Be Careful: Don’t Let Your Face Book, MySpace or Twitter Account Get Your Dealership into Trouble
I recently got a call from a frantic dealer. I asked the dealer, who’s one of my clients, what was the problem. He proceeded to tell me about a phone call he received from a disgruntled prospect.
So far, this was not totally foreign to me. I have been in the car business for more than a decade now. As a manager, I have received my share of none-too-happy people calling my store. So, I probed a little deeper into why my dealer friend was so upset. He said he received a call from a very unhappy person who said they will never buy a car from him. They came into the dealership and were working with a salesman and, after several days of working with him, they were close to making a decision.
So far, so good, right? Well, they went online and “Googled” as well as “MySpaced” the salesperson’s name and were utterly shocked at what they found. The salesperson had posted photos to MySpace literally taking hits from a bong — his page was the page of a party animal, in the very worst sense of the phrase.
This was shocking for this prospect, to say the least, who was going to entrust a major purchase to someone like this. She rightfully told the dealer that this is one of the most expensive purchases she was going to make in her lifetime, and trusting this type of person was not going to happen. But what really hit the dealer hard was when she said she was so disappointed with the dealership because they have that type of person working there, representing the dealership. What kind of a dealership hires that type of individual?
What was the dealer to say, except “I’m sorry”? He had no idea. The woman, however, would not hear any of that. She told the dealer that she in her 50s and was not a computer savy person, but she was smart enough to “Google” her salesperson’s name! A serious business, such as a car dealership, could do the same.
What could the dealer say or do, except to feel very embarrassed and totally unprepared for this type of conversation. This was negative word of mouth advertising in the worst way, but it wasn’t from something the dealership did directly; rather it was something a salesperson did. Since the salesperson is a direct extension of the dealership, the salesperson is the dealership in the prospect or client’s eyes.
This is a true story — not a hypothetical, or a what-if. You have to be careful at your dealership. If you are a salesperson, Internet/BDC representative or anyone who represents a business in any way, shape or form, you must either:
- not have inappropriate content at all on social media sites like Facebook, MySpace Twitter etc, or
- if you choose to have crazy things on your profile, you must set the profile to PRIVATE, or not for the public to see.
It is serious and important that you all understand that dealerships spend hundreds of thousands or sometimes millions of dollars to advertise and build their brand in the community, and it can all be destroyed by accident.
I doubt that the sales person in this scenario ever dreamed of a prospect seeing his profile, being offended and contacting his boss to complain. But, she did, he lost the deal, and the dealership got a huge black eye in the community. So, we all can learn from this mistake.
Managers, create a policy in your dealership for ethics online, especially for social media. Social media is now the No. 1 form of communication for people on this planet. So, we must be careful of the image we put forth online of the dealership as well as the online image we have of all of the dealership’s employees!
Sean V. Bradley is the founder and CEO of Dealer Synergy, a nationally recognized training and consulting company in the automotive industry. He can be contacted at 866.648.7400, or by e-mail at sbradley@autosuccessonline.com.
Dealer Synergy Copyright 2009