Digital Dealer Review
- Going to Orlando or anywhere on the East coast of USA requires a commitment to results and the ability to sleep sitting up. This is very true for a 3 day conference. We won’t go all the way to Orlando for a 3 day conference again. We will go west coast which is most likely Las Vegas.
- Vaustralia were great and the premium economy seats were good value. Would have preferred to arrive back in Australia with our luggage though.
- The convention was well run and organised with only one session cancelled without notice. Venue was great although location meant taxi’s everywhere at considerable cost.
- The American way of doing all their selling at conventions does not seem to allow for relationship building. “Sign up now” is a commonly used phrase and supports a “close this deal” at all cost sales process.
- American dealers have a great mistrust of vendors but have the freedom to express their dissatisfaction thanks to vendor choice and laws protecting their right to say what they think.
- Size and volume of the market creates different dynamics between Australian and American dealers including the number of vendors and products they offer, access to fast internet and penetration of mobile enabled devices. Regardless I believe Australian dealers do more with less, make more money per car and look after their customers better.
- American dealers have an unhealthy focus on top line for everything. More of anything is always better and costs are simply something that get forgotten. Every dealer we met had a Internet BDC and not one amortised these costs across departments. Great….free leads says everyone except the Dealer Principal.
- Australian vendors and dealers are not years behind. Perhaps this perception comes from seeing so much choice and listening to the great American sales process.
- The 4 main themes were:
- Social media – Do prospects and customers really want to be your face book friend?
- Online Reputation – Now everyone can tell everyone else how they were treated.
- Micro-sites – What is their place in a solid and professional internet strategy?
- 3rd Party Lead providers – Will Social Networking reduce the dependency?
- What did we bring back? (apart from a iPad)
- Content is KING
- Creating content is a daily/weekly nightmare without the right staff and strategy.
- Internet Strategy must be documented and disciplined.
- Dealers brand value and online reputation will ultimately decide internet enquiry volumes
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on Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 at 12:50 am and is filed under Dealer Solutions Blog.
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[...] our company, our industry and for our personal lives. We bought our 1st iPad went we went to the 8th Digital Dealer Conference in May 2010 before they were released in Australia and since then it has integrated itself into our [...]