The Driving Sales Executive Summit is on in a BIG way Oct 9-10 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. The industry is currently in a very dynamic yet super profitable state, but for how long? Change is just a supply chain kink or governmental policy away. Innovations are being introduced all the time, and now is the time to decide which ones are worthy and which ones are half-baked. Bottom line, it all comes down to people.

Is your dealership culture a positive, winning one, and are you and your team prepared for the next market phase that’s on the horizon? No one saw the Covid crisis coming let alone that it would usher in an era of unparalleled profit…we may not be so lucky next time…but we’ll be ready. This summit is focused to help you handle whatever is next.
Reg here and use Kelley100 to save $100:-): https://bit.ly/3RI7E0b

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The Driving Sales, Three Day Executive Retreat in Q4 designed to study retail innovation with world-leading experts, to help you write your business plan for next year. Save $100 by using code Kelley 100

For: Executive Teams, Owners, GMs, Marketing, GSMs, Fixed Ops

When: Oct. 8-10, 2022

Where: The Bellagio, Las Vegas

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Ken Hill is the Managing Director of 700Credit, the largest provider of credit and compliance products in the automotive industry. During his 12 years with 700Credit Ken has been responsible for the leadership and growth of the company. In 2007, Ken started with 700Credit when they had a respectful 700 customers and 5 affiliate partners. Fast forward to 2019 and 700Credit is now the largest in the industry, providing credit and compliance solutions to over 11,000 automotive dealerships, and integrating with 150 affiliate partners.

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Yes, sticker price size matters. Yes, financing matters. Yes, credit availability matters. But what gets a person interested in a particular vehicle, and moving through the funnel, is what excites their eyes.

It’s the same reason why millions of people spend so much time on Instagram, or why they spend so much time making sure they have just the right set of photos for their Tinder profile.

Selling cars in an Instagram society

Just consider for a moment that there are over 1 billion active Instagrammers, and more than half of those users (500 million) are active every day. What’s more, 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram every day, and over 40 billion photos and videos have been shared on the Instagram platform since its conception¹.

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but it’s a good photo that gets their attention, and to buy a car.

So, other than the obvious (higher sales), why should dealers care so much about better photos? Because without them they’re literally flushing money down the drain. Borrell Associates expects auto dealers will spend roughly $9.4 billion this year on advertising and marketing² — up 8.8% compared with 2021.

Online technology makes the photo process different

That’s a lot of money for a segment of the industry notoriously careful about advertising expenditure. However, the problem dealers run into isn’t the decision on whether to spend on advertising, but rather “how” they go about that spending. Especially when it comes to vehicle photos, online technology has become extremely advanced, and you can’t pull out a polaroid, snap a few quick pics and expect to grab someone’s attention anymore. In fact, without understanding all of today’s technical nuances of photography, your photos may not even make it to Google.

Across the hundreds of dealership advertising campaigns, we observe and consult on each month across the U.S., we typically see about half of dealership vehicle inventory photos disabled and rejected by search engines after initially posted due to poor image quality, overlays, dumb text, etc. Educating dealers on the finer intricacies of acceptable photography today, and how that translates over to their marketing technology needs remains mission number one.

Good vehicle photos aren’t just point-and-shoot

Dealers today have two primary areas of need when it comes to building the right vehicle image inventory – the right resources to take the photos, and the right training on understanding how to take good photos. Like many other areas of digital business today, there are plenty of apps and software available where dealers can upload their photos. But if they don’t have the right equipment and training, all of that software is like a shirtless guy on Tinder holding a fish – it’s useless, and it won’t get you paid. And training is important because dealership turnover remains a significant issue. Your best in-house vehicle photographer might be here today and gone tomorrow, so finding a partner with unlimited employee training is critical.

Once the photos are taken and uploaded, there’s one more key element that today’s apps and software won’t help with – professional editing. Vehicle images must offer the right angles, light balance, straightness and color corrections. These minor details can mean the difference between someone falling in love with their next BMW or moving on to see a Lexus.

The last thing to point out with photos today is quality control. Whether it’s used or new inventory, when it shows up on the lot the photos must be taken, and taken right. This is especially important today, where used and pre-owned inventory is just as critical as new. When vehicles come out of reconditioning, professional editors must catch every little detail, such as a photo of a vehicle with no bumper – it happens more than you think.

Understanding each of these photography best practice areas will be critical to not only meeting and surpassing monthly sales goals, but they will help ensure car shoppers remember the superior online shopping experience they had in your digital storefront. The right vehicle photography will keep them coming back, improve sales, and ensure that you’re not wasting digital marketing dollars each month on search engines. 

About The Author: Peter Duffy is the Founder/CEO of Dealer Image Pro, a professional photo, video & 360 software company based in California. Dealer Image Pro helps hundreds of dealers take their merchandising in-house by offering the equipment, unlimited training, and professional editing, and quality control for all of the dealers they work with. They are experts in-house merchandising and studio design for auto dealers. For more information visit https://www.dealerimagepro.com/.

Appendix:

1: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/04/20/instagram-statistics

2: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/370082/automotive-dealerships-poised-to-spend-94-billio.html

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Electrified vehicle sales growth of 81% led industry growth. Sales of EVs grew 44.8% year over year, setting a Q1 record with just under 100,000 sales. Sales of hybrid vehicles exceeded more than 200,000 in the quarter which makes sense as gas prices in California, for example, are now reaching $5 a gallon.

Cox Automotive and Kelley Blue Book analysis chart:

Cox and Kelley Blue Book Analysis:

Tesla sold approximately 69,300 vehicles in Q1 and accounted for 71% of total EV sales in Q1, down from 12% share in Q1 2020 as others jump in the game.

The new Tesla Model Y is the best-selling EV in the U.S., followed by the Tesla Model 3. The Model 3 was the No. 1 best-selling EV in 2020, but sales in the U.S. market declined by more than 50% year over year in the first quarter of 2021. The Chevrolet Bolt was No. 3 on the EV list, with nearly 10,000 sales in the quarter. The all-new Ford Mustang Mach-E, which went on sale in December, was No. 4, outselling both the Tesla Model S and Model X. 

While sales of EVs are increasing, hybrid sales are increasing more quickly, according to the Cox Automotive analysis. Sales of hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles jumped by 106% in Q1. Toyota, a hybrid pioneer, delivered most of that growth, selling 124,449 electrified vehicles in Q1, up from 49,576 in Q1 2020. Nearly 25% of new Toyota vehicles are now hybrids. The Toyota RAV4 Hybrid is now the best-selling hybrid in the U.S., with sales of 32,263 vehicles in the first quarter. The new Toyota Sienna minivan, which is available exclusively as a hybrid, is No. 2 with sales of 26,044.   

In all, there are more than 60 different hybrid or plug-in hybrid vehicles now available in the U.S. Honda is the No.2 hybrid maker, with more than 22,000 hybrids sold in Q1. Honda’s electrified tally was 7.1% of its total Q1 sales volume, up from 3.5% in Q1 2020. Ford is the No. 3 player with more than 18,000 hybrids sold, including 7,176 F-Series pickups. Volvo sold more than 2,800 electrified vehicles in the first quarter, accounting for 11.5% of the brand’s total sales in Q1.

“Electrified vehicle growth in the U.S. and around the world is shining a spotlight on battery development and sourcing,” said Cox Automotive Executive Analyst Michelle Krebs. “As the industry builds more vehicles with battery packs, sourcing of these parts and lifetime management of the battery cells is a critical hurdle the industry must clear.”

About Cox Automotive
Cox Automotive Inc. makes buying, selling, owning and using vehicles easier for everyone. The global company’s more than 27,000 team members and family of brands, including Autotrader^®, Clutch Technologies, Dealer.com^®, Dealertrack^®, Kelley Blue Book^®, Manheim^®, NextGear Capital^®, VinSolutions^®, vAuto^® and Xtime^®,are passionate about helping millions of car shoppers, 40,000 auto dealer clients across five continents and many others throughout the automotive industry thrive for generations to come. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., a privately-owned, Atlanta-based company with annual revenues of nearly $20 billion. www.coxautoinc.com

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Status is onlineAnthony Giagnacovo CEO of CallRevu | Board Member and Advisor | Investor and Mentor25 articles Following

Leaders recognize that even with a vaccine on the horizon, we won’t be going back to the way things were before COVID-19, for a long stretch to come. Today, we can only go forward, and now is not the time to cut back on investing in innovation.

At CallRevu, we’ve proven that we can help dealerships achieve sales and loyalty goals and drive immediate ROI. Over the past decade, sales organizations began leaning heavily on email and social media to reach prospective customers. However, with smartphone click2call features, voice command trends have been showing a renewed high focus on the telephone to provide a more personalized experience for potential customers. This is even more true since the pandemic hit us, which has changed how people view the purchase of an automobile. It is not that the phone ever disappeared, rather it simply faded into the noise of the sales organization – a tool managed by IT, and a commodity that organizations assumed had reached the end of its evolution. Like your water or electricity, the telephone was only ever thought about when it wasn’t working. Chip King, CallRevu’s founder, would say “Your customers tell you every day what you need to know to earn and keep their sales and service business…all you have to do is listen!”. Listening, by way of capturing accurate information, sentiment, and emotion from a telephone call, will help you better understand your customer and improve the customer experience.

The COVID-19 crisis and its restrictions has proven that to understand the buyer experience, and a dealership’s own internal sales processes, voice is the new innovation. While email automation, social media, and chat have changed the game in recent years, Salesforce.com research has shown that 92% of customer interactions are still occurring over the phone. And, since 79% of sales leaders say that at least half of their sales reps use personal cell phones to make business calls, organizations need to take a broader look at what telephony means to their teams.

CallRevu Helps Dealers:

·      Achieve recurring sales and service revenue retention

o  “…When customers regularly service with you, they are 86 times more likely to buy their next car from you…” (source: CBT News)

§ Acquiring a new customer costs up to 25 times as much as retaining existing customers!! – CallRevu

·      Allow Car Dealers to “LISTEN” to customer demands and meet them where they are

• The Customer has to win, for the Dealer to win! Ultimately Conversation Intelligence software serves the automotive customer first by improving their experience…… which brings the big win to the dealer that listened!

·      Accelerate appointment setting or inquiry response

o  A Salesforce.com study showed that telephone outreach out-converted emails by a significant margin (8.21% vs 0.03%)

·      Accomplish – Not only does voice interaction drive momentum in deals, but the underlying technology can have a major impact on sales productivity. 83% of sales leaders feel that having a phone system automatically log call information into a CRM after a call ended, would greatly decrease the amount of time spent on administrative tasks. When features like automatic dialers or other workflow capabilities are leveraged in a sales organization, Dealers are able to spend more time selling and less time on administrative tasks.

CallRevu’s communication intelligence software uses call recording and transcription tools to analyze calls, organize a playbook, facilitate coaching conversations, and help increase a sales agent’s performance. Insights from these tools are used to help train, share best practices, and improve sales processes using our outbound call tracking functionality. This allows your sales reps and BDCs to call leads and contacts directly through the solution, and record call and prospect data. The information typically integrates into a CRM for call and activity logging. CallRevu’s communication intelligence software seeks to provide sales agents with a more efficient and informed way to interact with clients through voice, text and other channels while providing insight into areas that the employees and dealership can improve on. This ensures that communication is in-line with the promise of the dealership’s name and brand. This is important because the impact a voice can have on a sales conversion is extensive.

The 2nd wave of COVID-19 is resulting in unpredictable business conditions for the next 4 months:

·      Closed showrooms?

·      Sales and Service by Appointment only?

·      Virtual purchases from anywhere?

Yours needs to be the dealership a potential vehicle buyer selects. How do you stand out in a sea of dealerships? By handling your customer effectively the first time, on the first call. This is THE MOST CRITICAL element of building a relationship! It is from that first experience that a potential customer often chooses your dealership over another.

CallRevu is the leader in communication intelligence for the automotive industry. We help your dealership CONNECT, COMMUNICATE and CLOSE! Contact us to learn more about how we can help you RECOVER and INNOVATE.

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Tom Murray, co-founder of WebBuy discusses the benefits and advantages of their newly designed, modular valuation tool (CarValuator) that adapts to any franchise or Independent dealer’s site. The success they had early on with digital retailing for Rimrock Auto Group as well as many others, was the incentive to enhance the design of this customizable, modular solution that delivers instant purchase offers and converts at unusually high percentages (I’ve seen the data). Dealers don’t have to engage the entire WebBuy digital retailing solution, rather they can simply implement CarValuator ala carte.

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Increasing battery pack energy densities holds the key to future vehicle design

BOSTON, MA., NOVEMBER 12, 2020: Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are poised to be the future of the auto industry. Looking toward the future of BEVs, a new report from Lux Research, “Electric Vehicle Lightweighting 2030,” analyzes the future of vehicle lightweighting and necessary BEV success factors over the next decade.

In the past, lightweighting – or purposely designing more lightweight cars specifically for fuel efficiency – has been a key tool for improving the fuel economy of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. However, the transition from ICEs to BEVs changes both the goals and the design considerations around lightweighting. Anthony Schiavo, Senior Analyst at Lux, states, “BEVs are overwhelmingly more efficient than ICE vehicles due to regenerative braking and more efficient motors and are increasingly outgrowing the issue of limited range. Materials companies need to start planning for a fully mature BEV space.”

Lux predicts that battery pack energy densities will increase by roughly 15% over the next decade. This increased energy density can be used to either extend the range of a vehicle by keeping battery size the same or reduce cost by shrinking the size of the battery pack. In its analysis, Lux modeled both scenarios and calculated a lightweighting benchmark. Lux determined that in order for lightweighting to be a cost-effective solution against batteries by 2030, it will need to cost, on average, less than $5 per kilogram of weight saved.

“This benchmark is not the only thing guiding lightweighting decisions,” cautions Schiavo. “To find adoption, materials companies and manufacturers will need to find solutions that save on both weight and cost.”

https://bit.ly/3lfFXeq“We predict vehicle structure will be an opportunity for high-strength steel and aluminum, as they provide weight reductions at minimal cost,” Schiavo continues. “Bumpers are expected to benefit from design advancements that utilize glass fiber, carbon fiber, and thermoplastics. Other material priorities, such as sustainability, durability, and end-of-life issues, however, will take priority over lightweighting by 2030.” Lux found that there’s far more risk of disruption from improving energy storage technologies – which could substantially outstrip forecast improvements by 2030 – than there is from novel innovations in materials. For the full article: https://bit.ly/3lfFXeq

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