My name is Jill Nicolini and you’re, watching auto dealer news with all the latest and greatest in the automotive dealer world.
We will be speaking with leaders in the automotive sales industry about the newest trends, technology, marketing and sales strategies that will push your dealership or automotive group to be the best it can be with us.
As always, is the CEO of dealer source group and Universal marketing solutions, automotive sales, trainer and business entrepreneur with over 15 years of producing outstanding results in the automotive retail industry, our very own automotive guru, Ricci Bello? Thank You Jill.
So much today’s topic of the show is gon na be talking about a PPC versus display ads Ralph paglia is the founder and president of ADM Consulting LLC serving clients like for GM Toyota, JD Power and Associates, and several retail dealer groups in Texas, California, New Mexico And Nevada he also served as vice president of digital at tier 10 marketing from January 2011 until the amp launch in April 2012, where he designed and blueprinted the daily operating processes which deliver digital marketing, advertising and social media services for car dealers and automotive groups and Establish strategic alliances with companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Advertising software suppliers, advertising networks and technology companies that tier 10 marketing continues to leverage for delivering best-in-class, digital marketing, advertising and social media.
Well he’s here with us today: how are you doing Ralph? Thank You Jill.
I really appreciate the introduction and Richie it’s a pleasure to be on your show, and I look forward to having a great session wait so Ralph.
How are you you doing? Good, no yeah yeah, I’m back in Las Vegas.
I was in Southern California for a period of time for a particular dealer that I was working for and as much as I was happy to get away from Las Vegas.
For some odd reason.
I missed this town and so now I’m back and I just moved back.
In fact, I don’t know if you can see in the background, but there’s a lot of moving boxes and stuff that has to be unpacked.
Yet that’s great.
It’s great seeing your Alf, its energy, so Ralph.
I wanted to talk to you about because you, you know a lot of knowledge, but you know, like the biggest thing, is this PPC? These dealers are spending so much money on Google AdWords, and I hear it all.
The time on the clickable side, you know, and I go to dealerships you know my ROI is not there so they’re on one month and then some dealers get an ROI and some don’t and they go crazy.
They start spending, especially if the half of the month they’re not there, they increase their budget and then, at the end of the month, that statement comes out.
The general manager goes crazy, it just it does it.
It doesn’t happen.
The one that’s really making money is Google, you know, and then they stop for two months because they exceeded all their budgets.
And nobody really knows about Google, I mean I’m, I’m a Google certified partner, you know we’re clickable and with us MMP, and you know I.
I try to coach these dealers where their best buck is, and you know – and you know me for a while now you know that I believe a lot in prospecting.
That’s what I believe a lot in you know I believe in prospecting, customers and their repeat business.
That’s what I do because I see an opportunity there, all the time you can promote on PPC and get new customers, but you always got ta, concentrate on your previous customers right and that’s how I think they’re gon na increase.
What are your thoughts on that as a professional digital marketing that you are first of all just in the past year? If I were to look at my experiences in 2017, I’ve seen budgets being spent by dealerships on Google AdWords PPC that I never in my wildest dreams, imagined dealer spending, I’m talking 120,000 a month for a single rooftop store and even higher as unbelievably as it might Sound and in some ways I think what Google has done much to their credit and very much to the high making their shareholders happy is.
We’ve often referred the bidding system when we’re trying to sell cars as a race to the bottom.
Well, Google.
I think what they’ve established as a race to the top, where you get the credible bids on keywords such as the brand or you know, used cars Los Angeles.
You know going for $ 10, a click and things like that.
So I insert in a certain level you really have to say to yourself: do we want to participate in this? To that degree, you know.
Do I want to be have my budget mixed in there with these real expensive clicks, because I’m chasing after the person searching for these particular queries and here’s? What I always say to dealers say nobody’s born, saying: I’m gon na go to Google and search for Fords in Southern California or whatever.
The search query is something prompts that something triggers that and that’s where display advertising comes in.
We know there’s a direct connection between display advertising and the search queries that people put out.
In fact, in one particular instance up in Oregon when I was working for the lithium owner’s group up there, we created a word that hadn’t existed before and we display it advertise it.
Quite it quite extensively millions of impressions and lo and behold, this word, which had never shown up on a Google search.
Query starts showing up in Google search queries by the thousands.
So we know that there’s a direct connection between what a dealer advertises in display and what people search for.
I am not downplaying the importance of pay-per-click in Google search, I believe it’s an important part and it has to be there, and dealers need to be there to get.
You know the right customers.
However, one thing I would disagree with is, I don’t think pay-per-click and Google search should be exclusively around conquest business.
I believe that you can target your previous customers using it and oftentimes quite inexpensively because of the Quality Score that you’re gon na achieve and because of the fact that you’re, you may be going for a longer tail keyword.
I do believe that the somebody I find see more opportunities and display advertising than I do see in pay-per-click and pay-per-click on.
Let’s face it everybody’s in the game.
Now I started teach the dealers how to do pay-per-click 15 years ago and and by now everybody’s doing it you’ve got companies out there that are managing budgets, because the OEM has mandated that particular supplier and in that, what they’re challenged with and I’ve been there.
I’ve been brought in and asked to help what they’re challenged with is they have this huge amount of budget when it’s added up for all the dealers that are participating and yet they’re all bidding on the same words, you know so between the geo-targeting to try to Reduce you know the overlap which doesn’t always work as effectively as you think it’s going to do and between the very fact that these suppliers are oftentimes chasing using up all the budget, not giving any money back, making sure.
There’s nothing left on the table, which is their job their job.
Is they get a budget? If you give them ten thousand a month, they don’t want to come back and say we only needed to spend eighty five hundred.
We got you all.
The best clicks, they’re gon na spend the full ten thousand one way or another.
That’s why when I’m in New York, I see ads for Los Angeles, the others.
You know that are the published by the company mandated by the OEM.
So there’s there’s a lot of turmoil out there and there’s a lot of inefficiencies going on.
There’s, certainly room for improving what we’ve got going on with digital advertising, and I and I think, there’s a lot of room for improvement.
Talking to you before the show started.
I’m fascinated with the with the model that your company has.
You know, there’s a little bit of mystery in there for me, because I haven’t learned everything about it, but you know the 15 cent.
A click obviously sounds pretty attractive, certainly better, but there’s there’s there’s a lot going on out.
There Richie and I think um when it comes to customer retention.
Let’s face it.
It’s always been easier to reach out and communicate with people that have already bought cars from us, and especially because we know how long ago they bought their car.
We know how many payments they’ve made.
We know what the cars worth we know.
We have all this knowledge, so that should be first, our marketing efforts should focus on our previously sold customer base first and when we use that up and we that would go for conquest and unfortunately, what we always see in our business is conquest.
First retention as an afterthought and that’s and I believe, that’s wrong – I think the more economical or the stronger return on marketing investment.
Our OMI is gon na come from our existing customer base, and this and there’s other sources too.
You know true car shouldn’t be the only company that develops affinity with large employer organizations.
I’ve seen several dealers be very successful and looking at who the big companies are that employ people in their area and developing an affinity having a page on that company’s website and likewise that company has a page in the dealer’s website.
I think there’s a lot to be done before we start boiling the ocean out there on the internet with pay-per-click search and spending all our money there.
I personally, I think the dollars are better spent going after our previously sold customers.
Come everybody come on.
It’s a lot easier to get them to click on the ad.
It’s a lot easier to get them to contact us.
It’s a lot easier to recognize them when they visit our websites.
There’s it’s a lot easier to see them when they come into our showroom floor.
I mean what would you rather take a fresh up or that guy you’ve sold three cars to over the last 10 years.
Right prospecting: that’s over a previous customer.
You know hi engrossed much easier to sell and everything.
So let me ask you this, then: why don’t we as an industry, focus on that first and conquest second, and I think part of that is we take for granted we take for granted than our previous customers they’re, just gon na automatically come back to us.
We think we already got it right, correct and let’s let’s face it, they need a little romance right.
Exactly and you know previous customers are so easy did they have all this data and their DMS right and with the clickable dashboard I did a live.
I believe it was yesterday right and we went over the whole dashboard.
It takes it actually scrubs all this data and puts it in a format for your sales department to follow it up.
It lets them know when that customers available ok and we can set it up because we get any API, no problem.
We got all these api’s and start triggering out email campaigns.
Well, you can start build funnels with it.
We we have the technology.
It’s tremendous amount of technology and you know Infusionsoft using Infusionsoft technology with our dashboard it just it’s another API.
We could set up that whole plan for a dealership and it’s like a tremendous amount you’re reaching out to all your customers, not only that.
We all know that service is a tremendous ROI.
There’s customers that go to your service department go once or twice and don’t go back there.
Now here’s the problem, these customers get warranty, work, there’s recall, work, there’s all that and we’re not doing anything to get these customers well with the clickable technology, without dashboards, we’re able to go in there and get those customers back in the door and let’s face it, We all right now, most of us in the car business you’ve been around for a while.
I’ve recognized that keeping the customer coming into service is a much better way to ensure that they’re gon na buy the next vehicle from us than almost anything else.
We can do one of the single greatest points of defect.
If you look at all the research, you know.
Where are the defection points? Where are we losing customers as a dealer? One of the things we lose customers is when that customer starts servicing the car somewhere else, and one of those you know we all know one of those big ones is.
This is a sore subject for some people whose tires you know if the customer keeps the kind of long enough to go, buy tires if they don’t come back to you as a dealer for those tires, then that might be their first trip outside of the dealership.
They go to Firestone, they buy tires next thing.
You know, we know we never see him again.
So absolutely there’s so much to be done with with fixed operations and not from the standpoint of just the profits and fixed ops, which are great.
That’s certainly motivation enough, but we know that if a customer continues to get their car serviced than our deal in our service department, we’ve got a five times greater operative chance of have an opportunity to sell in their next car.
So you know, service is really sales.
So in service leads to retention for sales.
You don’t here in this market.
What happens? Is you got a lot of lease? The lease penetration here is 85.
95 percent.
So what happens? Customers only come in for an oil change and they can go to an oil change anywhere else, but in reality, there’s warranty work.
These cars are out there that need warranty work so really got ta stay in the customer out there.
They got to get this customer back into that showroom and get warranty work because that’s theirs.
That’s a racial scientist there’s a huge problem right now and when you look at the percentage of completions on recall, work, there’s, unfortunately, of manufacturers out there that are 40 %.
45 % in terms of the warrant recalls being executed.
Honda is the only one who’s really grabbed onto that, and they’ve got a recall execution rates north of 90 percent, which is outstanding, and it also shows us that it’s possible.
So I do believe that whether it be technical service bulletins, tsps recalls, that’s a great way to get the customer into the dealership and really treat them like a VIP so that they come back for their customer pay services as well.
But there’s a huge opportunity out there and recalls you want to talk about conquests, how about people that bought cars outside of your market, but they’re in your area of responsibilities, so they’re listed on your dealerships recall list because their residence is in your market.
Okay, even though they bought the car from one of your competitors, it’s great opportunity to get them into your dealership and ensure that the next time they buy a car that you have another shot at them and they don’t default.
Just to that other did that selling dealer, so I see opportunity in the database mining around incomplete recalls as well.
You know it’s funny.
You should mention that because there’s a dealership here in town and he’s a Chrysler store and he will not serve us – a customer that didn’t buy a car from him.
Why exactly I’ve been dealing with this guy for a long time he’s a good friend of mine.
He will not service as a matter of fact, one of my partners, no some service business.
He can’t handle it.
I mean one of my good friend that has a catering hall, all right, the real good friend of Mines.
I refer him three years ago.
He tells me hey bitch.
I got a problem with the G, there’s that so I I send them over there and the guy tells me Richie.
I can’t help them.
I said why cuz he didn’t buy the car from me and this is the owner telling me.
I said you know, are you kidding me? Are you kidding a lot of problems with the dealer that refuses to service cars bought elsewhere, not the least of which is? Why not? It’s such a great opportunity to get a customer, but also there’s that customer will never buy a compliment and it’s like in your dealer agreement, you promised the manufacturer you’re gon na service, the cars.
So there’s a lot of.
I can’t I don’t understand why I dealers would do that unless, unless they’re so overwhelmed with service, which you know back for the recalls, I’ve seen situations where the recalls they could only handle so many a day.
There’s so many coming in you know, especially with those Takata airbag recalls, so I could see maybe a situation we put people on hold say I can’t handle him for another week, but um to just turn them away cuz.
They bought the car somewhere else.
Not in fact, you know what I’ve done.
The last time was a general manager in store.
I have had times were.
If a customer buys a car somewhere else, we’re trying to get their business I’ll tell them I’ll say you know what bring your car to me for service and I’ll pick up the tab just to show you there’s no hard feelings and I’m hoping that we’ll be Able to earn your business next time, I’ve done that, where a given service because they bought the car somewhere else, I’m trying to get him back.
Customers are worth too much money to just throw them away like that way too much money right now on Google AdWords, it’s nine hundred and fifty dollars a thousand dollars a customer.
That’s that’s right! Now these dealers are spending crazy.
I mean I got a Mitsubishi store right that I heard that spending about forty five to fifty thousand dollars how many cars he’s doing about 45 cars of 50.
That’s where the troll cigar? That’s exactly and that’s what they’re doing you know, and you know what I want to talk to you about something.
What they not concentrating is on review marketing.
Now, I’m going to tell you something I have upon you, it’s so important.
Richie, let’s face it, we got ta, get the dealers and pull their head out of the sand and stop talking about how much they hate y’all for how much they hate when their Google reviews disappear overnight.
We really we need as an industry, to embrace review marketing and I’ve been there.
I’ve worked at some of my clients stores where we do turn it around, and it’s very rewarding for the dealer.
It really is because most dealerships can actually be pillars of the community when it comes to review marketing.
Let’s face it.
When a customer spends the kind of money they spend on a car, it’s a lot easier to review a $ 50,000 purchase than it is to get them to review.
You know a $ 5 purchase from Amazon or something so we need to embrace review marketing as an industry.
We it should.
We should not look at it as oh.
These are all the crybabies.
I mean I’ve heard it all with yeah right correct.
Nobody pays attention to them.
First and foremost, people do pay attention to them more so now than ever, and it’s not going away, reviews are being relied upon by more and more consumers, and what many dealers don’t realize is reviews are used to eliminate dealers, so in other words they never even Get the opportunity to pitch the customer propose the customer respond to a lead, because the customer reads a bad review on that dealership.
It says up not that one that one’s eliminated, so you don’t even hurt you don’t even know when reviews are hurting it as a dealer.
They see you need to turn it around so that the reviews are helping.
We need to be proactive about it and it works.
I mean you know, for example, you’re talking about your product, I’m sure there’s a way to set it up so that we can invite customers to do reviews by email.
Well, what my product is totally different.
I have a product, that’s a video review, so right in the showroom right in the showroom you tell the customer mr.
Jones, would you be okay with giving me a review now? What happens if the customer says no to you? You know at that time that that customer is gon na, give you a bad review, so at that time, in the showroom you might as well handle it.
It’s called so tell us.
Okay, so tell us: now you have this app and you take a video right and you put it on your website now that customer is there right now it goes all over the place right.
It’s a video review platform where you can tell you, I loved the video review of the customer, because it’s so much more believable.
You know I’ll tell you, there’s a dealer: there’s a big independent used car dealer in Denver Colorado that they did in Dec.
They did carts where the customers handwrite the reviews and what they would do is they’d scan these cards and they’d load them up on the website, as images and the impact of seeing all the different handwriting and everything reason why that worked, it was it was authentic.
It was believable as genuine and that this nice thing about bidi reviews – and I have seen video reviews fact – the last dealer that I worked with in Southern California.
Some of the sales people were doing video reviews on the time of delivery and they are so believable.
They’re, genuine they’re, authentic, alright, pretty close for the customer to change their mind or go against themselves.
Cuz they’re looking at themselves on video or you know with what they said about how great the service was at the dealership.
So I I love I’m a video anything video reviews, I think, would be even more powerful than than anything else when it comes to reviews.
Well, the beauty of about is the video is very easy to go on.
Google, it’s really real easy right, and this is a great platform.
I’m actually gon na.
Send you the link after the show, so you take a look at it, it’s a great because it’s right in the showroom! You know when reviews first started coming out dealers.
You know how dealers are, they always look for an out on something they wanted a log in and for the customer to give him the review right there, but that could have happened.
We yell because of the API and all the stuff you know so that couldn’t happen, because all these review platforms came up, but this thing and you could get a review in the show room.
Mr.
Jones, would you mind giving me a review? This is my report card and you go right there on that platform and it’s an app and they give you a review customer says: no, you better try to find out what the problem is before.
That customer leaves the showroom berth great now.
You have now you’re being proactive.
So now your reviews are gon na go higher.
You know, there’s nothing wrong.
You know like I’ve always done.
You know me for a while.
I always start to deal with an O right.
I’d rather start the deal with an O than a yes, because I know I can handle a yes.
Nobody tells me yes, I say what the hell is this going on, there’s something wrong right.
I know I know how to deal with it when there’s enough right.
So there’s a no it’s good, because I know you handle it with a Y and you ask questions: that’s how you deal with it right.
So that’s great that you have that, because now you train your sales people on how to deal with it, and then you start using review management and review marketing and wow you that’s just another channel like there’s YouTube.
There’s, Google there’s Facebook there’s all these different channels that it’s much much more feasible than Google.
Well, you know, let’s face it, hey we all love ourselves.
If you’re in the car, business and you’re successful, you have an ego because you you would never ask for a business if you’re a Wallflower.
However, as difficult as this is to believe, the customers would rather see other customers telling them about your dealership myself.
Now I want to talk about my dealership, but there’s nothing more credible than a customer saying hey we went in there.
We had a difficult situation.
These guys made it work.
We got the car that we wanted things that we wanted.
Nobody else could help us.
These are very compelling types of reviews, so so I’m anything that brings us video video recorded customer reviews for dealership, I’m all for and in let’s face it, we all know that video is SEO magic right and the beauty about this.
All these tests can go on your website, video testimonials.
So what happens is what Google BOTS get some your your site’s going to bounce up? Oh yeah, they’re, all videos and they’re all in their video reviews and at the same time testimonials.
So it’s it’s beautiful with Richie.
What’s the difference between a review and a testimonial? Really, nothing! Is it a review? Is it a testimonial? If it’s good and it’s on video, give me it – I want it right.
I put it all over the place.
We’re gon na put it on social media, we’re gon na put it on the dealer’s website.
I, as far as I’m concerned, customers saying good things about a dealership.
We can never get too much of that like being exposed, and you know Ralph since you’re out there.
I wanted it up a touch, a point with you, the other.
The last show I had right.
I saw Manheim report.
How inventory has really gone up? This pre-owned inventory really really high now with the clickable dashboard right.
First of all, we teach you how to manage your inventory.
Every I mean you know.
Turning your inventory in the car business every 30 days to 60 days is key because we’re dealing in cars, cars depreciate, unfortunately cost appreciate right so with clickable our automated system.
After the 30 days will push that car directly into facebook right in your facebook, with your audience audience that you’ve put together, does it automatically whatever and, however you have it on your website.
So what I tell dealers before the 30 days to four or five days, whatever you want to promote, that’s how they’ll push it right to your Facebook right yeah it does and it does it and it does it to Google so automatically.
Just because you get the dashboard, you also get this automated system.
Where your people in the place, you don’t have to have them, do it it automatically just pushes it it automatically pushes it to Google.
A lot of us are doing that manually Richie.
So any any time we can take, we do manually and automate it like that.
It’s improved efficiency, it’s improved productivity, one of the things that really pains me because it seems like people in our business.
Don’t I don’t understand this, don’t acknowledge it is everybody that works in the dealership.
They have a certain amount of production capacity.
Each day they can only make so many phone calls.
They can only take care of so many customers.
They can only fix so many cars.
They can only write up so many customers in the service drive and we really have to take a look at.
Are we not only? Are we maximizing what they do, but are we putting more on their plate than what they can reasonably be expected to do and then wondering why they don’t get it done so a lot of times we’ll follow up when it comes to these phone calls and and Targeting you know specific customers, you know for for follow-up activities, let’s face it that customer that walks in the showroom floor at that moment is gon na always get the attention, and I can’t get enough of them.
If our marketing does this job, we have enough traffic.
Coming in the sales, people have no time to do anything else, other than take care of their customers coming in the showroom.
Well, the same goes for marketing guys.
I see this all the time dealers will have their marketing director and they’re working furiously to manage the Google AdWords account or manage.
You know a supplier that they’re using any time because we in everybody does this.
You look at your brains, inventory.
You say, let’s put it on special: let’s promote it, let’s put ads up there, so anything we can do to automate that to get that programmatic advertising going where we know that the oldest units are getting the priority on the ad spend.
I think it’s a plus and the other thing is: we have the data part right.
So what happens with the audience with the custom mornings, we go to your DMS or we go to your data with the clickable technology and we match those customers to Facebook.
Custom audience yeah.
I love Facebook custom audience so we match that so now, let’s say the customers.
Lease is up within three months.
We start promoting that also, and that becomes automated that just pushes out the car automated.
So we do, we do the custom or, and then we do the regular push the regular audience from Facebook.
So I mean we have this clickable.
We have the data which now it’s called you know, what’s called the big data, because big data is it right now and managing that big data and having a solution for marketing with big data.
It’s you know what I’m saying: it’s a win-win.
Well, you know if you ever want to see it’s really interesting, to see a dealer’s reaction to this.
You log into the Facebook advertising app and you go to the part where you’re targeting your audience.
You start clicking and expanding some of those categories, and it’s pretty amazing.
You know, for example, I’ve seen it where we pick out people who work in a particular employer in a market in the dealer’s market right and then we have the message that it’s for employees of that particular company, so we’re and and people really pay attention to It people will place a lot more focus on an ad that says employees of General Dynamics, convair division, if we’re dealing in San Diego, for example – and they can’t help themselves, they work there they’re proud of where they work.
They see the ad and it draws their attention to it.
Personalization the hard part about personalization rich is who’s got time to do it right right.
You start talking about these.
The ability to create programmatic advertising, which targets you know, specific customers with a specific message.
In a specific region and at the right time of the Year month, whatever day, whatever the case may be, I think you’re you’re you’re getting that efficiency.
That is missing when we feel like we’ve got the chaos you know.
I know a lot of dealers right now where they have somebody doing their pay-per-click.
They got another place doing some SEO work for them.
They’ve got another place, doing social media because the OEM told they had to do social media.
It goes on and on, but it’s all dispirit not talking to each other and really there’s no single person who understands the whole mess, because it’s all split off into these silos.
So, anytime, you get to work with a supplier like you’re referencing, where you can have multiple approaches.
Automated on the same dashboard, for example, I think is – is introducing some sea into the chaos and some organization into what I appear to be very scattered and chaotic, and I think it’s really really important with these dealers there’s so much data flying around in a dealership And they don’t know what to do with it and it’s it’s almost worth it.
Smart.
Look at all, it’s crazy.
You know, and with the review management and the review marketing nobody’s doing that in our business, but there’s other industries that are doing this and are becoming very, very successful.
The real estate business right now is doing this review.
You got ta see this real estate business.
What they’re doing with this reviews they’re like really doing it up well yeah, because if you think about it, like the car business, you know real estate is something you do intermittently in the course of your life and it’s a it’s a major major purchase on your Part is, in most cases the largest purchase, so yeah, seeing some other people like you talking about a real estate agent, is gon na make it a lot easier for you to trust that agent select that agent to either list or represent you on the buy side.
I I’ve always seen them there’s so many similarities between the real estate business and the car business.
They have franchises.
You hang a sign up in front, but really up.
Oh local operator build his his business just like it is for dealership and today, if you don’t use technology as a dealer to really streamline and allow you to be more effective without introducing increased complication.
Secondly, technology for our dealerships should actually entry make it simpler, make it easier to get organized, make it more efficient, more effective.
Have the reporting be more in line with I’m looking at the same reports for these multiple different channels than all these different reports that don’t even look like each other and measure different numbers and different metric points? You talked about Big Data.
The challenge with big data is everybody, says the same thing.
Gee, that’s great.
We can get all this information on these customers.
What do I do if Big Dave and that’s where the programmatic advertising or the automation is going to come into play? That’s what you do with big data use, big data to introduce some organization and some some streamlining to what can be a disjointed and chaotic process.
Otherwise, that’s what I want to give you a demo after this, when you have time good and I wan na get good.
I want to get brain, that’s really good with the dashboard and give you a demo about our boy with Vava lean and different other companies that we have to show you what we do with big data, how you just bring everything together when you describe your dashboard, It reminds me of some of your competitors that are in the carpus.
Does that focus specifically on the car business? So I’m fascinated to see what you do and because of respect for your show, I’m not going to name those competitors, but let’s face anybody in the business knows who we’re talking about yeah.
I’ve worked for Reynolds and Reynolds.
I’ve worked for ATP now cdk.
They have competing products, there’s a lot of room for inventing a better mousetrap when it comes to dashboards.
The thing to remember about dashboards is you should only be using one: it’s okay, it’s like I’ve, been in dealerships where they use half a dozen dashboards that you kind of wonder.
Oh my god, how do you keep this straight right? What the sales managers today right and the GSM sterday it must be really hard if they don’t have one single dashboard to just monitor everything, because I can’t I can’t imagine, I can’t imagine myself being a sales managing.
I got a look at this and I got a look at that and I got a look at all these different platforms.
They have cuz when I was a desk being in a sales man, you don’t think I concentrated on selling cars.
I had an assistant.
That’s all I concentrated on right, just desking deals and taking customers and Counting how many customers, in my showroom through my eyeballs and really managing or sales for now imagine I’ve gone into showrooms where the owners there.
I need this report and eat that report.
I need this he’s got to log into so many different platforms.
So what he does best is monitor and run the sales department he’s not doing that.
No more well yeah and there’s here’s what happens so you have your DMS DMS has various customizable reports and various dashboards you can use.
Then you’ve got the manufacturer if you’re a new card franchise dealer and they have their own dashboards and tracking systems.
You know a Toyota dealer daily or General Motors, you know global workbenches or you know the the Ford System.
Fmc dealer.
com is so as a sales manager.
You have to use these manufacturers supply tools.
You have to use these DMS supply tools because that that’s how you’re gon na get the most accurate transactional data about what were you making money in the dealership? And so there’s a certain amount of multiple hats.
You’re gon na have to wear to be a manager.
Today, right, we got ta focus on those not making it worse by by throwing, in you know, other dashboards and systems unless there’s significant value from using them right.
Correct Bob had said if we could just get something that would pull in, say the OEM data from their dashboard and pull in the data from the DMS, so that I’ve got it all in one place to look at the Penske.
Auto group.
For example, they’ve tried to do that.
They have a single dashboard that their general managers use, but they still rihanna’s what anybody says.
So a lot of manual data entry going on into that system as well.
Yes, so it slows the process yeah any and anytime.
You have manual data entry, you’re gon na have errors, mistakes and possibly you know exclusions.
I love it when, in the old days when we used to ask for a closing ratio on leads and you’d say wow, that’s pretty strong.
You get a 20 % closing ratio.
Great um and they say well, keep in mind.
That’s the closing ratio on valid leads.
Well, what do you mean valid leads? Well, those are the ones we can get all of the customer really because we’re doesn’t answer the phone, it’s not a valid lead, so you know that’s when the point trying to make is reporting and metrics.
You got ta make sure that this is not something where somebody’s using their judgment with that month.
They’re gon na kick out all these or include this or add that it needs to be automated.
So it’s done the same every month, so you’re comparing data one of the biggest things that we get in this business rich.
Is we get people saying what’s a good closing rate? What’s a good, effective, labor rate? What’s a good, they all want to compare themselves to other dealers.
The real important part on any dashboard performance metrics is to make sure you’re trending in the right direction.
Wherever you’re at today wait.
We need to do better and, as you do better, you need to do better than that.
It really it doesn’t matter what the metrics are from other dealers, and I and I know people will take issue with that and they’ll argue with me on it, but realistically in the reality of running a dealership.
Today we want to do better today than we did yesterday.
We want to do better in January, or I should say February of 2018.
Then we did better than we did in February of 2017 and who do we want to do better than ourselves? We need to compare our data against our historical data for our own operations.
We know how it was measured.
We know if we’re still measuring it the same.
It’s it’s.
It’s comparable data, it’s apples and apples.
So you know systems like what you’re referring to your dashboard.
If nothing else, if you keep it long enough, it’s gon na provide you with historical data where you can see where you should be and what is improving as opposed to going in the wrong direction.
All right, Robert was great having you in the show, when it’s always a pleasure speaking to you yeah, like always and takes lovely time.
I know your times very.
It’s very valuable, I’m so impressed that you’ve, given us this time today and have a great great weekend.
Ralph, thank you very much to see.
Well, that’s it for this installment of auto dealer news.
I’m Jill Nicolini and we’ll see you next time right here on Ritchie bello TV, , [ Applause, ], , [ Applause, ], , .
