What are YOU going to do with all that control?

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Permalink Reply by Karen Aichinger on November 6, 2009 at 11:01am

Here are my rambling thoughts on this subject as it is something I struggle with…

If my website provider was great at SEO, changing content and tracking my analytics I would say great you do that and I will focus on the things I am great at. However, with so much changing in the world of SEO what website provider can honestly say they are consistently updating, changing and improving a dealers website rating? This isn't to say your company isn't great at what you do but if I am in a position and have time to change, track and measure changes to my websites SEO why wouldn’t I?

I am currently struggling with a CRM company we use because they do not seem to bring much to the table in terms of marketing to my customers. Each and every email campaign has been initiated, designed, fine tuned with content and subject lines. So my question to them is what are they bringing to the table? They are supposed to be "experts" at email marketing so why have all my campaigns been designed (from artwork to content and timing) by me? Then when I question open rates and email fatigue they say it is because they campaigns we have been doing are too close together and are saturating our email lists too often. I would expect they would DIRECT me down the right path as the "experts" rather then allow me to make mistakes then point out how they are MY mistakes.

To get to my point…

If you are a service provider, regardless of your service, is it not your job to educate your customer? If I was a web hosting company and one of my customers wanted to take a hands on approach to there content, SEO and analytics why wouldn’t I not only allow them to do so but educate them so the changes made are successful? I have been lucky enough to be blessed with various Internet and Marketing positions within several dealerships. Theses positions allow me to focus on things other then just selling cars. I have struggled with General Managers and providers both to be able to make changes to things as simple as website content to as complicated as SEO. With information readily available to assist people like myself to better understand how we can improve our positions, customer retention and relationships I think it is a great opportunity for service providers to go beyond just offering the basics but to offer a complete package.

To answer your question…

A dealerships responsibility is all of the above. If a dealership doesn’t understand the how to’s or the benefits of SEO, email marketing etc. it is their responsibility to learn from and be educated by the providers they choose to assist them. In my opinion, if a provider is only offering their services and not explaining what, why and how they do it then they should hire someone who will. What would I do with more control? Learn, grow and work WITH my providers to assist my dealership in getting the most out of every dollar we spend.

Thanks for the topic, and thanks for reading!

Karen

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Permalink Reply by Ralph Paglia on November 6, 2009 at 1:28pm

@Karen - I loved your reply... The dealer you work for is fortunate to have someone like yourself on board, and many dealers do not!

@Terrence - I have worked on both sides and have gone from dealer to supplier, back to run dealerships, and back to working as a consultant, several times... So, I understand your frustration. One of the tings I tell dealers is that the best people they can have working for them are honest, intelligent men and women who have worked for automotive technology providers and have been involved in product development or anywhere more than only sales to dealers. Why? Because just like what Karen points out, there are really no suppliers that are going to truly care as much about a dealership's business as the people who work in the dealership and derive their incomes from that dealer's successful ongoing business operations.

Secondly, I have learned over the past ten years while being on the supplier side for 7 and the dealer side for 3 that there is a tremendous value in having people at the dealership who know how to manage their portfolio of suppliers in a manner that maximizes the value the dealership receives per dollar spent. The little secret that few suppliers want to talk about is the variance in service and treatment that exists from the SAME SUPPLIER and is being provided to multiple dealerships... Yes, it may be unfair but it is true... Some dealers get more from the same suppliers for equal or even less money than other dealers pay.

When I worked at Courtesy Chevrolet in 2005-2007 the dealer was always respectful of the way I could get suppliers to provide us with so much more than other dealers received for the same purchases. It is almost like the way some sales people generate consistently higher gross profits than others while selling the same cars at the same store... Why? Because what this post is really about is figuring out what tasks should be assigned to the supplier versus the tasks taken on by the dealership. Especially when everyone agrees that all of the tasks discussed must get done by somebody, or the solution being purchased is not optimized.

Take the inventory photos issue that Terrence refers to... Unless he works for Dealer Specialties and I am unaware of it, the taking of inventory photos is probably outside the scope of what he can actually do for the dealer. Does everyone agree that they need to be taken? Does Terrence's solution sale and the ROI that the dealer receives from it require that those photos be taken? Sure sounds like it to me. So, does Terrence have some "skin in the game" regarding inventory photos, to the degree that it is a fair topic for him to discuss with the dealer? If so, then it needs to be discussed and dealt with...Does it make sense for Terrence to be taking inventory photos while the dealer geeks out on the web site with Meta description changes? That would sure seem like we only need Moe to go back and write up service orders to complete the three stooges scenario!

However, there are other issues to be considered... Sometimes, people working in dealerships would rather do work that has already been outsourced than the work that the dealer intended for them to do... For example, I have had ISS's working for me that would rather build specials and manipulate graphics to make their campaign web pages look cool than to answer more Internet leads... Maybe a lot of us would feel the same way, but when pay day comes around, all those hours geeking out on getting those web pages juuuuust right will not put more commissions into that payroll run.

I have also seen the exact reverse, where the dealer pays an ISM an extra $500 a month to keep the web sites updated with specials and used inventory "spotlight" tags in Autotrader, but nothing gets done because the ISM says he is too busy selling cars. This is a problem.

I have been to several digital marketing conferences over the past 4 weeks and over and over again I keep hearing about the need for dealers to hire someone who is good at creating content suitable for web deployment... This is certainly true, but I know a lot of car guys who are going to say that if the dealer had given THEM half the money the new guy costs, they could have generated and published the same or better content in their spare time for half the expense. Of course, this is almost never what would actually happen, but that is besides the point...

One of management's duties is to ensure that the people assigned to execute work flow tasks are actually doing those tasks at a satisfactory level of competence. "Scope Creep" is what we call it when a person is hired or contracted to do a certain job and then gets pulled into other work that is outside the original scope of work, without any compensation. This Scope Creep effect can happen to both dealership employees and suppliers. The best way out si to spot it early enough to say "let's all get together and discuss this scope creep issue and figure out who is best to do what task that needs to be executed.

Can you make it perfect? Probably not, but I had about 75 suppliers that I was personally responsible for while I worked at Courtesy Chevrolet and I kept a spreadsheet with a tab for each supplier... Their monthly invoices, what was purchased and what we received were all marked in by my Admin... An Admin I was able to hire by finding $7,000 a month in outside supplier cost savings that i would not be able to ensure without having an admin to assist me. See how it can work? I also outsourced a lot of work that would take my people hundreds of hours to do and I could buy getting it done for less than $10 an hour... Which brings up another point... How valuable is the time of the person who is being assigned the tasks that need to be done? Can we do it in-house cheaper than outsourcing it? Will the quality be close enough to merit the cost savings?

For example, if I can manage my own Google Adwords account, instead of outsourcing it to a supplier that marks it up 25% when invoicing me, but I am only 85% as good as that supplier in managing my campaign spends, does the 10% net savings by doing it myself make sense when the value of my time is factored in?

Each dealership should get different answers to these questions and then make their decisions accordingly. One size fits all does not work in the car business!

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Permalink Reply by Terrence Gordon on November 6, 2009 at 3:08pm

@Karen, thank you for the great response. What I took from it is the basic underlying need for education on their services - regardless of who's actually doing the work. Two levels of education exist - 1) The service that is needed (i.e. inventory management), and 2) The service that is provided (the inventory management software). Learn what you need, and then learn what you're using to accomplish that need.

@Ralph, you've seen both sides so your feedback is invaluable. I believe it does come down to cost. If you can get the job done BETTER for LESS through a 3rd party vendor, then do. However, if you're going to take the job in-house, then you better make sure those people are not "scope creeped" into doing so, and that they are actually qualified and designated. For the record - we recommend dealers taking their own pictures. It's your inventory for goodness sake. As my CEO always says, "if you're the GAP, you don't hire a 3rd party to come in and fold your clothes".

Great discussion.

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