Yesterday my almost 5 year old son asked me “Dad, what if it was a money world?  There would be pennies and quarters everywhere for us to pick up.”  That is one of those questions/comments you get from a child and think ‘where did that come from’?  My two older boys are into finding money on the ground which is just a means to an end – find coins on the ground = we get to buy candy.

Our goldmine is actually Sonic restaurants.  We actually stumbled upon this goldmine by getting out of the car to order and eat our meal (so they don’t trash the car with drinks, etc).  While waiting on our food the kids ran around and stumbled upon a coin or two.  Once they found 2, they were searching the whole area for more!  They actually found over $1 in change just lying around.

Now where is the lesson in this story?  I began to explain to my son that it is a “money world” and there is money lying around everywhere.  It is up to you to just find the best spots to look for it.  Was this a lesson in capitalism?  I think so.

This same principle applies to us as adults, business people, marketers, and sales people (car dealerships in the case of our industry).  This is a “money world” and we just have to find the best places to look for it.  The only difference is our search for money is in the pockets of consumers.  Marketers reach these consumers in various ponds (sales channels), the company delivers good products and services, and sales people facilitate the sale.

As a car dealership you are always fishing those money ponds in the “Money World”.  Do you fish the same money ponds and keep getting the same poor results?  The old saying “if you want the same result, keep doing the same thing”.  This can be read both in a positive and negative way.  If something is working, then keep doing it (keep improving it).  If something is not working, then do something different.  Is your dealer website a good fishing pond?  Is AutoTrader a good pond?  Is eBay Motors a good pond?  Is a local organization a good pond for your store?

Every store varies in what is a good money pond for that dealership, but the principle is the same.  Keep adjusting what you are currently doing that works and experiment with new ponds.  You might just run into that money pond (in the case of my kids: Sonic restaurants).

Here are some ideas in your search for the money pond:

• Setup LinkedIn accounts for all of your sales representatives
• Setup a Micro-Site (secondary website or specialized website)
• Create a YouTube channel with videos and back links to your website
• Are you buying AdWords on Google and Yahoo (PPC)
• Update the content, page title tags, and meta data on your website with make and model keywords for more Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Create a blog of customer testimonials and stories with back links to your website, etc.
• Start issuing press releases through Business Wire or PRWeb (make sure to use their digital press release products to ensure an online long tail for optimal search engine results)
• Step up your email marketing to previous customers (CRM).
• eBay Motors (work very hard to get your feedback rating up)
• Craigslist
• Vast.com
• Create a 30 minute call back standard for new leads from all sources
• Build up a profile on DealerRater.com, CarFolks.com, or others.

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Our team members get questioned all the time about the happening and goings on at AutoRevo so we like to give customers an inside view to as much as we can here internally.  With that I’d like to make welcome of our newest editions.

Alan Bertucci – Senior Product Manager – Alan has over 20 years of software product management.  His last 2 contributions were at large successful start-up companies.  Other quick notables are working at Hewlett-Packard (HP) and BEA.  Great addition to our team and already making an impact!

Chris Mihalovich – Sales Director – Chris will be expanding the business in the western United States.  He came to AutoRevo from Park Place Lexus where he was top internet salesman.  For the last 2 years much of his internet sales has come from eBay Motors.  Last quick notable, he owned a Subaru racing team where he was the driver!

Amy Litzel – Support Agent – Amy comes to AutoRevo from the Dallas Symphony where she handled customer service.  As you can imagine, Dallas Symphony clients have a high expectation of service.  She has been here just a few weeks and already had a high impact in our support team.

More open positions are available currently in sales, support, and development.  If you have friends tell them to send over a resume to careers (at) autorevo (dot) com.

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eBay just announced the release of Seller Dashboards.  Dealers can now see their Detailed Seller Rating (DSR), Search Standing, Buyer Satisfaction, and more.

I have lots of thoughts on it, but here is my top pro and top con:

Pro: Search Standing status is great to know.  It only impacts the search result if sorted by “Best Match” (how often to users sort by best match on eBay Motors?).

Con: I was reviewing one of our high volume sellers accounts who consistently spends over $6000 per month on eBay to find out that they received a $30 credit for the DSR score last invoice.

One thing to note, when I logged in through the normal “My eBay” link it did not show me the Search Standing, but when I logged in through http://www.ebay.com/sellerdashboard it appeared.

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Quick hit post here.  The AutoRevo.com design team has just updated the dealer website porfolio page to show off their wares: http://www.autorevo.com/dealer_portfolio.aspx

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We have a new group on LinkedIn for AutoRevo.  Great way to network with other dealers, partners, and vendors in the industry.  Link in now: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/103752/5791C3719FE4

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Already a good week!  We passed the 700 dealers milestone at 704 this week.  Lots of hard work from everyone here and kudos to everyone’s contribution.

With this growth come lots of additions and changes every week.  We have 2 new hires in a support agent and product manager, actively interviewing for open positions in sales / support / development, our expansion space will be open June 1, product updates in the pipe, and new features rolling out.  Our CTO, Mark Hoffman, loves to work on scaling out systems for all the growth.

Follow the high growth of AutoRevo on Twitter.com

Learn more about us: http://www.AutoRevo.com

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Sorry guys and gals for the repost from the Dealer Pre-Owned newsletter, but I thought it was important and didn’t have time to break down the article, etc.  Here it is:

Wednesday, May 14, 2008  Issue 20    VOLUME 2 ISSUE 20
JMsolutions: Cars sell up to 9 days faster with Carfax Report
JMsolutions last week announced results of a study that suggests that Dealers who run Carfax Reports within JMsolutions’ AAX used vehicle inventory management solution prior to retail lower vehicle turn by five days on average. Vehicles that are identified as Carfax 1-Owner cars turn nine days faster.

“With the inclusion of Carfax in the AAX system, there is a significant impact being made for our dealers,” said Tim Zierden, assistant vice president and general manager, software solutions, JMsolutions. “Dealers need to take every advantage available to them today. Our study confirms that consistent use of Carfax Reports means increased revenue to dealers. Having instant access to Carfax Reports while appraising a car means there is less likelihood that a dealer will miss something in the vehicle history that might impact the value of the appraisal. Once they have pulled the report in the AAX system it is available to them for as long as they own the car.”

In addition, the study, based on more than 52,000 vehicles retailed by dealers using AAX, shows a lift in resale value when dealers run a Carfax Report within AAX before retailing a vehicle. The combined inventory cost reduction and resale lift nets dealers a minimum $250 increase per car.

“As this study shows, dealers that include a Carfax Vehicle History Report with their retail units increase vehicle sales rates and profitability,” said Larry Gamache, communications director at Carfax. “Our dealer customers make better decisions about the cars they put on their lot by running a Carfax Report through inventory systems like AAX. Just as important, dealers have Carfax Reports automatically linked to their vehicle listings almost anywhere online, giving consumers greater confidence to buy.”

Results from previous studies by GE Fleet Services showed similar results about the impact of Carfax Reports on vehicle resale value and inventory turn. More than 32,000 dealers provide free Carfax Vehicle History Reports for vehicles on their lot or listed online at places like AutoTrader.com, cars.com and Yahoo! Autos to build consumer confidence.

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Just a quick post about the iRemarketing conference in Phoenix next week.  If you are attending, we would definitely want to meet up with you.  Send me an email to setup a meeting: polk (at) autorevo (dot) com.

Conference website: http://www.autoremarketingconferences.com

AutoRemarketing Newsletter story: http://www.autoremarketing.com/ar/news/story.html?id=7847

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Spam is an issue facing any business today. According to a study conducted late last year by Nucleus Research Inc., spam management costs U.S. businesses more than $71 billion annually in lost productivity – $712 per employee. It is estimated today that roughly 65% of all email is spam. At AutoRevo alone, we receive thousands of spam messages each day.

Spam not only clogs up our inboxes with unwanted advertisements, it also is used to launch phishing attacks, Trojan horses and transmit computer viruses. Spammers are sophisticated and often well funded. Spammers have a strong monetary interest in keeping your inbox flooded with their junk mail, so winning the war against spam is a tough fight indeed.

At AutoRevo, we’ve recently made substantial investments in both hardware and software to combat spam. The results so far show that we’ve made significant inroads in reducing the amount of spam our dealers are seeing.

From the graph below, you can see that from April 25′th to May 1’st we were able to reduce the total number of spam from over 13,000 messages a day to around 1,000. That’s over a 90% reduction! And we aren’t finished yet. Our spam filtering system gets “smarter” each day and adapts to spammer’s techniques so we expect these numbers to drop even lower.

Beyond controlling spam, we are also reducing the number of viruses that enter our dealer’s mailboxes. The graph below shows that since improving our virus detection system on April 25′th, we have effectively stopped viruses from finding their way to our dealers.

There is no doubt that spammers will continue to find new ways of delivering their junk mail and viruses, but we’re committed to protecting our dealers and we will continue to invest time and money into this worthwhile effort.

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Vast.com is making a strong play in the automotive classified space (yes, AutoRevo integrates our dealer inventory there for FREE), and I spent some time this morning playing with their search tools and vast graphs.  The search functionality is pretty much industry standard, but the graphs are rich with great data and they just look cool!

Here is my graph after searching 2005 Toyota 4Runner Limited Edition:

What I like about the shopping tool:

• Let me get this one out of the way… it looks cool
• Once I get my search down to a trim level and price range it is very useful when shopping.
• I can see a pricing trend based on mileage
• Mousing over a dot gives me light detail on the car
• Clicking a dot gives me a bit more car detail (but not enough)

What I DON’T like about the shopping tool:

• The mouse over information should have more details for quick comparison.  Examples: Carfax One Owner, color, important options, engine, transmission
• After clicking on the dots it gives you a car preview on the right, but it really isn’t any more information than the mouse-over.  I have to click the preview to drill into the vehicle details.
• The car preview should have more instant information on the unit and a contact dealer button.

Vast.com has a unique slant on classified sites: they tracking millions of classified listings across the internet and aggregate the data for comparison shopping.  This gives them the comparison shopping engine based on your search criteria on their site.

They are also the inventory provider for AOL Autos and Overstock.com.

Anyway, enough for one morning.  Check out the site when you can.  If your inventory is not on Vast, call us at AutoRevo.com

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