OK you guys got me.
I also agree with Mike, You need to find what works for you. We have blended several product together to cut down on the amount of work that the ISMs have to do.
Here are a few things to consider:
Personally, I like web-based products that allow several members of my staff to work at the office or from home or on the road (away at training or a trade show). It also allows you to follow up on what they are doing in the office on the road or at home.
Web Control is the mother product to several re-sellers on the market but if you go Straight to AVV at
www.avv.com (ask for Lance) you will get the best price.
In all of our stores we use Web Control to track our day to day business. It allows me to run several detailed reports so we can determine a monthly ROI on each lead aggregator and my own web pages. As well as making sure who is and is not following up.
The GMs and myself have manager access the only difference is that we have a Delete Button the ISMs and ISSs do not.
One other feature is that you can allow them DMS access so that you can also measure your Internet Influenced sales as well. This access will also allow you to see just how much money each deal made without having to collect date from 5 different places.
However, we still print all of our inbound leads, Eudora checks mail every 6-8 minuets and then it sends out the AutoResponce then prints the PR. We then send out 3 to 5 letters that guide the customer through the process if they reply or other letter if they do not.
We use Web Control to remind us when to send the follow up letters and make the follow up calls. It also allows us to schedule our day and so that we can confirm things for each other. You can also spot trends and you can use this tool to
DOCUMENT when and why you loose deals to the competition.
Eudora also allows us to create address books that are grouped by a recipient list and segregated by model line for NEW or product type for USED. That way we can continue to send out bulk email when there is an incentive change or if we receive a unit like what they are looking for. By using the BCC or Blind Carbon Copy we can send hundreds of email in just a few minuets. Imagine, if your store was hit by hail you could contact thousands of people by email with just a few keystrokes. It cost nothing!!!
You paid for those leads there is no reason to throw them in the trash. 30% of our Internet sales volume comes from the leads that we continue to stay in contact with 6 to 10 weeks after the initial contact. Think back to when you were a green pee
Follow up sells but now instead of spending all day leaving messages on answering machines for a 2% return you can email hundreds of people at a time for a 8% return
DO THE MATH!.
I like Web Control for one other reason they are a web hosting and design company whose roots are in the car business. They have all the other tools to make your job less stressful. We develop a lot of our own content and they plug it into our pages so our sites look different than other stores. So since they were already dialing into our box it seemed like a natural fit. The folks at AVV will make it easy for you to post pictures on your sight and gladly push that data anywhere you want. That way you only manage your inventory once and you will have total control of how it looks and where it goes.
There are a few other real good products that are about to launch or are fairly new that offers much the same functionality but it was designed for a BDC or CRS not specifically for I-net so they cost a few bucks:
Traver Technology www.travertech.com
Automotive Directions
Sandi Jerome Consulting 360.452.1857
Auto web has a fairly good system too:
Sales Enhancer www.autoweb.com
I hope this helps.
PS:
To address the comment made by ecfrew if a prospect contacts you by email and offers you their email address and profile you have a right to not only host that information on a web server but you can market to that address for as long as that it is valid. This is not Spam. However, if the customer ask you to please remove them from your mailing list you should. I do agree however you should have a statement of confidentiality from anyone that you exchange data with. Conversely, if you take data off DMS and put it on a web server there is pending legislation that would require dealerships to notify your prospects that their profile is on the Internet. This could wind up being costly and painful.
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Greg Machado
E-Commerce Director &
Independant Consultant
www.gMACgroup.com
machado@gmacgroup.com
210.710.8456
[This message has been edited by machado (edited 09-25-2000).]