Have you been blitzed by team ATC yet?

[Alex Snyder]

Have you experienced the AutoTrader.com BLITZ?

Every once in a while you meet a salesperson who was obviously flexing his/her muscles to a coworker before trying to sell you something.  If things go awry, they have a tendency to say things that don't usually make the sale, but probably push someone further away.

Well, I'm not going to get into what happened to my boss and me last Thursday, but would rather hear your Autotrader blitz stories.

Don't know what the Autotrader.com blitz is?

Autotrader.com brings sales reps from different  areas into various markets to see if a change of face can get a dealer to sign-up for more stuff....or just sign-up.  I have heard it is called the Autotrader Blitz, but I've never actually heard an ATC rep say that.

Soooooo - have you been approached by an AutoTrader.com sales rep who usually doesn't work your market area? If you have, how did it go?

P.S.  I promise to share my story later.

 

[Frank Davis]

Two plus months ago I cancelled Autotrader and was blitzed by two other reps, one was the rep we used to have then they brought is the big gun, nice looking female from OKC, they went as far as cross checking my solds for 6 months to what they had, They were not to successful in convincing me I made a bad decision. I have to say I miss Autotrader and the telephone calls they generated, but I have to stick to my decision and I will tell you why, first I believe they are way over priced, I mean my god 2,300. They were the highest paid in my budget, I went back a year and found the ROI was not there for our department. Now what really bothers me about Autotrader and Cars.com for that matter. Pull up a vehicle on Autotrader, now count how many links there are taking consumers away from your ad, up to 14 links. All Paid for by other companys to advertise on the page I paid for to advertise my vehicle.
Sorry had to explain why I didnt sign back up. But yes they have tried over and over, The rep from OKC has been here three times. When they drop the price or pay us to advertise our vehicles so others can advertise on our pages I will reconsider signing back up. Maybe since we pay Autotrader more than any other advertiser etc they will just advertise our vehicles and take all of those links down?

 

[Eric Miltsch (blog)]

Frank - so funny...

The ATC blitz just happened in our NY market.

They sent in the classic M/F team; he was sharp, did all the talking and was very fast about everything. Nice guy, knew his stuff - just not anything about our account.

His side-kick was very nice, very knowledgeable and very pleasing on the eyes.

I'm not sure if they even spoke with our local rep about our account, our business model and our activity. Their pitch started out showing products we already use...

 

[Brian in Etown]

the over and under on this thread is 100 posts.....any takers?

 

[Jake]

'Tis the season...Philly reps are currently working the Hampton Roads, VA area, Hampton Roads reps are working the Richmond area, etc. They do it a few times a year because by getting fresh faces in front of the dealers and offering reduced rate trial periods they have pretty good success w/ the blitzes. Besides that, I've found the blitz atmosphere is less than professional. Reps tend to have the "I'm on vacation" and "I'll never see this dealer again" mentality, which isn't what I would want representing my company if I were Autotrader.com. Even when I worked inside sales and there were blitzes, we'd be trying to set appointments for the blitz team and it transformed the business environment into a carnival. What dealers want to hear a bunch of hooting and hollering in the background when talking to a rep about an appointment? It's all about the blitzes at Autotrader.com, which is why they pull some salespeople out of a sales role for two weeks and turn them into appointment setters, forcing them to take a big hit on their own commissions for $30/appt set.

Sure, blitzes generate some business, usually dealers that had previously cancelled, but you have to wonder if it tarnishes their image in some way.

 

[Jake]

Brian, that's easy money...count me in for the over!

 

[Brian (blog)]

The "wonderful" autotrader blitz team was through my area just a few months ago and I had a blast with them. These guys were not easy on the eyes what so ever.

Here is what went down. The automotive group that I worked for was handled by a larger account guy out of the Chicago area to my knowledge. These boys came in unannounced and started just doing there pitch with me. I let them have there fun and I had my fun later on. After wasting my time with pitches and "BS" pricing I made them come back to me two or three times a day while they were in town and at near closing time of the store. So long story short I had these guys back and forth and never left with a contract signed. Finally got better pricing through our large account rep than the wonderful blitz team was offering.

If you are not happy with the whole blitz team thing have some fun with them. I did and it was great.

 

[Mitch]

Strangely enough, the Blitz guys were the only employees from Autotrader that I'd seen in 2 years who had a clue about their product and had some kind of personality.

As far as the Blitz tarnishing AT's image... I felt much better about that than I do about the company's latest tactic of simply cutting your contracts short and demanding new, group-wide contracts at a higher expense. Oh, and it seems every time they turn over administrative personnel in Atlanta, there's magically another unpaid bill for dealers to pay. At my last dealership, there were three occasions where I was told we owed on past invoices from years back... each time this went down, it was a different administrative rep making the call.

Autotrader's done. Their execs have one foot out the door, no doubt about it.

 

[Jon Groenig]

I got to deal with the blitz team about six months ago,I was promised a 30 day out if I wasn't impressed with the product, so at the end of 30 days when the results didn't justify the additional $1,000 I called to cancel, to my surprise I found out it was a 90 contract even though it said 30 when it was signed. Fortunately for me the rep had written everything on the back of her card the first time she came through, so I contacted one of the higher ups I had met at the 2nd AAISP conference and got it handled when I emailed them a scan of the card.

The outside reps don't care because they will never see you again and they don't have to deal with the fall out. I found out I wasn't the only dealer in my zone that had been lied to, the only reason I got out was because of a connection at Autotrader, everyone else had to ride out the 90 days.

Do yourself a favor and only sign a contract with your local rep, at least you know where to find them.

100 posts is too low, think 200

 

[Paul Rushing]

Well they have made the precursor call in an attempt to gain permission to come see me "sometime" next week. The worst week to try and get any car guys attention, unless they want to buy a car. I'll report back after they drop in.

Ill put the over under on their current business model existing - 18 months!!