Wow!!! I want to first thank everyone, I have had some amazing feedback in regards to my articles as well as to our new Internet Sales 20 group. I hope everyone had a great holiday and is very focused on making 2008 their absolute best year ever!
I had a tremendous response from my article “Online Value Package Propositions”. So, when I was talking to an Internet Sales manager of a domestic dealer in Minnesota (Sonju superstore). Her name is Shannon Haney, she told me she was having tremendous success with this rewards program…I was all ears. The name of the company that she uses is Visible Customer (www.visiblecustomer.com), they too are based out of Minnesota. The reason why the product is so
amazing is the fact that it actually works! Shannon sells 20 units a month over the Internet in a small town outside of Duluth. Shannon tells me that it is a great way to differentiate her dealership from all of the others in town.
If you go to www.sonju.com, right on the home page you will see a button that says “Customer Rewards” when you click that button it will take you to a back page with the following information.
At Sonju Two Harbors, our goal is to develop a long-term relationship with you and your family. As a preferred customer you are entitled to valuable discounts, complimentary service items, and aVIP membership standing. Each time that you use your rewards card you will accumulate points for service discounts, service offers and up to $500 off next vehicle purchase.
Holders of the service rewards card complimentary to all Sonju's customers, receive perks such as a car wash with every paid service, local shuttle service, a loaner car while their vehicle is serviced, alignment checks, discounts on oil changes and other maintenance, VIP Saturday service hours, and many more.Customers also accumulate rewards points for every dollar they spend, which goes to lowering the price of the next vehicle they purchase at Sonju Two Harbors. For 2,000 points for example they get $50 off. For 25,000 points they get a $500 discount.
Anything the client does at the dealership, sales, service buying parts, referrals etc… they get Sonju points that are converted to dollars for future sales and services. But the best part is that it is NOT vapor. It is a real program with technology to back it up. Customers go to the dealership site to check status, upgrades, free stuff. It gives them a great reason to keep coming back to your site, even after they purchased a vehicle.
Shannon also goes on to tell me that it increases gross profit for her dealership. A lot of her competition “gives cars away”. I am sure all of you reading this article can relate to that… your competition just shot gunning over their “Best Price” on their first email to a customer. At Sonju they were able to build real VALUE with their dealership, with their benefits and thus… “the price you receive elsewhere needs to be weighed against the value of our dealership”.
Thank you Shannon!!! Good luck this month and close strong. I will be sending you your FREE Flip Video camera for having this month’s “Best Idea”. Do me a favor and take some video of your happy customers and put them on your website and in your email templates.
As for the challenge, I had a LOT of calls and emails from dealers with a CONSISTANT theme… But, I do not want to put any particular person on the spot. So, I am not going to highlight a particular person for this one. The challenge is:
How do I get my owner or GM to pay attention to this Internet thing? How do I get them to start get serious about it? They don’t see the value…
You would be surprised that in 2008, with 87-97 percent of people going online to do some form of research before EVER stepping foot into the dealership, with LOWER cost for advertising and higher ROI, with full accountability in HR and capital investments, with over 211,000,000 people registered to www.myspace.com, with almost 500,000 people a year finding their husband or wife on www.match.com, with Google buying You Tube for 1.7 billion, with Microsoft buying one percent of Face book for over a billion dollars, with CNN conducting the Presidential Candidate debates via You Tube, with the city of San Diego (has 2.8 million residents) offering FREE complete wireless broadband access to the entire city… Now add to the fact that there are lead source providers like Carsdirect that actually sell cars! People don’t talk about that too much anymore, but Carsdirect has an actual dealer license and with NO inventory or real dealership they sell over 1,500 units a month out of their LA corporate office… how about Autotrader.com? They have NO cars, no dealership, no sales people but they make hundreds of millions of dollars… HUNDREDS, telling the public to go their WEBSITE!!! That has ALL of your cars; yet, some dealers still to this day, see little value with the Internet or they see it but just let it fly right by them.
So… what do you do with those dealers who still choose to ignore the obvious?
My advice is give them this article to read, that is a start and then what I suggest is come up with a solid plan as to what you want to do. Details, what are the products or resources you are going to need, who is going to work in that department? Do you need more people? Where are you going to get everyone trained from? What are your Standard Operating Procedures going to be? And where are you going to get your opportunities to do business from… leads… Video Search Engine Optimization, Regular Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, 3rd party providers, membership buying programs etc…Outline how much is this going to cost, how much you are planning to gross and net and finally how long this is going to take to see a return. If you can put all of that together you should have a much better shot at getting their attention.
You can only do your best to change their minds and show them the light. It is up to them as decision makers if they want to walk into it or not. But you always have choices.
If you need help in trying to put that together, it would be my pleasure to do so with you or for you for FREE. Just email me or call me.Sean V. Bradley
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