Next Day Traffic

Strong, LLC – October 2009 Newsletter

Strong, LLC, is noticing an upward trend in the dealers who are consistently mailing their customers both sales and service offers on a monthly basis. A quote that I hear in dealerships on a daily basis is “mail is working” and it has never been more true than in a time like the fourth quarter.

Customers are going to be releasing some of the pent up demand between October 15th & December 31st – and it is never too early to start reminding them of who they have done business with in the past. Mail has a mental shelf life of at least 90 days – that is why the “performance based” mail companies always track your sales for a 90 day period when debiting you for how many cars you sell. Be smart. Mail early, and mail often. Sending a note / letter / flyer to one of your previous customers is never a waste of money.

One dealership cited that increased conversation ratios had come in the month of October due to increasing their efforts on their website through the use of “Live Chat”.

There are numerous providers of this service (and quite possibly your website provider can facilitate this for you) but when you do the math on the thousands of customers who hit your site per month, live chat can turn a unique visitor into a “intrigued prospect” in a matter of seconds.

As they say, ‘you only get one chance to make a first impression.’

If you puke all over yourself and fail to respond in a timely manner, you may lose an intender to another dealer who is utilizing live chat to their website visitors.

One day a farmer’s donkey fell down into a well.
The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do.

Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway;
it just wasn’t worth it to retrieve the donkey.

He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel
and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was
happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone’s amazement he quieted down.

A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished
at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing
something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.

As the farmer’s neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal,
he would shake it off and take a step up.

Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well
and happily trotted off!

*****

Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of
the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone.
We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up!
Shake it off and take a step up.

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:
Free your heart from hatred – Forgive.
Free your mind from worries – Most never happen.
Live simply and appreciate what you have.
Give more.
Expect less.

NOW …….

Enough of that crap. The donkey later came back, and bit the farmer who had tried to bury him. The gash from the bite got infected and the farmer eventually died in agony from septic shock.

MORAL FROM TODAY’S LESSON:

When you do something wrong, and try to cover your ass,

it always comes back to bite you.

Strong’s creative team put together a program for our dealers to use during the “Cash for Clunkers” program called “The National Automotive Redemption Center”, a.k.a. “NARC”. NARC licensed dealers were able to offer their customers the government’s original $4500, PLUS an additional $3000 for their clunker trade. It was followed up with a “Up to $4500 Clunker Cash on Used Cars”, “Clunker Rejects” and “Additional Trade Allowances” spots.

As a follow-up, we created a “spoof spot” for our dealers to use in their sales force meetings to get their sales staff motivated to start creating fresh traffic in a “post-clunkers” market.

Below is the “spoof spot”:

GM, Chrysler drop more than 40%; Hyundai leads gainers

The biggest automakers posted some of the sharpest U.S. sales declines in September as demand dropped to its lowest level since April in the aftermath of the cash-for-clunkers program.

The seasonally adjusted annual sales rate was 9.51 million units. After thronging dealerships during the government incentive and sending August demand to the year’s high of 13.7 million, consumers backed off in September, dropping the sales rate slightly below June’s 9.55 million.

Click here to view the article in full on AutomotiveNews.com

Numbers in this table are calculated by Automotive News based on actual monthly sales reported by the manufacturers and may differ from numbers reported elsewhere.
Source: Automotive News Data Center
Note: Other includes estimates for Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Lotus
*Includes Mini and Rolls-Royce
**Includes Maybach, Mercedes-Benz and Smart
***Includes Jaguar and Land Rover (through May 31, 2008) and Volvo
****Includes Saab
†Includes Honda Division and Acura
††Includes Hyundai and Kia
†††Tata Motors includes Jaguar and Land Rover as of June 1, 2008
‡Includes Nissan Division and Infiniti
‡‡Includes Toyota Division, Lexus and Scion
‡‡‡Includes VW, Audi and Bentley

When you cram a ton of traffic into dealerships that are lean on salespeople, managers and delivery people guess what happens… CSI Scores suffer.

When you send domestic owners to an import dealership or import owners to a domestic dealership guess what happens… CSI Scores Suffer.

Why does this happen? Dealerships were over run during cash for clunkers, sales people were scrambling to get all their deals covered and delivered and people were pushed in and out of the dealership faster then they probably wanted to be. You also brought in different customers to different franchise stores than they were use to going to. All this spells lower CSI Scores, which can affect co-op, credit and standing with the manufacturer.

A couple ways to overcome:

GM/Owner – make personal calls, emails to some of the customers who bought and invite back in for a personal tour of the facility and to meet the staff. Come on – it’s not that many people and few will take you up on it, but all will appreciate the gesture.

Thank You Note – print thank you notes, cards and mail/address to all customers who bought during this time. This is the extra mile but it is seldom crowded.

New Owner Clinics – these need to be handled to perfection. For the dealers who already do them, make sure this months are the best that you have ever done. For the dealers who don’t do them, time to think about starting them.

Just a couple of items to help preserve CSI… Remember Carl Sewell wrote about “Customers For Life” this applies to clunker customers too.

Get ready for a year-end truck war. It seems that reports on inventory from large regional selling Chevrolet and Ford Dealerships are coming in and both brands have dealers who are heavy and still receiving ‘09 product. What?!? With all the shortage in inventory, some Chevy and Ford dealers are seeing an abundance of F-Series and Silverado Pickups? That’s what they’re saying. Now some dealers will sell these vehicles as dealer trades keep the holdback and advertising credits, but for the ones who are ready for a fight… Get ready. Both Ford and Dodge are preparing for October to be Truck Month… and we know GM will not be far behind.

It is a head-to-head prize fight and the winner gets what everyone wants…  More Market Share and the Gross Profit generated from full size truck sales. That will make the winter seem a little warmer to some.