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From today forward we have 7 total selling days left. Push hard all the way through till the end. Revisit customers that came in and didn't buy. Relook at their trades. Check all other possibilities. What if they were on another vehicle? What about longer term? Used? Certified? New? Lease? One Pay Lease? More Down? Co-Signer? Turn up the heat! T.O everybody. Stay focused. Be happy. 

Internet departments hammer the phones. Bang out 17 calls per hour. Stay on Script. Set appointments. Directors, T.O the calls. Drive your departments. Set the tone. Motivate! Inspire! Train! Teach! Lead & Guide Your Team! Finish Strong! Don't look at the negatives. Focus on the positives. Take the lemons and make lemonade! Have a great day! Let's have a record breaking final 7 days! All things are possible baby!!!!!!
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http://www.internetsales20group.com 856-546-2440

Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association (MSADA) Partners With The Internet Sales 20 Group For #IS20G 6 In Boston

September 22nd, 23rd & 24th in Boston

MORE INFORMATION COMING SOON

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Auto Industry Failing to Tap Power of Social Media to Deliver Actionable Sales Leads, Says Report by CMO Council

CMO Council Report Finds Auto Ecosystem Marketers Looking for Better Ways to Integrate Marketing With Sales Generation and Sales Funnel Activities

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 3, 2014) - The auto industry ecosystem should do more to leverage social media as a platform for drivingbusiness leads into sales pipelines, argues a new report by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council. Social media is stimulating extensive auto-related conversations and content that create major opportunities to identify likely buyers and engage them based on their preferences and purchase intent, according to the report, which is entitled "Turning Social Feeds Into Business Leads."

Developed in partnership with hoojook, Inc. -- a Silicon Valley social media intelligence company focused on the auto sector -- the new report finds auto industry marketers are in various stages of adopting social marketing strategies and practices. Most see social as a potentially powerful medium for understanding and engaging consumers, but they are early in the development of marketing and business metrics, as well as processes that integrate social media data more effectively in the sales funnel.

"Social represents an important marketing frontier for the automotive industry," said Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council. "Senior marketers recognize its capacity to deliver actionable, real-time insights that can help drive overall marketing effectiveness. They also see its value as a dynamic channel for influencing brand preference and purchase. Now they need to take the next step by integrating social more directly into the sales funnel and using it as a new platform for delivering qualified leads."

There is plenty of evidence demonstrating the potential of social as a marketing channel across manufacturing brands, dealerships and aftermarket products and services. For example:

  • Thirty-eight (38) percent of consumers say they will consult social media in making their next car purchase.1
  • Twenty-three (23) percent of car buyers say they use social media to communicate their purchase experience.1
  • Eighty-four (84) percent of automotive shoppers are on Facebook, and 24 percent of them have used Facebook as a resource for making their vehicle purchases.1
  • Forty (40) percent of new car purchases over the next 10 years will be made by millennials.2
  • Ninety-four (94) percent of millennial car buyers gather information online.3
  • Clicks on Facebook auto ads climbed from 16 percent to 39 percent between October 2012 and April 2013.1

Based on interviews with senior marketers and executives from auto manufacturers, dealer networks, aftermarket service providers and B2B automotive solutions companies such as Autonation, Costco Auto Program, Nissan, Cadillac, Car MD, KIA, Aspen Marketing Services, Express Oil Change, Mazda, Snap-on, Dealertrack and DME Automotive, the report finds that senior marketers are highly interested in developing and using new systems and processes to leverage social more effectively for lead acquisition and acceleration. However, most say they are only in the very early stages of the process and often express caution about possible brand reputation issues when overtly marketing to individuals on social.

Nonetheless, the report argues that the use of social in combination with natural language processing and big data analytics, along with social's ability to deliver meaningful content and commentary in context, has the potential to make it a highly effective medium for identifying, segmenting and engaging consumers based on preferences and where they are in the purchase cycle.

"The technology now exists to process and analyze social streams -- not only to understand broader consumer attitudes and reputational issues, but also to identify, segment and profile individual consumers based on where they are in the purchase cycle, their preferences and needs, and even psychographic characteristics that influence how they want to engage with brands and service providers," said Shauli Chaudhuri, CEO of hoojook. "Consumers are using social media to find product recommendations, access dealer reviews, voice complaints, display preference, consider peer opinions, capitalize on coupon offers, and engage in ongoing dialogues with their favorite automotive brands. We believe the auto industry will benefit greatly from data-driven analytics to identify potential customers and social content delivery systems that bring automotive OEMs, dealers, aftermarket service providers and other members of the ecosystem closer to the consumers who are looking to make purchases."

The full strategic report is available for download today and features valuable insights, including:

  • Campaigns focused on cars generate much higher consumer engagement and interest than other social media initiatives, such as charitable causes.
  • Reputation management is seen as potentially the most critical aspect of social marketing, with consumer-generated content and commentary having a huge influence on purchasing decisions.
  • Marketers view social as most effective when integrated with other channels and marketing approaches; many view social analytics as an invaluable source of insight for other digital and offline marketing efforts.
  • Facebook is widely regarded as the most powerful social channel for automotive, but marketers say other channels can be more effective, depending on the need and strategy.

To download the report, please visit http://www.cmocouncil.org/r/social-feeds-into-business-leads

Source: http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/auto-industry-failing-tap-power-social-media-deliver-actionable-sales-leads-says-report-1884480.htm

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The Death of the Traditional Dealership: Part 5

The average dealership hires a salesperson and, after a brief introduction of paperwork, allows the salesperson to begin talking to and selling to their customers. Some dealerships may send the salesperson to a meeting room to watch a series of perfunctory training videos and then cut them loose on the showroom floor to sell. Either way, the day of unleashing an untrained salesperson on a well-trained customer is dead.

 

The days of counting on a steady stream of traffic and allowing salespeople to train through trial and error are over. The margin for error has been erased. The customers are now unforgiving in having salespeople on the job train at their expense. The customers, through the use of the Internet and their information gathering, have driven the competition for their business to another level.

 

Selling can no longer be taught solely as features and benefits. Selling is an educational, experiential process won by salespeople and dealerships who have worked diligently at becoming a category of one. A new salesperson with a lack of intense education — from cradle to grave of their careers — is doomed to failure or mediocre results at best.

 

No longer can dealership leaders allow the idea to permeate their business philosophy that veteran salespeople can’t, won’t or don’t need to be trained. The marketplace is unforgiving and cares only about results. An experienced salesperson without continual updated information and education is no better, and often worse, than an untrained new salesperson. The meaning at the root of the word “sell” is “to serve.” At least a new salesperson usually has an attitude of servitude that may be lacking in an often jaded but experienced salesperson.

 

Death is a cessation of movement and an unwillingness to adapt and accept change. Today’s marketplace demands that businesses be staffed with team members who display “teachable spirits.” Dealerships who wish to be in a position to compete for a customer’s business will have an intense written, communicated and required game plan for continual education.

 

The average technician in a dealership can have tens of thousands of dollars invested in education, tools and tool boxes. What about your salespeople? What investment is the salesperson making in his tools? What investment is the dealer making in that person who, with one bad contact with a customer, can in the short term cost the dealer thousands of dollars and, in the long term, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 

Education is not a sometime thing but an everyday habit. Doctors, lawyers and brain surgeons don’t stop educating themselves upon graduating from school. Would you want a doctor to operate on you who has not been trained on the latest techniques and best practices? I once had a dealer tell me they were waiting to see if a salesperson was going to make it in the business first before investing in him. The only thing worse than investing in a salesperson who does not make in the business is not investing in a salesperson who does make it in the business.

 

For a free special report “10 Things Your Dealership Must Do To Be Successful” e-mail me at info@tewart.com with “10 Things” in the subject line.

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The Death of the Traditional Dealership: Part 4

Everyone talks about change, but few people embrace it. Change is growth, and growth is positive and unavoidable. If you don’t change, the world will change without you and leave you behind. In business today, change is occurring at a rapid pace and is causing the death of traditional salespeople as we know them.

 

In the age-old process of selling, the emphasis has been on a linear “road to the sale” process. Step One leads to Step Two and so on. The Internet information age has made the traditional road to the sale obsolete. Your customer today may be on Step Three or Four from the beginning, instead of the traditional Step One. Traditional salespeople try to force the customer through a funnel no matter what the customer says or feels. Today, flexibility and understanding in the sales process is the key.

 

The traditional sales process talked about features and benefits. If you are selling just features and benefits today, you are at a strong disadvantage. It’s simply not enough. You must communicate features, benefits and value wrapped up in a story and shared through an experience. People want to be involved and, when they are, it strengthens their commitment. Traditional selling is something that is done to someone and modern selling is something that is experienced with the help of a communicator/ facilitator/problem solver.

 

In the traditional sales process, price is never mentioned until the feature-benefit presentation has been made. Price is avoided and evaded. In today’s market, you cannot ignore the issue of price; instead, you must address it up front to eliminate the fear and establish trust. By addressing price, you will move the customer past price apprehension and eliminate the fight caused by avoiding and evading. This does not mean you have to be a quote machine, but it does mean that you cannot be afraid to discuss the issue of price to move past it.

 

In the traditional road to the sale, you would address the customer’s trade-in at the time of the appraisal because it’s part of the pricing structure and, therefore, part of the negotiations and a potential objection. In the modern sales process, you recognize the trade-in as being a major comfort zone of the customer and a great tool to build rapport and find out the customers patterns of buying. You will now address the trade-in willingly up front in the process. People repeat buying behavior whether it’s in person or on the Internet. The Internet is just another medium used in the process and customers emulate offline and online behaviors and patterns.

 

In the traditional road to the sale, customers are asked to make a buying commitment before they are given figures. Imagine scaring your customers so much before you gave them figures that you created a fear about buying. That’s exactly what often happens in a traditional sales process. If you want to commit a customer, do so throughout the sales process in small commitments, based upon the process and the value of the product and their satisfaction. Get continual agreements about the two things all customers care about today — time and money. All people want to save time and money. Use these keywords throughout the whole sales process and get agreement about how everything you are sharing with them, everything they are experiencing and the manner in which you are doing it is creating opportunities for them to save time and money. Perception becomes reality. Frame the perceptions and thoughts and you will frame the basis of the customer’s decision all without making them commit to a buying decision too early in the sale process when they don’t have enough information. This old school form of commitment is just “If I could would you…” run amok.

 

Utilize as many modalities of learning as possible with your customer. Allow people to see, hear, feel and experience. Old school selling was dominated by telling things to customers and making verbally dominated presentations. The problem is that many of your customers are not auditory learners. The popular method of selling in the past has not matched the way a customer tends to learn and absorb information in a comfortable way. Through proper questioning, you can easily define a person’s dominant mode of learning and weave in the other modalities to put the customers buying experience on steroids. Utilize video, audio and experiential steps in the buying process and your customers will begin to feel what I call the “Disneyland Effect.” Create sensory amazement with your customer.

Your customer should never be able to walk away from the buying experience they have with you and compare it to any other salesperson. The traditional salesperson tried to find the right car, information and price for the customer and hoped he got the sale. Today, the customer can get those things anywhere and never leave the house to get it. Your marketplace demands more. Start to reevaluate your sales process by thinking of the following questions:

 

• What are other salespeople not doing?

• What would be the opposite of what other salespeople do?

• What do customers want, and in what way do they want it?

• What would make you stand out from anyone else?

• What parts of traditional selling should be tweaked, changed or removed altogether to create an easier, better buying experience?

• What is the customer’s biggest fear and how do I remove it?

• What do I have the most fear about eliminating or changing in my sales process and why?

Usually the biggest rewards are in attacking the areas we fear the most. The things we tend to hold as the strongest foundations and that would absolutely be unthinkable to change are the very things that tend to lead to the biggest breakthroughs. Traditional selling is dead and that is a good thing. Ten years from now, the breakthroughs of today will be obsolete. The question for you is, will you be obsolete?

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