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They don’t trust you.

We both know it’s largely unfair, but they don’t trust you. 

You’ve seen all the polls where buyers say if they could bypass the dealership and buy directly from the manufacturer they would.  They trust the OEM, but they don’t trust you.

A couple weeks ago, I heard a Ford maven say this (I’ll paraphrase): “The more your outgoing emails resemble Tier 1 emails, the more prospects trust you.”   By gawd, he’s on to something.…

Our team’s official Ford Motor Company job title is Digital Marketing Consultant.  Sounds cool.  I like it. 



But it’s actually a misnomer as it suggests that we want to sell you SEO/SAO, website development, lead generation and other services.  And we don’t.



For some time now I’ve been telling people that our real title should be Best Practices Consultant: Internet-based Retail New Car Sales.  But besides being too long, it’s also inadequate because it…

Imagine that you run a restaurant.  

Out in the dining room it’s nothing but surprises: you open each day with no idea how many people are going to come through the doors, what they are going to order, whether you have too much or too little staff or food on hand, etc. etc. etc.  Anything goes, and that’s what makes it fun.

But back in the kitchen there must be order and process: if the kitchen is not systematically organized and operated the dishes will not make…

It’s odd how, in the fortnight that passes between these lite essays, the theme for the next one always appears out of recent dealer visits.  For example, if I write about lead response times it’s because, unexplainably, LRT became an issue multiple times in my visits during the two weeks prior. 

The issue that revealed itself this time is Over-Thinking The Lead.  I had some poor mystery shops, and from stores that should know better and do better.  When we looked for a…