Jeff,

We searched our system for all leads with the Marie Zahn name and found four. Three of them went to your dealership and were submitted on these dates: 10/13/2006, 2/22/2007, and 4/29/2007.

All three of these leads were individually entered on the Yahoo! Autos website. Yahoo! Autos has confirmed that they never resend leads—each is uniquely entered by users. Since Yahoo! sends leads from their website only, they confirmed that these leads were typed in on their “get a free price quote” lead form which has dealers listed for selection. Whoever typed in these leads had to specifically select your dealership in order for us to send you the lead. Since the leads are several months apart, we did not filter them out as duplicates.

The fourth lead was for a different make and came from the PriceQuotes website on 11/13/2006.

AutoUSA is very sensitive about websites creating duplicate leads and selling them to us. We have stringent filters to catch duplicates within a certain timeframe. We only work with the highest integrity websites and we will not buy any leads from websites that automatically create duplicate leads.

We do understand that Internet customers can go to several websites, including the dealer’s website, and request the same vehicle from the same dealership. We can only filter out the leads that come through our system. Dealer CRM’s or CRM ad-on software may be needed for dealers to filter out duplicate leads that come from different lead providers.

If you or your readers have ideas on how we can improve our duplicate filtering, we would love to hear about them either as comments on your blog or emailed directly to us at [email protected].

Thanks for the heads-up Jeff. I've got my own test lead out there now.

Joe,

Thanks for the plug, unintentional as it may be...

Yes, i-LeadControl does look at leads over 30 days old, you simply plug in the desired date range and voila! However, most lead providers will only give you credit for leads that duplicate within a 30 day time frame as you mentioned.

Like most who read this blog I am also discouraged by the ability of the lead providers to take advantage. I hope i-LeadControl can do it's part to help out...

Best regards to all,

Steve Williams
i-LeadControl

This sounds like a problem for i-LeadControl? From the article you posted not too long ago, I didn't catch if i-LeadControl can look at leads that were generated over 30 days ago. (ie: in this case) AND no, I don't work for them, I am just trying to relate one post to another.

Jeff, do you think that you would have caught this duplicate if you didn't generate the lead?

In my past life, I was the eCommerce Director of an 18 store dealer group. I would like to think that my ISMs would have caught such a duplicate, but I am guessing that it would have never been flagged for a credit (and we probably would have assumed that the same customer came back through another website & would have been charged for it.)

It's disappointing that such activity happens. I know the big lead providers are pretty good about giving credits, but they usually expected me to pay for the same information twice if the inquires are more than 30 days apart.

-JoE Drosen
National Sales Director, CarSpot

Driver Education Online course is state and DMV-approved teaches you strategies for safe driving, defensive driving techniques and state specific rules and regulations that are necessary to qualify for your DMV Learners Permit.

FYI we were closed from Dec 24 - Jan 2nd, for the holidays, with support via email & ticket system. Any yea we have been working on our new car configurator and hoped to release it at the new year, we are days away from a release and will be sure to promote it on Dealer Refresh.

Chris I will call you shortly to demo the new tools with you...

Chris,
They are different. The "Ken Burns" Slide Show is annoying. Love the image size.

Speaking of image size...
Your camera flash is on too often on the interior shots.
Love your indoor photo area, very clean and bright.
Your camera may need some work, it's either set wrong, or it could uses an upgrade. It seems to wash out on very bright days and struggles with the bright white walls inside.

On the interior shots, made indoors, experiment with turning that flash off and swing thoses doors open. Indirect light is your friend, find it or make it when ever you can!

Love your work!
Joe

I've been hosting my site with Idealer Network since August 2007. Our site is awesome. What sold me on Idealer was the overall appearance of the inventory detail pages. The photo slideshow is top notch. The supposed new car configurator and vin decoder were also major selling points. HOWEVER, shortly after I signed up I found out there was some lawsuit and Idealer was no longer able to pull the graphics and information for their cofigurator or 07-08 decoder info. So, I got over it and waited patiently....then I was told it was almost done for several weeks and promised we would be the first to have it up...it's still not up! Now, when i call support i get voicemail. When I email Aaron I get no response. I'm starting to wonder if my website provider is still in business? If someone from Idealer Network reads this please give me a call or email me.
Thanks,
Chris Branum
www.KelleyGM.com

ahh... very nice Aaron.
I'll dig into your client list and see what you've got going on. While you're building out your new site, I HIGHLY reccomend that you add Video or Camtasia presentations to help explain your features and benefits.

You've caught my eye when I saw the "ken burns" effects (Photo Pan/Zoom Video) . I am manually building Still Photo Pan/Zoom Videos and doing voice overs, see www.breseechevrolet.com/ I've been hunting for an inventory host that could automatically build these on the fly. The digital voice reader is good, but May I suggest that you offer an option where a subscriber could add a voice over to the video.

Thnx, looking foward to digging into your platform.
Joe

Hi Joe;

Here are a few more samples for you... We are about to release our new platform which will include our new website. New features will include revised car config, a new version of our integrated click to call and call back system, enhanced new vehicle polling, and our new website platform with complete user interactive configuration...

Here are some of our unique features...
Custom Home Page Design (No Template)
Un-Matched Natural SEO Indexing
Mega-pixel Imaging (Industry First) Unlimited Images
Photo Pan/Zoom Video Effect (Industry First)
Auto Voice - Text to Speech
Integrated Click to Call - In house technology with call tracking
One Click Inventory Navigation
Enlarged Inventory List Photos
Interactive (Flash Based) Control Panel "RIA"

Site Samples:
www.dcmotorcars.com
www.deserteuropean.com
www.eurocaroc.com
www.carltonmotorcars.com
www.prestige-motors.com
www.hondasantaana.com
www.jstarmotors.com
www.townsendglobalimports.com
www.cartermotorcars.com
www.motorgroup.com
www.southernimports.com
www.newporteuropean.com
www.graigerhonda.com

We also have a very nice eBay Auction Manager w/ UI that matched our dealer sites.

If you have any questions feel free to give me a call 949-200-7199 x10 Aaron

Aaron,
Like what I see so far, looking for examples of your inventory platfom in use. All I saw was dc motors. May I suggest that you post a client list, because right now it looks as if you have just one client and your last update was ove 1 year ago.

I am looking at how your platform handles vin/option decoding (which is an industry wide SNAFU).

thnx,
Joe

Thanks for the plug Jeff. I see your new site is finally up, looks good!

Jeff,

I have to agree with you. Cobalt and Prospector and even ReyRey make my head hurt. I can make them all work well, but I could use the same amount of effort and use a Outlook based program.
These systems tend to get in their own way.

Most of these "lead management in a box" systems don't work for most dealers who are trying to get to that next level. Which is why they all ask for long term commitments, because once you know what you are doing, you have out grown their system.

Fully Customizable systems are becoming the only way to go in my opinion.

I always like to keep on-hand as many articles as possible that proclaim Vendor X as the "dealer's choice" or "#1 performer". I stockpile this stuff so that when a vendor or a GM comes to me touting Vendor X's superiority on some "unbiased" survey, I can just toss them the pile of articles and say, "according to these, everyone's a winner. I'm gonna go sell cars now if that's alright with you".

Jeff,

First of all, good job on winning the award... you certainly deserve it!

Second, are you saying that you used to use Prospector when it was still Cowboy? That's cool, I am friends with the 2 guys (Brad & Jordan) that created Cowboy and sold it to (and now are employed by) Cobalt.

From 2005 to 2007, I was a member Cobalt's Customer Advisory Board and was very sad to see that Cobalt's LMCC (Lead Manager Customer Central) is over taking Prospector as the main CRM offering from Cobalt. I've used Prospector and LMCC extensively & hands down Prospector is a much better product... as far as this award goes though, I think they are probably referring to LMCC (as this has many, many more users.)

-JoE Drosen
National Sales Director, CarSpot

Jeff,

You truly do have the best blog.

Todd,

Dealers are the masters at smoke and mirror marketing.

Finally, the topic I've been waiting to sink my teeth into!

First off, congrats on the award Jeff. I didn't vote for you though. I would have, but I wasn't asked. That brings me to the whole point of where these awards come from...where do they come from? Who decides? What are the standards? How were these vendors, dealers, etc. picked?

If there is anything I would like to see come out of the Dealer Refresh efforts, it would be a standard for judging the Automotive Internet Community. It is the same reason why I asked how other dealers count internet deals in a different topic.

I will continue to contribute to Dealer Refresh, AAISP-like organizations, and other venues in hopes that we will all agree to some sort of standard some day.

Jeff,

That’s why I love reading your stuff... You hold NO punches.
I always wondered myself on how certain companies won all of these awards. I guess it isn't hard if you spend a ton in advertisements. I was floored to find out recently that certain magazines sell the covers of their magazine to the highest bidder. Me personally, I rather let my skills and proven success of my clients speak for my company's talents... Besides $12,000 for a cover of a magazine is just way too pricey for me.

Hey, I guess if you got it like that...

Jeff,
I couldn't have said it better. This type of marketing has worked well in the pass, however, I believe (Hopefully) dealers will wise up and make theses companies produce the goods. No more smoke and mirror marketing, just solid applications and ROI's.

Congrats!

Yes about time for the separate department/coordinator to fade out. I have been on a quite a few website training calls where the coordinator just wants to hog the internet deparment, not share the leads and do the follow up's himself. Doesn't want anyone else to get the training on how to manage the inventory online or how the ILM works... Silly you... what will happen when you are on Vaction or Sick??

I have to agree with Alex.. you have to do proper follow-up and data-mine... but to mine that data you need the correct and up to date data. Amazing that most dealers DMS systems do not even have up-to-date inventory or customer information. Further to mine that data you must have full access to it... it is your data and you own it... not the DMS provider.

So please support Open Secure Access. www.opensecureaccess.com.

Regards,
Farooq

In the near-term, I think Alex is right about the issue of GM's effectively following-up and data-mining. We have been in this space for over 12 years and that has been a somewhat consistent issue.

There are certainly very successful exceptions and we are seeing more and more of them over time, yet they still represent a minority of the whole.

With the convergence of technologies, and a younger generation moving in, we may start to see a shift. The kids having txt-speed contests with their friends today (whom have grown up surrounded by these technologies) will eventually be representative of the majority of the workplace; unlike today.

Not only will there be a more tech-savvy workplace, but as the technologies themselves improve it will be easier to stay on top of things with less effort. That's where we try to help : )

It will be interesting to see how the future unfolds.
--
Andrew Salamone
carsgofaster.com

Our "Internet Department" (a non-BDC-like department) lasted from 1997 to July of 2006. In our larger stores we had a BDC-like Internet Department since late 2004. Up until that point, our BDC's were separate from the Internet Departments.

We had also been through 6 different department models ranging from a selling Internet Coordinator/Manager per store to a completely centralized Internet/BDC solution for our entire company (current model). If the idea that the traditional Internet Department is dead because those departments have been integrated into a BDC-like environment, then I have to agree.

Of course, this will not be as evident the case for single-point dealers, but I do believe a mixed phone/Internet department is the way to go.

I have heard people take things a step further by saying the BDC's will go away as CRM systems get better and better - it will once again become a salesperson's responsibility to follow and harvest the incoming analog and digital business. I think this will never happen. For the same reason the Internet Departments and BDC's exist today is the same reason why they will exist tomorrow: salespeople, salesmanagers, and GM's will not effectively follow-up and data-mine.

Will the BDC/Internet model change again? I don't know. Technology changes too often to make that prediction.

Our dealership has been with TKCarsites for over 3 years. When we first started with TK we were extremely happy. A company who knew who you were when you called and wanted to make and keep you happy. Since the merge with KPA we've had NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS. Customer support is a joke, sometimes they get back to you the next day but not often! I just had a call on from support for a ticket I opened two weeks ago!! With the new IOL 2.0 platform that Homenet launched a couple of weeks ago we had several issue's with how our inventory was showing on our website. Homenet kept us up-to-date with fixes to their new platform. But...some of the issue's were TK. We couldn't get anyone to call us back...we sent emails to their infamous techsupport and no response at all!! We went with TKCarsites in the beginning because we were impressed with what other dealerships had to say about their support, follow-up and problem solving. We have hand none of that for quite sometime. Our contract is about up and we ARE going with someone else. TKCarsites if you want to be top dog you have to get out of the house!!

We are an 8 rooftop dealership in Indianapolis and launched with TK in January.  We have had nothing but problems with our sites since we launched!  TK is blaming it on HomeNet, but if our inventory is not online, we are not selling cars.  I am ready to find a new website vendor.  Any suggestions??