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Automotive Digital Marketing Manager of Dealer Group in Kentucky - 17 Years in Automotive Sales
Quick interview with Joe Turner, Digital Marketing Manager with the Neil Huffman Auto Group. Joe has been in the industry for over 17 years and is a veteran in Automotive Internet Sales. Joe gives some advice based on his experience(s)
A General Manager of a Toyota Dealership with 35 Years in the Automotive Sales Industry Talks About Internet Sales
Can You Sell Cars Working 4 Hours A Week?
Can you imagine? Instead of working 60 plus hours per week, you show up at 9 AM on Monday and weekend is just four hours away! What would you do with all the free time? I would probably play enough golf to be on the PGA tour, lift weights and work out everyday, and then on Saturday, maybe go to Home Depot, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath & Beyond, I don’t know.
For those of you who haven’t read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, you’ll be really disappointed to know that I am not starting a revolt to reduce dealership hours from 9AM-9PM Monday through Saturday to 1 4-hour workday. However, I am confident that I will save you a ton of time and be able to help you make more money.
Let’s get started..
Stop checking your email every five minutes!
Prior to reading the 4-hour workweek I was super guilty of this. By checking your email every minute you can’t get anything done. What happens is you start to work on something important like an email blast, website analytics, advertising, etc. Then you get an email from your factory rep with daily sales update, while checking this email you get a SPAM email that you have to unsubscribe from, and then you get a bill emailed to you that you print out to authorize payment for and before you know it it’s been a half an hour and you completely forgot about your email blast.
Instead of checking your email every 5 minutes, set 2 times per day that you check email say 12 PM and 5 PM. I’m sure it’s your habit to check their email the first thing you get into work each day, but you must break this habit! Henry Evans in the book The Hour a Day Entrepreneur uses a sports analogy, rather than start the day on the defensive responding to emails you want to start the day on the offensive. Making stuff happen, making profit happen.
It is a difficult habit to break, but you must keep Outlook closed and even turn off the email notifications on your iPhone. Some of you might have managers or the owners above you whose emails you feel obligated to quickly respond to, however if you explain to these individuals that you are only checking your emails at 12 PM and 5 PM each day in an effort to increase efficiency and for them to call you with anything urgent. You will find that responses to most of their emails can wait and that they will call you if they truly have something urgent.
Single tasking is the new multi-tasking!
Poker is a passionate hobby of mine and I play in the WSOP main event most summers, but the majority of my play used to be online before it got shut down in the US. When playing online poker I had 3 22” monitors set up playing 12 tables
simultaneously (there are people who play many more tables than this!). While it was fun and exciting to play so many tables, I found that my win rate was much lower than if I played only 3 or 4 tables. The reason… playing less tables I was able to focus more on maximizing as much profit from the hands I was ahead in and minimize loss in the hands I was behind in.
The same principles can be applied in the dealership. At one point, I would have my email, Facebook, Twitter, CRM, website editor, vAuto and instant messenger all open at the same time. Why? Because it was awesome and made me feel really important to have so many windows open. Naturally all of this leads to little focus and a lot of distraction. Now, I’ll try to keep only the things open I need, for the most part this is just one program. However, there are times where I’ll need multiple things open like if I’m desking deals for instance that I may need multiple things open.
In terms of getting things done. I set 12 month, 6 month, and 1 month goals and funnel each of these goals to specific daily to dos. I use Evernote the night before to prioritize the entire next day to do list. As I mentioned you want to head into work on the offensive making stuff happen. On a given day the priority might be a customer we are real close with closing, sometimes it’s working on the CRM action plan, writing a press release, sales training, etc. However, they are prioritized and align with my goals, instead of someone’s email.
Eliminate work other people can do
Prior to reading the 4-Hour Workweek there were countless things that I would do on a weekly basis and the entire time while doing them I would be thinking someone else really could be doing this for me. The reason I didn’t, I was too lazy to teach someone else how to do it. I am sure there are countless things that you could have someone else do as well. A few things that come to mind are reporting sales, sales logs, and dealer trades but I am sure there are countless other things that you can have someone else do for you as well.
Below is a great chart that is included in the 4-Hour Work Week on finding stuff to outsource to a personal assistant. I have found that there are enough people in the dealership to keep busy that a personal assistant isn’t necessary. Finance Managers are great people to utilize because they are detail oriented and while they aren’t selling products you might utilize their skills rather than have them checking Facebook while they are waiting for another deal. Other people that come to mind are secretaries or warranty administrators. I would recommend not having sales people doing stuff like this because there are a lot of sales people who will make these things a higher priority than selling cars.
Empowerment
Another thing that is mentioned in the 4-Hour Workweek that is a big time saver is empowering your employees. Now, truthfully I’ve yet to implement the majority of the stuff I am suggesting so these are merely ideas. However, Tim Ferriss shares about how he would get 200+ emails per day from the customer service side of his business about different customer complaints and how each should be handled. He would spend 9-5 replying to each email about how to handle the situation. Ultimately he empowered his customer service to fix any customer problem under $100 without contacting him and this instantly reduced his emails from 200 per day into fewer than 20 per week.
In the New Gold Standard is explained how the Ritz-Carlton empowers each employee up to $2,000 per day to take care of any customer issues and also to exceed their expectations. Naturally this empowerment must been managed, but both Tim’s company and the Ritz-Carlton note that such empowerment has had little to no effect on the bottom-line. Yet, the quick resolution of problems has undoubtedly increased customer happiness. Even if such empowerment does minimally affect the bottom-line, the freedom from constant interruption this provides you and your managers makes it well worth it.
Dealership specific example of how this could be effectively implemented would be to provide a structure for internet pricing for BDC or Internet Sales Reps so they don’t have to check with a Sales Manager for every price. Also for Service Advisors to take care of any problems and unhappiness on the service drive.
Time Vampires
In Dan Kennedy’s book No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs Dan talks about one of the of the biggest threats to your time and energy, time vampires. Time vampires can come in the form of coworkers, vendors, and even customers who have no regard for your productivity and are constantly interrupting you with meaningless questions, stories, or gossip. Some time vampires he talks about in the book are Mr. Have-You-Got-A-Minute, Mr. Trivia, and Mr. Soap Opera. These people need no description, you know who I’m talking about.
A couple of things to drive a stake into the time vampires is to end the open door policy! If you are working on something and can’t be interrupted put your phone on do not disturb and put a big sign outside your office to not come in for a set period of time. I tend to bounce around from dealership to dealership and therefore don’t have an office so when I sit down to get work done I put on headphones. When people see me banging on my keyboard and working diligently with my headphones on they know it better be good to interrupt me.
The last time vampire is Mr. Meeting.
Meetings
I have gone full circle on meetings. I used to be a Mr. Meeting. I thought that the old school car guys were crazy because they never seem to ever have meetings. However, after reading the 4-Hour Workweek and some of the other books I’ve mentioned I have realized that there can’t be anything less productive than a meeting. I used to take every meeting asked for by AutoTrader, Cars.com, CARFAX, and if you are vendor reading this and I forgot your company I apologize but the good news is I probably had a meeting with your company too.
So don’t let the vendors talk you into going over your account performance because this is simply an opportunity for them to upsell you on a higher version of their product or waste your time. Meetings should only be used to solve a pre- defined problem and must have a set agenda. So if you are having a problem or want to know about a higher version of the product, you set up the meeting with them.
Side note: one meeting I do recommend having is a morning meeting, most call it a save a deal meeting. I think it is so important that i will go over it in another blog post.
Questions:
Have you read the 4-Hour Workweek and if so what did you get from it?
Are you applying any 4 Hour Workweek rules at your dealership or to your personal process?
Source - http://www.dealerrefresh.com/hour-hour-work-week-dealership/#more-8007
http://www.alanvinesautomotive.com
Durran Cage went from a Chrysler OEM Rep to an Internet Sales Manager... He was delivering 25-27 units per month. They brought in Dealer Synergy and we helped them get to:
- 95 Units Per Month!
- 2.3 Million Dollars Gross Profit from Their Annual ONLINE SALES!
- Durran Cage, Internet Sales Director gets promoted to GSM of the Dealership!!
This is such an incredible success story and it couldn't have happened to a better person, a better department or a better dealership.
So, from everyone here at AIS... CONGRATULATIONS!!!
*Another Successful Dealer synergy Client!
Congrats Mike!!!
Example of Good Video Review / Testimonial From a New Client (Created and uploaded in 3 minutes) Client FLYS in to buy a car
marketing solution SusanGivens
video search engineoptimization increases salesby 45 percent
Video Search Engine Optimization (VSEO)
marketing solution SusanGivens
video search engineoptimization increases salesby 45 percent
Video Search Engine Optimization (VSEO)
their dealership dominates the most popularsearch terms on all of the major search
engines organically with high-impact videos.
This practice has become vital to successful
online marketing strategies. Online video is
fast-becoming a highly effective and cost-
effective means of advertising within the
automotive industry.
In the last two years, there has been an
undeniable surge in the number of online
video viewers, with approximately 175 millionunique viewers watching an average of morethan 900 minutes of online video each a
month, based on an October 2010 report by
www.comScore.com, and www.eMarketer.com
predicts nine out of 10 Internet users will beconsuming video by 2012.
In 2007, Google pioneered “universal search,”
otherwise known as “blended search,” where
multiple search results are returned in oneconvenient results display that includes
autosuccessonline.com
Websites, news
articles, images,
press releases,
maps, blogs, socialmedia, e-commerce
and video.
Google’s universal
search capabilityundoubtedlykicked online video
marketing into high
gear.
According toGoogle, searchersare 55 percent morelikely to click onthumbnail video
images than staticlinks and because
of this Googlegives more rankingauthority to video,
thus placing videoson the top of search
engine results.
“People would
rather watch the
movie than read the
book,” said KarryMoore, presidentand founder of
com, the company
is the process of ensuring that video assetsgenerate the highest-possible volume of
quality traffic to your Website. Dealerships
such as Gary Mathews of Jackson, in Jackson,
Tennessee, recently implemented a digitalmarketing platform to help them appear ontop of the leading search engines like Google,
Yahoo!, Bing and YouTube in their local marketto attract, sell and service more customers
profitably. “My Internet department has been
doing 40 to 45 percent of the dealership’sbusiness, and that’s true accountable sells,
not just sourcing,” said Duran Cage, InternetDirector for Gary Mathews of Jackson.
With more than 88 percent of ready-to-buy
consumers using search engines to shop,
most dealers are scrambling to outbid theircompetitors to appear on top for the most
popular search phrases in their market.
Gary Mathews uses a VSEO company thatautomates thousands of activities to ensure
that Gary Mathews uses. “VSEO is ‘targeted
TV,’ and VSEO allows dealers to deliver their
message to engaged consumers.”
Additionally, dealers can now have multiple
listings on “Page One” by implementing astrong SEO and VSEO strategy. Traditionally,
dealers could get only one listing for a
keyword or phrase such as “Jackson TN,
Hyundai Santa Fe” or “Hyundai Santa FeJackson TN” because they only had one
Website optimized for that phrase. Now with
VSEO, they can build on that single Website
return to have multiple video listings on thatpage, which creates more exposure for thedealership and keeps the competition relegated
to “Page 2” results.
Google indexes all video-sharing sites, not
just YouTube. This means that the more video
sites a dealer distributes their video content to,
the more opportunity that the search engineswill have to index those videos and consider
it relevant content for search returns; thus,
multiple listings for keywords or phrases such
as “Jackson Hyundai Santa Fe.”
Video has become such a game-changerthat VSEO companies like the one GaryMathews of Jackson uses have developed and
launched the automotive industry’s first truevideo search portal, www.CarBuyersEngine.
com, the only video portal of its kind whereconsumers can research and shop for new
and used vehicles, find a dealership, reviewvehicle comparisons or financing withoutthe typical online “clutter” — meaning, no
pop-ups or annoying previews to sit through
before video begins.
The Internet is an ever-changing landscape and
dealers need to keep pace with the changes.
There are no silver bullets, but clearly videoand VSEO need to be incorporated into a
dealers’ online digital strategy. “We want to
‘own’ the Jackson market and video is helping
take us to the next level,” Cage said.
Susan Givens is the publisher of AutoSuccess.
She can be contacted at 877.818.6620, or by
e-mail at sgivens1@autosuccessonline.com.
I am telling you all that this dealership... John Hinderer Honda is AMAZING. Look at this dealership!! They have a GREAT team. Lets wish them luck and assist them anyway we can in growing their department.
SVB-
