Category Archives: Reviews

All Salespeople Are Liars

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For almost 3 years, I have been posting a comic every day on my Facebook account. I do this because I like to think I bring a smile to at least one person a day. I look through comics every morning in my attempt to share a “good” one. Yes, believe it or not, I do put effort into choosing which comic I post. I’ve started noticing a disturbing trend. Many comedians use reality-based comedy and it seems this also translates into comics. Syndicated comics, by their very nature, are designed to be funny and appeal to the masses. I see comics like these below on a regular basis and, personally, I do not find them funny. In fact, quite the opposite.

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We all know that the history of sales (especially car sales) has earned us a bad and, some would argue permanent, reputation amongst consumers as being deceitful, manipulative and… well.. liars.

I think everyone can agree that, as an industry, there have been a lot of changes in how car dealers do business. Some of these perception-shifts have been due to the fact that consumers not only have more access to information but also because they have access to more dealers. In the past, consumers were limited to dealers in their local area. The number of dealers they could realistically get prices from and shop was limited by how many they could physically visit and how much time they had on their hands.

The increase in the amount of information available to consumers brought the ability to access more dealers in less time. It has also brought consumers a quick and easy way in which to analyze not only different prices via internet quotes but also to identify who they want to do business with. There have been many debates and opinions over time in various automotive industry forums on how dealers should interact with customers and how much information they should share as well as hostility towards consumers, vendors, OEMs and websites for sharing information which effects a dealer’s ability to profit from a sale. In my opinion, this only fuels the stereotype. Consumer’s have access to this information and it isn’t going away. Attempts to take it away and/or make it less available only serve to promote the negative image. Consumers already don’t trust dealers. Hiding (or reducing) the amount of information available to consumers will only make them trust dealers less.

No matter what you do, you will not be able to change this stereotype for our industry as a whole. You can, however, change how you do things at your store… which is a step in the right direction.

Here is my opinion on best practices:

  1. Be transparent. If a customer asks for information, give it to them. It doesn’t matter if they ask you in person, over the phone, via an e-mail or via a 3rd party lead submission. Chances are they already know the answer. Any attempt to dodge, evade or avoid answering the question will make the customer think you have something to hide.
  2. Establish and maintain a solid online reputation. Yes, consumers are increasingly looking at the various review sites and using that information to help decide whether to do business with you.
  3. Give consumers “real” numbers up-front. Many consumers already know most of them anyways. Don’t try to undervalue trade-ins or manipulate numbers on a pencil. The days of “scraping them off the ceiling” are over. This is an “old-school” mentality and its only outcome is detracting from your dealership’s integrity. They may still buy the car but they won’t leave with a great impression of your salespeople or dealership. Of course consumers are looking for a “good deal” but, I believe, they appreciate honesty.
  4. Get rid of bad apples. If you have salespeople or management staff who lie to customers, play games, or fudge numbers or information. Fire them. They will only hurt you in the long run. Customer don’t have loyalty because you didn’t earn it from them.
  5. Take care of your customers. Your customers are your life-blood. Dealerships have more income potential in fixed-ops than in sales. Treat them like royalty and they will come back.
  6. Pay attention to your customers. Many dealerships never contact customers post-sale until the dealer believes they may be in-market again. Follow-up processes should not simply be about selling them another car. It should be about appreciation. Call them on their birthdays and anniversaries. You have a better shot at selling them another car by not trying to sell them another car.
  7. Stop treating salespeople as expendable. Most customers don’t expect their salesperson to work at your dealership long. Be a company people want to work for. Reward and encourage employees to stay around. Get rid of managers that are quick to replace salespeople. Customers will notice.
  8. Engage your customers. Don’t just pop in and out of their lives to tell them about your upcoming sale. Once you’re in their lives, stay there. Use social media, blogs, newsletters, customer appreciation events, and any other tools you can to remain not only in their lives but in their minds.

While doing these things won’t change the perception of our industry as a whole, it CAN change the perception of the most important person in existence….

Your customer.

How Reviews Stop Buying Decisions

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First, it’s been way too long since I’ve blogged. For those who care, I apologize. I’ve been very busy in my new role with a great company, 3 Birds Marketing, and I’m very grateful that they invited me to join their team.

We all know that reputation management is mandatory in today’s digital world. Consumers have increasingly more information at their fingertips and there are more choices than ever out there. With auto brands barraging consumers with marketing, consumers are continuously relying on reviews to help make buying decisions. Studies show that consumers have more confidence in reviews left by other consumers than any other type. Everyone knows the importance of building and maintaining a solid, balanced reputation across all the review sites.

When can reviews actually stop the buying process?

I’m NOT talking about someone choosing WHO to buy from necessarily. Part of the problem is that consumers are so overwhelmed by reviews about your PRODUCT that not only is it essential to maintain a great reputation as a DEALER but to also pay attention to reviews about your brand and models.

Here’s an illustration I found that details pretty accurately what can happen:

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Has this ever been you?

How do you prevent consumers from progressing past panel #1 in that comic?

Imagine this scenario… A customer comes into your dealership. They find a car they like. They go online on their phone to see if they want to do business with YOU. While reading your dealership’s reviews, they also come across product reviews from consumers saying positive things not only about YOU but also about the car they are trying to decide upon. After deciding they are comfortable with you, it’s possible that a consumer wouldn’t then feel the need to progress to product reviews on other sites and it could help avoid the progression illustrated in the comic.

In addition to not only building a solid reputation online across ALL review sites (not just focusing on a single site or two), why not also encourage your customers to say great things about your BRANDS and models?

There’s no reason why you can’t ask your customers to write a review about the car they purchase from you. Not only does this add to your reputation but it provides relevant and fresh content that could assist your dealership in not only appearing in name searches on Google but also brand and product searches.

There’s no reason why you can’t leverage consumer product and brand reviews on all of your review sites that can assist your dealership in gaining exposure that your competitor wouldn’t have.

If a consumer is trying to make a decision NOT on whether to do business with YOU but on whether to purchase your PRODUCT, a good mix of both types of reviews can certainly help prevent consumers from progressing to indecisiveness.

Buying Reviews and Car Dealerships

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In the last few days, there has been national media coverage of a vendor on Amazon who decided to “stack the deck” and buy reviews. The two articles, one on Gizmodo and one in the New York Times, told the story of a company selling cases for the Kindle Fire on Amazon who included notes in the packages asking for positive reviews from buyers in exchange for a full refund of the purchase price they paid.

Within the automotive industry, there have been (and still are) companies that promise to increase your online reviews and, while they claim the reviews are all genuine, people paying attention can easily dissect the fact that they are not. I wrote an article in June of 2011 that investigated one company, Review Boost, that was suspected of doing just this in which I interviewed the owner.

Most dealers do not participate in or knowingly hire any companies that do this.

One statement in those articles, which was included in the letter to consumers who purchased the Kindle Fire case, caught my attention though.

“We strive to earn 100 percent perfect ‘FIVE-STAR’ scores from you!”

Does this sound familiar?

Most dealerships have a time, usually in their delivery process, in which the customer is “educated” that they will be receiving a survey from the manufacturer and how important it is for the dealership to receive top scores in all areas. Some dealerships even get as detailed as having a copy of the survey with the desired answers highlighted and reviewed with the consumers. I know dealers who ask the customers to fill it out and bring it into  the dealership in exchange for something – a free oil change, t-shirt, etc. Some ask for the survey to be returned blank (which they obviously plan to fill out themselves) and some just ask them to return a completed survey which they can then read and decide for themselves whether to return it or not. I know dealers who will even RDR the car with a different address if there is heat on the deal so that a customer never gets the survey at all.

While this is certainly not identical to the vendor in the articles, in which they offered a refund for the product in exchange for positive reviews, it’s pretty close.

Reviewing a CSI survey with customers when they buy a car is skating a fine-line especially when there’s coaching involved. When you throw in a free oil change or some other incentive, it’s the same thing. Every dealer knows that they aren’t supposed to do this. However, CSI scores can be tied to future incentives from manufacturers so dealers are always under pressure to keep their scores high.

The problem with any of this is that you never get an opportunity to truly improve. You don’t get real feedback on what (or who) is broken in your process. Even though these aren’t “public” reviews and are only viewed by the manufacturer and employees of the dealership, the opportunity for improvement still exists.

You should embrace the opportunity, take your lumps when they come, and do your best to solve the customer’s complaints or criticism with your CSI surveys just as you would with your online public reviews. Even though consumers might not see these when choosing your dealership, making sure that ALL your customers are happy by attempting to solve issues they may have had, whether you received the feedback publicly through an online review or privately through CSI survey feedback, will help you grow as a dealership.

Embrace all reviews, both negative and positive, public or private, and use them as a learning experience and an opportunity to fix broken processes, clean house of cancerous employees, and become a better dealership.

I guarantee that by doing this, you’ll see less negative reviews.

BMW Dealer Customer Service Fail Goes Viral

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A customer comes into your dealership because the warning lights come on in his Certified Pre-owned BMW after your service department tells him to bring it in immediately. He comes in and your first tier tech tells him the lights only apply to an emissions issue which doesn’t apply in his state, promptly turns the warning lights off and tells the customer he’s “good to go”. The customer leaves and two days later, the steering fails on his car while driving 65-75 mph on the freeway causing him to crash off the side of the road. When he complains to the GM, no apology is given and he’s told to bring the car back in. He expresses concern about his trust in the dealership and says he wants to go to a different one and is told that he can only bring the car there.

He then goes online and starts asking questions in a brand-enthusiast forum. After getting some information and advice from his peers, he meets with the GM at the dealership where, after expressing his concerns about the dealership’s service quality, the GM asks “then you shouldn’t even be in my office wasting my time”. The customer then agrees to let the dealer pick up his car via flatbed to look at it but is denied a loaner car.

Someone at your corporate office sees his online forum posting and has the corporate LAWYER call the customer requesting that he remove his online posting. He refuses and takes the car to an independent mechanic where he is told that the codes indicate issues with “steering and stability control”.

BMW North America gets involved. They ask the customer to bring his car into a different dealer and promise to fly in a team of specialized engineers. They confirm the steering and stability issues, charge him his $50 deductible and only fix two issues that are covered under his CPO warranty. Neither the corporate office or the dealership will explain to him what was wrong or take any responsibility and, when asked why, they say they “don’t appreciate that (he’s) made this a public issue on the forums.”

Yes, this really happened. What a train wreck.

The dealership? BMW of North Scottsdale. (a Penske Automotive dealership)

This story made the website “Jalopnik” yesterday. The article (in which the dealer is not only named but linked to) “Did a Dealer Ignore a Faulty, Dangerous BMW?” has received 27,334 unique visitors and has 209 comments. In one day.

The original forum post has 327 comments on it in less than 30 days and has been viewed by 27,956 unique visitors.

The Jalopnik article is now in the #6 position on Google Page 1 for a search for the store’s name, four spots up from their DealerRater page.

 

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We’ve all experienced irate customers. We all make mistakes. There were so many opportunities for customer service to appear by so many different parties (technician, service manager, general manager, corporate office, manufacturer, the second dealership, and, of course, the corporate lawyer), yet it never did and now the dealer and BMW have a PR nightmare on their hands.

One forum poster actually said this: “Scottsdale BMW got a pretty good rating at dealer rater…shall we change that?”

What would you do if this happened at your dealership? How would you handle this?

Lessons from BlogWorld – A Social Media Experiment – How to Find a Job by DJ Waldow of Waldow Social

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DJ Waldow of Waldow Social delivered a timely and fascinating presentation at the 2011 BlogWorld LA conference held November 3-5, 2011 in Los Angeles, CA titled “A Social Media Experiment: How to find a job” sharing his thought and experiences while offering timely advice and tips on how job-seekers of today can leverage the power of social media to aid them in finding a job.

DJ Waldow was formerly the Director of Community for Blue Sky Factory and is now the owner of his own business, Waldow Social. In his session, he told his personal story of how he was laid off unexpectedly when his employer was acquired by another company. Because the company’s acquisition was not public, he was not allowed to say anything other than he no longer worked there. So he got creative.

He shared with the audience how he created “Project Awesome“, which included an interactive PDF resume in Slideshare (to date viewed 9,181 times), the aforementioned blog post (which received 5,000+ visits and over 200 comments), and enlisted his friends to give video recommendations(viewed over 1,500 times) for him to use in his job hunt. All of this creative marketing of himself using social media led to “300 e-mails, 44 phone conversations/interviews, 7 in-person interviews, 13 Skype chats, 2 Google+ Hangouts & one Facebook chat – all with people interested in hiring (him) for a full-time position” and all of this occurred within the first 2 weeks of him losing his position.

Of course, being in the business of social media, he had some very high profile friends (which helped), but his approach was not one of soliciting recommendations from everyone he knew, but rather identifying key people in his life that he knew well enough to ask for a personal favor from. He called this “Social Capital”. Your social capital is gained by trust from people that you have earned, friendships that you have built, and relationships that you have grown. Identify key people in your life, both personal and professional, to assist in marketing yourself. Be creative and use social media networks to share that you are in the market and enlist your network in sharing YOU with THEIR network.

He advised that, if you plan to use social media, the first step is to know what’s out there in the world about you, right now. Do a search on the internet and see what others would find should they be looking for information about you. If you find negative items, either delete them or correct the ones that you can.

He challenged job-seekers to ask themselves these four questions:

  1. What are you known for?
  2. What do you want to be known for?
  3. What are you good at?
  4. What do you love?

In the connected world in which we live, traditional job hunting skills and habits will no longer separate you from the rest of the “pile”. You must be different and creative to stand out, but above all be helpful, be kind and always be positive.

Originally published on Yahoo!