The Pink Cadillac Strategy - Salesperson Websites

[Ryan Everson]

One opportunity I think us car dealers are really missing out on is individual salesperson websites. Now sure there may be vendors out there that offer salespeople websites but I haven’t run across any particularly great options. So what I try to do as a digital marketing manager is look at other industries for ideas, because let's face it car dealerships and the online marketing solutions available to us are generally a little behind the curve.

So who can we steal ideas from? No other than the company with a fleet of Pink Cadillacs, Mary Kay. Mary Kay provides each of its sales reps with their own website which is basically a clone of the main MaryKay.com website except it offers personalized information about the rep and most importantly all online sales go to that Mary Kay rep.

Why is it important that online sales placed on this site go directly to that Mary Kay rep? Because if they did not, the sales rep would have absolutely no incentive to refer people to the Mary Kay website. They would fear that they would lose sales to MaryKay.com if their friends and family place orders online without working with them directly at their next party. But Mary Kay was smart and chose to instead empower their sales reps by giving them their own MaryKay.com clone which in turn equals more sales for Mary Kay and the rep.

You may be asking how does this pyramid scheme-esque makeup company's strategies apply to a car dealership? Think about your lead assigning process, at most dealerships leads get round-robin or assigned to select salespeople. Now what incentive is there for your salespeople to direct people to the dealership website if there is a good chance they may lose the customer to another colleague through the lead assigning process? There isn’t. (And skating alerts won’t help if this is somebody that your salesperson doesn’t know and just met while they were out and about after work.) So this salesperson in their own self-interest is hesitant to direct prospects to the dealership website for fear of losing a potential customer and instead chooses a less effective method: giving the person their phone number, which almost guarantees lost sales for the dealership. Customers are much more willing to go to a website than call a car salesperson they met for a few seconds. So we need salespeople to embrace the internet and push their contacts to the medium that most car shoppers prefer, the internet.

How do we do this? We take the Mary Kay approach. No not giving all of our top salespeople Pink Cadillacs as demos (unless that’s their thing). But giving each salesperson a clone of the dealership website that offers personalized information about the salesperson such as personal pictures, bio, customer reviews, delivered pictures, integrated facebook page newsfeed, etc. This salesperson site allows the customer to do anything they can on the main dealership website but the only difference is that any lead form submitted will be assigned directly to that salesperson. For example a customer could view the entire dealership inventory and after finding the perfect car they choose to fill out a lead form: “Confirm Availability”, this lead form will then go directly to that salesperson. Sales phone numbers on the site will also reflect the salesperson’s direct line. Now we’re talking! And if the customer doesn’t fill out a lead or call in to the salesperson and instead is just a walk-in customer, this is where the personalized information comes into account and hopefully the customer specifically requests the salesperson after finding out they have similar interests and have great customer reviews.

In conclusion, you've gotten salespeople bought into this internet "thing" and have them promoting themselves and the dealership in the most effective way possible. And let’s face it a lot of salespeople tend to have big egos and this feeds right into it - giving them their own “mini business” they can call their own and promote. I know a lot of salespeople are already bought into the internet and do send people to the main dealership website but I can assure you if you give them this functionality they will be the ones to take it to the next level and go gangbusters. Also if a salesperson ever leaves the dealership, it’s as simple as forwarding their site / subdomain / subdirectory to the main dealership site or a different salesperson who may have been assigned their prospects.

This is a ripe opportunity for all car dealers to embrace and I’m sure us DealerRefreshers will be the ones to make it happen. What are your thoughts on this?

 

[joe.pistell]

From my travels, Sales reps biggest ROI is working social channels like FB/LinkedIn/Twitter, etc.

 

[ddavis]

I was visiting a close friend's store and saw the ProMax for the first time. It is a great product with potential but, like me, people don't know it exists. There is little doubt that this vehicle could be sold to HVAC, Plumming and a host of other companies. I sent the Internet Director, also a friend, a couple of links to walk-around presentations on the ProMax and suggested that she assign someone to send them to some HVAC companies. I even made suggestions on how to work this.

I was there yesterday and waited for a big rain storm blow over. The whole sales force was glued to the glass like they hadn't seen rain before. They have a lot of green salespeople. I could always find a list for people to call. Someone would be doing a walk-around. If I was a manager, they would have something to do.

Sales Managers have a responsibility for the success of their people. Yes, I was old school. My department had their days full. People need to come to work and not spend time pissing in each other's pockets. The biggest ROI is making your people productive.

 

[cmjerry4531]

If you are decent programmer you could set up personal subdomains with iframed websites that would properly handle all the leads. Some MLM's, such as Mary Kay and Saba, do this with their sites. Check out sababuilder.com for an example. People pay a monthly fee to have an iframed website.

However, I don't see much in the way of benefits. The reason why MLMs do it is because they are marketing themselves, and it's the only way they are allowed to do so by the rules of that company. Maybe you should just suggest to your employees that they can do their own thing like Laura from Toyota of Bozeman does with Lauratoyota.com. Edmunds just had a story about her individual efforts at her dealership. Her personal Youtube channel has over 100,000 views, and some of her blog posts get over 500 views a month.

 

[yagoparamo]

If you are decent programmer you could set up personal subdomains with iframed websites that would properly handle all the leads. Some MLM's, such as Mary Kay and Saba, do this with their sites. Check out sababuilder.com for an example. People pay a monthly fee to have an iframed website.However, I don't see much in the way of benefits. The reason why MLMs do it is because they are marketing themselves, and it's the only way they are allowed to do so by the rules of that company. Maybe you should just suggest to your employees that they can do their own thing like Laura from Toyota of Bozeman does with Lauratoyota.com. Edmunds just had a story about her individual efforts at her dealership. Her personal Youtube channel has over 100,000 views, and some of her blog posts get over 500 views a month.

Notice that Toyota, Honda, and Lexus usually come unglued if you buy a domain with their trade mark like that one LauraToyota.com.Maybe she is grandfathered in since she became famous but the OEM tends to be inflexible.

 

[Rdpatrick]

I agree with the thinking behind this but I think it has to be very dependent on the salesperson. I live in a rural area and I have a personal site Ricky Patrick | Your Automotive Professional that is just about building credibility in me and it also drives some extra Ford traffic to me since there are a few lazy Ford dealers in our area.

Robert Weisman has done this and made it work well for lead generation at his yourhyundaiguy.com but that's also a different demographic.

I'm not making excuses, but StateFarm has individual websites automatically generated for their agents and they might as well be blank pages with a toll-free number because they are useless.

Just like with any other website, it has to serve it's unique purpose. For me, and my area, it's about name recognition and building credibility. For some guys, it might be about getting referral traffic. For another, it might be building custom Jeeps and Trucks because that's his "thing".

I really feel like if you create a templated website for each salesperson you are just diluting your traffic and creating unnecessary noise.

 

[joe.pistell]

My wife (a car sales rep) had her own site back in 2007 Used Car Queen » Post Topic » 2008 Chevy Cobalt Sport Coupe 2LT loaded! Save on my personal DEMO!

Today, you can use Free Website Builder | Create a Free Website | WIX.com -or- WordPress Car Dealer Theme Mobile Responsive Layout | WordPress Themes for Sale | Gorilla Themes

Back in 07, ranking well in the SERPs was easy. Not any longer. IMO, the biggest leverage a rep has is working FB.

 

[Rdpatrick]

Back in 07, ranking well in the SERPs was easy. Not any longer. IMO, the biggest leverage a rep has is working FB.

Agree 100%. People want to connect with a person. There are already enough vehicle listings online.

 

[Ryan Everson]

From my travels, Sales reps biggest ROI is working social channels like FB/LinkedIn/Twitter, etc.

Joe I 100% agree with you and that’s why I’ve taken this good foundation of salespeople using social media and built on top of it. The salesperson sites can integrate in all of these social media platforms by featuring the salesperson’s or dealership’s Facebook & Twitter newsfeed, embedding their delivered customers Facebook photo album, and linking to their linkedin profile.


Solely using social media and solely using a dedicated salesperson website each have their positives and negatives, that’s why it’s key to do a combination of both. Wouldn’t you agree it’s a lot easier for a salesperson to give someone they meet their dedicated website address then it would be to ask to be friended / liked on facebook, because for a lot of people who they friend is a big commitment and that’s asking a lot of a freshly met prospect. Social media does of course has the significant advantage of being easier to build ongoing relationships. But what’s another benefit of using websites over or in tandem social media? Social media requires the salesperson to be somewhat tech savvy and actively involved in on it in order to get decent results. With a website if the salesperson isn’t the most tech savvy person, they can still reap the rewards without having to be actively involved. The only work required will be on the internet manager’s part to do the initial bio setup and then post their delivered customer photos on facebook which they are probably already doing. Reviews will feed in automatically and instead of integrating personal social media newsfeeds, the dealership’s can be used. I’m giving this example for the old school salesperson to show the benefit that this has for ALL salespeople regardless of their online involvement, a less old school salesperson can go gangbusters with this by really promoting it offline and online through their social media profiles. Like most things there is no single channel to success, it takes a combination of a bunch of different channels to be successful today!

However, I don't see much in the way of benefits. The reason why MLMs do it is because they are marketing themselves, and it's the only way they are allowed to do so by the rules of that company. Maybe you should just suggest to your employees that they can do their own thing like Laura from Toyota of Bozeman does with Lauratoyota.com. Edmunds just had a story about her individual efforts at her dealership. Her personal Youtube channel has over 100,000 views, and some of her blog posts get over 500 views a month.

Aren’t car salespeople also marketing themselves? I think the good ones do a least. I do really like the Laura Toyota website but I think this this method would apply to only the top 1% of car salespeople, where a blanket solution like the one I'm suggesting could work for all salespeople even the most old school salesperson out there. Will Laura get better results? Yes. But personally I’d rather have 100 salespeople utilizing this similar but less robust solution than just 1 salesperson using the ultimate solution. The benefit of this blanket solution is once old school salespeople start to get a taste of the results from their personal sites they may start to become the next internet superstar like Laura, something completely off their radar beforehand.

I really feel like if you create a templated website for each salesperson you are just diluting your traffic and creating unnecessary noise.

That is a valid concern but these clone websites will not be indexed by google so no worries there.


It allows customers to learn more about each salesperson during their research stage before coming in. What else is important besides the car and the dealership? The salesperson. By having the salesperson as an unknown entity at most dealerships currently sans a profile picture that creates unnecessary anxiety for the car buyer. They've spent hours researching the car and dealership, why not give them the final piece of the puzzle to completely put their car buying process at ease? Car shoppers love having the ability to get to know their salesperson and choose the one that they are most compatible with. I think these salespeople websites give customers psychologically what they want but may not know they want at first and also gives the dealership what they want: more customers in the door. Just like my digital picture frame post this too leverages human behavior.


This is also different than most current car salespeople websites because this allows the customer to shop for vehicles, get financing, etc all on the same site with the lead going directly to that salesperson. The salesperson website also keeps a consistent look with the main dealership website.


My 3 pillars to my digital marketing strategy & approach are:
1) Put yourself in the shoes of a car buyer and create the ultimate experience for them.
2) Tailor that experience to also meet the objectives of us as a car dealership.
3) Look at other industries and implement their cutting edge ideas and processes that may translate over effectively to our industry.

Taking a step back and putting on your consumer hat can truly allow you to come up with some great ideas! And even if it is a flop at least you're not sticking to the status quo and are actively trying to be innovative instead of sticking with the same templated online marketing like thousands of other dealers. Fortune favours the bold!



Maybe it will help if I show an example salesperson website of our very own Jeff Kershner….see below and let me know your thoughts!

 

[joe.pistell]

Wouldn’t you agree it’s a lot easier for a salesperson to give someone they meet their dedicated website address then it would be to ask to be friended / liked on facebook, because for a lot of people who they friend is a big commitment and that’s asking a lot of a freshly met prospect.

Ahh... no, not even a little bit, but, thats not the problem, your context (above) is based on replacing the business card (pre-sale). IMO, you have 2 contexts, pre-sale and post sale. Pre-sale or post sale, no one is ever going to ralph.jamieson.royaltownhonda.com (unless they're a stalker . Social has little presale value. Post sale is where all the social energy is.

Social media requires the salesperson to be somewhat tech savvy and actively involved in on it in order to get decent results.

Ahhh... /sarcasm removed/

With a website if the salesperson isn’t the most tech savvy person, they can still reap the rewards without having to be actively involved. The only work required will be on the internet manager’s part to do the initial bio setup and then post their delivered customer photos on facebook which they are probably already doing. Reviews will feed in automatically and instead of integrating personal social media newsfeeds, the dealership’s can be used.

DealerRater is fairly close and it's 3rd party endorsement. Megan Terry - Dealership Ratings Lastly, This is a great model if it's on the dealers VDP and you let your shopper choose their rep. I had it on my old site 5-6 yrs ago and I am a BIG proponent of it today, not for prospecting, but for return shoppers, referrals and be-backs.