Source: https://automotiveinternetsales.com/profiles/blogs/list/tag/sales
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 20:01:49+00:00

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In this week's Episode of Make Money Mondays Dealer Synergy's Nation Sales Director, Joseph Argento, explains how you need to lead and motivate your team if you want to be successful. You need to get your people behind you and supporting you which means, everyone has to be on the same page. Everyone needs to understand the goals of the dealership, how to approach those goals, and the consequences if those goals are not met in order to work well as one unit. It's about planning, being on the same page, motivating, and the execution.
In this week's Episode of Make Money Mondays Sean V. Bradley, CSP, President of Dealer Synergy, discusses the different levels of professionalism. An Olympic athlete is the highest honor of professionalism you can hold. If you think you are truly a professional, you should grade yourself on a realistic level. As an automotive professional, you can be junior varsity, varsity, AAA, or in the major leagues. Which level of professional are you?
In this week's Episode of Make Money Mondays Dealer Synergy's President, Sean V. Bradley helps you identify what your personal deficiencies are and how to improve them. You should not became overwhelmed with the size of your goal. There are a list of steps you can follow to help improve your overall skill. Take some time to write down the things you are not good at. You will see what you should prioritize and improve upon.
Make Money Monday with Sean V. Bradley - How to Handle "I'm Just Looking"
In this week's Episode of Make Money Mondays Dealer Synergy's President, Sean V. Bradley gives advise handling a prospect that comes into your store and says "I'm Just Looking." A vehicle is the second largest item a person will buy in their lifetime after a home. Do not take offense if someone says to you, "I'm just looking." Sean gives us advise on what to say when a customer says those three words. If you are structured and professional with your response, you could have the prospect abandon the "I'm just looking" reflex.
Make Money Mondays with Sean V. Bradley - How To Handle "I'm Just Looking"
Dealer Synergy Presents Lee Lee Williams, Internet Director of Grindstaff Automotive Group, giving advice on branding and networking on a personal level. You need to go out into your community and interact and network with the people of your community. You need to create a personal website branded for you even if you are part of a bigger automotive group.
It is an indelible image of the financial crisis: a bird’s-eye view of the backyards of foreclosed houses, their in-ground pools festering with algae and mosquitoes. In Northern Virginia, Marcus Sheridan was in the financial storm.
By early 2009, his company, River Pools and Spas, a 20-employee installer of in-ground fiberglass pools in Virginia and Maryland, had a decline in orders from an average of six a month to barely two. That winter, four customers who had planned to install pools costing more than $50,000 each demanded their deposits back. For three consecutive weeks, the company overdrew its bank account.
Around this time, Mr. Sheridan began to overhaul his marketing. The company had been spending about $250,000 a year on radio, television and pay-per-click advertising. It would now cut the budget to about a tenth of that and focus on generating sales through informational blog posts and videos, what has become known as content marketing. But Mr. Sheridan took an unconventional approach to his content.
As a result, River Pools has recovered to exceed its peak pre-2007 revenue, and Mr. Sheridan, a 35-year-old father of four, has become something of a Web marketing guru. While he still owns a 33 percent interest in the pool company, his partners manage it day to day while he concentrates on his new venture, TheSalesLion.com. He recently spoke about his marketing approach in a conversation that has been edited and condensed.
Q. Take us back. How did you save your company?
A. I just started thinking more about the way I use the Internet. Most of the time when I type in a search, I’m looking for an answer to a specific question. The problem in my industry, and a lot of industries, is you don’t get a lot of great search results because most businesses don’t want to give answers; they want to talk about their company. So I realized that if I was willing to answer all these questions that people have about fiberglass pools, we might have a chance to pull this out.
Q. What was the first question you answered?
A. The question I was always asked within the first two minutes of talking to customers was, How much does a fiberglass pool cost? Pool installers are like mattress or car dealers — we hate talking about how much a pool costs until we have you in person because there are so many options and accessories we want to sell you. As a result, pool companies never mention price on their Web sites. But I said, I don’t care what the question is, we’re going to answer it.
Q. Did you actually tell people the price of a pool?
A. No — because I couldn’t. But see, that’s the magic behind this. Google’s search engine doesn’t really care if we answer the question. It’s just looking for companies that are willing to address the question. So I said in that article, there are a ton of options, so it depends, the price can range anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000 and a lot of our customers end up between $40,000 and $80,000. And that was enough. Within about 24 hours of writing that article, it was No. 1 for every fiberglass-pool, cost-related phrase you could possibly type in. And because I have analytics, so far to this day, I’ve been able to track a minimum of $1.7 million in sales to that one article.
Q. What was the next question?
A. In most industries, there comes a time in the sale process where the customer turns to you and says, “O.K., I like you, but who are some of the other good companies that do this?” Half the time it’s a test, because people know who our competitors are because they can find them in .5 seconds online. Most contractors avoid the question. They say, “Oh, we don’t really have competition.” But because I was asked that question so often, I decided to answer it. I wrote a blog post about the best swimming pool builders in Richmond, Va., one of our main service areas.
Q. Where were you on the list?
A. I wasn’t on it.
A. No, because the moment I put my name up there I would lose all my credibility. But here’s the thing. Take the first company on the list, Pla-Mor Pools, a top competitor of ours. If you type in, “Pla-Mor Pools reviews Richmond, Va.,” which of course people do all the time when they’re vetting a company, what comes up? Me! You vet all my competitors, now I’m showing up for all their key words. If you really want to understand the power of inbound marketing, it comes down to this idea: I want to have the conversation at my house.
Q. Once you wrote a blog post, how much time did you spend promoting it on Twitter and Facebook?
A. I didn’t. Dude, that one article on price has never been tweeted. It’s never been Facebooked. I’m not saying social media doesn’t help, but it’s nowhere near what people think. The only metric that really matters is total pages viewed. Here’s a statistic for you: If somebody reads 30 pages of my River Pools Web site, and we go on a sales appointment, they buy 80 percent of the time. The industry average for sales appointments is 10 percent. So, our whole marketing campaign revolves around getting people to stick around and read our stuff, because the longer they stay on our site, the greater the chance they’re going to fall in love with our company.
Q. What do you say to business owners who say they don’t know what to blog about?
A. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard, and I hear it a lot. What they should be doing is just listening to every single question they get and answering it. In my consulting business the first thing we do is brainstorm what questions the company gets on a regular basis. I’ve never had a company come up with less than 100 questions in 30 minutes.
Q. How do you suggest companies find time to do all of this blogging?
A. Most of the time, they can take the employees they already have talking to customers and turn them into content producers. If you have 25 salespeople, and each one of them writes one post a month, your search is going to be through the roof because that’s a new piece of content every day.
Q. How have your competitors responded to all of this?
A version of this article appears in print on February 28, 2013, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: A Revolutionary Marketing Strategy: Answer Customers’ Questions.
If there is one thing you can count on for marketing, it’s this: there is no one way to do it. It’s always changing. What worked yesterday may not work in a year from now.
Digital technology has sped up the process. Now dealerships have more possibilities to connect with customers.
If you feel as though your auto dealership marketing is beginning to flat line, it may be time to mix it up and try something new.
Branding is the starting point for all your marketing efforts. Without a strong brand name, logo, and message, it’s difficult to catch the eyes and ears of customers. Even an excellent marketing campaign suffers if the brand doesn’t have that extra “oomph!”.
If you’ve had your dealership name for some time, it’s okay to keep it (in fact, that may be a better idea). You canmake your brand more engaging and interesting without a complete overhaul.
Create a byline for your brand. A short message that communicates your “promise” to customers. That message creates a common theme for the rest of your marketing efforts.
Hire a professional designer to create a new logo.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is not a new trend. Most dealership GM’s and managers are familiar with PPC advertising, targeting keywords, and the goal of ranking higher in Google. But, there is another way to marketing your business using SEO techniques, and, believe it or not, it’s all about your blog.
You can target specific keywords within your blog content. Each piece of content you publish effectively turns into a landing page for your dealership, drawing more targeted traffic to your website.
Hire a professional content writer to write SEO’d content for your blog each week.
Make your blog content informative and helpful to your readers.
Keep each post short, visually appealing (use pictures), and easy to read.
If you are using a generic CRM tool, think about switching to one that offers features specifically tailored to dealerships. AutoRaptor is made by car sales professionals, for car sales professionals. Every feature is intuitively designed to help your salespeople work more efficiently.
Lead assignments within the software tool.
Send text messages and phone calls with no additional carrier charge.
Complete mobile capability with unique features, such as license and VIN number scanning.
Many of your customers view your website, emails, and inventory with mobile phones. If you haven’t already, it’s time to ensure that all of your digital content is responsive to mobile devices, including tablets. Content that is not easily readable on mobile screens is losing you conversion opportunities.
Design all of your auto dealership marketing with mobile browsers in mind.
Think about how your content is read: make your email messages short and to the point. Mobile readers will skim and scan before they decide to read.
Get your website up to snuff, in other words. In terms of digital marketing (or perhaps all of your auto dealership marketing), your website is the most important piece of the puzzle. It’s the virtual doorway to your dealership. Your leads will pass through to view your inventory, read your content, and get a feel for how you do business. What will they see?
Create video content to post on your website. Dealership walk-throughs, salespeople spotlights, virtual car presentations, etc.
Hire a web designer to give you a new, sleek look. Make your website look attractive, fun, and engaging.
Make sure to build links to all your pages so Google can index them correctly.
Include pictures of the salespeople with short bios and contact information.
Converting your web visitors into qualified leads is a step-by-step process. Gaining an email address is easier if you offer something free in return, such as an e-book, white paper, redeemable coupon, etc. This is one of the main methods of inbound (or permission-based) marketing.
A person visits your website, views inventory, and researches your dealership.
He watches your videos of vehicle presentations and reads your blog.
At the bottom of your web page is an offer to download your entire library of video content.
To download the content, he needs to provide an email address and/or phone number.
He provides his information and is added to your opt-in marketing list.
You sent out automated messages (email drip campaign) offering more useful content.
After a few messages, you sent out a targeted promotion based on his vehicle search and behavior.
He responds, comes into the dealership, and now your salespeople have a qualified lead.
Finally, if you want your marketing to provide effective ROI, you need to target specific groups and personalize your efforts. The “spray and pray” techniques do not work like they used to. People want to have a personal connection to your dealership. They will not respond to vague, objective, or generic marketing material.
For better results, segment your marketing lists into specific groups and demographics. Use your research and tracking tools to see what they’ve viewed, what vehicles they’re interested in, and what promotion would best attract their attention.
Break your email lists into specific groups. Create promotional material specifically for them.
Make sure your emails and text messages are personal. One-to-one conversations are the messages people respond well to.
Think small: brainstorm ways to target specific groups with engaging, useful, and relative promotions.
Every dealership needs to mix up their marketing efforts on a regular basis. Of course, if something is working well, there is no reason to try and change it. But, if you see that your “go-to” tactics are starting to flat line, use these tips to diversify your marketing mix. Remember: your internet marketing is a critical aspect of your overall strategy. Give your website the attention it deserves and build up your inbound marketing sales funnel.
What’s your opinion? Do you have any marketing tips to add? Share your thoughts!
I recently added this into a forum post comment and realized that some more people might be wondering about this. Where is the best place to ask for a referral? It used to be simple, after they purchase - ask for a referral or maybe give them a call a few weeks later and ask. Definitely YES, those two options are prime time referral asking opportunities but now that we live in a digital era, there are A LOT more opportunities to connect and engage with your customer. Meaning there are a lot more opportunities to ask for a referral.
I like to refer to all the best places to "ask for a referral" as touch points and I will preface this with my STRONG, STRONG opinion that a referral program is great, it's awesome, but without an offer of some kind.... some of these ideas can just fall flat... why? People are busy. The offer is the stickiness that you need to go above the competition and stay at the top of your customer's mind. PS: People prefer MOOLAH, according to a recent survey," 77% of Americans identify money as their reward of choice."
I know some dealers are hesitant/wary about the effective on ROI when combined with the reward amount but it's such an inaccurate/outdated way of thinking about it. I love showing stats and blowing dealer's minds about ROI on referrals. Just look at PayPal: "By directly paying people to sign up and then paying them more to refer friends, we achieved extraordinary growth. This strategy cost us $20 per customer, but it also led to 7% daily growth, which meant that our base nearly doubled every 10 days." - Peter Thiel - Co-founder. And not only is it cost effective, it improves your overall branding and marketing efforts, according to MarketShare, "Word-of-mouth has been shown to improve marketing effectiveness by up to 54%."
My biggest tip to gain the most traction in the following scenarios is that you ensure your referral offer/request gets to your customers QUICKLY and it is EASY for them to refer. Below are a few top touch points for a dealership/salesperson, GM or really any employee to ask for a referral.
In-Store Marketing - while they wait for F&I create some flyers that highlight the referral program + $OFFER, your customer is at their most elated point right now, they just bought a car but now they're stuck waiting. They also know they've just spent a pretty penny and the option to help a friend and earn is extremely appealing at this point. We've had some customers submit 4+ referral leads while they've waited for F&I!
F&I - your F&I manager is an ideal candidate to quickly explain the benefits of your referral program AKA earning money, while they are also discussing added benefits of new features AKA customer's spending money. a nice ying and yang for the customer to think about.
Automated Emails - if you have a follow up email to thank your customer for their purchase - add a referral button or banner that leads to a form to submit referrals. It's easy and efficient. Your salesperson should also be following up with an email or call (mentioned below) but if they forget or won't, these automated emails and inclusive offers will ensure it gets to your customer!
Salesperson Follow up - 1-2 weeks after purchase. A simple check in to see how the car is doing can lead to a LOT of useful information, like if anything is wrong and the salesperson can help remedy this -- Major brownie points and once resolved, it's the perfect time to ask.
REVIEWS! If you get a good review, comment back and give them a link to a landing page/form where they can submit referrals! The lack of action on positive reviews sometimes saddens me, they are a GOLD MINE for referrals... and even the bad one's offer up so much learning experience --- a goodwill offer can help a ton here too.
Your Website - PLEASE!!! do not stuff it into one of your million and billions of tabs and sub tabs. Nobody really looks in those. Make it a nice attractive button that highlights the offer amount "$100 Referral Credit" $100 Reward Credit". Something to catch their eye.
Make Money Mondays with Sean V. Bradley - You MUST listen to your customer!
Looking to start an exciting career in automotive sales? Several Dealer Synergy clients are looking for talented individuals to join their team. Check our current listings and submit your resume.
Sean V. Bradley, CSP, CEO of Dealer Synergy speaks on the topic of how BDC is not an expense. People are not an expense, they are an asset. The difference between your organization and others are your people. The competition does not have anything different than you do, people are not an expense it comes down to your value proposition package. You cannot make money without putting money out. 92-99% of Americans go online before they even step foot in the dealership. If you can direct that traffic to an Internet or BDC department and you've got the right factors, you will be able to build a customer factory.

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