While only a tiny percentage of your website visitors submit e-leads from your website, these leads are gold to dealerships with solid processes in place. In fact, for the average dealer, just 5 website leads equals 1 vehicle sold; making generating these leads a top priority for successful dealers. Unfortunately, many dealers are unintentionally […]
As we learned from two great studies produced recently by AutoTrader and DrivingSales, 39% of today’s buyers make some contact with the dealership prior to arriving. This means they submit an e-lead, pick up the phone, start a chat or complete some other connection activity before walking on your lot. In this part, we’re […]
Everywhere you turn in business today someone is squawking about ‘Millennial Buyers’ – as if Millennials were somehow that different or more important than the generations that preceded them. Certainly, 20-year-olds are different from 60-year-olds in many ways, but when it comes to website conversions, we need to agree that Millennial studies are stupid. […]
When you’re planning to make website changes to improve your conversion rate, it’s important to make sure everyone involved can answer the question: What is a conversion? There are a lot of opinions about what constitutes a website conversion – especially from the classified listing sites – and the problem for you is that […]
(This is the first part in a multi-part blog series that will explore virtually everything car dealers and other sales-focused businesses need to know to drive the maximum amount of leads, calls and sales from their existing website traffic.) Car dealers and other businesses looking to dramatically grow their e-leads, their phone calls and even […]
Stop Overthinking Your Emails! Between prepping for 20-Group presentations to serving our regular clients, we mystery shop scores of dealers each month – reading their emails and texts, and listening to their voicemails – and while we’ve seen definite overall improvement over the years, one aspect of the internet sales process that is beginning […]
Ha, just kidding… There are no viable Pokemon GO marketing strategies for car dealers to employ in 2017 that will provide them with any kind of advantage or genuine ROI. STOP CHASING SHINY OBJECTS! If you’d like to make a difference with today’s connected customers, you should check out the recording from the Undeniable […]
Sales are flat – we need more training! Turnover is up – we need more training! Grosses are down – we need more training! We just got a bad review – we need more training! Salespeople aren’t making their calls – we need more training! I can almost hear Jan Brady now: “Training, training, […]
Cheat Sheet for Free Car Dealer Training Resources About once a week I get asked if there is a place where someone can go to see all of my free training resources cataloged in an easily digestible format. For car dealers looking for just video training, we created a Suggested Training Curriculum for Car […]
This may sound like strange advice since I teach dealers how to implement both an Appointment Culture and The Perfect Appointment in their dealerships… but, will you please shut up about the appointments already? You are failing to set real appointments that show and buy, precisely because you talk so much about appointments that […]
One of the great things about what I do is that I get to speak to a lot of dealer groups. It’s something I really enjoy doing; but more than that, it’s something I feel needs to be done. I believe an educated dealer is a successful dealer; and there is just so much misinformation […]
I hate to break it to you, but if you run a for-profit business – like a car dealership – then your website has just two important goals: Goal #1 – Attract Visitors Goal #2 – Convert Visitors Sorry, that’s it. Attracting and converting visitors are the only real value your website provides and […]
Stop Overthinking Internet Sales: 7 Simple Strategies for Closing More Deals Today! The perception of internet sales for many dealers and traditional sales managers is that it’s still a confusing area best left to those who are more “technologically proficient.” Moreover, industry vendors, other so-called experts and even some trainers continue to profit in keeping […]
The Best Way To Overcome Today’s Price Objections Whether training sales managers for an OEM or a call center for a single-point dealer, the concern posed more than any other recently is how to overcome price objections on the phone in today’s transparent environment. Most dealers, you see, do a decent job of managing objections […]
The three-minute Be-Back process that actually works… When dealers ask me to help their teams improve their be-back appointment percentage, the first thing I say is “call them.” By that, I mean, “Pick up the damn phone and actually call a be-back for once in your ever-loving life!” I’m not trying to be a jerk; […]
The 5 Car Dealer Sales Call Situations (and why a BDC is best) With today’s connected customer, there really are only a few types of phone calls your team will find themselves involved with. Gone are the days of a customer phoning and saying, “I need something good on gas for under $8,000; what do […]
(Another helpful excerpt from the pladoogle.com free 2015 Car Dealer Mystery Shop Study of more than 400 automotive dealers.) Why Does Lead Response Matter? Lately, much has been written about the drop in the number of electronic sales leads dealers receive – not coincidentally, of course, most often by those wishing to sell more of their […]
While I tend to do a lot of phone training, it’s not my favorite skill to teach. This is not because my phone skills training lacks substance or robustness or even uniqueness – it provides all three (and you can even get most of it for free online) – it’s because that no matter […]
“What’s the Average Closing Percentage for Automotive Leads 30, 60 and 90 Days Old?” I recently received a variation of this question from a visitor to my free video training website; and given that many automotive managers, salespeople and BDC agents likely have the same question, I thought I’d post my original answer here, […]
Did you know that there is a secret to setting firm appointments that will actually show up at your dealership? Not only show up, but actually arrive on time? There is. There is a secret; and most salespeople and managers have no idea what that secret is. The secret is this: You have to […]