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In the last several years, I have had a revelation about the art and science of sales. The answer to sales success is within all of us. The answer is simple but the key to unlock the answer is elusive.

If you were to go back to the late 1800s, the first formal sales training provided by the likes of J. Edward Douglas and others, you will find teaching geared toward techniques — tie-downs, inverted tie-downs, etc. For more than a century now, sales people have been trained with various forms of techniques, word tracks, closes and other sales processes. Do these things work? Is this what creates success for the best performing sales people? My own unscientific research says no.

For more than 25 years I have been involved in sales and sales training reaching the highest levels of success. I have read more than 250 books and listened to hundreds of CDs on sales. I am considered a world-class expert on sales, but I am just now tapping into a higher level of consciousness in the arena. My conclusion is that most of what you have been taught about sales and use on a daily basis is not what creates the highest levels of success.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Tipping Point,” Gladwell describes theory and various supporting research about human behavior and how people make decisions. The author uses the term “small slicing” to describe the idea that substantial and correct information can be obtained about a person and his or her future behavior based on small slices of their communication and current behavior. The information in this book supports theories and research that I have had for the last several years. However, the theories are hard to articulate and get others to model. The key to success is simple but hard to define.

The old phrases, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” and “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it” are examples of simple truths. The magic answers to how do you make a great first impression and how do you say things correctly are what are much harder to define.

Sales techniques, sales processes and word tracks can all be helpful but are not the key to peak performance. If those things were the answer then everyone who ever had sales training or had modeled a successful sales person would become peak performers. That’s not the case.

Even the words “sales” and “selling” create a false direction for sales people. The proper mindset for a sales person is to think of very personal interaction with buyers. The mission of a sales person is to create an environment conducive to buying for the customer. TLC – think like a customer. Not just any customer — the particular customer you are with now. One-size-fits-all selling does not work.

The so-called road to a sale or sales process is only as good as the personal interaction of the sales person with the customer during the process. This is why training on just sales process without education in understanding interpersonal communication, behavior or the art and science of persuasion creates a sales environment of failure for sales people and frustration for customers.

Think more about the customer’s thoughts and emotions and how they are being expressed to you. To create a buying environment for the customer, you must take all your senses and intuition to a higher level. You must begin to see like a deaf person, hear like a blind person and understand the customer as if you were his or her deepest and most caring friend.

If you would like seven quick tips to start you on the road to higher sales success, email me at info@tewart.com with the phrase “7 quick tips” in the subject line.

Facebook has a promise that it has made to businesses. It’s not an official promise in writing anywhere on the site. It’s an implied promise. “We have the attention of the masses. If you want to get in front of them, we’re the biggest game in town.”

The unfortunate reality is that the majority of businesses, particular small and medium localized ones, are completely missing out on the potential benefits of their Facebook page. It’s not all about the page, but that’s a good place to start and the best venue through which to have control over your own destiny.

Here are some signs that your social media strategy has your page operating at a low level. Don’t be discouraged – the vast majority of pages out there are feeling the same types of pains you are. The good news is that with a little help, businesses can make a swift turnaround and find success. It just takes understanding the realities of Facebook marketing.

1. Your Engagement Ratio and/or Total Engagers Are Low

As we’ve said in the past, the total number of fans is such an unimportant number that it’s not even funny. It’s all about reach, but that’s another story altogether. You can tell a lot about the effectiveness of any page by looking at two numbers up at the top.

The number of people “talking about this” compared to the number of total likes is your engagement ratio. This is the most important of the two parts when it comes to reaching more people through Facebook. In the instance above, there are 84 out of 5,737 people actively engaged with the posts coming out of this Facebook page, yielding a 1.5% engagement ratio. This is bad, but in many ways it’s because the engagement ratio in the automotive industry in general is bad, average around 1.75%.

The second part of the equation is the total number of people talking about the page. If 10 people are talking about a page that has a mere 50 fans, then the 20% engagement ratio isn’t going to help very much.

It’s important to understand the dynamic here, though. Some would think that having a ton of fans and a lot of people talking about it at a low ratio is fine, but it’s not. It hurts the page’s overall ability to allow the posts to be seen by locals. In other words, if a page has 100,000 fans and 2,000 people talking about it, then it has a low 2% ratio but a good total number. However, and this is often the hardest aspect of all this to understand, that low engagement ratio is still hurting the page and minimizing the potential. It’s possible to reach more local people on a page like this:

This page has fewer than the 2,000 people talking about the hypothetical 100,000 fan Facebook page, but it has a much higher potential to reach people, particularly the locals, because of the 15.1% engagement ratio. Facebook can see statistically that people are much more likely to like and engage with the content when it’s presented to them and it makes advertising and promoting the page much easier as a result.

More importantly, it allows for localization of the promotions at a massive scale. 157 people have engaged with this page recently, but a ton more locals were able to see the posts and be exposed to the messages as a result. Take a look:

As a result of getting the right type of local fans and operating a properly-structured advertising and promotions campaign, we are able to target a lot more than just those 1,040 fans who have liked the page.

Anyone can see what the engagement ratio is on a page simply by looking at the public numbers. In the automotive industry, the average is 1.75%. Anything over 4% is considered adequate. We strive to hit and stay above 10%, though we’ve seen some that sustain 30%+. It won’t last forever, but keeping it that high for a month or two means epic levels of exposure for the business messages.

2. There are Irrelevant Images on Your Wall

You shouldn’t have pictures of cats on your wall unless you’re a veterinarian. You shouldn’t have pictures of childhood memories on your wall unless you’re an individual.

That’s the point, right? Businesses post irrelevant things to their walls because they were likely told by some social media guru to try to fit in, to post viral images and ask questions that have nothing to do with business in order to get people to engage with your business page.

Here’s a quick tip: people don’t want to engage with you over irrelevant posts. They already have plenty of friends and family filling their news feeds with such things.

Here’s a more important tip: you can get much more engagement by actually being transparent, relevant, and posting the type of content that has to do with your business. It’s a hard concept to understand for some reason, but when a car dealer posts images of cool cars, they’re staying relevant. When they post images from the local area, they’re staying relevant. When they post Facebook-only oil change specials or intriguing trade ins that just hit the floor, they’re staying relevant.

When they stay relevant, they have an opportunity to fulfill the purpose of the page’s existence. When they stay relevant, they’re able to fulfill the promise that was implied when people liked the page in the first place.

People like business pages for one of two reasons:

1. They were interested in the industry and wanted to have a source on Facebook for things pertaining to that industry, from localized specials to interesting bits of information that can help them.
2. They were coaxed to like the page for bizarre reasons (we covered this recently).

Not a single person woke up and said, “I want to see funny cat pictures and reminisce about my childhood today. I think I’ll find a local business on Facebook and follow them to satisfy this need.”

Stop trying to fit in. Your Facebook page should be designed to stand out. Don’t chum up to your fans. Inform them. Educate them. Amaze them. Give them information about things that relate to your business.

3. You’re Trying to Coax People to Like Your Page with Games or Giveaways

I just posted about this yesterday so I’m not going to rehash it now.

Read: Why Irrelevant Giveaways and Games Are Killing Your Facebook Page

4. You’re Not Getting Engagement on Individual Posts

Sorry for all the purple – trying to block out identifying content to focus on the point of this. It’s a stereotypical business Facebook page – 1300 likes but very few people liking, commenting, or sharing the posts themselves. In this example, there was a post that had 13 likes and another with 11 in the last month, but he majority had 0, 1, or 2.

There are going to be duds. It’s not possible for every post to be successful, but most of them should be. You should be averaging around 1% engagement on each post. In the example below, the page has around 900 likes, which means that on average 9 interactions should be happening with each post (likes, comments, and shares).

It got 37 likes. This is good because some posts on the page are under the 1% mark with only a handful of likes. Some will do well, particularly those that resonate with the local community the way this one did. Some will not do as well. Keeping as consistent as possible is the key. Unfortunately, most pages are performing consistently poorly.

5. You’re Not Finding the Right Mix of Conversation and Conversion

This is the only component of Facebook marketing that takes real skill and analysis. Everything else takes a little, but playing with the algorithm, monitoring the results, and tweaking the strategy are all part of finding the right mix between conversation and conversion.

Conversation is the fun stuff. Again, no cat pictures, but for a car dealer to get conversations going, they’ll want to post content that isn’t directly businesses related but that is still relevant to the industry. A Chevy dealer might post pictures of the new Corvette, for example. A Seattle dealer might post images (or better yet, ask their fans to post images) of the Space Needle. These fun posts get the community involved and allow your overall Facebook footprint to be as big as possible.

The conversion posts are all business. They’re talking about the big sale this weekend. They’re talking about the brake special from the website. They’re highlighting and individual used car that is just too amazing to miss. These get less engagement (normally but not always) but are the real reason you’re on Facebook in the first place. It’s not all about branding. You can increase business as a result of using social media and these are the posts that do it for you.

The two types of posts go hand in hand and finding the right mix is the tough part. You need to “earn” the right to post conversion content by posting enough high quality conversational content. It’s an algorithm play as well as an audience play, which means that you have to play with it. Too much conversation and you’re not getting a relevant message out to increase business. Too much conversion and people will shut you out, making your posts virtually invisible.

The example above was all about sales. Everything they were posting was about conversion which meant that very few people were actually seeing the posts. The opposite is no more useful; getting all kinds of conversations going without affecting business does nothing to help grow.

* * *

There are other bad things as well as good things that are going on with pages, but these are the easiest way to tell in a glance whether or not you’re being effective. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or to find out what we can do to help you.

In my recent exploration of various social media profiles being used by local businesses, I found a disturbing trend. While there are definitely those who are doing it right and utilizing Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest the right way, there are also plenty who are simply failing at it miserably. They are forgetting the most fundamental aspect of managing their profiles, namely posting the right way.

There are components of this infographic by MyCleverAgency that I don’t fully agree with, but they are minor points, opinions really. For the most part, the advice is sound. You should be posting with a mobile perspective in mind onto Facebook. You should be engaging with users on Twitter, not just posting blog post titles and links. Unless a post is about people, don’t include people (particularly faces) in your pins. Tag, tag, and tag some more on Google+. These are great pieces of advice.

Here’ the infographic. Read each point in it and ask yourself if you’re doing these things on your Facebook page or not.

When a lead arrives from one of your suppliers, do you ever question its origin? In the initial days of the Internet, it was fairly straightforward. There were few options for the consumer online, and most leads arrived showing their points of origin. Now, more than 90% of your customers head online before choosing a dealership, and when they generate a lead, it’s tough for you to know where it really came from and how it got to you.

Let’s start by breaking down the two general “types” of Internet leads:

Direct interest leads are those generated by consumers who are seeking information on your make of vehicle, or specific vehicles in your inventory. By contrast, Indirect interest leads are generated as a result of a similar interest or related event, but not on a make or specific vehicle you stock.

Wait a minute: I get leads from people who didn’t submit a lead on a car I stock?

Probably. Recently, I went to a wine and food festival. Next to a beautiful new Buick was an entry form to win a trip to wine country. I completed the contest entry and two weeks later, I got a call from my local dealer regarding my interest in a new Buick.

OEMs are notorious for this “lead generation” method, but they’re not alone. There are companies who take leads from other sources – contests, home mortgages, credit bureaus (trigger leads), re-marketed leads – and sell them on the open market.

Is that why customers tell me, “I never submitted a lead?”

Not usually. In the overwhelming majority of cases, when you receive a lead from a reputable lead company, the customer did submit a request (whether they took the time to read what they were doing prior to submitting their information is another story).

 Quite often, when a consumer submits a request online, they do so to many dealers at once, resulting in them receiving emails and calls from several people in a short period of time. Many of the emails are automated responses that don’t answer the questions they had, address the notes they put in the comments, or the expectations they had (like an instant price quote) when they clicked “submit.” Sometimes, they just want space and know that telling you, “I’m not interested,” “I’m not in the market,” or “I didn’t send you a request for information” is the easiest way to stop the calls and emails.

How do I make sure I get direct-interest leads?

First, work with reputable, established lead providers. Most have contracted with suppliers and sites to only receive customer-generated, direct interest leads. Second, capitalize on your search spend and site traffic by making sure customers on your website stay on your website.

Most customers leave your website because they don’t find what they are looking for, whether that’s a particular vehicle or information that they feel they can trust. When this happens, they go to independent websites that specialize in providing them with selection and information – and in turning that interested customer into a lead for you. If you can provide the customer on your website with tools and information they can trust – for trade in values, vehicle information, and even financing and payment options – you’ll convert more of your own traffic and reduce the defections.

Once again the CRM has helped us put together another huge deal! This time we searched our dealership records for customers with an interest rate of over 8%. We then contacted them, letting them know that rates are much better now and that the lower rate would allow them to get into something newer and actually lower their payments or get something nicer for the same payment. On the FIFTH call we made contact, set the appt, and that night they left in their new vehicle.

NOTE: The payment of their new vehicle was actually $40 per month HIGHER than their current vehicle.

IT'S ALL ABOUT PERCEPTION!!!!!!!!!!

Commitment. It means different things to different people. When it comes to social media marketing and Facebook in particular, it means making the choice to work hard, keep going, and stay disciplined.

Facebook is extremely fickle. Its algorithm relies on momentum, something that dies very quickly after only a few bad posts or skipped days. It’s for this reason that businesses and marketers have to make a choice before diving in. Are they going to take it all the way or is it better to keep it slow and simple?

Both methods work at achieving their respective goals. The majority should consider going for the latter as the effort that goes into going “all the way” must be sustained indefinitely to be successful. There are plenty of strategies that work with each method, but before we get into those, here’s the difference between the two.

Keep in mind, there’s really no in between.

The Easy Road

This isn’t the “stick your head in the sand approach”. Let’s assume that you wouldn’t be reading this article if your goal is to pretend that social media doesn’t exist, that it’s a fad, or that your business cannot benefit from being on it.

The easy road is one that is only targeting interested parties. It isn’t about aggressively going after new fans. It isn’t about using Facebook advertising. It isn’t about playing the algorithm game or going for additional reach for your message. The easy road is only targeting those people who will find your Facebook page through search or through your website. This isn’t about getting into users’ news feeds.

This path takes very little time. While I would never suggest using automation such as RSS feed posts, it’s just a notch above that. With this strategy, the goal is to make sure you’re presenting a strong presence for those who find your page. It means posting text, images, links, and videos on a regular basis. Once a day is plenty but a business on this path can easily get away with a couple of posts a week.

This takes very little time and effort. Use Post Planner, Buffer, Facebook’s native scheduling tool, or any tool with a queue feature and make sure it’s loaded up. That’s it. Put a week’s worth of posts in every week, schedule the replenishing tasks once a week, and let your presence become a good representation of your business for those who proactively seek your page.

There are plenty of advantages to this style. It takes much, much less time. It requires fewer touches of your social accounts. Your posts can be easily scheduled and as long as you’re monitoring via email or alerts for inbound contacts, this method is almost foolproof.

Again, it’s important to remember that you will not be getting into news feeds. Very few people will see your posts, but those who do see them will not be disappointed by seeing and abandoned page or one that is RSS automated.

The Hard Road

The other option is to commit. It’s that simple. If you’re wanting to use facebook as a true advertising and marketing platform, you will want to be extremely active. You’ll need to learn about and keep up with the algorithm, touch your account daily (possibly multiple times per day depending on your reach), and craft content perfectly.

This is the path that most want to take because it’s aggressive. It is the way to get real exposure through Facebook, to get into news feeds and to get your message in front of as many people as possible. The key point is to understand that social media doesn’t sleep, it doesn’t take weekends off, and it knows when you’ve been away for an extended period of time.

It also requires an investment. Any expert that says Facebook can be effective in an aggressive strategy that does not include a Facebook advertising spend is trying to sell something to a potential client. It cannot be done unless you’re an A-list celebrity or a major brand. Local businesses, smaller brands, and just about any entity that is not a household name within their market cannot achieve maximum success on Facebook without spending on ads. I’d happily debate that with anyone who says something to the contrary.

The hard road requires constant monitoring and interaction. If someone comments on a post, it’s imperative that there’s a very quick response. The next day often won’t cut it. You can get more engagement when people are replied to while they’re still online and the comment is fresh to them. It’s also the quickest way to get your posts to spread quickly. When a long conversation thread can be sustained, those involved will help your post become visible on others’ feeds, they’ll tag people that they want to join the conversation, and suddenly the post has the ability to get real traction.

Most of these things are obvious to those who have been doing it for a while, but one thing that so many are missing is that you can never waste a post. There is too much algorithmic damage that can be done with bad posts. They all have to count – every single one of them. They all need a purpose whether it’s creatively delivering a business-oriented message or just posting high-quality content that can be universally liked to boost your algorithmic authority.

One can still use tools and plan out posts, but it’s important to not let them make you lazy. Just because you’re scheduling posts ahead of time doesn’t mean that you can let it sit dormant or that you can stop paying attention for a little while.

This isn’t intended to scare people. It definitely doesn’t mean that you have to live on Facebook to be successful. It’s just necessary to make the commitment to spend enough time, energy, and money to make your Facebook presence strong and to aggressively pursue greater reach. It’s not a matter of fans. The truth is that fans are a very small part of an aggressive strategy. The hard road takes you down a path where reach is 99% of the goal. The more people you can get to see your message and to communicate with you, the more success you can have.

To reach this success, you have to be willing to go all in. There is no gray area. There’s no middle ground. A halfway aggressive approach is not half as successful as the aggressive approach. It’s barely more successful than taking the safe road, which is why most businesses should opt for that path.

It’s all or nothing. Which is best for you?

I want to give the Automotive Dealers around the country a pat on the back.  As a whole, Dealers have process figured out.

If you ask 90% of the Dealer employees what they are supposed to do when a prospective client enters the facility you will get a great response.  Amazingly, from coast to coast, it almost identical in theory from store to store.

Greet the client, establish the needs, present product, appraise the trade, tour the service department, agree to figures, obtain financing, delivery vehicle, and finally timely follow up to ensure satisfaction.  This has been the mantra for at least 40 years, and has stayed the same for the entire time.

Yes, there are differences in philosophy and execution, but the physical acts as a whole have been remarkably untouched, and are well known.

The answer to improvement and growth is Management.  Not THE Managers, but the practice of Self, Team, and Leader management.  As a business the highest value target for improvement is the percentage of times we perform the process perfectly.

Does your process happen perfectly 50%, 60%, 70% of the time?  Every time steps are missed, or poorly executed is a lost sale opportunity.  Our present traffic is our greatest opportunity for incremental growth, and better yet with minimal expense!

The first management technique to talk about is transparency.  It is the highest value proposition.  High value targets are ones that have the greatest balance of cost against ROI (return on investment).

Transparency, as it relates to business, is the policy of an open flow of information between Clients, Employees, Managers, and Leaders.  Management through transparency has to have integrity to be effective.  You either have a policy of sharing relevant information or you don't.   Let's examine the the practice and effect on each level.

Self - What does it mean to practice transparency as an individual employee?  When a client asks for $9,000 for his trade, what do you tell the Manager?  Is is $9,500, so hopefully the Manager gives $9,000 as a counter-offer to make your job easier, or do you give the total and honest information?

When a client has an issue with their car, do you immediately apprise your immediate supervisor, while taking the necessary individual steps to correct it, or just try to keep it on your own level to avoid being judged for how it is handled?

Are you filling honest and complete information into your CRM (customer relations management) tool, or simply clicking through items and tasks to make it look like you are completing a ton of work?

These are everyday transparency decision points.  Each one can derail our perfectly planned processes.  By having a policy in place that fosters and encourages complete openness the business gains valuable information, and improves the bottom line.

One method to help this along is to actually post publicly the information as a business you expect your employees to be transparent about.  A large sign on every desk that says "We will provide open and honest assistance with your trade value", "Any issue you have with your car is a concern for every employee from Porter to President", "Our future relationship is everyone's highest priority, and we intend to reach out to you to ensure your satisfaction through thick and thin"

Managers - Managers have a heavy burden in this task.  What is good an useful information for all?  Should everyone know closing percentages for each Sales Consultant, or keep that ourselves until we feel it is a weapon to wield on someone who isn't measuring up?

Is Department profit relevant?  Can you get your staff to see that total department profit, ultimately effects their commission structure?  Is it better to keep Sales Consultants on a need to know basis?

I know adding meetings in a car dealership isn't high on anyone's agenda, but they are the most effective method for a Management Staff's transparency.  Turn your meetings from long sessions about the needs of the Managers, to lightning information rounds.  5 minutes each day about stats from the entire Sales Department, can boost morale, and create open teamwork.

Leaders - All styles of management become reality when they are upheld by upper leadership.  How can Leaders create an environment fostering transparency?  Does more information equal more production?

Human resources can be one of the greatest opportunities in the Dealership.  Are exit interviews performed, and information analyzed as a staff to help guide future hiring and retain employees?  Is it more productive to move forward as soon as possible without this valuable information?

Reviews take time, effort, and require intense communication to work.  Do your employees really know where they stand with honest feedback and expectations?  Does your store evaluate employees on the fly with small sets of data, like how a Sales Consultant handled their last client?

Next post time to talk about transparency's older brother, ACCOUNTABILITY.....

Recently there was a customer that was on my lot,that wanted to buy a car but was unsure of what kind of car he wanted. After talking to 2 managers and two salespeople he finally agreed to purchase a NEW MAXIMA!!! The rest of the story is one salesman considered him "an abosolute waste of time" This belief went on for about a day ! One manager was very determined to sell him a car and he eventually returned. A salesman who did not think him as a waste of time helped him and made the sale!

So treat everyone as the most important person in the world because in their eyes: THEY ARE !

I've stated this over and over at various conferences. So I'll put it in writing.

Companies like cars.com et al, exist because we as dealerships allowed a vacuum to form. Consumers wanted to research online and we didn't change fast enough to what they wanted.

Ever hear of Buzzillions? When is the last time you heard people talk about what they read on Epinions or Reevoo? These sites used to be the hottest things out there. Then companies started posting their own reviews. Newegg.com took a huge risk years ago and put their reviews, good and bad, directly on their site. Now their reviews are considered some of the most trustworthy. The entire ecommerce industry embraced reviews. Those with the most success are the most open. The sites that did reviews became unnecessary.

Ecommerce saw these review sites as a threat and realized the easiest way to knock down their relevance was to get in front of them.

You hear how car buyers hit 18 sites on average before purchasing a car and dealers think that is great. Why? In ecommerce you learned that every time a customer had to leave to get information you raised the chance of losing them for good.

Here is a short list of what ecommerce did to streamline and knock off exits from the sites. These are all things that believe it or not, didn't exist on a majority of ecommerce or web sites at one time.

Search - There are still places that don't have a search feature. Expecting instead for the customer to slog through the site and still be happy when they find what they are looking for.

Communication - There was an attitude early on that a phone number was enough. Then just a phone number. Now you have feedback forms right on the site, chat, or click to call.

Reviews - Give your customers a voice right on your site. Dirty little secret in the ecommerce industry, the standard is any review with 3 or fewer stars are considered a customer service issue and referred to a CSR.

Pictures of products - Yeah, there was a time when if a site had 1 picture it was a miracle.

Customer video of product - These are gaining ground in a lot of sites. One of the best videos I ever posted on a site was a consumer nearly setting themselves on fire with our product. We called out all the things they did wrong and why they we say in the manual not to do it. It was deleted a couple of weeks later, so win-win.

Shipping charges and tracking - Hard to believe but there was a time not long ago when you had no idea what the shipping would cost or when your order would arrive. You had to go to UPS or FedEx and get a rough estimate.

Manuals and direction videos - Manuals were some of the first things added to ecommerce. I bought a saw the other day purely because their video showed that it would flush cut at the angle I needed. I spent about double what I planned. Manuals can answer a lot of questions about a product.

Personalization - About 10 years ago ecommerce realized that when you make it a more personal experience you create a stronger connection. Car sites are just now realizing this and remembering what people looked at and who they are.

Security - Throw that security badge up, show the customer they are safe giving their information. So many car sites make this horrible mistake. They Iframe in a credit app. The app is secure on the vendor site, but the browser shows that the page being used as a porthole by the dealer isn't safe. Guess what, people won't trust their information with you.

Standards - Account info, cart and search in the upper right. Customer service and phone info in the footer. Click on the logo for the home page. All of those are considered "standard" ecommerce rules. Sure, Amazon started it but they forced everyone else to do that same layout. Next time you are on a site and ask "where is the...?" you'll realize that you are on a site trying to be clever and failing.

I constantly say that the car industry is about 10 years behind ecommerce. Every time a dealer says, "Well the car industry is different" I remember how many times I heard that when the printing industry became computerized. They were convinced that computers had no place in printing because they were different. Most of the people were very resistant to change. Their industry had a monumental shift and thousands found out that burying their heads didn't help until it was too late. It turned out printers were actually one of the industries changed the most by computerization.

So, you have a Facebook page for your business. You’re ready to tap into the most powerful social site in the world. You want to get fans, to get people to like your page and hear your messages, to communicate with them in a meaningful way and to help drive more business.

You figure that, “Hey, I’m a business. The only way people are going to like my page is if I have a drawing for a free iPad or give them a game that they can only play if they like my page!”

Nope. It’s the wrong thinking. It’s not just the fact that you’re going to get people liking your page from everywhere around the world rather than the coveted local area Facebook users. What’s worse is that you’re actually going to do damage to your page and prevent locals from seeing your post or engaging with your page.

Here’s why…

Their Intentions are Not Good

Convenience stores don’t make a ton off of lottery tickets, but they get people into the store which is an opportunity for you to buy something else. There’s also a chance that the store can win something if they happen to be the place where the winning tickets were purchased. People don’t go to a convenience store to buy lottery tickets in order to chat with the clerk.

Why do people like your page if you’re offering a chance to win a million dollars? Because they want a chance to win a million dollars. They aren’t interested in what you have to say. They aren’t wanting to engage with you, to use social media as a method to communicate with you in hopes of learning more about what you do and how you can help them. They want a chance at winning. In many ways, it’s a lot like selling lottery tickets, except they aren’t going to buy anything while they’re there and you’re not going to share in their winnings if yours is the Facebook like that ended up winning the money.

Whether through games or giveaways, those who like your page for that reason isn’t going to interact with you. In fact, they’re probably not going to ever see any of your posts in their news feed. If they do, it’s a bad thing because…

“Coaxed” Likes Hurt You in the Algorithm

I’m not going to bore anyone with the EdgeRank algorithm. Instead, I’m going to focus on the basic concepts of affinity and weight which are the main reasons you’re not seeing a ton of activity on your pages today.

Every interaction is recorded by Facebook. Just about everyone knows this, that when people click through to, like, comment on, or share your posts, that’s a good thing that helps your posts appear higher in their news feed as well as their friends’ news feeds. The reverse is true in that negative sentiment such as hiding or reporting posts will hurt your chances of having your posts seen by people in their news feeds. What many people don’t realize is that no action at all is also a negative.

In other words, when someone sees your posts in their news feeds and scroll right passed it without doing anything, that this hurts the chances of them being presented future posts. This is exactly what’s happening with the majority of your “coaxed” fans. They didn’t care about what you had to say. They liked you page so they could get something. Now that you’re showing up in their news feed, they have no intention of interacting with it in any way.

Reach is (Almost) Everything

Here are a couple of examples. The top example is a dealership that is coaxing people to like them by giving them a chance to win something as well as to play games. The bottom example is a dealership that is completely transparent with their intentions, that allows us to use localized Facebook ads to build their fan base, and that started off with 26 total fans in February.

In the top example, you see that they have a lot more likes. Over 3k people have liked the page. The games/giveaways are working, right? Wrong. Yes, they’re getting more people to like them, but when you look at the more important number than likes, the “135 talking about this” statistic under their name, you can see that they are not doing well compared to the example on the bottom. The gaming/giveaway dealership has a 3.9% engagement ratio, meaning that under 4% of their fans are actually doing anything with their page such as liking, commenting, or sharing posts.

Keep in mind, this is actually pretty darn high of a ratio for a page that is artificially inflated through games and giveaways.

The way you’re able to reach more people is by getting more of them to interact with your posts. Every interaction increases your chance of getting exposure by moving it up higher in news feeds and increasing the chances that it will appear in additional news feeds. This is how Facebook works best, by reaching people. However, there’s a caveat and it’s the most important reason that you’ll want to avoid giveaways and games…

Local Reach is TRULY Everything

It’s definitely possible through a combination of games, giveaways, amazing content, and properly managed Facebook ads to have a strong reach. It’s not possible, however, to keep your reach hyper-localized with this combination.

Because games and giveaways have a tendency to pull people from across the country or around the world, they taint your following with irrelevant likes and interactions. If you’re a local business, you want to reach the local people only. When your posts are being presented to those outside of the market area, you’re increasing the chances that they will find your posts irrelevant and therefore hurting your chances of the local people actually seeing your posts.

Look at the reach statistics above for Cutter. You’ll see that the vast majority is in the United States and of those, nearly all of the reach is focused on Hawaii itself. There’s a blip – an aggressive internet marketing consultant on my team that lives in Cincinnati started following and liking the posts. As you can see, even a single person engaging can cause more of his own friends and family to see the posts, which can then be liked or not. While some of the content is standard automotive content that can be universally liked, a good portion is localized content. Will someone in Cincinnati like a post about a sales event at a Chevrolet dealership in Honolulu? No.

Reach is important. Local reach is the entirety of the targeting strategy. Your goal with your page should be drive locals to your store or your website. People too distant from the store to actually buy something will not help. They’ll hurt. Just as a Phoenix dealer wouldn’t buy television ads in Indiana, neither should a Phoenix dealer put effort and money into engaging with someone in Indiana.

If you keep it local, keep it transparent, and focus on delivering business-relevant messages to fans who like you because they wanted to receive business-relevant messages, you’ll be able to get exponentially more benefit from Facebook than you ever will if your focus is on helping people win iPads or playing games.

Here’s the sad truth about the way that most dealers are posting their inventory to Facebook. It’s not getting seen. None of it. Not at all.

Currently, there are three primary ways that dealers are posting their inventory to Facebook. The most common method is to have a tab on their Facebook page with their inventory. This doesn’t work. The click stats that we’ve studied using three different inventory types show that even the most active dealer Facebook pages are seeing next to zero traffic, clicks, or leads from this form of inventory posting.

The reason is obvious – people don’t visit your Facebook page unless they get there through search, a link from your website, or an ad on Facebook. In these three scenarios, they’re either not interested in seeing you inventory (if they were, they’d just go to your website) of, in the case of referrals from your website itself, they’ve already seen it. Now they want to see you and your personalization.

The other way is to feed your inventory manually or automatically through Facebook posts. This is a really, really bad idea because it will kill your page’s algorithmic authority and render your posts, inventory or not, essentially invisible.

The third way, the one that we recommend, is to be creative, selective, and persuasive. You have to post vehicles that deserve to be on Facebook. By that, I mean that the vehicle has to have something special about it that you can focus on, it needs to be relatively unique, and it has to have a compelling story behind it. In some cases, the cars create the story itself. We all covet that 5-year old car that was driven by a grandmother who literally took it to the grocery store and church and accumulated 20K miles over her five years of ownership. A car like that would definitely fit the criteria and the story clearly would write itself.

The more common circumstance is that you’ll want to create your story for the vehicle. In the example above, the story was that it was a unique car. We focused on the paint job to turn it into something that is at least a little interesting to the Facebook fans for this page, then we told a little about the car, just enough to let people know that they’ll be clicking through to a vehicle details page. This is important. You do not want to try to trick people into clicking through to a link that is trying to sell them something.

Be transparent. The car speaks for itself, so the image won’t make people report it or block the page, but if you then try to get them to click through without letting them know that you’re wanting them to buy it, you run the risk of them landing on your website, getting upset that you conned them into clicking through to what they thought was an image gallery, for example, and then clicking back and giving your post negative feedback. This is a bad thing.

Look at the example above. It’s a nifty little used VW with a different paint job. Rather than simply saying, “Check out this VW Rabbit…” we put a cute little spin on it. As a result, we know three things:

• It did well in the news feed, garnering 38 likes.
• It did not receive negative sentiment such as reports or hides.
• The vehicle sold less than 48 hours after it was posted to Facebook.

You don’t have to wait for a car with an interesting paint job. Chances are you have something on your lot, particularly a pre-owned vehicle, that has something interesting about it. Here’s another example:

In that example, the focus is on the year. It’s a used car, but it’s a 2013. Every lot should have some of these available. Hot newish car without the new car price – that’s a story that’s Facebook worthy, especially with a nice image of the vehicle itself.

This is where some creativity comes into play. You can’t just say, “2013 Camaro with 16K miles for sale, click here…” You have to tell a story about the vehicle. At the time of writing this article, the post is only 33 minutes old so we don’t have any statistics on it, but you get the idea.

Social media isn’t just for branding. With KPA Local Engage, we highlight the right vehicles, specials, and dealership activities that will resonate on the various social sites. Done properly, your social media can start producing real ROI. The branding – that’s the consolation prize. Focus your social media on getting tangible results.

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Originally posted on the KPA blog.

On January 15^th 1928 my father, Edward Lockerd, was born. Sometime within the next year his father, my Grandfather, George Lockerd, left and was never to be seen or heard from again.

My father, one of four, two sisters and a brother, all suffered from what both Author John Eldridge and Father Richard Rohr call “The father wound.” That is, growing up without the father, the “leader,” in the home and in their lives. My grandmother, Isabell Lockerd, did the very best she could to raise her four children, she spent 50 years as a school teacher and was both loving and very strict.

Fast forward 32 years to 1950 when my parents met, they got married soon after and about a year later I was born. My dad got into the auto industry; he sold cars, had a couple used car lots, ran a few big dealerships as a General Manager and then bought a small single point Plymouth store in the late 60’s.

My mother made sure she was involved in my life, all the games, scouts, school, she was even the school librarian for awhile… which wasn’t all that cool for me at the time, but she was there. My dad, however, wasn’t around all that much, his time spent being in the car biz with lots of hours, lots of time spent out with the “Factory Guys” after work, etc. Point being, most days I didn’t see him at all, and when I did, the “leader” of the home was “absent” even when he was in the house.

In 1974 I got married and a little over a year later had the first of four children; two girls, two boys, now ranging in age between 27 and 36. I left the marriage about a year after my youngest son was born. I have always taken care of my financial responsibilities to their mother and my kids but the “leader” was not there for them, when they needed one the most. See a pattern?

Both Eldridge and Rohr say that our fathers are the first people in our lives that either choose us or don’t.

How does all this affect us? Perhaps it brings up questions like “Am I good enough?” “Can I come through?” “Do I have what it takes?” “What do I do next?” “Do you approve of me?” And on and on….

I write this not as a poor me and not from the perspective of blame or even guilt, although that has taken some time and forgiveness to deal with. It’s not my dad’s fault, he didn’t know what to do, he was never shown, and I needed to forgive myself because I was never shown and perhaps grandfather George was never shown either.

Can these life cycles be broken, repaired and lessons be learned? I say yes, but it’s going to take a state change and lots of hard work and perhaps some pain from the “leader.”

Mulligan Please

There are no do over’s, or mulligan’s, in personal life. I can’t go back and talk to my children before school and tell them to have an amazing day, or after school asking how the day went and suggesting how to take care of this situation or that. I can’t play catch with the boys or help my daughters make better choices or to warn them about how boys are.

I recently was at an Automotive Conference and heard most speakers talk about their families and I sat there wishing I had spent the time they said they had with theirs, perhaps things would have turned out different, easier, better, for my kids. I came away from that conference knowing that what I CAN do is help them break this cycle that has taken place.

As a “leader” at you dealership, as a Dealer Principle, GM or a person in any supervisory position, are you absent?

I suggest that the same “wound” takes place in far to many dealerships across the country where the “Father, leader” is absent in some way from raising his or her children, their employees. I also think that being absent fuels the very same questions, like “Am I good enough?” “Can I come through?” “Do I have what it takes?” “What do I do next?” “Do you approve of me?” And on and on…

Can you be there in the morning with your “kids” helping them to have an amazing day with encouragement, training, development and when needed, proper discipline? Can you be there when they need help and talk to them at the end of their days and recap what happened at “school” that day?

Put the remote down (get away from your computer), get off the couch (get up from your desk or from behind the tower), communicate, listen, engage and maybe, just maybe, that wound that takes place at your dealership or in your department, can begin to heal, and your family, at the dealership, will welcome their “leader” back and get both stronger and healthier in the process.

Three Ways to Increase Your Human Capital Investment Portfolio

1. Hiring: Like a relationship, the way an employee relationship starts typically has much to do with its long term success, or lack thereof.

First step is to understand the culture of your dealership and hire people that are best suited to thrive within that culture; if you don’t start there you have a “square peg in round hole” situation that will never correct itself.

Second step  is to write an effective help wanted ad that really speaks to the job seeker,  i.e. why do you work there, will the potential employee feel as though they are in on things, will they be appreciated for excellence and of course potential income, in that order. Take a success story of an employee that came from a different industry and highlight them in your ad.

Third step is the interview. I strongly suggest a scripted interview, one that is psychologically based and used during each interview. I can send you mine if interested, just ask.

Fourth step is screening. I don’t care what screening tool you use, but use one. Be aware that screening tools will indentify a persons sales aptitude and intelligence, but they typically can’t measure a person’s heart or willingness to succeed, so use it as PART of your hiring process. In other words don’t let a screening tool stand in for a proper interview.

2. Development: Top athletes are developed by starting with the basics; repetition, constant training, mentoring, monitoring, rewarding and discipline when needed.

I just stayed in a hotel in Vegas and was talking to one of the valet’s outside and remarked to her that she must get many job offers in her position, based on the awesome customer service I saw her giving.

She told that every week she got an offer but due to her training and the culture of the hotel and how they were “developing” her for advancement she was very happy with her current position and loyal to the hotel. She knew she could make more money elsewhere but due to their commitment to her she was committed to them.

3. Leadership: Think of yourself as the rudder of a ship; take the Titanic for example… Ha! Just think about how one very small adjustment a mile away could have changed the direction of that huge ship and the course of history. Imagine yourself as the small rudder running the big ship that is the dealership, one small move can change how your investment in your human capital appreciates in value.

Don’t be absent. Be present. Spend time being a leader; showing, doing, teaching.

http://www.internetsales20group.com

Make Money Mondays With Sean V. Bradley - Membership Buying Programs

Take a look at those familiar little icons in the top right corner of the screenshot above. Four of the primary social media sites’ logos adorn a prominent position on the homepage. It’s not an uncommon sight. Some put them at the top. Other put them at the bottom. Some make them large and prominent. Others make them small and subtle. One way or another, most dealerships put them somewhere. They do it for a reason.

The reason is presence. We’ve all heard about the potential of social media but few local businesses and car dealers in particular have found the level of success that they would like. Finding that success is not the topic of this particular article (important though it is). Instead, we’re going to gain an understanding of the importance of social media outside of the obvious.

We all know that Facebook, Twitter, and the other networks have the potential to drive business when done right. Some would say that the effort and cost are too high, that the spend of both time and/or money can better be allocated elsewhere. This may be true for some; finding demonstrable success and true ROI from social eludes the vast majority of dealers. There’s assumed benefits, but real ROI – that’s a whole series of other posts. For now, let’s assume that you’re cruising along with a social media strategy that is basically there for presence only. You have to be there because you have to be there, but the effort or investment are currently minimal. Perhaps you’ve tried it yourself or with a social media vendor and couldn’t justify the cost. For whatever reason, you’ve taken your eye off the social media ball.

It’s okay. Many have. There’s nothing wrong with it. However, it’s important to understand one thing, one spark of an idea that you should consider before abandoning it all together. Whether you’re paying attention to it or not, others are. Your customers are. Your employees are. Even if you’ve given up on the “social” aspect of social media, there are other reasons that make it to where you must pay at least a little attention to it.

If you’re already out there finding the type of success that I’ve seen in recent weeks (and there aren’t a ton of you from what I’ve seen), then this article isn’t for you. If you’re just not sure of the importance of social media, read on…

It’s Search.

People look for you by name. Take a look at your analytics and you’ll see that the majority of your traffic comes from people searching for a variation of your dealership by name. As with any search, there will be those who look at the search results page as a whole and click to more than one spot.

Thankfully, those who are doing their social media properly can have their social profiles easily found on searches for their name. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and LinkedIn all hold strong authority in the eyes of the search engine. This is the case for a reason. The search engines know that people like to click on the profiles. If they didn’t, the search engines would not present them so prominently. That’s one of the key factors in the search ranking algorithm – searcher activity.

When they click through from search, will they be pleased with what they see or will they be embarrassed for you over your social profiles? Will they see that you’re using social media as a communication tool or a place to put funny cat pictures? Will they see that people are commenting and you’re commenting right back at them?

If you want to give people a bad taste in their mouths before they even attempt to do business with you, have a dormant or mismanaged social profile for them to click through from search. That’ll do it very quickly. Remember, millions of Americans take their social media seriously. Studies show that 64% of social media users are much more inclined to do business with a company that is maintaining the profiles on their beloved social media sites. Is your profile up to par or better than your competitors when people click through from search?

It’s Reputation.

This is one of the most challenging concepts to communicate to clients. When we think of reputation and reviews, we think of review sites. While these are definitely important, they are best suited for defense. In other words, people look at your ratings on review sites when they’re already in the market. They do so just to make sure that you’re a dealership they’re willing to do business with, but there are challenges to that which I’ll explain below.

First, let me explain the difference in how social media reputation works. In the old days before the internet took over, asking a dealership about reputation made them think of “word of mouth”. Many made a living off of word of mouth – repeat and referral business normally led down an easier road to the sale as well as higher gross margins. That concept has been replaced in many ways to where the thought of reputation has been isolated to review sites.

The problem there is that word of mouth is not only still alive and well, it’s actually more prominent today than ever before. It’s social media. Reviews are “name defending” to allow those who would consider you to continue down that path. 4-stars, 25 point rating on Google, good on the easily visible comments – that’s a great defense. When people see that, they’ll continue looking at you.

Social media takes your reputation on the offensive. It’s not the review components on your social media page as those are rarely used and even more rarely seen by consumers. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m referring to proactive customer sentiment communicated through their wall posts, Tweets, etc. I’m talking about making sure that people are saying positive things about you through social media. When people leave a review on a review site, there’s no commitment. They’re not really voicing an opinion that will be seen by the right people. Yes, it’s helpful, and I hope that everyone understands the distinction here. It’s just that there’s no “skin in the game” the way there is on social media.

When they post something about you to their own social media profiles, they’re telling their portion of the world (much of which is in the local market) through a venue that means something to them, their friends, and their family. This is aggressive, proactive reputation marketing and it can only be done by the consumers themselves. If they say they had a good experience at your dealership on Yelp, there’s not a great chance that anyone who knows or trusts them will ever see the review. Yes, you get the stars, but that’s defensive.

Their Facebook wall, however, is sacred. It means something to them. Their friends and family will see what they said and it will register because they trust that person. It’s word of mouth on steroids. No, you don’t need robust social media profiles to have it happen to you, but it certainly helps. When they can tell that you’re active on social media, they are much more likely to interact with you as well as commend you publicly through these venues. This is the golden ticket that, with very little effort or investment, can translate into increased business. It’s not just about defending your reputation. It’s about advancing it. This cannot be done through review sites. Social media is the word of mouth for the digital age.

It’s Presence.

The last reason that social media is so important to dealers beyond the actual social aspects of it is presence. This is the easiest place for you to shine as a company. Community involvement, employee spotlights, customer highlights – all of these things express a positive sentiment about your dealership that can have an impact on your potential customers.

It’s through social media that you’re able to humanize the company. This is where the “big, bad, scary car dealer” can be shown to have a heart, to be active in the local area and charities, and to be another business just like the bakery down the block. It’s this presence component that makes abandoning or going through the motions on your social media profiles such a huge mistake. This is no longer a world that relies strictly on proximity and newspaper ads to help them buy vehicles. It’s a world that is open to the realities of entities such as businesses.

You have an opportunity through social media to show your potential customers that you’re truly better than the competition. In many ways, some dealers have decided that they’re not reaching people through social media because they don’t see the interactions. This is confusing because so many times as I talk to dealers they tell me just how active they are on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or the others, yet they somehow feel that their own presence on social media is invisible. If the strategy is wrong, they very well might be invisible. However, when the strategy is strong, the possibilities open up to turn social media into a true advertising medium.

* * *

These aren’t techniques to help you find success. These are simply reminders that social media is hot for a reason, that bad experiences in the past do not have to be repeated, and that there’s more to it than just getting likes and fans. Stay focused on improving your social media presence. Don’t let it slip. As the world becomes more and more social, you’ll want to maximize the potential benefits that can arise from this ever-changing and ever-growing medium.

There have been too many blogs that dealt with articles on automotive SEO and there are some slightly annoying things that have recently caught the eyes of the SEO experts. The bloggers who particularly deal with automotive SEO are actually dishing out advice that appear to be normal traditional SEO advice but they’re actually far from being good SEO advice that can help the bloggers with better search engine rankings. The bloggers and the contributors of articles on automotive SEO are all wondering about the big question, what makes automotive SEO different from the other kinds of SEO.

The difference making factor – How is automotive SEO different?

Car-buying isn’t real time material and a handful of the population will agree that they buy cars for entertainment. Radio is no longer the place of auto-dealers and we’ve crossed the Golden Age of Auto Dealer Radio Advertising. What about television ads? Why would someone pay dollars for offering an advertisement on the television when YouTube comes free of cost? Thus, it seems that online reputations are getting more attention than real-world reputations and this is somewhat an amusing choice.

Different industries have been affected in different ways through the internet and perhaps the biggest impact that it had was on the automotive industry. Dealerships in business for over 90 years suddenly found out that they couldn’t compete with their competitors. So, among majority of the cases, the automotive businesses thought of concentrating more on the online media including the social media. In 2012, we’ve reached a point where the car dealers agree than online ads should be always integrated into their online marketing budgets. While some dealers have already gone digital, non-traditional advertising seems to have taken over the automotive industry as the king of the hill.

The fact that makes automotive SEO different from traditional SEO is “cars”. The auto industry touches more people than what the normal people realize and this speaks about the importance of automotive websites. Automotive SEO is therefore more complex than the non-industry people think it to be. Google doesn’t care for an industry; the only power is a mere algorithm. Through such algorithms, it is possible for Google to set forward a new set of rules through which they can easily penalize or shape the fortune of a particular website.

Therefore, with automotive SEO, the car industry is being boosted and enhanced so that it is possible for such companies to shape their future by targeting the right audience. If you too are trying to make your niche, you can hire an automotive SEO analyst who can help you increase automotive internet sale.

I’m not a broken record, at least I’m not trying to be. It seems that I’ve covered this topic from different angles a lot lately, but it’s simply that important to understand. In business in general and in automotive marketing in particular, getting more Facebook fans is a very low priority compared to reaching more people.

This seems to be counter-intuitive. One might argue that getting more fans on Facebook is the way to reach more people, but they dynamics of the social network make it to where this isn’t the case. A page can be extremely successful and reach the masses with very few fans. Conversely, a page with hundreds of thousands of fans can reach next to nobody. It’s a challenging concept to understand until you get down into the way the Facebook algorithm works.

In essence, it’s not size but quality that counts the most on Facebook. Just because someone likes your page doesn’t mean that they’re going to see any of your posts. Just because someone doesn’t like your page doesn’t mean that they won’t see your posts. It’s for this reason that getting more likes is such a small component of the overall Facebook marketing picture.

Here’s a quick video I did for the automotive industry that highlights a couple of examples of this principle. In it, a decent Facebook page with 4K fans is getting 1/10th of the reach of a great Facebook page with 700 fans. If that isn’t convincing enough, I’m not sure what else to say.

There are always going to be those who are real experts offering real products or services with proven strategies and the ability to make changes to their techniques as the market and industries change. There are also always going to be those who put on the uniform, slide on the aviator sunglasses, and pretend like they know how to pilot a passenger jet. Sadly, the latter is starting to outnumber the former, particularly in the world of search marketing.

It happens in many industries, particularly ones where things get easier. For example, owning a custom computer shop was a nice, tight niche just a few years ago. Now, you can drop a paper airplane off a building and have a 50/50 chance of hitting someone who can build a custom computer. It isn’t that they are faking. It’s that the modular design and cross-compatibility of computer hardware components has made building custom computers as easy as building a LEGO house.

The arena of search marketing is different. In both PPC management as well as search engine optimization, there has been a tremendous influx of experts and services filling the ears and inboxes of prospective clients. It’s not that it is easier than it was in the past. In fact, it’s harder today than it has ever been in the past, particularly with the complexities, risks, and quality needs of SEO. The reason that it’s growing is because the pitch is easy. Search is obscure. It’s super easy to fall for the wrong pitch because they’re all starting to sound the same.

In Catch Me if You Can, Leonardo DiCaprio‘s portrayal of the infamous Frank Abagnale Jr. was an example of what I’m seeing more and more of today in the search marketing world. It’s a matter of being able to talk the talk and winging it when it comes to walking the walk. Everyone says the buzzwords. Unique content. Targeting competitors’ cities. Market coverage. Link building. Social signals. I’ve heard pitches from people who can barely spell “SEO” that made them sound like their services were rock solid until you asked them detailed questions or demanded more than one or two example of successes.

Therein lies the two biggest problems. Those who are buying SEO don’t know the right questions to ask or what the correct answers should be. More importantly, every vendor in the industry has at least a couple of examples of where their clients are ranking well even if they had no hand in making it happen. This happened to me first hand this week when a site that I had optimized to rank well two years ago was used as an example of search dominance by their website provider. Their rankings had fallen in the two years since we had optimized them but they were still good enough to be an example of this web provider’s excellence.

There’s really no way to fight this, unfortunately. For my own company, I’ll be collecting dozens of examples of SEO domination to give to the sales team, but what about the smaller companies that are doing it right? If they have a dozen clients and they’re all doing very well, they still look bad compared to the giant company with 2000 clients that has 8 examples of good performance. Is there a solution? Is there a way to wake up the industry and show them how to tell the difference between aggressive, solid search marketing and the type that isn’t worth a buck, let along hundreds or thousands a month?

I will be taking the comments from this post and applying them to the Automotive SEO Study.

Is the high premium on the insurance policy stopping you from getting an auto insurance coverage? If so, then you’re not required to worry as there are various ways to lower the premium on the car. You can get full coverage without burning a hole in the pocket. Just follow some of the smart tricks given below to lower the premium on the policy.

Here are some of the effective tips that can help you get cheap insurance policy:

1. Type of coverage required: You need to understand the type of coverage required. Analyzing your requirement can help you determine whether you require full coverage or minimum coverage. However, you need full coverage to legally drive your vehicle in your state. If you’re not purchasing the right insurance policy, then you may receive a notification from the bank stating that you’re not carrying the right coverage. The bank can either repossess the vehicle or place its own risk protection on the car and bill you for it.

2. Get online quotes: Make sure you get required online quotes, to get the best deal while buying insurance policy. You may find some of the companies that provide money saving offers on the policy, if you buy from any one of the reputable companies. You’ve another option to get cheap insurance policy. Try to look for start insurance providers who can help you get policies in accordance with your requirement and on low premium.

3. Look for small companies for minimum coverage: You can look for minimum coverage from the any small insurance companies. Try to contact them over phone and inform them that you’re looking for cheapest insurance policy. Well, some companies may sell you extra coverage like glass coverage or road side coverage. The extra coverage may increase your monthly premium. Make sure you avoid splurging on these items; otherwise you may have to pay more in the long run.

4. Show a certificate on safety driving course: If you haven’t yet completed your safety driving course, then do it immediately. When you show the insurance company that you’re a responsible driver by getting a safety driving course certificate, you may get cheap insurance policy. So, you can effortlessly lower your premium on the policy. As a result, you can save considerable amount of money on auto insurance policy.

5. Impact of a branded vehicle on the policy: If you’re driving a car like Ferrari, then your insurance premium can be high. Therefore, if your priority is to get low insurance coverage, look for an economical car.

Therefore, you need to keep the above mentioned points in mind when you plan to buy cheap auto insurance policy.

Are you a hunter or farmer For so many years, we have struggled as an industry when it comes to follow up. Then, companies like Clients for Life and came along and started sending our follow up letters for us. All we had to do was sign it and mail it. This gave us more time to focus on working with the customers who were on the lot and calling in.

Basically, it gave us the ability to focus more time on hunting for new business and the farming was something we were able to relax on, just a little bit, but it was a much needed break right? Then, with the invention of email we are able to reach more customers faster than ever before and thanks to tools like CRMs we don't have to sign letters or even look at what is being sent because 90% of it is templated. The idea behind all of this awesome technology is to free up the time consuming tasks so we can focus all of our attention on generating new business...basically....HUNTING.

Unfortunately, the information age also came with some interesting side effects.

#1 - Less folks walking on the lot because they can shop online and narrow their choices before spending $4.80 a gallon in gas

#2 - Less folks answering their phone because they can just email...or ignore your email

#3 - Our sales people have spent so much time learning how to use all this technology that many of them have forgotten how to HUNT.

Farming and Hunting are equally important but much of our farming has been automated and it's nearly impossible to automate the hunting process so let's talk about why we've forgotten how to hunt and what we can do to get back on track.

Sales Leadership Team: Before you spaz out, don't blame your sales person. The reason they forgot how to hunt is because many of us, as their leaders, have forgotten how important it is to teach them the fundamentals of being a Hunter.

We know how to do it and it was part of our upbringing so it's easy for us to assume that our team should just 'get it' but...well...they don't. And we didn't 'get it' either, somebody taught us so let's pass it on :)

Hunting 101

1. Hunters prepare. Before going out into the wild, they make sure they have the gear they need to provide for their family. For a sales person that consists of the following NECESSARY tools.

A. Skills - LOT SKILLS: We need to make sure our team can walk us through the entire sales process from start to finish. Greeting to close. If they can't, don't verbally beat them up! If they can't do it it's your fault as their leader because you're responsible for training them how to do it the right way so use this as a teachable moment. PHONE SKILLS: They need to be able to handle a phone up, as well as an outbound follow up call. They need to be able to handle objections, concerns and roadblocks to gain the appointment or to bring someone back in if they didn't buy. NEGOTIATION SKILLS: They need to be able to handle objections like a pro. Cardone, Verde and a Million others have great info on this. Heck, for 99¢ you can download the AutoCloses app from the app store and it has the 25 most common auto objections at http://j.mp/autoclosesapp

B. Daily plan - Your sales people don't want to sit on their ass staring out the window, they just don't know what else they are supposed to do. Help them get in the habit of planning their day. We all used to have to spend 1 hour each day on improving our SKILLS, HABITS & ATTITUDE and it made us better. Why don't we help our folks do the same? Sample day: Set aside 20 minutes on your calendar for each of your sales people to have a quick 1 on 1 meeting with you to talk about what they did yesterday, what they're doing today and what they need from you in order to be successful. Have them set aside 20 minutes to role play with another team member. Have them set aside 20 minutes to listen to something motivational or read something motivational. Have them set aside 20 minutes every day for product knowledge. Have them set aside 1 hour each day to make all of their follow up calls to hot, warm and cold prospects. Have them spend 40 minutes each day making true prospecting calls to lease lists, customers over 90 days old and orphan owners. How many, how many, who's next? That's 3 hours of their day planned out with a purpose.

C. Attitude - Your sales people NEED a positive attitude in order to make A and B work properly. This tool is CRITICAL for them to be effective hunters. Let's face it, everyone has a bad day, we have personal things that come up that are unpleasant, stressful and sometimes overwhelming. As their leader, we need to help remind them of why we brought them on our team, why we keep them on our team. We need to remind them that they are valuable, they are important to us, they are great people. Without our sales people we don't have any chance of success so we need to treat them with the respect and value that they deserve. Without our sales people performing at their best, we cannot support our families.

Farming 101 Don't rely on your CRM alone.

The CRM may automate follow up but it's still not human. We're in the people business and relying on your CRM is telling yourself that the automated computer message is just as powerful as you are.

Nothing is more powerful than human interaction. A warm phone call every few months can work wonders in being a great farmer for years to come. Try something like: "Hey Bob & Sue this is Mat at (Dealership). I just wanted to say hello to keep in touch. I hope you're still enjoying that Honda Accord as much as you did on the day you picked it up. Call me at (number) if you need anything at all and I'll be here to help."

Farming is a process, one that often feels thankless but it sets the stage for long term relationships. Hunting can be scary but exciting and it is what helps you eat today, and gives you the means to farm another field for years to come.

I'd like to encourage you to set aside 20 minutes or so to write down all of your strengths and put them in one of two buckets: Farming or Hunting. Look it over and see where you need to focus your attention in order to improve.

Once you do it yourself, ask your sales people to do the same exercise so you can learn which areas they feel like they need your help.

Thanks for reading, make today amazing!

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Sean V. Bradley Will Be A Headline Speaker For The Massachusetts Automobile Dealers Association In Boston June 21st