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R

rapidchevrolet.com

Full Sticker
Nov 9, 2009
18
0
First Name
Matt
#1
Hey everyone, I don't care if you are a vendor or an end user. I put myself on this forum to get non biased advice from guys in the trenches. I appreciate all the help with all the comments. I have had vendors emailing me and also calling regarding services. I don't care if they are trying to sell something; I understand the reason (to make money). I have been working on this project since I returned from the digital dealer conference. I am making my decision tomorrow morning. I have been really interested in some comments from non-vendors, and have only seen a few. I think in the future you (dealerrefresh) should take into consideration regarding the vendors a completely separate Forum that is just for vendors. When we want their input, we can go to them, or they can direct us to a link from a previous thread that might make sense to us on the vendor forum, kind of like a template?? (I know they know how to make those)

Just my thoughts, I am not trying to make any vendors mad, but I am working hard to succeed at this and want what works. I think if the vendors think about the customer, and not just themselves, this forum would be much less promotional. By the way I am deciding tomorrow, and VinSolutions is at the top of my list. I liked the product (no money coming from VinSolutions)
 
#2
Matt - you make a very valid point and one we debated heavily before launching the forums. However, there is way more vendor-helping than vendor-selling on here. The recent stuff about VinSolutions is nothing against them as a product - there were just too many coincidences going on yesterday that we had to do something about.

We care about purity on DealerRefresh, and helping the community. When we see something that looks like it is not helping in either of those goals, we stomp it out. It doesn't matter who is doing it, there are no biases. I'm good friends with a lot of the people at Dealer.com and if something happened around them like what happened yesterday, I'd jump on them too. We give paying sponsors more leeway, but there is a line there as well.

I'm glad you brought this up, Matt, because we want to be clear about what happened:

1. The merging of the thread about finding a CRM and picking VinSolutions was not a dig at anyone. It was simple forum cleaning. Nothing was deleted - nobody was censored. Jeff did exactly what I would have done and what we'd expect a DealerRefresh forum moderator to do: merge two threads on the same topic.

2. Three different coincidences happened yesterday - 2 new users signed up for the forums spouting sales pitches for VinSolutions. They were really bad. Nobody can say whether these were dealers who really wanted to speak up for VinSolutions or employees of VinSolutions who were spamming. It smelled a lot like the latter. Then PrecisionAcura started a new thread talking about VinSolutions. You pair all that with Matt Watson's approach to Social Media and it just smelled a lot like someone was screwing with the purity of DealerRefresh. So, we did what we should: deleted the new users' junk and Jeff made a comment about VinSolutions' tactics.

If we are to keep DealerRefresh pure we want to encourage vendor engagement, promote new & old ideas (no "repost" call-outs), merge threads of the same topic by the same person, and PUSH TRANSPARENCY. The last part is what we did yesterday.
 
#3
Here we go again. I just don't get it. As a dealer that has received phone calls, email etc from customers because we sent them a letter in the mail and screaming at us because we have no right to send them mail, are we really going to ask the vendors to stop selling? If you don't want to hear from the vendors in conversation, don't read what they have to say just like that customer should have just thrown the letter away. It's the same with all media. You aren't being forced to watch, read, listen! Just watch, read, listen to what you want to.

As to my experiences with the vendors on the site I haven't seen any abuse. As a matter of fact, when my last post asked questions about CRM companies and what people were using and what they thought if it wasn't for vendor response the forum would have been no help. Don't blame the vendors for doing their jobs. Blame the rest of the dealers on this forum who don't! I'm sure there are people using the CRM's I asked about and got very little real feedback from them. I would never even have interviewed my final three vendors if the vendors didn't speak up.

As most eCommerce, Internet, whatever managers can attest, I get solicited every day many times on the newest latest and greatest. If I shut out everyone, how would I find the good one that helps us the most. As I tell everyone, I will listen to everyone. It's up to me to decide if it's good for us.

As an aside, Jeff, how's the chicken taste now? Good? Well it's steak!

:hello::hello::hello::hello::hello::hello:
​
 
#4
Got an email from another vendor who didn't want to be recognized:

anonymous vendor we all know...not a CRM vendor said:
Alex,

Just wanted to send you a quick note to pat you on the back for your handling of the CRM discussion on your forum. Some of the transparency of the sales pitches being made by vendors on these types of forums absolutely blows my mind…and the fact that the community of readers allows so much of it to occur is also mind boggling. It is great to see DealerRefresh call some of these folks to the mat. I’m not making any judgment about any of these vendors…I’m just glad I’m not the only one who has been noticing the behavior, and not just on DealerRefresh but also on many other forums.

All [of our] employees are strictly forbidden from anything that even remotely smells like a sales pitch on any public forum. It is a rule I wish all vendors would follow.

Keep up the good work. DealerRefresh continues to kill too much of my time, everyday!
Click to expand...

Got a few others from some other folks along with quite a few chats on AIM. I thought that email summed things up best though.
 
#5
As a vendor who spends some time on this and other industry social networking sites, I could not disagree more. DealerRefresh, DrivingSales, ADM and KainAutomotive sites are all a GREAT way to keep a pulse on what's going on in the business. I learn something every time I get on here!

Asid from that, hopefully once in a while we (as vendors) can contribute an idea or two without coming across as a sales pitch. We do have a lot of smart people that work for our company that have been around the industry for a while. We run into best practices everyday that are helping dealers sell more cars, and we are delighted to be able to share them!

Shellie Pierce
[email protected]
www.dealersocket.com


Alex Snyder said:
Got an email from another vendor who didn't want to be recognized:



Got a few others from some other folks along with quite a few chats on AIM. I thought that email summed things up best though.
Click to expand...
 
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