If a salesperson pulls out a mobile phone when greeting a customer, does the customer perceive it as a distraction or is it seen as being on the cutting-edge of technology? Is it a sign that the dealership is current with the modern age and are using tools to serve them better? Or is it just rude!?!

Another thing that the sales force was not necessarily doing that well was handling the calls, the incoming calls and things, so we created business development centers. BDC was going to be the answer, and that was going to be our end-all be-all to fix things, but really the BDC is not an automatic problem solver.

When you’ve got all this information, a dealer has a tool in place that collected this information, the natural tendency is, “I’m gonna blast these people with all kinds of emails and they’re gonna hear from me all the time. What a great way! I’m gonna have my name in front of them,” but that can be the death of your process, as well.

I’m with you every step of the way, so if things start to look like they’re getting out of control, I can step in and help. If I don’t know where you’re at in the process, I can’t. So, again, you’re making my life easier.

Now you talked a lot about customers and the ways that we have historically gotten in touch with them and things like that. And you’re right, everybody now has a mobile phone, but are we still utilizing the wrong channels to get a hold of our customers?

We’ve been working with CRM tools, at least in the automotive industry for the last 30 years. And here we are again talking about it. You would think we would be like done with it by now, right?

Somebody can get online, they can look in two, three, four places, but when they finally do come through your door, you need to earn their business, because they’ve already done their shopping.  You’re probably going to contend with some misinformation that they’ve gathered on their own, or thought they gathered on their own.

It seems like for a salesperson managing their contact information, there are some similarities to retail Automotive.  I would think that in both Industries the sales person that waits around for the door to sway and the phone to ring is going to be in last place.  It sounds like there are opportunities to be very aggressive about contacting people because they want these new things. They’re not afraid to buy them.  Is that true?