Jared Hamilton
Jason Falls, Social media author
This past October, hundreds of the nation’s most progressive auto dealers converged in Las Vegas for the 2011 DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES). The event was roiling with progressive thinking and tactical battle plans.
I could write pages about the CEO panel alone, which featured top technology leaders discussing their vision for the future; or Dennis Galbraith’s amazing Internet workshop; or Aaron Strout’s keynote on location-based media, not to mention the tactical learnings on automating inventory, selling accessories, and maximizing SEO, mobile marketing, website performance and so on. I recommend that you visit DrivingSalesTV.com to watch these sessions as we post them in the months to come.
There’s not enough room here to touch on all the outstanding content from DSES, so I’ll focus on one major takeaway: People matter and so does their chatter. We learned from Rob Siefker of Zappos — a hugely successful business whose foundation is customer service — and the extra-ordinary Gary Vaynerchuk, who rocked the house with his ‘thank you’ department. If we don’t start looking at our customers as people, and if we don’t start paying attention to what those people are conversing about on the social web, we might as well throw in the towel, because guess what folks? Social media does matter.
Dealer.com released a groundbreaking study revealing the impact of social media in the automotive world: 38% of new vehicle shoppers used or will use social media to research their next vehicle purchase; 41% of those added a brand or model to their consideration because of a post; 28% said a post caused them to add a dealership to their consideration, and one in four use social media post-purchase to broadcast their purchase and ownership experience. In essence, social media sends us back to small town living with all the implied interaction and intimacy of human contact.where a personal referral means everything.
We started DrivingSales.com not because we wanted to be in ‘social media’ but because we wanted to use digital media to connect our industry and create community. It’s a basic human imperative to connect and that is all social media does — the Internet has simply facilitated it. Which is why I find it interesting that so many jump to be dismissive or overly tout the cool factor of what is simply a channel, albeit today’s most compelling and relevant one. As Gary V put it, “I have no interest in social media because it’s cool; I don’t give a c*#p about Twitter, or Facebook or FourSquare. The only reason I care is that social media sells stuff… And the people in this room will be out of business unless they understand this.”
In the early 2000s, I traveled the country interviewing dealers about how the Internet was impacting their business. I found many who were already using the Internet to ‘help them sell stuff,” but there were still those who felt that they if they ignored the Internet, it would go away.
Those dealers ended up being the ones that went away, while the Internet stayed. Which brings me to perhaps the most inspiring person at the summit: 23 year-old Grant Gooley, a digital marketing manager for a Toronto dealership who paid his own way to Vegas, and stayed at one of Vegas’ more ‘economical’ hotels, taking the bus to the summit each day. He was on a mission to prove social media ROI — and brought a video of sound bites from the smart and well-meaning folk at his dealership that had me spinning back to the anti-Internet talk of the nineties. Here is a sampling: “I don’t understand how social media would help sell a car…You can’t really sell a car with the Internet…I don’t use Facebook because people come IN to the dealership…It is hard to gain rapport and trust through typing…”
This is not to ding a very successful dealership; but I believe that what Grant is hearing is what many young people starting in dealerships are hearing from management and sales people across this country today. What I love about this dealership is that they were willing to go on camera about social media — and I am confident that they will be receptive to the information that Grant devoured at the summit.
Grant is young, eager, energetic and passionate and he knows that to survive, dealerships must continue to focus on how best to find, understand, and interact with the people that are their customers. Spending three days with the most progressive dealers — and seeing the face of the future in Grant — left me truly excited about what will come next for all of us … and the ways in which digital media and rational tactical thinking will bring us all an even more prosperous 2012. To see Grant’s video go to http://www.drivingsalestv.com/2011/10/grants-journey-to-the-summit-and-beyond/
