“Well the frost is on the pumpkin, And the hay is in the barn…” those lines from James Taylor’s “Walking Man” always remind me of this time of the year. It’s harvest time, and it’s time for the gardener/farmer to go out and start picking the crops they’ve been growing all season.
If you’re going to play in the internet you need to understand the importance of having a full time “gardener” for your online garden. Someone to nurture it, coax it along, do all of the right things at the right times. Otherwise you’ll end up with what I see a lot of out there: a land of promise transformed into a barren and forsaken land whose bleakness is only interrupted by patches of weeds, brambles, and thorns.
This month’s column compliments perfectly last month’s screed on the importance of hiring the right people. I was up in the air as to which one to present first, but once I seized on the garden/farming metaphor, I figured this one made more sense to run in October. 
Last month’s column was all about why and how to hire the best people possible, this month’s column is about what you need them to do and why it needs to be a full-time position.
There’s a lot of moving parts in a modern, successful online operation. There’s the technical side of things to make sure the websites, databases, and applications all work the way they are supposed to. Then there’s the artistic and design aspects to make sure that the world perceives your brand as favoriably as possible. There’s the art and science of search engine optimization and search engine marketing. You’ve also got to consider product merchandising, promotions, and the overall shopping experience. Of course on top of all those, there’s the seemingly infinite number of other things that always seem to pop up. Broken things to fix, decent things to improve, opportunities to pursue, ideas to test and experiment with, etc. etc.
If you think that it’s possible to do all of this without at least one full time person, you’re delusional. In a perfect world you’d have at least one person working on each of these facets. If you want to be successful online, either via e-commerce or just online marketing and advertising (perhaps via social networking technologies like Twitter, Facebook, etc.) you need to have at least one highly competent and dedicated individual in charge of it all.
You need someone that can eat and sleep this stuff. There’s simply too many highly lucrative opportunities to fill this position with a 9-5 clock puncher. You need someone that is passionate about your market (motorcycles, racing, ATV’s, watercraft, etc.), passionate about the web, passionate about social technologies, passionate about design. You need to encourage and support them with the tools, technologies, and most importantly education necessary to stay on top of it all.
I can say with certainty that when a business has at least one person like I’m describing above, they are virtually unstoppable. When they don’t have that, they go nowhere fast and the decline is dramatic and almost instantaneous. It’s a hard climb to the top and it’s too easy on the internet to be knocked off your perch. It’s so easy for the competition to take advantages of unprotected flanks. You’re at the mercy of ever-changing search engine algorithms that can wipe you off the face of web with the flip of a bit.
If you think that you can just move someone that did a decent job as a parts manager into the role of running your websites, your e-commerce, your online marketing and expect to see anything short of poor results without a ton of training, development, and support, you’re just not being realistic.
But assuming that you do hire someone with the intelligence, drive, and potential, how do you get them started. Well, at the risk of being immodest, the first thing you should do is have them read all my columns. If you go wayyyy back to the very beginning, over the years I’ve laid out an almost step-by-step outline of what to do, how to do it, where to get more information, etc. Considering how much I charge for consulting, and considering you’re getting Dealernews for free, if you’re not doing what I’m telling you, well, then there’s something wrong with you. Look, I’m not being arrogant if it’s true!
This is an area of specialized expertise just like the other aspects of your dealership. Do you have a service department without a service manager? A sales department without a sales manager? A parts department without a parts manager? Not if you’re a high-performing dealership. Obviously if you’re doing e-commerce there’s going to be a lot of overlap into areas of the parts department, but you still need to think of your online operations like its own line of business.
I don’t think there’s very many retailers/dealerships out there that have figured this out yet. I think part of that is because a lot of the 20-type groups and other general industry consultants that may have years and years of excellent experience in the “traditional” dealership management roles don’t have a clue about the internet. They don’t properly recognize the immense potential it represents, nor do they properly understand or respect how difficult it is to do it right.
Because the majority of training and education dealerships do get (if they get any) is from these traditional sources, they are absolutely missing out on this stuff. That’s why I write this column. That’s why Dealernews is the only industry trade publication that has dedicated space to these topics for years. We recognize the need to get this information out to you, the dealers, retailers, and independent shops to help you survive the uncertain and turbulent future.
We’ve only witnessed the beginning of the amazing potential the internet has to dramatically and radically reshape the very nature of our industry. Next month I’m going to unleash on you my nightmare vision of the fiery hell-scape unleashed by the Internet Monster in all its fury. Whoa be unto those that have not embraced Todd’s Gospel of The Interwebs and are caught up in the chaotic aftermath (it will be right after Halloween after all!).
Tags:Column, DealerNews, dealerships, E-Commerce, ecommerce, employment, internet, Merchandising, motorcycle, powersports, selling-online
