When a lead arrives from one of your suppliers, do you ever question its origin? In the initial days of the Internet, it was fairly straightforward. There were few options for the consumer online, and most leads arrived showing their points of origin. Now, more than 90% of your customers head online before choosing a dealership, and when they generate a lead, it’s tough for you to know where it really came from and how it got to you.

Let’s start by breaking down the two general “types” of Internet leads:

Direct interest leads are those generated by consumers who are seeking information on your make of vehicle, or specific vehicles in your inventory. By contrast, Indirect interest leads are generated as a result of a similar interest or related event, but not on a make or specific vehicle you stock.                              

Wait a minute: I get leads from people who didn’t submit a lead on a car I stock?

Probably. Recently, I went to a wine and food festival. Next to a beautiful new Buick was an entry form to win a trip to wine country. I completed the contest entry and two weeks later, I got a call from my local dealer regarding my interest in a new Buick.

OEMs are notorious for this “lead generation” method, but they’re not alone. There are companies who take leads from other sources – contests, home mortgages, credit bureaus (trigger leads), re-marketed leads – and sell them on the open market.

Is that why customers tell me, “I never submitted a lead?”

Not usually. In the overwhelming majority of cases, when you receive a lead from a reputable lead company, the customer did submit a request (whether they took the time to read what they were doing prior to submitting their information is another story).

 Quite often, when a consumer submits a request online, they do so to many dealers at once, resulting in them receiving emails and calls from several people in a short period of time. Many of the emails are automated responses that don’t answer the questions they had, address the notes they put in the comments, or the expectations they had (like an instant price quote) when they clicked “submit.” Sometimes, they just want space and know that telling you, “I’m not interested,” “I’m not in the market,” or “I didn’t send you a request for information” is the easiest way to stop the calls and emails.

How do I make sure I get direct-interest leads?

First, work with reputable, established lead providers. Most have contracted with suppliers and sites to only receive customer-generated, direct interest leads. Second, capitalize on your search spend and site traffic by making sure customers on your website stay on your website.

Most customers leave your website because they don’t find what they are looking for, whether that’s a particular vehicle or information that they feel they can trust. When this happens, they go to independent websites that specialize in providing them with selection and information – and in turning that interested customer into a lead for you. If you can provide the customer on your website with tools and information they can trust – for trade in values, vehicle information, and even financing and payment options – you’ll convert more of your own traffic and reduce the defections.

As our industry looks to the future, many experts claim the next logical step from online marketing is online sales: that is, completing the car sales process, or as much of it as possible, online. According to an IBM study last year, 21% of new car buyers never test drove a car before purchasing it, that percentage is likely to grow. In 2012, CNW Research stated that only 13% of millennials say a new vehicle ranks as the number one product projecting enviable status. This utilitarian viewpoint of cars, combined with the millennials’ increased usage of mobile devices to conduct research, compare prices and shop online, indicates that future consumers will want more—if not all—of the car buying process to be completed online, and in as little time as possible.

Successfully serving this growing segment of consumers will require dealerships to shift from websites that are essentially online display showrooms to websites that help the customer accomplish as much of the deal online as possible. Currently, one of the major hurdles between engaging an online customer and closing an online sale is financing. Like other aspects of the car buying process, customers want to research financing on their own to ensure they are getting a vehicle that fits in their monthly budget. One way dealers can help them do this is to offer a shop-by-payment marketing tool on their website.

Traditional payment tools such as calculators, estimators and online credit applications fall short when it comes to giving customers what they want. Payment calculators and estimators are inaccurate because they depend on the customer providing their desired interest rate, which may not be realistic, as well as the purchase price of “a vehicle,” not a specific, in-stock unit that you’ve priced. Online credit applications require the customer to enter personal information and can have a negative impact on credit scores, so many prospective car buyers are hesitant to use them—especially customers with good credit.

A shop-by-payment tool allows customers on a dealer’s website to view the dealer’s entire inventory that matches their payment criteria. More importantly, the customers are pre-qualified for a real payment in the process, providing the dealer with high-quality, credit-analyzed leads. The shop-by-payment tool brings the customer further down funnel, closer to the purchase of a specific vehicle—bridging the gap between online marketing and online sales.

If you’re considering a shop-by-payment tool, ensure that it analyzes consumer credit using the “Three C’s” of successful payment marketing:

1) Credit: To provide an accurate payment quote, you must know the customer’s credit. Today’s technology can provide your dealership with an accurate score while maintaining the customer’s privacy and without negatively impacting their credit.

2) Criteria: A payment tool should be able to pre-qualify a customer based on a dealer’s specific financial criteria—that is, their current, real finance programs.

3) Collateral: Monthly payment quotes can vary based on what vehicle a customer wants to buy. Payment tools that can provide quotes for VIN-specific inventory help to set realistic expectations of what that customer will be able to afford.

If your dealership is considering taking the next steps towards closing more sales online, a shop-by-payment tool is the key to bridging the payments gap. To see a demo of this new technology, follow this link and click on the tab, “demo.” Let us know what you think!

http://www.anywheremotors.com/

I’ve often advocated in my blogs the benefits of quoting a price to customers who submit leads with a price inquiry. If the customer is submitting leads to more than one dealership, not providing the price will likely eliminate you from consideration.

Yet, according to CNW Marketing Research, 70.5% of people finance their cars. That means the vast majority of Internet leads will take the price quoted to them and then try to determine what their monthly payment will be. As we all know, monthly payments can vary based on the consumer’s credit score, the dealership’s finance programs and the specific vehicle the customer wants to buy. So the customer searching for the lowest priced vehicle today may still not end up with a vehicle that fits within their monthly budget for the next 60, 72 or even 96 months!

If we can move the conversation from price to payments, we can identify the right vehicle earlier in the process, saving the customer time and aggravation, and saving the dealership gross. One way to shift the conversation to monthly payments is to offer and promote payment—and shop-by-payment—marketing tool on your dealership’s website. A shop-by-payment tool allows consumers to search your inventory based on what their ideal monthly payment is and displays inventory based on real, credit-qualified payment quotes. An estimated or teaser quote can set the wrong expectation, but one based on the customer’s actual credit and the dealership’s finance programs sets both the customer and the dealer up for success.

Allowing consumers to shop-by-payments on your website offers the following benefits:

1)    Keeps Customers on the Dealership’s Website. Customers come to your site to find answers, not more questions. If you are asking the customer to provide all their information, such as what their credit score is or what interest rate they may qualify for, they may have to go off of your website and find the information on another site. A shop-by-payment tool allows the customer to see all the inventory on your website that they qualify for, without having to look for the information somewhere else. The tool is also interactive, enabling the customer to adjust payment ranges, down payments and other information so that it engages the customer, keeps them on the website longer and results in higher conversion rates.

2)    Protects Customers’ Privacy. Real payments can be quoted to customers without requiring them to enter in personal information, such as date of birth or Social Security Number, and without having a negative impact on their credit score. This is appealing to customers and allows them to play around with various terms and different vehicles, further engaging them and bringing them that much closer to the sale. Since most good-credit customers don’t want to affect their credit score until absolutely necessary, the result is often more leads from customers with higher average credit ratings.

3)    Credit-Analyzed Leads Close at a Higher Rate. The ability to analyze a consumer’s credit online brings them one step closer to the sale. Closing rates for these leads are typically much higher than for unqualified leads, often exceeding 20%.

4)    Streamlines the Sales Process. Providing real payment quotes on VIN-specific vehicles sets the customers’ expectation on what they can actually afford to buy, versus what they would like to buy. This eliminates unnecessary time that salespeople spend trying to sell a car that the person can’t afford, while also eliminating the “embarrassment” factor for the customer if they can’t afford the car they really want.

5)    Keeps Dealers in Control of Financing. Providing real payment quotes shifts the customer’s focus from what the bottom-line price is to what they can afford to pay every month. This allows dealers to set their own prices and financing terms and gives them more flexibility in negotiations, unlike lead services that force dealers into price wars in order to deliver the lowest price for the consumer. Ultimately, this results in higher gross profit margins for the dealers.

Providing a shop-by-payment tool helps to engage customers, keep them online and bring them closer to the sale. Today’s payment marketing technology delivers real benefits to both dealers and consumers, resulting in high-quality, credit-analyzed leads that close at rates much higher than traditional Internet leads. To see a demo, visit www.anywheremotors.com

The broad term “Internet Marketing” encompasses a fast-changing industry. In the past two years, “new” developments such as mobile, social and reputation management have quickly become mainstream, while the effectiveness of “old” methods such as banner ads and e-mail marketing have been debated.

While dealers should be aware of the latest technologies, ensuring that perceptions about the Internet and its capabilities is extremely important too. Here are three things every dealer should know about Internet marketing:

1) The Internet Creates Buyers, Not Shoppers

Given a choice between greeting a showroom customer and working an Internet lead, most salespeople would choose the former; simply because they believe they have a better chance of closing the showroom customer in the short term. Many dealers (and salespeople) still view Internet leads as “Internet shoppers” who are potentially difficult to work with or even reach.

The reality is that, whether they’re in your virtual showroom or your physical showroom, they’re a buyer. Maybe not today, but statistically the Internet customer is highly likely to buy within 90 days.

94% of car buyers begin the process online, according to recent estimates, yet most dealerships attribute less than 30% of actual sales to Internet leads. Why the discrepancy? Most consumers do research online but instead of submitting a lead, they decide to call or walk into a dealership when they’re ready to buy. Because of all the research they can do on their own, though, customers today visit only 1.4 dealerships before purchasing a car, down from 4.5 in 2005, according to J.D. Power.

And, according to a recent study by CAR-Research XRM, only 25% of people leave showrooms because they are “still shopping.” The rest leave because of inventory, financing or some other issue. These customers are ready to buy, the only question is, are they buying from you?

2) Internet Marketing is More Than a One-Person Job

If I asked you, “Who is in charge of your Internet marketing,” would you answer, “The Internet Sales Director?”

To be effective, Internet marketers need to have knowledge of and take advantage of all facets of the Internet. This means managing the dealership’s website and SEO, e-mail marketing campaigns, and being the resident CRM expert.

In addition, Internet marketers should know how to properly leverage and manage the dealership’s presence on independent auto shopping, research and review sites, the manufacturer website, social media sites and reputation management sites. Finally, they need to keep up with the latest trends and create strategies for search marketing, payment marketing, mobile marketing, banner advertising, e-mail marketing and video marketing.

That’s a lot for one person to keep up with, let alone the time needed to work the leads that come in as a result of all that work. To stay competitive, dealers need to allocate the appropriate budget, training and resources for their Internet departments. According to a recent article in Ward’s Auto profiling the top 100 e-dealers, successful Internet dealers typically spend 40% or more of their overall advertising and marketing budget on digital.

3) Evolve Your Communication

Most dealers are probably not Internet gurus; nor do they want to be. Several years ago, the perception was that this was okay. Hiring an “Internet nerd” who could run the Internet operations was the norm. But staying competitive today—and maybe even survival tomorrow—depends on how successful your dealership’s Internet marketing program is.

Every manager needs to understand that customers can engage with the store and its sales staff anywhere online. They need to stay abreast of trends, direct strategies, manage processes, hold teams accountable and respond to customers’ online concerns and opportunities—wherever they arise. One click, one call, one person doesn’t work any more.

What do you think dealers need to know about Internet marketing?

I’d like to think that by now most dealerships have a written Internet sales process to handle Internet leads effectively. As the documented, researched and confirmed driver of “lead quality,” an established process is the key to obtaining a maximum ROI from Internet leads. Though many dealers are allocating a substantial portion of their marketing budget to attract Internet leads, many are still not achieving the recommended minimum of five times their ROI on those dollars spent, even with a “good process”. Why not?

Very often, accountability is the missing link between a written process and lack of desired ROI. How easy is it for an Internet salesperson to check off tasks as completed when they are not, or to say “I’ve tried calling that person three times and they haven’t called me back. What’s the point?” A good process that isn’t followed is the same as having no process at all—both salespeople and managers must be held accountable to following that process.

Here are a few tips to help weave accountability into your processes:

Does Your Team Own It? Accountability is about ownership – do your salespeople own the process? Ownership means more than just knowledge of the process, it’s belief in the process and its consistent execution. As a manager, if you want to hold people accountable you have to reinforce WHY they should be following the process and instill the belief that their personal results will improve. Call out individual successes that reinforce that following the process yields personal returns.

Review the Internet Sales Process.  Does it mirror the showroom sales process? In the showroom process, there’s always room for interaction with management. Salespeople have check points throughout process; the test drive, desk log and the write-up. In many stores, managers walk the lot and showroom and inject themselves in the process to ensure everything stays on track. Is management involved throughout your Internet sales process, only at the end, or not at all? Create availability of management to the Internet team and reinforce the need for manager involvement.

Openness and Competition. Nothing breeds accountability like visibility. Show the whole team where all of them rank in your key performance areas and include the steps of the sale (i.e. contact rate, appointment rate, show rate), not just sales volume. Regularly review team results in a group, calling out the best at execution, and schedule individual meetings for coaching and personal accountability.

What are your tips for improving accountability? What tips do you have for managers and for salespeople? 

It’s becoming more common for customers to shop, communicate and conduct daily business using their mobile devices. If you are selling cars in a dealership, I’m guessing you’ve received many responses from customers with the signature “sent from my iPhone/4G-LTE smartphone/mobile device.” When you see this type of response, do you attempt to communicate as you normally would?

Almost all of the e-mail templates and responses I have seen were created for customers who are sitting at their computers. Many salespeople have been trained to reply to an Internet lead with a fairly long, personalized response that includes links to several pieces of inventory, reasons for buying from this dealership and one or two questions designed to engage. This type of e-mail is great if your customer is sitting at the computer. But if you send that same response to a mobile customer, they’re probably not going to engage.

So what’s the best way to communicate with a mobile customer? Here are a few tips:

1)    --Get to the point. Mobile customers don’t think or respond the same way, and don’t have the same level of patience as when they’re sitting at home on their computers. A mobile customer is probably going to be distracted; multi-tasking, bouncing from checking e-mail to Facebook, to Twitter, to attending to their daily life. For this reason, keep your e-mails to no more than a couple sentences and you’ll be more likely to engage that customer in a conversation.

2)   -- Choose attachments and links carefully. If you’re used to sending a brochure about your dealership, an embedded video, or showcasing a particular vehicle with hundreds of photos, think twice before sending memory-heavy attachments to the mobile customer. Mobile users aren’t likely to open an attachment that’s difficult to view on a small screen or takes a long time to download. Instead, send a link to a video or send one good photo of the car that they inquired about.

3)    --Be Patient. On mobile devices, many people respond one line at a time, as if in a chat. Going back and forth one line at a time may become frustrating to you. But remember, this is not about you, it’s about the customer and their needs. You may reach a point where you think that one phone call could replace all this, and ask the customer to just call you, or you may try calling them. Or you may be tempted to write, “if you set an appointment to come in and take a test drive, all your questions will be answered.” Yet, just as we’ve been taught to earn the right to ask for the sale in the traditional sales process, you must earn the right to ask your mobile customers. When you’re communicating via mobile, it may take a lot longer, moving one small step at a time. Trying to skip ahead in the process could disconnect them from the conversation.

What tips do you have for communicating with mobile customers?

It’s the classic prisoner’s dilemma, to tell or not to tell. Two suspected criminals are separated into two different rooms, and given their options:

1)    If neither of them betrays each other, they both go free

2)    If one betrays the other, the betrayer goes free while the other prisoner gets maximum penalty

3)    If they both betray each other, they both get a penalty slightly less than the maximum penalty.

Clearly, it benefits both prisoners to not betray each other as they can both go free. Yet, inevitably the prisoners betray each other out of fear that the other will betray them, and that they will get the maximum penalty.

So how does this relate to the classic “Just Give Me the Price” objection? When a salesperson hears that objection, they are faced with a dilemma: to give the price or not to give the price? First, you have to assume that if a customer sends in an Internet lead or calls into a dealership demanding to know the price right off the bat, they are probably making the same inquiry to at least a couple of other dealerships. Based on that reasonable assumption, here are your choices:

1) Don’t give the price.

Ideally it would be in every dealership’s best self-interest to never give the price. If nobody quotes a price, the customer has no choice but to make an appointment with a dealership in order to discover and negotiate a price. But in the information age, this just isn’t how business is done: customers expect the price.

If you don’t give a price and your competitor down the road does give that customer a price, your chances of working with that customer have just dropped to zero while your competitor’s have skyrocketed. So, what do you do?

2) Give the price.

If you and your competitor both give the price, you both still have the opportunity to work with the customer. You’re competing on a level playing field, and the next step is to convince the customer to buy from you. Contrary to what some salespeople believe, the customer will not automatically choose the dealership with the absolute lowest price. Ideally the difference in quoted prices should be minimal, and if you can build trust and give that customer several other reasons to buy from you, then you will win the sale.

For this reason I always recommend giving a price when a customer demands it. However, giving a price does not mean you have to give the gross away. Here are a few tips on how to effectively engage these customers, give them smart quotes and to ultimately secure an appointment:

1) Know Your Market. It pays to shop the competition, use internal sales history and third party resources to tell you what the average selling prices are for the vehicles you’re quoting. If you end up sending a quote that’s close to your competitor’s, you increase your chances of selling to that customer.

2) Give Options. When you send out a price quote for the customer’s desired vehicle, send out a lower and higher-priced option that are similar to the vehicle they inquired about. Use the opportunity to educate the customer that comparing prices of two models isn’t like comparing apples to apples. Prices can vary based on a number of factors such as age, mileage, options and more.

3) Include Payments in the Conversation. Most consumers consider the payment of the vehicle, not just the price, when evaluating a purchase. Offering a link to your website’s credit application, when done the right way, can progress the deal. If you really want to stand out, provide payment estimates in your quotes, or use a real-payment-quoting lead generator such as Payment Pro^SM to bring you one step closer to the sale.

How do you deal with the “just give me the price” objection? Have you ever sold to a customer who made this demand right up front, and if so, what was your process?

It’s pretty well known that YouTube is the second largest search engine with more than 4 billion views per day. While your dealership isn’t likely to produce the next “Gangnam Style” YouTube sensation, your presence on and use of YouTube can be part of a successful online strategy. If you allocate a significant budget towards SEO and SEM, you may want to think about allocating a percentage of it to increasing the number and types of videos on your dealership’s YouTube channel. Videos have been proven to engage customers, boost credibility and drive traffic to websites.

If you’re not already incorporating these five types of videos into your Internet marketing plans, consider adding them in 2013:

1)    Inventory. Posting inventory videos on YouTube is very effective when a link to your website and relevant search term keywords are included in the description. Also post the videos on your website and Facebook page. Then, post links from classified ads sites like Craigslist. Craigslist gets more than 50 billion views per month, and can drive traffic to both your website and Facebook page from customers wanting to view your inventory videos.

2)    TV commercials. Most dealers at some point or other have spent a significant amount of money on creating commercials. Are you maximizing that investment by uploading your old commercials to YouTube and posting them on your website? If a commercial was to promote a specific event such as a Labor Day sale, you may want to include something in the description that encourages customers to keep in touch for news about this year’s Labor Day sale.

3)    Videos that brand your dealership. Customers want to feel good about who they are buying a car from. Whether you brand yourself as the price leader, the honest, no-haggle dealer, or the small, family-owned dealer, have a professionally produced video that reflects this. Highlight your involvement in community service or incorporate humor if you can, and include your service departments by weaving in expert technician interviews or service advisor maintenance tips.

4)    Customer testimonials. Word of mouth and online reviews have tremendous impact on customer consideration. Potential customers want to know what your current customers have to say. What better way to advertise than combining both of these effective marketing methods in a series of testimonial videos? The key to making this successful is to keep testimonials current. If a customer sees that your last testimonial was posted more than six months ago, they may wonder if your service has been slipping.

5)    Personalized videos for lead follow-up. Have you ever received a personalized video message in your e-mail? I did recently and it got my attention. If you want a customer to think, “Wow, this person actually took the time and effort to create this video just for me,” then you may want to consider this idea. If you are a salesperson who is comfortable and personable on camera, sending a customized video to select Internet leads is a surefire way to outperform your competition.

Which types of videos have you found to be the most effective in increasing traffic to your dealership website? Are you able to track leads that come in as a result of your videos? 

One of the first leads we received when we first started the Internet Department was from 3 hours away on a new Pathfinder. After an initial back and forth via email and a productive phone call, the salesperson went to the manager for some availability and pricing information. “Just get them in,” was the answer.

We all know that when we get customers in the door, we’re likely to close them. Our dealers (and our own internal measurements) tell us we close about half of our Internet customer visits. So if we can “just get them in,” we can “just close them.” HOW we get them in, though, is the real magic, and it starts with our contact rate.

Here are some tips to help you drive your contact rate – thus your appointment and show and sales rate – higher:

1.     People hate long emails.  Look at your email responses, starting with your initial response. Does it get to the point quickly? Is there even a point? Make sure the customer know why you’re emailing them and what you want from them up front. Keep it short and simple and people are more likely to respond.

2.     Keep. Trying. Industry studies consistently show two things: first, the more call attempts made by a sales associate, the more likely they are to make contact with the prospect (with some diminishing return after 6 call attempts, according to LeadCritic’s 2009 study). Second, most salespeople abandon the lead after 2-3 attempts. If you want to contact the customer, you have to put in the effort and be persistent where others are not.

3.    Stand out. Your customer likely sent a lead to another dealership (or 5). If you want the customer to return your contact attempts (email or phone), you have to a) be different, and b) clearly state who you are and where you’re from.

4.    Personalize your approach, not just your responses. In their keynote address at the Digital Dealer conference in October, Google discussed how online car shoppers are in a state of “constant consideration,” and no longer follow a linear buying cycle. That means each lead could be at a different point in the process, and you may have to pick up the process in the middle.

5.    Give reasons to call, respond or visit. If you’re not offering something to the customer of value or perceived value, they’re less likely to take an action. You can offer your assistance, or cash equivalents on your website in the form of incentives, or information that’s of value and typically hard to get (like payments on their vehicle of interest). Give before you expect to receive and you’ll get more back.

What have you done that’s helped you convert more leads into shows?

In October, we facilitated a panel called “The Five Things in Common That Successful Internet Departments Share” at the 13^th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas. We were thrilled to have over 200 attendees and want to thank our panelists for doing a great job. We decided to share some tips from our panelists for the benefit of all who couldn’t make it to the conference in hopes that you’ll find it as helpful as the attendees did.

Our panelists included:

- Greg Coleman, Director of Business Development & E-Commerce Director, Lexus Store of Lexington & Toyota of Nicholasville

- Justin Brun, E-Commerce Manager, Acton Toyota of Littleton

- Richard Tolsma, Internet Manager, Dan Wiebold Ford, Idaho

- Ray Fenster, President & CEO, RayFenster.com, LLC

- Dennis Colome, Vice President Sales & Marketing, eXteres Auto

Here’s a summary of some tips from their discussion:

1)      Boost your phone call volume without paying additional money: “Make your phone number prominent on every website page. In addition, include your phone number in the website page title and description.” – Ray Fenster

2)    Relevance is content, not just keywords. “Don’t ‘keyword stuff’ your website search terms, i.e. don’t go after every city in the state. Google is onto this and no longer allows it.”  – Dennis Colome

3)    All leads are created equal. “Our dealership uses a strict 180-day process for follow up. Once a lead reaches 60 days with no contact, then the process becomes automated.” – Richard Tolsma

4)    Turn your “dead” leads into service opportunities. “If a customer isn’t ready to buy a car, give the lead to fixed ops to market and see if they can get that customer in for service. Something like 80% of service customers will buy a new car from that dealership. The closing percentage goes way up.” – Ray Fenster

5)    Don’t be afraid to share pricing, just be smart about it. “Be up front in your pricing, but be sure to give the customer several pricing options. Give them the price for the vehicle they inquired about, then follow up with second and third pricing options that are lower.” – Dennis Colome

6)    Generic responses don’t add value to the conversation. “Respond to specific questions and concerns in the customers’ initial e-mails. Also acknowledge the source from where the lead came; for example, if you get a lead from ZAG American Express, mention something about the program and how exclusive it is and how happy you are to be working with them.” – Justin Brun

7)    Have a pricing strategy. “When responding to pricing questions, use a “we start as low as” strategy and show the customer the option, i.e. a Toyota-Corolla. Giving them the lowest price on the lowest model will set their expectations and they usually upsell themselves. The vast majority of our customers buy a different vehicle than they originally inquired about.”  – Greg Coleman

8)    Be patient. “Third party leads typically research five to six vehicles on the third-party sites because they are looking for unbiased info. When they submit leads they are often three to four months out, so work with them for a while. True ROI has to be measured over time.” – Dennis Colome

9)    Know Your Market. “We perform a competitive analysis via e-mails and mystery shopping websites and third-party sites, and build a pricing matrix based upon the information gathered. On new vehicles we found our competitors are just showing the MSRP; so by displaying that number minus any available rebates, we automatically show a lower price than what’s in the market.” – Greg Coleman

10)Trends are worth more than ‘snapshots’. “When you report to management, they want to see results. Whatever program or product you are reviewing, show 30-day, 60-day and 90-day snapshots so they can see trends as to what’s working and what isn’t. Don’t be afraid to get rid of what’s not working. Not all products work for all dealerships.”  - Ray Fenster

Which is your favorite “top tip?” What are you doing in your department that works? What’s your “top tip” to share with other Internet sales personnel?