3rd Party Lead Provider vs. Hook Logic (Auto Logic)

[joe.pistell]

You definitely need to get phone tracking if you don't have it. I also highly suggest that you record your calls as well. I think you might be surprised by what you find.

Uncle Joe Lesson #121

SELLING CARS IS A TEAM SPORT.
Improving Marketing without Improving Management is not going to sell more cars.

You can work for 100's of hours to crank up the digital marketing (and merchandising) to juice up the traffic, BUT, if your sales managers are not working as hard as you AND are not as innovative as you, then all of your hours of marketing has produced one result. You've simply made it easier for the sales reps to fill their belly and shut down.

HUMAN NATURE FACT:
Salesmen are on the hunt for laydowns and often shut down once they have food in their belly. We can call it: "The Fat and Happy Wall" Selling more cars requires... WORK.

If your management team hasn't got a score sheet to leverage this new traffic (and make everyone accountable), you can flush all your time and talent down the toilet.

HTH

 

[JamieS]

Uncle Joe Lesson #121
SELLING CARS IS A TEAM SPORT.
Improving Marketing without Improving Management is not going to sell more cars.

You can work for 100's of hours to crank up the digital marketing (and merchandising) to juice up the traffic, BUT, if your sales managers are not working as hard as you AND are not as innovative as you, then all of your hours of marketing has produced one result. You've simply made it easier for the sales reps to fill their belly and shut down.

HUMAN NATURE FACT:
Salesmen are on the hunt for laydowns and often shut down once they have food in their belly. We can call it: "The Fat and Happy Wall" Selling more cars requires... WORK.

If your management team hasn't got a score sheet to leverage this new traffic (and make everyone accountable), you can flush all your time and talent down the toilet.

HTH

QFT

 

[ajholland]

We did cut our newpaper ad and replaced it with tv, which has a call to action sending the user to our web site. On top of that we have fine tuned our SEO efforts, all to try and drive more people to the web site. As part of this push, I was hired and an internet department now exists. Our GSM and NCM are screaming about the lack of floor traffic and blaiming it on the fact that we pulled the newspaper ads. Everyone wants to hang the ad agency, whom we most likely are overpaying, however I don't thing that's the answer. I believe they've done what they came in and said they would do. Feb '11 we have less than 2000 unique visitors to our site. Last month we had almost 6,000. I don't pick up the phone, so I can't speak to our phone traffic. If we are getting more phone calls they're not turning into appointments. As I type this it makes me wonder if we can set up call tracking through the website (maybe already have it), to get a better idea if phone calls are just being mishandled. hmmm....

If you don't have call tracking on your site right now, I would definitely invest in it. There are multiple vendors out there that can provide you with numbers and the ability to listen to your calls. It would be a shame if your efforts are producting 20, 30, or 60 phone ups per month, but they are being blown by someone who has no training or has no business answering the phone up.

 

[mcampo2501]

If you don't have call tracking on your site right now, I would definitely invest in it. There are multiple vendors out there that can provide you with numbers and the ability to listen to your calls. It would be a shame if your efforts are producting 20, 30, or 60 phone ups per month, but they are being blown by someone who has no training or has no business answering the phone up.

I agree. I'm looking at a few vendors now that offer call tracking services. To be brief, our store has 8 sales people, 2 of which have been here less than 5 years. The sales managers assume that their tenure equates to unparalleled phone skills (among other things) and I personally don't think that has a whole lot to do with it. In my experience, tenure can often lead to complacency. We also don't have a pager system. When a sales call comes in, our operator sends the call to a line that rings every salesperson's line at once. The first to pick up the phone gets the call. Not a bad system if there's always someone free who wants to answer the phone, but there's no telling how many calls go unanswered. Along with the tracking I think recording would be nice as well. Having spent a lot of time dissecting our current process I have concluded that I need a new website, phone tracking, and a new SEO program are a must. Would like a newsletter and hooklogic as well, but not sure how friendly the GM will be with the checkbook. Seems as though if the focus is to drive thousands of extra people to the website, capturing the business should be worth at least as much advertising money as what got them there.

I appreciate everyone's input on this but the thread seems to be getting way off topic. Let's try to shift back over to Hook Logic vs Third Party. Have we concluded that third party leads are not the answer? Also, Hooklogic seems great, but are there any other similar products out there? Seems pretty unique to me.

 

[joe.pistell]

QFT

hahaha, damn I'm old, had to google QFT to see what you meant Jamie! https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1TSNO_enUS453US453&ix=seb&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=QFT

Thnx!

 

[joe.pistell]

...I appreciate everyone's input on this but the thread seems to be getting way off topic. Let's try to shift back over to Hook Logic vs Third Party. Have we concluded that third party leads are not the answer? Also, Hooklogic seems great, but are there any other similar products out there? Seems pretty unique to me.

--ActiveEngage (100% must have)
--DriveItNow (awesome concept, haven't got it it yet)
--WalkAroundVideo (100% must have w/High End units)

 

[joe.pistell]

When it comes to inhouse videos Feldmans has few peers.

 

[joe.pistell]

mcampo,

IMO, go for ActiveEngage. Max leads # per dollar spent and its COMPLETELY BRAINLESS. Its my 2nd highest lead source.

HTH
p.s. remember my warning

 

[john.quinn]

mcampo,

IMO, go for ActiveEngage. Max leads # per dollar spent and its COMPLETELY BRAINLESS. Its my 2nd highest lead source.

HTH
p.s. remember my warning

I disagree. Chat skills are akin to phone skills: you can generate all the sessions the world and still blow it; never see a customer in the store. As a matter of fact, it's a whole new skill set: not to be taken lightly.

You have to have some real mental deficiencies to screw-up Hook Logic.

Quote me: Hook Logic is Salesperson Proof. Honestly, it's as big as inventory on your site.

 

[joe.pistell]

I disagree. Chat skills are akin to phone skills: you can generate all the sessions the world and still blow it; never see a customer in the store. As a matter of fact, it's a whole new skill set: not to be taken lightly.

Big John,

My Bad. I should have mentioned that I use the HOSTED CHAT. It's staffed by activengage staff, not our sales reps.

I wrote about my chat experiences here: Is Your Dealership Website Chat Used or Abused?

"In my organization, we started self-managing our chat and got OK results. I felt we were leaving cash on the table, we took the leap and employed ActivEngage to manage our chats. The lead counts and sales exploded! It was nice to read the chat records and watch the ActivEngage chat team consistently recognize a shopper with ‘purchase intent’ and each time they aggressively go for the appointment! For us, 3rd party chat service is our highest ROI vendor."


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