Third Place is You're Fired

I’ve eaten, slept and breathed Lead Management since I sold 23 Hondas my first month of selling Internet customers in the late 90’s.? You know when someone on Social Media asks “what could you talk about for thirty minutes without notes or prep?”, yah, well I can confidently talk about Leads.? Lead Quality vs. Quantity.? Cost Per Customer.? BDC scripts, templates and contact cadences.? CRMs.? New Car Vs. Used Car.? Sub-Prime Vs. Prime.? Given what happened with CDK this past couple of weeks, I’m gonna guess that what I have to say may fall on some otherwise distracted eyes, but here goes:

The Leads Suck.

There are NO GLENGARRY LEADS! Nobody can possibly self-originate enough first party leads to make the expense pencil.? You can’t drive enough traffic to your website with what you’re willing to spend.? If you have a Digital Retail platform integrated into your website you further dilute the effectiveness of your marketing dollars.? Your third party lead sources can’t do it with what they charge you so they backfill with crap they buy on the open market, wrap that garbage up with a pretty header and call it lead volume.? Inventory leads might be slightly more valuable but they still suck overall.? Dealers take one of two paths, they skim the leads and post abysmal closing percentages OR they become apathetic and stop trying to work the leads at all.? I mean, if you buy 100 leads and 2 or 3 of them buy, how hard are you really willing to work??I know I'm oversimplifying here. And not all dealers are in this predicament - there are plenty who have kick ass Biz Dev Departments or they outsource Lead Management, but more often than not, when I was calling on dealerships the past almost three years, lead expenses were up, contact rates were down, and there was a lot of grumbling.

We've accepted that Covid turned our dealerships into order taking profit machines.? Now, we’re seeing inventory levels return to near normal and profit has taken a big hit.? I think I read this morning where average profit is around $2300.? It’s time to ask yourself ?“Can your variable operations survive a return to lower new car profit and high cost per customer?”.

I’ll tell ya, I was running Internet Sales for 5 New Car stores about 20 years ago.? And we were starting to see $100 “minis” from invoice minus holdback deals and increased focus on sales training and CSI and I was OUT on doing more work for less pay.? I wanted to know how to make good money with the skill set I had.? And I found out by going to work for the highest volume Single Point Sub-Prime Pre-Owned ?Dealership on the West Coast.? We were spending about $125K a month and our cost per customer was under $300.? Our profit margins were STUPID because 70% of the customers were statistically sub-prime.? This is where the ACTION is still to be had in this economic climate.

Fast forward to today and I am working with one of the most knowledgeable, reputed Sub-Prime experts in the industry to bring profit driving opportunities to select Expert Sub-Prime dealers in EXCLUSIVE territories across the US.? I’ve got two programs:? In Market Customers and Increased Credit Score Customers.? I’m beginning today to bring these VALUABLE opportunities to YOU.? If you want your own FREE MARKET ANALYSIS to see what your market looks like, just DM me!? Let’s make your store some money!