Alan Ram or Dealer Synergy. I made mastering phone skills a priority very early on in my career as a floor sales person. Little did I know that it would be instrumental in taking on and being successful in Internet Sales.
You must have a game plan and process in place and make sure that everyone is following it. The bottom line is strong phone skills can overcome the price quote without ever giving the customer the impression that you don't want to quote them. There will always be a situation where you must quote a price, but again if you are truly a "Phone Ninja" You will be able to overcome any obstacle.

I would recommend training programs like Alan Ram or Dealer Synergy. I made mastering phone skills a priority very early on in my career as a floor sales person. Little did I know that it would be instrumental in taking on and being successful in Internet Sales.
You must have a game plan and process in place and make sure that everyone is following it. The bottom line is strong phone skills can overcome the price quote without ever giving the customer the impression that you don't want to quote them.

There will always be a situation where you must quote a price, but again if you are truly a "Phone Ninja" You will be able to overcome any obstacle. This may seem over simplified but basically the ability to manage a strong internet team comes down to training, training, training. I hope this does not offend anyone but every sales person thinks that they are good on the phones. I have listened to sales calls for many years and let me tell you that is the furthest from the truth. Make the committment to a strong process and you will be more effective at setting appointments and steering clear of price and trade values.