Pre-Conference Twitter Advice for Vendors

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Arnold Tijerina

I’ve had the privilege of handling social media for nine major automotive industry conferences in the last few years. (the 1st and 2nd DrivingSales Executive Summits, the 8th-11th Digital Dealer Conference & Expositions, and the 1st and 2nd Innovative Dealer Summits). In that time, I’ve also tried to include exhibitors and sponsors in the conference’s social media campaigns both for their benefit and for the conference’s.

I routinely asked them for Twitter accounts and created lists of those accounts for people following the conference Twitter account (like this one) whether they provided it for me or not (lots of searching Twitter, sadly). We left spots on speaking applications asking for their information and we had the sales team ask. If I had to guess, only about 15% actually provided this information and even less actually used social media to reach out and engage with attendees.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of “pre-conference” promotion (by the conference) and an essential piece of that was done via social media. Attendees would start getting excited and I would see Twitter conversations start ramping up via the conference hashtag. What I wouldn’t see is vendors participating in those conversations. No matter how hard and how many times I would advise a vendor that they should, they just wouldn’t do it. So for the few months leading up to the conference, there would be plenty of conference-related chatter (“Are you going?” “I’m excited” “Let’s get together”, etc) but virtually no vendor engagement. Amusingly enough, I have even had dealership attendees on Twitter publicly noticing and inquiring about the lack of vendors.

About a week before the conference…. it hits. Like someone hit a “Go” button somewhere. Vendors galore. All over Twitter. It was great that they would finally start participating but the problem was that there was no engagement and they were late to the party. A typical vendor’s tweet would read something like “We have your magic solution! Come visit us at booth #1234” or “We’re giving away an iPad2! Come to booth #1234 to enter”. By this point, they are entering (and creating) noise. The dealers and managers attending see this. They know that there is virtually no value in those tweets. They’ve received the countless pre-conference e-mails from vendors promoting something or other all with the same basic call-to-action of “come to our booth”.

On the flip side of this, I see vendors who DO engage with attendees. I see the vendors that engage attendees successfully setting up demo appointments and building interest and rapport with attendees. On the conference side, I always tried to increase their exposure (and the conference’s) by re-tweeting those vendors and encouraging people to interact with them. I rewarded exhibitors and sponsors for contributing to, and participating in, the conversation. What I didn’t retweet was blatant sales-only type tweets.

Fact: The 11th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition hashtag saw 9,100 tweets from over 1,400 unique people with a combined reach of almost 100,000 people that generated over 9 million impressions…. and this was only from people that tweeted with the hashtag!

Why a vendor would want to skip out of being included in this is beyond me. I think they don’t understand social media 101 – the whole point of social media is not only to engage with your primary audience, it’s also to reach THEIR social network. The only other reason I can think of that they’re not doing this is that they can’t be bothered or see no value in it.

Vendors need to realize that conference attendees paying attention to the conference hashtag don’t want to see your 140 character sales pitch a week before the conference while, at the same time, they are receiving all the direct mail pieces and e-mail marketing campaigns that are hitting their real (and virtual) in-boxes. You become noise. Spam.

They are willing and want to engage with you but you must start this engagement MONTHS before the conference and it must be REAL engagement.You want to get a dealer’s attention pre-conference? Start talking to them pre-conference, not selling to them.

Sell to them at your booth, not on Twitter.

Automotive Customer Centricity Summit

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Arnold Tijerina

The Automotive Customer Centricity Summit, hosted by Thought Leadership Summits (ACCS) was on June 14th, 2011. I had the privilege of reporting on this event on behalf of DealerElite. This event is a one-day event that runs from 7am-7pm. The event was held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina Del Rey, CA. While I don’t have exact attendance numbers, it seemed to see about 125 attendees. There were a lot of OEM representatives from both the automotive and motorcycle world, vendors and some dealers.

Speakers included:

Thilo Koslowski, Vice President & Lead Automotive Analyst for Gartner
George Liang, President of the DCH Auto Group
Allan Jenik, Director of Dealer Services for Harley-Davidson
Jon Budd, National Manager – CRM & Integreated Marketing for Hyundai
Kal Gyimesi, Automotive Industry Lead for IBM Institute for Business Value
Brian Benstock, Vice President & General manager for Paragon Honda
Lonnie Miller, Vice President – Marketing & Industry Analysis for Polk
Sara Hasson, Vice President – Automotive Brand Solutions for Univision
Michael Sachs, General Manager – CRM & Loyalty for Volkswagen

Some of the interesting things I took away from the sessions included:

Thilo Koslowski spoke about “Understanding Automotive Trends & Creating Successful Strategies”. He stated that consumers are paying more attention to automotive & transportation related spending. It’s his theory that the next 10-20 years will be the most disruptive to our industry and that in the future, individual transportation may not mean vehicle ownership with younger consumers increasingly relying on alternate modes of transportation. He predicts that by 2012, the majority of OEMs will have integrated wireless connectivity into vehicles. Younger consumers are less likely (22%) to be concerned about the distracted drivers that in-vehicle data integration would undoubtedly create. He stated that as companies feel that a social media presence is more important, the social networks themselves become more important (kind of a vicious cycle) and that dealers need help from their OEMs with social media marketing because many of them are doing it, but the majority are doing it wrong. One interesting takeaway was that as data integration increases, and younger consumers continually consider alternate modes of transportation, 78% of consumers would still prefer a gasoline engine for their next vehicle than any other type including electric and hybrid.

Kal Gyimesi spoke about “Advancing Mobility – the Next Growth Engine for Attracting Consumers”. He stated that within the next 5 years, 30% of revenue will come from new sources and that to achieve success, we need to transform into a service-oriented business model. He believes that the ability to interact with consumers will be centered around connected vehicles. He said that 59% of auto executives agree that auto electronics and software will be open & customized by smartphone apps and that a game-changing byproduct of the connected car may be the interchange-ability of vehicles. However, to appeal to consumers, mobility solutions must be simple, yet comprehensive.

George Liang had a controversial session about a test store within the DCH group that went to a hassle-free pricing model. He stated that within the next 2 years, Gen Y will represent 40% of dealers’ business. His view is that the traditional sales process is management centric, a long process, inequitable to the guest and complex. Gen Y consumers won’t put up with that. The “limited negotiation” process is faster for the guest, simple, friendly, fair and transparent. In this model, Client Advisors will be trained to desk their own deals eliminating the need for desk managers. In addition, as Client Advisors gain experience, you create a career path for them by advancing them to a “Elite Client Advisor” position and that for every 5 “Elite Client Advisors”, you can replace one F&I manager. By eliminating these positions (desk manager and F&I manager), you save money on personnel costs. In their test store, he said that they immediately lost about 95% of their salesforce due to salespeople and managers being unwilling to adapt. He advises that you should expect a temporary drop in both front-end gross and market share. In fact, DCH lost 50% of their front end gross when this model was implemented in their test store. He said to stay the course, however, as everything went back up with time. He said that DCH focuses on market share because if you increase market share, everything else will come with it. Of course every sales manager and retail car guy in the room was immediately on the defensive especially after Mr. Liang shared that this test store’s closest brand competitor was 45 miles away.

Allan Jenik spoke about Harley’s “one-to-one” marketing approach. During his Q&A, he said that he believed that your social networks don’t want to see coupons and offers. I don’t agree with him there. In fact, I would argue that the exact opposite is true in that most of the people who follow you only do so for the coupons and special offers. Harley-Davidson is a different beast, in my opinion. The lifestyle and community they’ve been able to create is completely different from any other brand so for them, this might be a valid statement.

Jon Budd shared the importance of listening to your customers and keeping your brand on track. He highlighted Hyundai’s ever adapting “Assurance” program and showed how its changes over time reflected on consumer concerns – from the initial 2009 campaign in which they offered to buy-back the vehicle (of the 435k vehicles bought under this program, only 100 were returned) to today’s campaign offering Hyundai customers piece of mind by offering security in the tangible value of the Hyundai by guaranteeing future trade-in values at the time of purchase.

Brian Benstock repeated his popular session showing how Paragon Honda went from #17 to #1 in 6 months. (When I say repeated, I mean that I’ve seen it before.) His session was very popular. I even heard comments from dealer-attendees that wished that the summit organizers had allowed him to continue rather than hurrying him up and cutting his presentation short. I thought his comment that vehicle brochures were dead was spot-on. He says that OEMs should just stop making them. In fact, Paragon made their own to give to customers. He says most consumers who want information about a vehicle don’t look at brochures anymore, they go online to find the information. He advocates OEMs to create more short-term lease options available to dealers as that would decrease the buying cycle and increase loyalty. He said that Paragon Honda has a 68% retention rate because of their efforts to get customers into short-term leases.

Michael Sachs spoke about customer loyalty. The gist being that its very important and hard work. I especially liked the story he shared about the “$100,000 salt & pepper shaker” as an illustration (anyone who knows me would understand why). This story told of young children who visited Disney World and bought, as a gift, a salt & pepper shaker for their father. They broke it before they could give it to him and went back to the in-park store to get it replaced. Due to kindness and generosity, the Disney employees replaced it for them although their policies didn’t require it. Due to this, those children became “raving fans” and over the course of their lives spent over $100,000 with Disney. He stated that even the smallest of actions which make customers happy can have a huge effect on future earnings and loyalty.

Sara Hasson spoke about the importance of marketing to the Hispanic market. One interesting statistic she shared was that from 2010-2020, Hispanics are projected to account for all (100%) the growth among adults 18-49. She said that Hispanics spend at similar levels and return to the new vehicle market sooner. She said that not only is it important to market to Hispanics but its important to market to them in their language.

Originally published on DealerElite.net

Digital Dealer’s Hidden Learning Opportunity

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Arnold Tijerina

As we get ready to attend the 9th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas, I wanted to talk about a hidden learning opportunity.

Over the past weeks, I’ve seen plenty of blog posts and articles from people with advice on how to get ready for and efficiently attend the conference. All of these articles offered great advice such mapping out your sessions and bringing proper supplies. I agree with all of them.

One thing I haven’t heard, however, is one of the most beneficial things I used to take advantage of at the conferences and that is the ability to check out all the new technology and services available within our industry that could help me sell more cars.

I was an internet director working for large automotive groups for a long time. I was constantly bombarded – as I’m sure you are – by calls from vendors. Some days it seemed like I appeared on every vendors “to-do” list and, at times, I just stopped taking their calls. We’re all busy and we’re all focused on selling cars. Nobody wants to be “sold” something when you’d rather be doing the selling.

One of the most attractive things for me, at the conference, was the opportunity to visit with all the vendors in the exhibit hall if only to check out what solutions and technology are available. Whether you are in the market for a new solution or not, the knowledge of what’s out there is invaluable because the one thing in our business that is constant is change.

When your dealer principal, GM, GSM or whomever comes to you with a problem and asks you to fix it, would you rather know what solutions exist and be able to make some suggestions RIGHT THEN, or have to start hunting from scratch. I guarantee you it will waste more of your time hunting for a new vendor for whatever your needs are if you don’t already know what’s out there.

This also gives you the opportunity to ask other DEALERS about their vendors. Every vendor is going to tell you that their product rocks, that they are the best at it, and that they will help you sell a ton more cars than you already are (if you use it properly, of course). So how do you weed out the good companies from the GREAT companies? How do you find the “diamonds in the rough”, so to speak?

Look, we all know that post-conference sales pitches, phone calls, and e-mails only INCREASE – as they should. You can’t blame the vendors. Say you sold Fords and you went to an auto show. At that auto show everyone was educated on the benefits of driving a Ford Explorer. Everyone left with some level of knowledge that maybe I should be driving a Ford Explorer. Now, say the conference decided to give you a list of all of those people who were interested in a Ford Explorer. Would you call them? If you are any type of salesperson you would.

Just like you get irritated when you call someone that you got an internet lead on because they’re irritated that you called them, so do the vendors. If you took the time to educate yourself about the technology products and services that are available WHILE YOU”RE AT THE CONFERENCE, you would be able to tell the vendors when they call you post-conference that you took the opportunity to check out their service already.

I’m not saying you have to spend your time watching everybody’s demo. Just set aside a block of time to make a quick trip around the exhibit hall to check out what new services and technology products are being offered by companies – both new and old.

I guarantee you’ll discover something that you didn’t know existed.

You have all the notable vendors within our industry in the same place at the same time. Use that to your advantage. Learning what is available to help you sell more cars is just as important as learning new techniques and processes to do that via the seminars. The vendors are an intrinsic part of what makes the Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition POSSIBLE. They’re at the conference because they want the opportunity to meet you and talk to you.

Be the go-to-guy (or gal) at your dealership with the solutions and you’ll make yourself that much more invaluable.

…and pick up some free swag and enter their contests for prizes while you’re at it. We all like free stuff and they like to give it out.

Here is the list of vendors that helped make the 9th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition possible.

Exhibitor List

I hope to meet everyone at the show.