- Apr 16, 2009
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- Blake
Phone Skills is where I would start. Listen to some of your current sales calls coming in, it will be a eye opening experience.
I love what I do, but it is so f-ing stressful.
- Thread starter eag818
- Start date
Phone Skills is where I would start. Listen to some of your current sales calls coming in, it will be a eye opening experience.
CRM has all kinds of reports. I built a report for managers that shows how 50% of the email leads were going to 20% of the sales reps, and these reps had awful closing ratios. these eager beaver reps were burning thru leads looking for lay downs and dropping the ball. What happened with my observation? NOTHING... yet 
Joe, you have the Internet leads being distributed to the whole organization? I had them come to only my team. The store used other forms of advertising (electronic media and print) that went through the switchboard. All of us were in the same room. I listened to all of the phone calls, but being there, I heard my guys talking to the customers as the calls came in. I had a scoreboard when you walked into that room that was updated daily. Leads, outgoing calls, appointments, closing ratios etc.. I'm not going to allow the weakest link to take calls. We didn't allow reps to say, "let me make sure that car is here and I will call you right back". They knew the inventory and could describe each car. If the car didn't have pictures, I had a flip video recorder and the ISM would do a video and send it to the customer. The only person that could mark a lead as dead was me.
I worked for two large groups. While nobody could be on the desk that didn't have F&I experience, I have never had a desk manager with any Internet experience.
I appreciate your frustration. I worked the same hours. Most of the time, my face was glued to a computer screen. I would walk up to the desk and the managers would be planning lunch at 10:00 and making a football pool at 1:00.
Joe, you have the Internet leads being distributed to the whole organization? I had them come to only my team. The store used other forms of advertising (electronic media and print) that went through the switchboard. All of us were in the same room. I listened to all of the phone calls, but being there, I heard my guys talking to the customers as the calls came in. I had a scoreboard when you walked into that room that was updated daily. Leads, outgoing calls, appointments, closing ratios etc.. I'm not going to allow the weakest link to take calls. We didn't allow reps to say, "let me make sure that car is here and I will call you right back". They knew the inventory and could describe each car. If the car didn't have pictures, I had a flip video recorder and the ISM would do a video and send it to the customer. The only person that could mark a lead as dead was me.
I worked for two large groups. While nobody could be on the desk that didn't have F&I experience, I have never had a desk manager with any Internet experience.
I appreciate your frustration. I worked the same hours. Most of the time, my face was glued to a computer screen. I would walk up to the desk and the managers would be planning lunch at 10:00 and making a football pool at 1:00.
- Dec 2, 2009
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- John
Ha! What perfect timing... VP keeps me and one of our high-line sales managers after our morning sales meeting. Obviously, the sales manager had been complaining about, let me paraphrase: "all that digital stuff we've been wasting money on." They want a new "campaign," wholly consisting of 1/2 page ads in the newspaper! HAHA!
Funny... I remember the conversations last year as they were all patting themselves on the back for having their best year ever! Sure liked "that digital stuff" last year! hahahaaha
Simple minds equal simple actions, right? Can't get upset about it -- you certainly need to have a thick skin in this "what have you done for me lately" business! We can have all the convos in the world about Greek debt crises, double-dip recessions, lack of a housing market, governmental leadership, and how all of these things have combined to create fear, nervousness, and trepidation in the current marketplace, but none of that really matters, because we need to spend more money in the newspaper
Don't let it eat you up -- only a coupla days left in September, then you'll see how bad the market was nationally. Maybe October will pick-up, and you'll be a hero again
Funny... I remember the conversations last year as they were all patting themselves on the back for having their best year ever! Sure liked "that digital stuff" last year! hahahaaha
Simple minds equal simple actions, right? Can't get upset about it -- you certainly need to have a thick skin in this "what have you done for me lately" business! We can have all the convos in the world about Greek debt crises, double-dip recessions, lack of a housing market, governmental leadership, and how all of these things have combined to create fear, nervousness, and trepidation in the current marketplace, but none of that really matters, because we need to spend more money in the newspaper
Don't let it eat you up -- only a coupla days left in September, then you'll see how bad the market was nationally. Maybe October will pick-up, and you'll be a hero again
- May 1, 2006
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- Alex
Anyone who has *really* done this job should have no problem identifying with the frustrations eag818 has voiced. I think we all go through a period of realization that car dealers suck. The question eag818 is asking us is: How did we deal with it?
This post has made me think that question through quite a bit and I think I can break it up into three phases.
Using something Uncle Joe Pistell loves to say all the time: Crawl, Walk, Run.
Phase 1: Crawl
Discovery - You've enhanced the marketing, increased the visits/leads/etc, and all the other things you were hired to do. Now you're realizing sales are not increasing. Why is that? You've done your homework to discover management and the sales floor only wants to go so far.
Phase 2: Walk
Sharing Awareness - You've got the numbers to support your discoveries and you're now sharing that with the appropriate people. If nothing is being done, then frustration is probably hitting an all-time high.
Phase 3: Run
Change - This is a long and hard road to take, but this will put hair on your chest . You become the leader. You identify with something that everyone else identifies with (usually a CRM system) and own that thing. Once you start to connect dots in your coworkers' daily lives to the dots you've created, you can make change happen.
On a personal note, as someone who also comes from a dealer family, Phase 2 and 3 sort of happened at the same time for me. I can say that I spent roughly 6 years in Phase 3 with the last two years being the time when triumphs started to happen.
Silver bullets don't exist; everything takes deep commitment.
This post has made me think that question through quite a bit and I think I can break it up into three phases.
Using something Uncle Joe Pistell loves to say all the time: Crawl, Walk, Run.
Phase 1: Crawl
Discovery - You've enhanced the marketing, increased the visits/leads/etc, and all the other things you were hired to do. Now you're realizing sales are not increasing. Why is that? You've done your homework to discover management and the sales floor only wants to go so far.
Phase 2: Walk
Sharing Awareness - You've got the numbers to support your discoveries and you're now sharing that with the appropriate people. If nothing is being done, then frustration is probably hitting an all-time high.
Phase 3: Run
Change - This is a long and hard road to take, but this will put hair on your chest
. You become the leader. You identify with something that everyone else identifies with (usually a CRM system) and own that thing. Once you start to connect dots in your coworkers' daily lives to the dots you've created, you can make change happen.On a personal note, as someone who also comes from a dealer family, Phase 2 and 3 sort of happened at the same time for me. I can say that I spent roughly 6 years in Phase 3 with the last two years being the time when triumphs started to happen.
Silver bullets don't exist; everything takes deep commitment.
- Dec 30, 2009
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- Yago
Think about how smart the average person is, then realize that half of the population falls below that.
Is it that the sales person type that the dealer's hire hasn't catched up with how the biz has changed? Or is it that the managers are stuck in the old ways?
This is not even about age, I see older guys that understand the present world-adapt-and succed at what they do. If there is one thing that defines small/mid size biz is challenge. Is it more of your actitude towards challenge.
Dealers ask me all the time if I know a good Internet manager/salesperson. Most of the time there is none available; guess what? anyone that is a good Internet salesperson already has a job. So I tell dealers to just hire a mid twenties person with good personal skills and grow them. Any person in their mid 20's knows or will learn any technology needed for the car biz in no time. So what's the hold up?
The hold up is not that the salespeople are:
the hold up and failure of the team is that WE managers are:
We want trained people that know what to do on their own without help that can work with what we already have and that BRINGS US DEALS.
The failure of the system starts at the top of the chain. It seems that any biz knows that but the car biz. Any failure at the base in a large corporation and the CEO goes thru the window. In the car biz we just blame the layer below us.
But I see the light; a friend of mine that manages Brien Ford was talking to me about setting IPADS and other technology things and long the conversation he said a few interesting things:
"when I interview a new salesperson I llok at their phone. No smart phone-no job here"
"I want the news -- manager I hire to free the salesteam to act on their own. I want him to come every morning and his day be about helping and empowering the salesteam to learn about taing the deal from A to Z"
Groundbreaking...!
You know why dealers love the newspaper? Because you can't screw it up! Pick a car and put in a price. The paper does the rest. The problem is that nobody reads them anymore. They are all going electronic, broke or both.
I loved electronic and dominated a market with it. We had four stations, back then, not 1000. I don't listen to radio stations. I have an iPod, satellite radio and a 6 disk CD player.
IDIOTS! The Internet is the most efficient way to reach buyers.
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Wow, so many responses! 
Thank you guys so much for the feedback, it really helps to know that I'm not the only one in this rut. It also helps to know that even Joe Pistell himself went through this!
Exactly. When fatcat managers notice a drop in sales, they approach me with the same BS -- 'hey man we used to get a ton of apps on this day, why arent we getting anything'
'why is traffic so slow'
implying I do something different that doesnt bring in leads.
implying I shut off homenet one day and decided hey i dont think we should sell cars this week.
They like to compare us to a dealership 15 miles away that has 500 cars. They all either worked there before or have friends there. I hear this all the time:
"well they got 15 deals this weekend" "they sold 118 cars last month what will it take to get there" "they *said* they get 8000 visitors a month"
"they have a bdc their phones ring non stop all the time"
implying i dont know how to view source code, analytics, keyword traffic to their website and realize they only have a couple hundred more visitors than us, inventory size and selection is the reason they sell so many, realize their closing ratio is pretty much the same as ours, oh and they have zero seo
implying that regardless of the fact that theyre an elephant sized dealership, we 'should have been at their level by now'
my dealer has done more digitally than this big dealer and the majority of dirt lots in my area combined, so you can imagine how offensive it'd be to hear this all the time.
I loved Alex's three phase theory. I've been in phase 1 and 2 for the past two years. Phase 3 is difficult, because managers start power tripping. Once I voiced my course of action to change things around, every other manager had their own say to want to change things to their comfort as well.
Boss got pissed at everyone, told me to just focus on bringing 500+ visitors a day (wat) to our website, told managers to focus on maximizing sales.
So basically I tried, got everyone else to put in their two cents of how to run a dealership, confusion and disagreements occur, now we're back to Phase 1.
Its probably my age and lack of previous dealerships on my resume why I feel I cant radically voice a need for change here.
Thank you guys so much for the feedback, it really helps to know that I'm not the only one in this rut. It also helps to know that even Joe Pistell himself went through this!Exactly. When fatcat managers notice a drop in sales, they approach me with the same BS -- 'hey man we used to get a ton of apps on this day, why arent we getting anything'
'why is traffic so slow'
implying I do something different that doesnt bring in leads.
implying I shut off homenet one day and decided hey i dont think we should sell cars this week.
They like to compare us to a dealership 15 miles away that has 500 cars. They all either worked there before or have friends there. I hear this all the time:
"well they got 15 deals this weekend" "they sold 118 cars last month what will it take to get there" "they *said* they get 8000 visitors a month"
"they have a bdc their phones ring non stop all the time"
implying i dont know how to view source code, analytics, keyword traffic to their website and realize they only have a couple hundred more visitors than us, inventory size and selection is the reason they sell so many, realize their closing ratio is pretty much the same as ours, oh and they have zero seo
implying that regardless of the fact that theyre an elephant sized dealership, we 'should have been at their level by now'
my dealer has done more digitally than this big dealer and the majority of dirt lots in my area combined, so you can imagine how offensive it'd be to hear this all the time.
I loved Alex's three phase theory. I've been in phase 1 and 2 for the past two years. Phase 3 is difficult, because managers start power tripping. Once I voiced my course of action to change things around, every other manager had their own say to want to change things to their comfort as well.
Boss got pissed at everyone, told me to just focus on bringing 500+ visitors a day (wat) to our website, told managers to focus on maximizing sales.
So basically I tried, got everyone else to put in their two cents of how to run a dealership, confusion and disagreements occur, now we're back to Phase 1.
Its probably my age and lack of previous dealerships on my resume why I feel I cant radically voice a need for change here.
eag818 I am both understanding and empathetic of the position you find yourself in.
There is no judgment here of you rather simply what I have found works.
In my many years of doing networking and related, ( I am 53, gosh getting up there) and IT /SEO related duties I learned one valuable lesson. That is DON’T ASSUME.
There is an old adage “don’t hide your light under a bushel basket”
It is often assumed that the work we do "IN OUR DEPARTMENT" ( seo, web IT) will in fact be noticed by others and the better we are and the more we do will be acknowledged. The sad truth is that very few people understand what we do or will take note unless you make them aware. This is the key, you sincerely need to let people know what you are doing, plan to do and have done to date. This is not meant that one brags, it simply means you need your people to be involved both directly and indirectly in your processes. In fact, it is the involvement of all your staff in your work that makes the IT department successful.
I have walked in your shoes, however I am not generally walking that path today. Why? Because each time I am going to put something in place I present a short power point presentation for management that introduces the concept and the reasons behind what we as a dealership should and could be doing moving forward. We cover the 5Ws and the HOW. From this initial meeting I ascertain and make sure that I have a solid buy-in from the management team and we discuss possible problems and objections. Then in a separate meeting with Sales, Service or parts we present the new marketing initiative. All the time it is the internet marketing department that is making sure it happens and all know that we are working to pay our way in the success of the new initiative. In many cases the ongoing management of the new process is handled directly by the internet department, but the success is because everyone understands the initiative and is involved.
Not long ago I asked Jeff K. about Hook Logic, and with thumbs up from others using that service I decided to go ahead. I made up a 15 minute power point presentation and met with management. Not only was there buy-in, there was excitement; this then carried over to our meeting with the sales team. My success and the IT deparment is in bringing this great feature to the dealership, (and knowing that our staff and management are aware of this fact), but the success of the program is our people implementing the program so well.
A small tip, don’t bring too many new things to the table at a time. One new idea at a time with one plan to make it happen, then several weeks later bring forward the next “great” suggestion. Doing this will lead you to success.
IT and SEO for many firms is still looked at as a “support” department and an expense; however it is up to us as managers of that department to demonstrate that in fact we are a profit center and we can both directly and indirectly generate revenue for the dealership. ( to do this you need to measure before and after numbers in anything you do, but that is a different posting).
So if you are working a little in the dark and no one is really acknowledging your contributions consider adapting your work methods a little, letting people know what you’re doing , getting them involved and let your light shine
Cheers
John
There is no judgment here of you rather simply what I have found works.
In my many years of doing networking and related, ( I am 53, gosh getting up there) and IT /SEO related duties I learned one valuable lesson. That is DON’T ASSUME.
There is an old adage “don’t hide your light under a bushel basket”
It is often assumed that the work we do "IN OUR DEPARTMENT" ( seo, web IT) will in fact be noticed by others and the better we are and the more we do will be acknowledged. The sad truth is that very few people understand what we do or will take note unless you make them aware. This is the key, you sincerely need to let people know what you are doing, plan to do and have done to date. This is not meant that one brags, it simply means you need your people to be involved both directly and indirectly in your processes. In fact, it is the involvement of all your staff in your work that makes the IT department successful.
I have walked in your shoes, however I am not generally walking that path today. Why? Because each time I am going to put something in place I present a short power point presentation for management that introduces the concept and the reasons behind what we as a dealership should and could be doing moving forward. We cover the 5Ws and the HOW. From this initial meeting I ascertain and make sure that I have a solid buy-in from the management team and we discuss possible problems and objections. Then in a separate meeting with Sales, Service or parts we present the new marketing initiative. All the time it is the internet marketing department that is making sure it happens and all know that we are working to pay our way in the success of the new initiative. In many cases the ongoing management of the new process is handled directly by the internet department, but the success is because everyone understands the initiative and is involved.
Not long ago I asked Jeff K. about Hook Logic, and with thumbs up from others using that service I decided to go ahead. I made up a 15 minute power point presentation and met with management. Not only was there buy-in, there was excitement; this then carried over to our meeting with the sales team. My success and the IT deparment is in bringing this great feature to the dealership, (and knowing that our staff and management are aware of this fact), but the success of the program is our people implementing the program so well.
A small tip, don’t bring too many new things to the table at a time. One new idea at a time with one plan to make it happen, then several weeks later bring forward the next “great” suggestion. Doing this will lead you to success.
IT and SEO for many firms is still looked at as a “support” department and an expense; however it is up to us as managers of that department to demonstrate that in fact we are a profit center and we can both directly and indirectly generate revenue for the dealership. ( to do this you need to measure before and after numbers in anything you do, but that is a different posting).
So if you are working a little in the dark and no one is really acknowledging your contributions consider adapting your work methods a little, letting people know what you’re doing , getting them involved and let your light shine
Cheers
John
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- Dec 30, 2009
- 1,883
- 480
- First Name
- Yago
vAuto is great but, to quicly check your prices against the market why don't you just check Craigslist?
Craigslist will also give you a good idea on how mnay similar cars to yours (both dealer and private) are around you for sale.
