;

Ratings and Reviews Don’t Just Matter to our Customers, they Matter to Us

Rate HookLogic on DrivingSales.com
Rate HookLogic on DrivingSales.com

I’m a huge advocate of Ratings and Reviews. After all – I’m a customer, and customers love to talk. Even better, I can evaluate products based on other customer ratings

and feedback to help me make confident purchase decisions. What’s better than that?

Now I – the customer – am not the only one that benefits from these public assessments. The company I work for (HookLogic) also does; and for most of you reading this, you’re in the same boat. Chances are, your companies are rated in a communal forum – the Internet, whether you willingly submit them to be or not. But, this isn’t a bad thing! Insights gained from Ratings & Reviews help us understand how our consumers buy. What kinds of features are most important to them? Why did they decide to work with us? What innovations can we create to make their lives even easier?

In our industry, one great example of this is DrivingSales.com. The company invented the industry's first and only Vendor Ratings Platform, designed to help dealers find and select the best vendor partners while holding vendors (like mine) responsible to deliver superior products. With Vendor Ratings, dealership employees can rate and review their vendors anonymously and leave detailed feedback for all the community to see. Now that’s valuable stuff!

If you’ve ever worked with HookLogic before, using any of the AutoHook products, please take a moment to rate us on the DrivingSales website. As you have probably gathered from my rant, the feedback is invaluable. Click here to rate our suite of products on DrivingSales.com, we appreciate your business.

Dealer ThinkTank Boston - Review

Dealer ThinkTank Entry Sign
Dealer ThinkTank Entry Sign

Dealer ThinkTank, a group of auto and sales experts that provide insights and strategies for the auto industry, visited Boston last week. I was lucky to able to sit in on the conference, representing HookLogic AutoHook.

While the topics all focused on how to compete in a automotive digital world, I was struck by the theme of “trust” that ran through the day. It seems like the dealership industry is facing some of the strongest challenges in this new data-rich, transparent, hyper-connected world.

First, you have the reputation of the typical car dealer. As we saw during the conference, you just have to Google “car dealers are…” to see what people typically think of them. Even better, do a Google image search for “car dealer.”

Studies have shown that car dealers rank lower in terms of trust than nearly every other profession. Now contrast that with the internet, where consumers have the ability to control their experience, find copious amounts of data in minimal time and manage communications more selectively than ever. Then add in the increased impact of consumer-to-consumer transactions.

It’s no wonder dealerships are struggling to find their way in the internet age.

The Dealer ThinkTank pros had several ideas on how to improve the sales process to improve both real and perceived trust, most of which focused on improving and controlling the information flow, while still maintaining credibility and transparency.

My favorite idea of the day, thanks to our very own Jeff Kershner , who presented at the day, was the recommendation that dealerships give consumers pre-loaded tablets as soon as they enter the showroom. Not only do you immediately entrust them with an expensive piece of equipment, but you give them a chance to do a lot of research, without feeling like they need to look somewhere else. There’s no end to the information you can provide to potential customers (the importance of providing content being a theme echoed by Eric Miltsch).

This idea dovetails exactly with HookLogic’s AutoHook solution for dealerships, where consumers are given a gift card incentive to physically show up at a dealership. When a consumer goes to the dealership to redeem their incentive, they get it immediately, within 30 second of walking in the door.

They don’t have to sit through a sales pitch, jump through hoops or fill out massive input forms – all of which can both frustrate them and jeopardize the tenuous trust that dealerships are trying to promote.

The goal of AutoHook is simply to get qualified customers in the door, where the dealership’s sales professionals can then manage the interaction. Combine the two ideas, giving consumers tablets on which they can both redeem their incentive and then browse relevant content, and you just might have dealership magic.

The 10th annual Dealers' Choice Awards - VOTE NOW

Cast your vote. Because your vote counts! 

Plus you can win a Kindle Fire HD. Two respondents will be selected from random drawing.*

Auto Dealer Monthly is holding their tenth year for The Dealers' Choice Awards. These awards are in recognition of the most highly regarded vendors, suppliers, and finance companies in the industry as named by dealers.

The 10th annual Dealers' Choice Awards - VOTE NOW

dealers choice award
dealers choice award

VOTE HOOKLOGIC / AUTOHOOK. Because your vote counts! 

Plus you can win a Kindle Fire HD. Two respondents will be selected from random drawing.*

The Auto Dealer Monthly Dealers' Choice Awards is currently underway. And IF deserving, we would highly appreciate your vote!

These awards are in recognition of the most highly regarded vendors, suppliers, and finance companies in the industry as named by YOU - our dealers clients.

Respondents must rate third-party providers or suppliers (in-house or in-dealership solutions will be not be acceptable answers).

What matters here is who dealers feel provide the best product or service, the best customer service, and support and the overall value of the product or service compared to the money spent on the product or service. Additionally, we want to know if you would recommend the product to another dealer.

Please only cast votes in those areas that you directly work with, or have directly worked with recently. You may vote on more than one supplier if you are using more than one. Categories answered with in-house or dealership only will not be included since this is a survey of 3rd party vendors and suppliers.

Survey submission ends on 5/30/14 and the contest winner will be determined by a random drawing on 6/30/14.

Click here to Vote

CallSource Adds IHS (Polk) Data to Sales Profit Management System

IHS Powerd by Polk Logo
IHS Powerd by Polk Logo

CallSource Automotive, provider of call management, marketing analysis and sales improvement services, today announced it has partnered with IHS (Polk) Automotive to add vehicle purchase insight to its patented Sales Profit Management (SPM) system.

The addition of IHS Automotive information and insight allows CallSource to provide its automotive dealer customers with reporting and analytics to show how many sales prospects ultimately buy at the dealership they called and how many are ultimately lost to competing dealerships and alternative brands. This data will allow CallSource to better identify and pinpoint how to improve their client’s call management processes and will help them to track improvements in performance over time.

callsource logo black
callsource logo black

“IHS Automotive purchase insight provides a key element in analyzing the results of our clients’ call management efforts,” said Andrew Price, president of CallSource Automotive. “Our patented SPM system provides a continuous loop of ongoing improvement for our dealers. The IHS Automotive insight is an important measurement of dealership performance that allows dealers to identify areas of profit leakage and improve their call management processes.”

The two organizations recently collaborated to measure the impact of CallSource’s DealSaver service.  When mishandled sales or service calls are identified, a text message alert is sent to the dealership so management can reengage the prospect. After a 90-day review of calls at nearly 500 dealerships, IHS Automotive found that more than 40 percent of customerswho purchased from the initial dealership they contacted came into the dealership following a DealSaver alert.

“Adding our analytics to CallSource’s SPM system provides some important metrics,” said Bob Sherman, director of sales and client services for IHS Automotive. “As in the case of the DealSaver analysis, we can validate that CallSource services are providing an immediate impact on a dealer’s bottom line. In addition, we can uncover important industry trends that help dealers monitor their individual call management performance against the rest of the industry.”

About CallSource

CallSource has been the industry leader in call lead and tracking-based solutions for more than 20 years. We help our clients improve their marketing and lead conversion with solutions that include: CallTrack® call tracking and recording, LeadScore® marketing analysis tool, DealSaver® missed-opportunity alerts, vanity numbers, telephone performance analytics, and online training for thousands of companies in industries that include automotive, home improvement, media, healthcare, education, plus numerous franchise organizations.

What Happens When you Increase Your Average Show Rate?

more shows
more shows

In my last article “1 Simple Way to Increase your Appointment to Show Rate”, I reviewed how your sales and BDC staff can utilize our “Send Coupon” feature to help increase their appointment show percentage.

We have dealers utilizing the Send Coupon feature every day to increase their appointment to show rate by 20% or more. However, when I’ve presented this feature or idea to other dealers, I sometimes sense a bit of hesitation. And that’s okay. Not everything works for everybody because the first step in getting anything to work is buy-in and commitment from top management.

To help defuse this hesitation, let’s do some quick math:

*Remember - the average dealership has a 50% Appointment to Show rate.

Say you schedule 50 appointments Of those 50 appointment’s, 25 show up for their appointment (50% Appointment to Show) Of those 25, you sell an average of 60% = 15 sales

Increase the show rate by 20%

You schedule 50 appointments Of those 50 appointment’s, 35 show up for their appointment (increased to 70% Appointment to Show) Of those 35, you sell an average of 60% = 21 sales

Using the average $25.00 incentive, let’s figure out the potential ROI.

50 appointments / 35 shows 35 x $25 = $875 With a 20% increase, you move from 15 sales to 21 sales. That’s 6 more deals.

= $145 per additional Show to Sold

This might not jive with everyone’s calculator, depending on your current budget, process and inventory. But I would guess most dealers have room to increase their appointment to show rate by 20%.

For those still a bit hesitant, train your staff to incentivize customers that seem hesitant when scheduling the appointment. Use the incentive and supportive word track to not only lock in the show with a hesitant caller, but also reinforce the appointment time. There’s nothing worse than coming into work during your day off or staying late only to find out the customer is a no show.

Differentiate by Incentivizing the your phone appointments to increase your show rate and ultimately sell more cars.

1 Simple Way to Increase your Appointment to Show Rate

no show
no show

According to industry statistics, the average dealership converts LESS than 20% of Sales Calls into an appointment.

The average dealership has a 50% percent show rate on those appointments. So for every 10 appointments scheduled, only 5 on average physically show up.

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you don’t want to be AVERAGE. If you’re already using our suite of Autohook products, there’s NO reason for your dealership to have a 50% (or less) appointment to show rate. I’ll get to that a bit later…

Why is the average appointment to show rate only 50%?

We can come up with many excuses but let’s agree that the biggest reasons usually boil down to Phone Skills (or there lack of).

  • Customer wasn’t SOLD (or over sold) on the initial vehicle of interest.
  • Customer wasn’t SOLD on the appointment / experience but agreed, so they could get off the phone.
  • No appointment confirmation call was made (preferably by a manager) – many times the customers contact information wasn’t acquired or accurate.

Despite the many reasons dealers are only achieving an average appointment to show ratio, we have many dealer clients utilizing a feature within AutoHook that makes it very simple to increase their appointment to show rate by 20% or more. Achieving a 70% plus.

What is this 1 Simple Way?

Differentiate by Incentivizing.

Award that potential customer one more reason to show up at YOUR dealership. That one more reason could be the one that makes all the difference. Even when the phone call experience didn’t go so well.

Our dealer clients in-the-know are already utilizing our “Send Coupon” feature. Send Coupon feature is included with our suite of products and found within the Admin screen when you log-in.

send single coupon
send single coupon

With Send Coupon, you have the ability to easily incentivize a potential customer on the phone. Along with some added word tracks to your phone scripts, this is a great tool for your sales and BDC team to leverage during a sales call. In just a few steps you can quickly send a customer an Incentive to Show by email.

I challenge you to commit to this 1 simple way to Increase your Appointment to Show Rate. Before you know it, your sales staff will have more shows and be selling more cars.

Improved Responsive Confirmation and Reminder Emails

responsive email on iphone
responsive email on iphone

We’ve been on a mobile kick lately here at HookLogic. Last week I wrote about our new Web2Show feature - Mobile2Show  and  Why did that customer LEAVE YOUR DEALERSHIP right after looking at their iPhone?

Many of you already know or can easily guess that current studies are showing consumers are now reading a larger portion of their emails by mobile device, mostly on their smartphone. Therefore it’s imperative that emails sent to your customers are easy to read on a smaller screen.

Today, we are officially announcing our new and improved Responsive Designed confirmation and reminder emails that are sent to your potential customers that have engaged with Web2Show and Lead2Show.

Prior to this improvement, we had a few tiny display issues with our previous emails when it came to formatting for mobile across the different devices and screen sizes. While none of these issues had any real negative impact on the customers experience, we knew we could do better. Anytime we can improve the experience for our dealer clients and their potential customers, we make it a priority.

To address this, we took the existing email(s) (which are already optimized for deliverability and engagement), and built upon them. The result is an email “template” that contains the same effective message within a much more responsive design.  Whether on a full-size monitor or mobile device (tablet, iPhone, etc), your customers are now presented with an email that scales and displays appropriately.

responsive email design
responsive email design

Added Bonus: While we were making these enhancements, we also made the addition of including your dealer logo at the top of the message (previously only at the bottom of the signature), which we believe gives the email a bit more validity as a communication on behalf your dealership.

Why did that customer LEAVE YOUR DEALERSHIP right after looking at their iPhone?

Man running to next dealership
Man running to next dealership

With smartphone ownership at 58% nationwide and with close to 200 million tablets sold in 2013, the way dealers do business and advertise is drastically changing.

The way consumers shop for their next vehicle has once again made a huge shift. They now have all the information needed, right in their pocket, in their hand, available at anytime and anywhere they want or need to access it.

cars_mobile_study
cars_mobile_study

A recent study performed by Cars.com and Placed, Inc. shows that 25% of car shoppers will conduct research using only a smartphone, prior to visiting a dealership.

Another important find from the Cars.com and Placed, Inc. revealed that 63% of auto shoppers researched and shopped online while at a dealership and 33% of shoppers were lured to a competing dealership based on a mobile advertisement found while on a dealer lot.

Click here to download the complete study.

Let’s review that stat once more – “33% of shoppers were lured to a competing dealership based on a mobile advertisement found while on a dealer lot.”

At first, 33% may seem like a steep number. But think about how often you use your own smartphone to shop and cross-shop different product as you’re about to make a purchase. All of a sudden, that 33% becomes more believable.

Then as you stand back and look across the crowed showroom floor on a busy mid-morning Saturday, you take notice to almost every potential customer working with one of your fellow sales representatives, has a smartphone in their hands.

Maybe they’re checking their email. Maybe they’re texting a friend. Maybe they’re taking a photo of a vehicle and posting to facebook - asking for their friends feedback…

OR maybe they’re on the mobile website of your competition, looking for either a better deal, or a like vehicle of a different color and included options. While searching inventory on your competitors mobile website, the customer not only finds another vehicle they may be interested in but they're also presented with a $25.00 gift card for visiting the dealership (while leaving yours) today for a test drive.

Mobile2Show Banner
Mobile2Show Banner

The customer considers the other vehicle and the $25.00 incentive; figures what the heck, lets slide down to ABC Toyota and test-drive this vehicle before deciding.

Before you know it, the once crowded showroom floor is no longer.

What happened?

Answer: You’re competition has that 33% figured out. They've put together a strong and effortless mobile shopping experience while leveraging Mobile2Show on their dealerships' mobile website - for this exact conquest opportunity.

What’s your mobile strategy to help capture this 33%?