Sound like this is going to be some Beckian anti-government Tea-Party rant?

Nope. This is about something important that will actually matter to your real life.

I’ve got a few things to say about a little topic called M.A.P., or Minimum Advertised Prices (click here for a primer).

This is a long one. You’re about to see what happens to me without an editor!

MAP is a policy exerted on retailers by a PG&A OEM or distributor in an effort to keep a brand’s price (and ostensibly its brand equity) artificially inflated. OEM’s can’t, or often don’t try, to limit what you actually charge for a product, but they do try to control how you communicate or advertise a price.

If OEM’s are really that concerned with maintaining exclusivity and brand equity they should just be selling directly.

My position on MAP in the past has been that I don’t like it on principal or in practice, but if it’s going to exist then it needs to be enforced 100% evenly across the board: no loop holes, no selective enforcement, no games.

I’m also on the record in several columns that I also don’t believe running a cut-rate outfit is a path to long-term success. However, business reality dictates that specials, discounts, and other promotions (when used wisely) are an important tool in the box when running a business.

As a retailer we should have the freedom to run our business how we see fit.

I have now changed my stance on MAP. I don’t like it and I’d like to see it done away with.

Not only don’t like it, I think it’s harming our industry as a whole and benefiting a select few (mostly the OEM’s that create and enforce it).

Over the years that I’ve been writing my column on e-commerce, I’ve read or heard from dealers that really want MAP policies. They think that by having draconian MAP policies that prohibit internet retailers from selling at prices that are different than what “regular” dealers sell in their store, or on their website, they are “safe.”

What I think is going to happen is that these dealers are going to discover that Ben Franklin was right when he said “Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.” If you are a small or medium sized dealership, those MAP policies are not there for your benefit.

They are there to keep you, Mr. or Ms. Dealership, in line while they wait for the business model that currently drives this industry to turn their way.

MAP policy in the end is going to hurt small retailers much, much more than it will disrupt the large pure-play e-commerce companies.

Most OEM’s or distributors “enforce” their policy by threatening to put a dealer on a “no ship” status for a period of time or to just outright stop doing business with them. Obviously it’s the OEM’s decision to do business with whomever they want and to do so however they feel is appropriate.

The reality is that a very small number of powerful OEM’s and distributors supply popular or must-have brands. Due to their broad appeal and ability to get shopper’s attention a retailer has to carry them. The option of telling these folks, “Thanks, but we’d prefer to have control of our own business and do business with suppliers that are partners as opposed to overlords” is not a viable, realistic alternative.

The biggest problem comes down to selective enforcement or special “arrangements” between some retailers and MAP-happy OEM’s or distributors. These may be overt (i.e. the apparently special relationship between LeMans and Dennis Kirk that Arlo Redwine has detailed on the DN blog), or they may come down to the MAP enforcer choosing to just turn a blind eye on transgressions by certain retailers.

When the enforcement mechanism is to not sell to a retailer, and that retailer sells literally tens of millions of dollars of that OEM’s product, do you really think they are going to put that retailer on “no ship” if they find ways around a MAP or just decide they don’t want to follow it?

In addition to their market clout, large internet and catalog retailers in our industry have the luxury of expensive legal advice that helps them find loopholes in the MAP policies.

If smaller retailers/dealers try these same “tricks” they are often subject to a phone call or email from the OEM/distributor’s legal team (however, the person on the phone is most likely not actually a lawyer and typically doesn’t have the authority to actually clarify or discuss the actual policy).

The major e-tailer’s legal capability can discourage OEM enforcement because the OEM knows the policy that won’t stand up to the rigorous challenge a crack legal team could mount. I don’t know a lot of small dealers with access to those kinds of legal resources.

Don’t even get me started on what will happen once they start distributing directly to folks like Amazon. Considering Amazon’s potential buying power, no OEM in our industry has the balls to tell Amazon what they can sell a product for, especially if a deal with Amazon (or Wal-Mart, or Sears, etc.) means 2X, 3X, or 4X the order volumes and dramatic increases in operating efficiency and profits.

Large e-tailers also have the luxury of custom e-commerce platforms that allow them to create systematic end-arounds to the MAP policies in the forms of cash-back programs, rebates, gift-cards, loyalty programs, etc.

Instead of saying that a MAP protected helmet (from a large OEM and distributor) that normally sells for $300 is 20% off (which would explicitly violate said MAP policy) a large e-tailer can say “Buy this $300 helmet and receive 20% cash-back good on your next purchase” or “Buy this $300 helmet and get a $60 gift card.”

What’s nuts is that you can use this card or discount on a future purchase of a MAP protected product as well! And for some reason this is all OK with the folks writing and enforcing these MAP policies? So much for wanting to enforce brand equity though artificially inflated prices!

You can say “Low Price Guarantee: We won’t be under-sold! If you find [insert MAP controlled product name here] for less we’ll beat it!” Apparently this price protection is considered a private contract between the retailer and the customer and is not enforced under MAP… Lawyers… Gotta love ‘em…

If they are serious about the real purpose of MAP, why would these loopholes be OK?

If everyone on every internet forum on the face of the planet knows that they can call up or email UberMotoShoppingMegaSite.com and get a MAP protected jacket or pair of gloves that they found through a Google search on your (Mr. or Ms. rule-following, local dealership) site, but you can’t communicate to that shopper that you can and will in fact sell for the same low price that the big guys do… How does MAP help you again?

Even when the website/e-commerce platform providers in our industry have a way to enable the same promotional methods that the large e-tailers offer, thereby moving to a more level playing field, OEM/distributors drag their feet and don’t offer the necessary approvals that would be required to allow development to move forward.

In fact, as of this writing one platform provider has been waiting for several months for approval from a large OEM/distributor’s legal team regarding a promotional mechanism that would allow dealers the freedom necessary to compete with the large e-tailers while not violating MAP.

Why would the powerful OEM/distributor be so slow to enable small dealers to have the same promotional tools that large e-tailers have? No… Really… Someone please tell me why they have time and resources to track down every little dealership out there advertising products for $10 below MAP, but can’t get around to authorizing something as simple as this?

Let me put my tin-foil hat on for a moment:

Large OEM’s and distributors have recognized the writing on the wall.

Over the next ten years most (80%+?) of their business is going to come from large e-commerce retailers (even more so if the likes of Wal-Mart, Sears, and Amazon really start playing in the PG&A space as it looks like they intend to).

If they can do 80%+ of their PG&A volume with only 5-7 large retailers, they can dramatically reduce their overhead in the forms of sales expense, logistics expenses, etc. Right?

If they can get the market to look like that, don’t they have a fiduciary responsibility to their investors to do that?

By enacting draconian MAP policies that are only strongly enforced on the smaller, more legally defenseless dealerships, they can force the market into a shape that is more conducive to their bottom line.

I don’t care if Amazon, Wal-Mart, Sears, etc. all actually follow MAP. How many customers shopping for a new helmet, gloves, or jacket are going to buy from your shop over Amazon if the price is the same?

It’s not so much that they want you all to go out of business overnight… But if they can help steer our industry to a model with a more easily managed small number of retailers… I guess you can’t blame them really. It actually is a pretty good long term plan for them to become even more profitable.

So as you can see, MAP is basically a game. Even if it was possible to enforce 100% (which it never would be), odds are that the large e-tailers would be immune through the use of their market clout, legal muscle, or systematic work-arounds.

Even if you have a MAP policy that could theoretically be enforced 100%, like all command economies, it will lead to black-market sales and other back-room deals if the MAP price is perceived as too high vs. other non-MAP products.

I’d argue that in the long run, MAP policies even hurt the OEM/Distributor because it robs them of important market signals pointing to the actual value of the product in the marketplace.

Under MSRP and MAP, some product manager builds a fancy Excel sheet to determine the best price. It then has its legal team enforce the MAP policy. What does that sound like to you?

Last time I checked a theory writ-large that looked pretty close to this failed in the ex-Soviet Union.

Even the PRC has recognized that free-market economics makes more sense than trying to a command and control economy in many instances.

Companies with MAP policies apparently are not big on history or economics.

Here’s a scenario: Helmet I sells for a MAP protected MSRP of $450 and dealer cost of $292 (profit: $158). Unfortunately at that price it just doesn’t stack up to (or sell as much as) Helmet K that retails for $500 but has a street price of $380 and a dealer cost of $300 (profit: $80).

Now as a retailer, I know my market, my customer, etc. and I know that if I could sell Helmet I at $380 I would sell the crap out of them!

I’d still be clearing more profit per unit than Helmet K and I’d move more units which would make more money for me and ironically for the OEM that wants MAP!

There’s no way that some brand manager at an OEM could envision those market dynamics when setting the MAP MSRP 6 or 8 months ahead of the market launch.

They don’t know what the economy is going to look like, they don’t know what competitors are going to do, etc.

OEM’s and distributors need to worry about setting a wholesale price that allows them to make a profit when they sell to a retailer and that’s it. Period. End of story.

The idea of using MAP as a way to “protect” a brand’s image is a joke when it’s clear that there are so many tricks and loopholes that allow the protected products to be sold at prices nowhere near the MAP.

Check out the abundance of MAP protected products that are sold on Amazon or on eBay through gray-market distribution deals as just one example of how MAP breaks down and does nothing to 1) protect the brand or 2) protect legit retailers.

In the end, here’s my take on MAP:

• MAP policies hurt retailers by limiting their options and choices in how they run their business
• MAP policies (either intentionally or deliberately) can never be enforced 100% across the board so it creates artificial inefficiencies in the market
• The resources being used to write, monitor, and enforce MAP are 100% non-value-added. I’ve been told that some retailers have people on staff full time that do nothign but find, and report MAP violations. These are the same people that volunteered to be hall monitors in grade school I bet.
• MAP policies hurt customers by forcing prices to be artificially high in the same way that price control cartels like OPEC artificially control the price of oil
• MAP price controls are eventually ineffective as grey-market retailers on sites like Amazon, eBay, etc. sell out the back-door of less scrupulous dealers

And here’s my suggestion. If you get a call from a MAP enforcer, have them speak to your lawyer.

If you find cases of large e-tailers violating the same MAP policies, report them to the OEM’s legal team and verify that the offending company has made the changes to their site or advertisement within the required time. If they don’t, then have your lawyer write a letter to the OEM pointing out that it appears that they are selectively enforcing the policy.

Eventually if we drown these OEM’s legal teams in reports of MAP abuse and catch them in the act of selectively enforcing MAP they will give up on the idea of playing this game of whack-a-mole.

Next we can try to name & shame. I’m creating a topic on my site here where you can leave comments and links to retailers that are violating MAP policies. It will be our own little MAP enforcement clearing house. Or Stasi if you will.

What’s pretty awesome about that idea is that I’m pretty sure that once the FTC gets wind of that post, and what is without doubt a clear case of collusion in our industry to keep prices artificially inflated, they will demand that it’s shut down.

Now if that happens, that pretty much proves that MAP is illegal, right? Collusion… Price-fixing… I’m pretty sure there’s a law or two somewhere about that.

Until these policies are challenged in court and eventually done away with, we are going to continue to see more and more power shift into fewer and fewer hands and that’s not going to be good for your customers, our industry, or most importantly your business.

I believe that these MAP issues are just the most evident tip of the iceberg that represents a looming challenge to the dominant business model in our industry.

However this time it’s going to be the Titantic that rams right though the iceberg. All of us, in our little boats, are going to be the ones at the bottom of the North Atlantic.

Let me know what you think.

I’ve created this post for the purpose of insuring that as long as OEM’s and other sources of supply in the motorcycle and powersports industry continue to create and enforce M.A.P. (minimum advertised price) policies (thus creating what are essentially price fixing scenarios) that all violators are treated the same.

It’s the “action” arm of my lengthy post on my take on MAP in general that you can read here.

The goal here is to make sure large retailers and small retailers are all being held to the same standard when it comes to MAP.

So, when you see a violation of MAP anywhere (email, print, website, eBay, Amazon, Google products feeds, etc.) in addition to following the policy of the OEM and reporting the violation to them, report it here as well so everyone can see it. Simply use the comments at the bottom of the page. You don’t need to use your real name to leave a post. I’ll be moderating the comments to eliminate spam, but that’s it. I take ZERO responsibility as to the accuracy of the MAP violation claim. I have no idea if the items actually violate any given OEM’s MAP policy. That’s for the OEM to decide.

The OEM’s with MAP are more than welcome to post their responses to MAP violation claims here as well. As are the offending retailers.

When the offending retailer has made the change to their site, etc. please update the comment section. Likewise, if after reporting the violation to the OEM/Disti you don’t see the retailer being forced to toe the MAP line make that clear as well.

Hopefully by having this fully open and transparent discussion of MAP and all of its tangential issues we can work to create a more fair, competitive, and vibrant powersports market.

Holding my breath…. NOW!

One thing that’s pretty obvious from looking through those stacks of catalogs on your parts counter is that we are in an industry with an insane number of products that our customers can choose from. While a small percentage of the hard-core enthusiasts know exactly what they want (you know the type.. The ones that have the distributor catalog memorized and come in with reams of printouts from the forums) most people need some help figuring out what they need or even more importantly what they don’t know they need.

Unlike in your physical store where you can have one of your knowledgeable and helpful staff aid a lost customer, on your website for the most part, the customer is on their own (unless of course you’ve got some type of online chat and co-browsing or co-shopping application on your site).

When it comes to e-commerce, the only tool you really have to help the customer is the merchandising on your website. For the purpose of this column I’m going to define merchandising to encompass three things:

1. Organization of the products (product or feature groups, category and taxonomy development, etc.)
2. Selection of products (what product go into those groupings or receive some other type of “feature” status)
3. Presentation of the products

The first two elements go hand in hand. You can create a “category” on your site and call it something like “Maintenance Essentials” with products that pretty much anyone that rides any type of powersports vehicle is going to find useful or necessary. One of those items may be chain lube. Let’s say you’ve got access to like 10 different brands each with 3 variations and 3 different sizes. That’s 90 different combinations! For one simple product!

Imagine this type of scenario that I think makes up 80% of the shopping situations out there: A guy rides his motorcycle as an alternate commute vehicle and an occasionally for recreation. He likes his motorcycle, but he’s got a life. He doesn’t spend every waking moment on forums to determine what the ultimate chain lube is. He doesn’t ride with a big group of people that will sit around debating the relative benefits of various type of chain lube. All he knows is that his chain looks dirty and needs cleaning and lubing.

He goes to your site, or any typical site, and types in chain lube and is presented with almost 100 choices! For a simple product like chain lube! You need to make sure that on your site that you’ve picked the “best” one or two options for these major product types and present them in a way that makes it 1) easy to find and 2) communicate that based on your expert opinion that these are the ones to go with. Basically the exact same thing that a good parts person would do in a face-to-face situation. The difference is that online you need to do all of this before the customer ever comes onto your site.

There are a few different ways that you can do this. The first is the idea of creating multiple personas of model customers and so scenario planning on how they may interact with your site. Create like 3 to 5 customer types (the hard-core enthusiast, the casual rider, the spouse or parent of a rider, the total noob, etc.) and then imagine a few different scenarios for each type (a major part broke and they need to find a replacement right now, they are new to riding and need everything but don’t know anything, they need to buy a birthday gift for their wife, son, friend that rides, and so on). Pretend to be these various types in various situations and try to organize your site so that there are obvious categories and product assortments that make each customer’s shopping experience as fulfilling as possible.

If your site has been live for a few years and you’ve been using a good analytics package, you can use its data to see how people use your site and utilize real-world data in your scenario planning. Where they go, what they buy, what they look at and don’t buy, etc. etc.

Obviously this is all a lot of work. It’s so much easier to just buy a site from a 3rd party vendor with all the catalogs pre-loaded, or build your own and dump a product feed into it, have a few general categories like helmets, exhausts, etc., and be done with it. That’s what 99% of the sites out there do, and that’s why 99% of the sites out there suck and don’t sell anything! Not only does merchandising make it easier to shop, it’s just about the strongest tool you have to differentiate your site from all the other sites out there!

That doesn’t mean that you should do away with the potentially millions of other products in your online catalogs. More often than not, you’ll want to present that potentially overwhelming selection on a second layer behind the your primary merchandising and allow customers to drill down to explore. Always have a “See all of our chain lube products” link next to your hand-picked selection. Of course a robust and powerful search tool is your best bet to handle these kinds of shoppers.

So now that we’ve dealt with the product selection and organization ideas, let’s move onto the final piece, the presentation of those products.

There are so many cool technologies these days that can help you communicate the features, advantages, and benefits of the products that you sell. You’ve of course got the good ol’ custom written and compelling product description. You’ve got the ability to take your own product photos that show things like the product in use, various angles or views, mounting options and so on. You’ve got videos that you can post on YouTube and embed in the product page. You can post sound files of exhaust systems. The limit is really only your imagination and the amount of time you want to devote to it.

At the very top you can even go big time and use rich-media technology like Adobe’s Scene7 (www.scene7.com) that can provide a huge range of presentation and interaction opportunities.

Try to remember that you are the expert in what you sell. Use that expertise to help customers figure out what they should be buying and communicate it through professional merchandising on your site.

What I’m talking about is taking advantage of things like e-commerce applications on social networking sites like Facebook and other “widgets” that you can embed in blogs or forums.

The first example I’ll point out is a company called Payvment [http://www.payvment.com/] that has a nifty little storefront application for Facebook.

In order for this to work you’ll need to have a Facebook fan page set up for your dealership. You simply install the application on your page, set up the look at feel of the storefront using the tools that Payvement gives you, enter in some information about your shop, and then start loading products. (Obviously there’s more detailed steps involved and Payvment’s site provides all the details).

I’d recommend experimenting at first and a load a small selection (around 10) of products that are impulse buy, gift, general interest type of products. You’ll want to keep in mind that Facebook is not really a shopping destination, and typically you’ll want to focus on the interaction and social networking aspect of Facebook and keep the sales pitches to a minimum. But since it is a fan page, I see it as a great way to sell things like t-shirts, hats, and other items branded with your shop’s logo, or the brands that you carry.

Considering that Payvement is totally free to use right now, there’s really no reason to not give it a try and see if there’s a sensible way for you to fit it into the overall online activities.

One dealership that has begun experimenting with Payvment is Ducati Seattle [http://tinyurl.com/ykppl42]. What’s interesting about the fact that they have this e-commerce application running on Facebook is that they don’t even have any e-commerce on their primary dealership website!

Ducati Seattle’s Cindy Wallace is in charge of the Facebook storefront as well as their eBay store where they focus on selling crash damage take-offs, excess & obsolete, etc. Cindy told me that based on a combination of factors (strong local community support & involvement in the shop, etc.) Ducati Seattle has made the decision to not have a full-blown e-commerce operation. “People prefer to come into the shop to buy things where they can actually see them and to see other people there as well.”

But that doesn’t mean that they are not active online in other ways. Based on leadership by Ducati Seattle’s owner David Roosevelt they have made a decision to be very involved in social media like Facebook. Considering that they have over 1,200 fans on their Facebook page it makes sense that they are giving the Payvement application a test ride.

Another Facebook application for selling products from within your Facebook page is Nimbit MyStore for Facebook [http://tinyurl.com/yzvdzxh]. Nimbit seems to be going more for the rock band trying to sell merchandise angle (so they offer features like the ability to sell tickets or downloadable music), but I don’t see why you couldn’t use it to sell merchandise for your shop. Nimbit has several offerings that range from free to about twenty bucks a month.

Moving away from Facebook, I want to point out that there’s a growing number of widgets that allow you to place shopping experiences on more content-centered (as opposed to shopping-centered) websites and pages. A widget is a small bit of code that you embed in a webpage that provides a little area or box where something shows up that gives people information (weather, race results, etc.) or in our case a product display with the ability to buy it right there.

These widgets allow what I call contextual commerce. Where you can offer products that go along with the content the visitor is reading about. Writing a post in your blog about how to bleed the brakes? Why not have a widget in the side bar selling brake fluid, brake bleeders, pads, etc?

There’s quite a few people playing in this widget area out there. Here’s a few leads to get you started: BlinkCart [http://www.blinkcart.com/], Shopit [http://www.shopit.com/], CartFly [http://www.cartfly.com/], and Amazon [https://widgets.amazon.com/] even has widgets that let you sell products they offer (or that you have loaded as an Amazon merchant) on your site.

Check out Widgetbox (a clearinghouse of all things widget) as well and check out the ecommerce tag http://www.widgetbox.com/tag/ecommerce. Finally, of course, you can always Google “e-commerce widgets” to track down more of the latest and greatest as developers keep the wheels of progress humming along.

Having a storefront on Facebook or an e-commmerce widget on your blog is most likely not going to be a silver bullet in terms of generating a huge amount of extra revenue. A lot of this has to do with the fact that most people out there are not in the shopping mood when they are on a social site like Facebook. However, having a good selection of impulse purchase products and gifty items makes a lot of sense. It gives you a chance to have a few more hooks in the water in terms of selling things and it keeps you abreast of what’s going on in the world of e-commerce technology and off-site merchandising.

If you give this a try, please let me know how it works for you!

The reason I’ve been so gung-ho on the web was because it was the only practical way for a dealership to dramatically grow its revenue. A dealership could do nothing and float along with the economy, and we’ve seen what’s happening to them. A dealership could try to expand it’s physical presence into other markets by opening more shops, but that’s expensive, difficult, and risky. Or a dealership could take on the web in a big way.

On one hand, it’s good that so many of you seem to be doing this now. On the other hand I think a lot of you may have missed the window of opportunity. At least as far as jumping into straight e-commerce goes. Especially if my email load is any indication. I know of at least 10 dealerships that say they are going to jump in. Add to that the huge number that didn’t write to me, the number of dealerships already doing it, and of course the huge pure-play e-commerce guys like MotorcycleSuperstore and RevZilla, and as you can see, the pool is pretty darn crowded now.

So given this situation, I want to end my series of columns for 2009 playing Nostradamus and set the stage for a plausible future that I think you need to be thinking about, if not outright planning for.

The year is 2012. The previous two years didn’t provide the much hoped-for economic recovery (think I’m being overly pessimistic? Read this: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/tjan/2009/09/the-next-crisis-coming-in-2011.html). The economy as a whole managed to eek out a small amount of growth but only enough to keep it from sliding backwards. What’s worse is that it proved to be a totally jobless “recovery.” Consumers in the USA didn’t have the disposable income nor the security necessary to fuel the powersports industry at a level necessary to maintain it’s current model. More and more dealers closed. So many closed in fact that large urban centers around the US were now without a single powersports dealership. OEM’s were sitting on warehouses and leased lots full of vehicles that were working on their second or third birthday. Production back in their respective home countries was at a virtual standstill.

The dire economic situation had now forced the OEM’s (as well as parts, accessory, and gear manufacturers) to rethink not only their own business models, but the overall business model for our industry as a whole. The idea of having literally thousands of typically undifferentiated retailers across the country selling virtually undifferentiated products out of establishments that by their very nature were burdened with unsustainable overhead and other expenses had finally proved its ultimate folly.

Customers still wanted their motorcycles, ATV, PWC’s, etc. The OEM’s still wanted to stay in business producing them. The ultimate problem was the distribution and retail sales system. Finally, the smart OEM’s hit on a model that had worked before. They looked at the personal computer market pre-Dell and realized that there was an opportunity to leverage the phenomenal opportunity that the internet provided and essentially sell semi-direct. Customers would shop on the OEM’s, pick out the vehicle and options, and then buy it online.

However, unlike the relatively inexpensive and “basic” home PC, the products in our industry presented a level of technical, financial, and legal complexity that they still required one more node in the supply chain. Unlike a PC from Dell, the vehicle would not be shipped directly to the end customer.

The solution was to evolve to a model that traded information for inventory. Vehicle and PG&A inventory was now held as high in the supply chain as possible. What were once “dealerships” that occupied ten’s of thousands of square feet were now transformed into small “authorized delivery, setup, and service” locations. It was a radical transformation from huge dealerships to many more boutique-type establishments that now focused on much more high margin business activities such as the F&I portion of the sale, vehicle service and warranty work, and so on.

The fundamental discovery that allowed this model to work was the realization that the just-in-time logistics costs to get the right vehicle to the right delivery point at the right time could be done far more economically than the aggregated real and opportunity costs of the old (i.e. current) way of doing things.

Customers also shop for OEM branded and produced PG&A on the OEM’s site and have the opportunity to take delivery (for installation or set-up for instance) of the products from participating retail/delivery locations for a revenue share with the OEM.

These Delivery, Setup and Service locations were now composed of mostly high-magin activities and were relieved of much of the non value-added overhead burden from the previous industry model. However, because there was the potential for so many more locations in any given market, the emphasis on quality and high levels of customer service was even greater.

So what’s the moral of this cautionary tale? It’s this: “if you think the internet has been disruptive to your business so far, you’ve most likely not seen anything yet”! Our industry has not yet even begun to scratch the surface of what the internet and all of it’s prodigal technologies and business practices can do for (or to) us.

I’m sure a lot of you are shaking your head and saying: “this guy’s nuts!” Keep in mind I was telling you all two years ago to get into the e-commerce game. I’m sure more than a few of the dealers trying to finally get into the e-commerce game once said the same thing about selling on their websites. Most of you didn’t move until it was too late on the e-commerce front. What if I’m right about this? What are you going to do to prepare?

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.

So what happens to you guys in the middle? The X% that makes up most of the market. If one of the above does not describe you, then you’re the one I’m writing this for.

1) You’ll fail. You’ll fail most likely because of poor management and poor execution. You’re overstaffed because you need all those people to keep rolling the rock up the hill, but none of the people you have either posses the ability or the time to move you to the next quantum state. You can’t cut headcount because all of those people are needed as they are propping up a rotten structure on a broken foundation. You can’t or won’t recognize the problem and replace those “props” with more useful people because you’re too busy fighting fires. You never get your head above the water so you never get a chance to focus on developing the processes that will keep all those fires from happening in the first place.

2) You’ll get it, and you’ll survive. Not only will you survive, but you’ll begin building a new structure that will allow you to become an outstanding mega-achiever when the economy and other environmental factors allow it.

I’m thinking that #2 sounds a little more fun.

As a manager you need to keep in mind that the only three things you can really do as a leader to enable a successful outcome are: 1) recruit, hire, or acquire the best people you can, 2) educate and train them to be as good as possible, and 3) create or enable the creation of the processes and environment that will allow them to make the most of their abilities and education.

You have no real control over anything else. So why are you spending any time on the stuff you can’t control? I know why you’re doing it now. Because most likely you’re surrounded by people that would have a hard time getting hired at Starbucks. Do some research into the hiring process at Starbucks. Is making coffee harder than anything you do? Are the people that are working at Starbucks coffee “enthusiasts?” Do the people working at Starbucks need years and years of experience in the coffee industry to make Starbucks successful? Then why do they pay better and offer better benefits to their people than most of you do?

When you consider how much more your dealership’s individual success depends on having the best people, why are you hiring any ol’ mouth-breathing meth-head that stumbles into your dealership from a craigslist ad?

When I manage people, if they don’t provide at least one better alternative way to do a task that I assign, I make a negative mental note of it. I don’t want staff that is just there to do a task I don’t have time to do myself! I want staff there to do a task because they can do it better than I can! If they don’t have the mental capability or desire to do that, they’ve just begun the process of looking for a new place to work.

Why are you hiring three people at $8/hr. that contribute $X to your company when you could be hiring one person at $20/hr. that could contribute $X*5 if they were educated, intelligent, motivated, and surrounded by other educated, intelligent, and motivated people?

I know why. Because you would never even consider paying $20/hr for that position and letting three other people go because you can’t “afford it”. Or you need the people to just keep beating out the fires. Or you think that if you did bring that person on they would get “bored” or they wouldn’t fit in because they would be the only person there with a degree, or whatever…

Well, here’s my prediction: if you don’t do it you’ll be out of business shortly. Either because of your own businesses “problems”, or because another dealership (local or online) that is doing what I’ve talked about this month drives you under.

Of course the next big challenge you’re going to be faced with if you’re still around in two years is learning how to manage and motivate highly functioning people that are interested in doing more than just “turning the crank”. You know what… There’s education and training for management too.

Epilogue: What do I have to say to all of you working stiffs that are reading this? Start making yourself invaluable. I’m not talking about the B.S. that typically passes for invaluable at most shops; “We can’t get rid of Ol’ Pete back there… He’s the only one that knows how all those 3×5 cards that we keep all our customer records on are organized” or “we can’t get rid of Ol’ Pete because he’s got 40 years of stuff locked away in his head.”

I’m talking about doing things that are going to be indispensable in two years that no one in our industry currently has a clue about. Like taking night classes to get a degree in things like internet marketing or e-commerce. Or joining organizations like The American Marketing Association and getting training in things like social media marketing. I’m talking about demanding that your boss provide you with education and training at places like Dealership University, or provides the resources to attend the Dealernews Live sessions at Indy, or attend in-depth educational opportunities like the one I’m going to be providing in Orlando for Leverage this October (face it… If you want to learn how to use the internet in this industry you can do a lot worse than learn it from me).

And if your boss is not reading this, is not following my directions, and you don’t start seeing some radical changes at your dealership in the coming months, then I’d suggest you start looking for a new place to work, because one way or another, you’re going to be doing that anyway in a year or two.

“What?!” you say? “What is this idiot talking about?! Has he not been made aware of the general malaise of the world economy? None of what’s happening to me or my dealership has anything to do with my management or the calibre of people that I have working here! I’m only a victim of circumstance! How dare he blame me for my dealership’s troubles?”

Let me lay my main argument out for you. In my 5 years in this industry (after coming from the high-tech world) one of the most surprising and disturbing things I’ve noticed was the general lack of higher education or even formal professional training among dealership staff (often including the principal or GM level).

I propose that this is being driven by two main factors: 1) Dealerships, by and large, don’t pay worth a crap (I was appalled when I saw the results of Dealernews’ Wage and Benefits review. No wonder so many dealerships are such horrible places to shop in when you pay less than WalMart does for a night stock clerk), and 2) There’s a general lack of respect for the value of education within dealerships (perhaps driven by fear on the part of higher management that they will soon be surrounded by people that are “smarter than them.” Don’t laugh, I’ve had dealer principals admit as much.)

In this economy, less than 20% of college grads are able to find a job in their desired field [ http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7636561&page=1 ]. What does that say to you? It says to me that now is an excellent time to do some major replanting in your company.

You’ve got a pool of educated people out there that could bring significant improvements to your business. I’m sure that among all of those kids that are dejectedly dropping off applications at Starbucks, Home Depot, and Best Buy, that more than a few are motorcycle or powersports enthusiasts that could contribute positive things to your business if you made it worth their time. I’m not talking about picking up good people cheaply. I’m talking about an opportunity to pay reasonably well for value (these kids have significant financial requirements to think about http://redtape.msnbc.com/2009/05/college-debt-so-crushing-grad-says-i-wish-id-gone-to-prison-instead.html). There’s a big difference.

Yes, I’m fully aware that a lot of you reading this are the principals or management of dealerships or retail establishments that have been seen as “successful” for many years. I’m sure that more than a few of the dealerships that have gone under this past year were seen as successful as recently as a year or two ago. But that success was relative. They were competing with a bunch of other dealerships that weren’t exactly highly performing either. It’s fairly easy to be a good JV team when you’re competing with other JV teams in your neck of the woods. But shortly your JV team is going to be playing against the varsity and maybe even the pros from around the world. How’s that going to work out for you if you keep doing things the way you’re doing them now?

I can hear you know… “But Todd… You’re being ignorant and naive! We need to hire a lot of people with years and years of experience in this industry because they need to know how things work as there’s so many fires going on at any given time. We don’t have the money or time to recruit the best and the brightest because we’re dealing with all the crap going on every minute, of every hour, of every day.”

I suggest that you have so many fires to deal with at your shop because you’re doing it wrong. Look… In general (notwithstanding radical outliers that are caused by environmental factors outside of your control), positive outcomes are the result of two major things: 1) quality inputs and 2) a robust repeatable process that is continually reviewed and improved.

Beyond the products and services that you sell (which are by and large generic and totally undifferentiated) what other “inputs” into your business do you have to offer other than the people? Think about it.

What does this have to do with my column’s title, “Doing Business Online?” Everything!

Businessman vs. Enthusiast

Here’s what I see happening over the next two years:

1) The very small mom-and-pop shops are going to go out of business. They will just vanish. They don’t have anything worth buying from a merger or acquisition standpoint. The hole in those markets will be taken over by new dealerships that are part of large, multi-store “chains” or dealer groups that are run by professional businessmen.

2) Large (but not unhealthily so) dealerships that perhaps have been in the family for a while, will be taken over by sons or daughters that are fresh out of B-school. These are kids that have been around the industry for their whole life and know its ins & outs. They don’t see a lot of great prospects out there in the job market, so in spite of the many family fights in the past that included a “There’s no %^&*ing way I’ll work in that %$^$ #$%^ shop of yours!” they will realize a pragmatic reality and decide that perhaps they can bring to bear their exposure to the industry and the formal business education that they picked up at college.

So what’s going to happen to you, one of the dealers that make up the bulk of shops in the middle? Check back next month to see what kind of recommendations I have for how to get out of this cycle and set up your business for success in the future.

I don’t want there to be any confusion or misunderstanding about why I’m doing this. I want you Dear Reader to be 100% clear about what the deal is. And because of that, I hope you will respect my position and my conclusion. If at any point in the future anything changes I will be equally clear.

No, This little missive is not brief. It’s not a bunch of key concepts organized in bullet points. You’re going to probably want to carve out a chunk of time to read it, but damnit, it’s my site and it’s one of the few places I can do whatever the hell I want! It’s a blog and I like to rant! And I’m writing a lot of it on an airplane flying back home from Duluth so I’ve got time to burn.

Also, I don’t have an editor anywhere around here so I’m sure there’s a lot of really bad writing in here as well. Also (see?! two sentences in a row that start with also!), because this is my point of view and not officially a statement from 50 Below, I’m going to be pretty direct so there’s not a lot of ambiguity.

On with the show…

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve placed an advertisement on my blog here for 50 Below. In addition, you need to know that I have entered into a co-marketing partnership with 50 Below to help promote, and more importantly, develop, their range of solutions for the motorcycle and powersports industries.

If you’re a long-time reader of my random thoughts and rants in Dealernews or here on this site (Congratulations! You’re among a very small, and elite group of people!), you should be saying to yourself, “Self: but I thought Todd has said repeatedly in his columns and in his Indy presentations that all of those turn-key, 3rd party website providers were to be avoided if at all possible.” (Actually, to be honest, I’ve said they were all crap) And yes, when those things were written or spoken it was, in my rather well-informed opinion, true.

I fully stand behind the fact that when I expressed those views that if a dealership was committed to really taking on things like e-commerce or using their web presence as a cornerstone of their marketing strategy that the only honest advise I could give was to take it on and build something unique, bespoke, custom… Expensive.

That was before I began a project for A&S Powersports, the dealership that I am, at the time of this writing, responsible for the development and operation of their websites.

I’m pleased to say that now, for like 98% of you, when you ask me what you need to do to get online and really take it on, instead of of a 16 page proposal that had a ton of bullet points and would require you to spend a lot of money, my advise boils down to the following three points:

1. Sign up with 50 Below (load it up… get EZ-Shop, Shop by fitment, and when they launch some of the cool-as-hell stuff that I’ve seen this week, whatever it costs, you’ll need that too…)
2. Have someone that is at least full-time to really take it on that has the competence and ability to make the most of it. You don’t have a service department without a Service Manager do you? How about a sales department with no Sales Manager? Parts department with no Parts Manager? Nope. Nope. And…… Nope. So why would you have a line of your business that has more potential for revenue than all three combined (and right now, without exaggeration, that potential exists) without at least one person dedicated to it full time?
   Would you buy a new box of tools from the Snap-On guy, roll a bike in front of it and then get pissed because when you came back at the end of the month the bike still doesn’t run?
3. Hire me as an obscenely high-priced consultant to really show you how to make enough money so that you can sleep on a bed of $100 bills with three or four MotoGP Umbrella Girls.

(Step #3 is optional, but highly recommended)

Anyway on with the main story…

Over the years, A&S had one primary website, www.ascycles.com. This site was doing double duty as a successful dealership-based e-commerce operation, and our “dealership” website. So whenever we needed to communicate something like an event, or a vehicle financing special, it had to go onto a site that was generating significant e-commerce revenue from PG&A sales to BMW riders all over the country. This meant “giving up” things like screen real estate, navigation areas etc. for locally oriented purposes at the expense of direct revenue generation via e-commerce (promotion space, merchandising, etc.).

At the beginning of this year A&S took on Ducati and created a new line of business, A&S Ducati. This was going to require some shuffling around and thinking about what I was going to do in terms of site organization.

I made the decision that:

• the site www.ascycles.com should remain focused on BMW Motorcycle e-commerce
• there should be a new dedicated Ducati e-commerce site (www.ducati-motorcycle-parts.com (I can’t believe that in 2009 that this prime, SEO worthy domain was available!)
• I should create two new sites for local dealership activities (vehicle information, lead generation, local community activities, etc.).

I had some key goals or constraints for these two new dealer sites:

1) They had to be easily maintainable directly by A&S sales and marketing staff. I had zero desire, interest, or time to do things like put up new graphics or change content on these sites. So there needed to be some kind of easy-to-use content management system.

I could custom develop a site around a content management system (CMS) platform like Wordpress or maybe suck it up and go with one of those 3rd party, turn-key sites that focus on the powersports industry. At this point in the process, you need to read that last part with a sneer of disdain bordering on disgust. Remember, I still didn’t like any of them.

2) I wanted a system that automagically had things like vehicle specs and OEM promotions just show up on the site. Well, that obviously ruled out building a custom site on a CMS and pretty much forced me to at least consider one of the three players in this space.

So I wrote up an extensive evaluation questionnaire similar to the one Arlo did for Dealernews. No, you can’t see my questionnaire because I did it as part of my day job for A&S, but Arlo’s is a pretty good representation of what I was asking.

I was going to grill the hell out of these guys and if they couldn’t handle it then maybe I’d have to go the custom route.

So I wrote up the questions, emailed them to each of the vendors, had them fill them out and then scheduled the follow up interviews.

Now I want to be very clear here. I was asking questions to a detail and a level that I’m 100% sure that none of you ask. How do I know that? Because all three told me that. They all said that I was asking stuff that they had never had any dealer ask them.

Because of my years, and years, and years in the software sales industry before I came to the powersports market, I know how to get through the smokescreens, the fake demos, the hand-waving, etc. I was a sales engineer during the dot-com days. I know how to rig a demo. Therefore I know how to spot a rigged game.

And remember, I was looking to spend real money for the dealership where I worked on not one, but two sites. I don’t take my job lightly. I’m obsessive to the point of being a pain in the ass. But I’m pretty good at what I do so I consider it a fair trade.

Also keep in mind that I was sort of throwing my weight in as somewhat of an expert in the motorcycle and powersports industry when I was asking these questions. As in, “You know who I am right? You know, if I end up picking you that means that I’m going against my past stand against a turn-key site and that might be potentially valuable for your company… Right?”

I’m kind of like the male version of Paris Hilton when it comes to the internet in this industry except I don’t carry around an ugly rat-dog and I make a lot, lot, lot less money.

And I’m not as hot.
Or as skinny.

OK… Maybe I’m more like Oprah.

But male.
And white.
And thinner…
And much, much, much poorer.

Anyway… I was being very clear that:

1. I don’t want to use any of you
2. If you impress me, I’m going to be very vocal about it
3. I’m 90% sure that you’re not going to impress me
4. It’s worth your effort to try to impress me

So onto the results:

Company A:

To sum up Company A in powersports terms, they are the equivalent of an inexpensive Chinese motorcycle. It’s cheap, and yea, it technically qualifies as as a motorcycle, but I would never buy one or ride on one or let a friend buy one. And it’s sure as heck not going to win you any races.

• They pretty much refused to offer much of anything in the way of a written response to my RFQ questionnaire so it fell to a phone call.
• On the initial phone call I went though the answers with a salesperson that I’m pretty sure had just turned on a computer for the very first time a day or two before we talked. They were totally clueless about everything. They finally admitted they were new (why would they have a brand new sales person talk to someone like me?! What were they thinking?!) and they were going to get their boss involved. That was probably a mistake.
• “The Boss” was one of the most unpleasant people I have ever had to deal in a sales/customer interaction in recent memory. And they were pretty clueless as well. On several occasions their initial response to a question was something along the lines of “Why do you need to know that?” Because maybe I’d like to know as much as I can about the platform I’m going to invest a big chunk of money in and depend on as a significant part of my business’s future success. How’s that for a reason? Good grief… Sales training anyone?
• So in addition to the general unpleasant feeling about the call, the solution was so horrible that I pretty much stopped writing down answers on my notes and tried to get off the phone as quickly as possible.
• Well, they do have pretty good micro-fiche solutions. I think they should go back to focusing on that, hand off all their customers to 50 Below and just move on. But that’s just me.

Company A’s verdict… Immediate and total FAIL!

Company B:

In powersports terms, Company B is a 1996 Virago. It might have been an adequate bike for the time, but it’s 2009 for Pete’s sake! A new coat of paint and new tires are not enough to let it compete in the modern marketplace!

• Dated platform. They have not made, nor do they seem to be interested in making any significant or necessary advancements or improvements to their products in several years.
• Pretty much without exception, every one of the sites I’ve ever seen that is based on their platform is ugly. Not just ugly based on 2009 standards, but most of these sites would have been ugly back in 1998 when people still thought that the <blink> tag was cool. I know, because when I judged the top websites for the 2009 Indy show, I had to suffer through reviewing like 90 of them. The good news is I could identify them before the header graphic had even loaded so I didn’t have to suffer long before I moved on to the next one.
  While I can’t fault you dealers for not being graphic designers, or knowing anything about how to design a website that enhances your brand image, you’d think that the largest supplier of websites to the powersports industry would have a frickin clue and hire someone that had more artistic and design background than painting portraits of Elvis on black velvet at the country fair.
• Horrible, horrible shopping experience. Face it… Customers do… not… shop… by… distributor… catalog…! A customer for a motorcycle jacket does not care or know who Tucker Rocky is! Sure, they know Parts Unlimited because their banners are all over the race track, but I’d say less than 1% of your customers has a clue what Parts Unlimited actually does. And they sure as hell don’t want to search through those catalogs for something like a jacket, sprocket, tire, or helmet.
• You’re locked into a long term contract. You are required to sign a one year contract with an non-optional auto-renew clause. No way! I’m not getting locked into anything as important as my website’s platform. Things change in our industry and on the web too quickly to run the risk of missing a significant opportunity to do the right thing for my business because I’m tied to an agreement that is not in my best interest. Seriously, what do they think they are…? A cell phone company?
• Very poor customer service. When I used them on a limited basis for a dealership I was trying to help out (to the point that I wrote several strongly worded e-mails about the issue to their parent company’s upper management) I basically got an “oh… so sorry…” response. I (and by extension Company B’s customer) never did get answers to my questions.
• Very expensive. When all the bells and whistles are turned on to get it to come close to what 50 Below offers when all their bells and whistles are turned on they were almost $10,000 more expensive than 50 Below over a year for both sites. And that’s with, in my opinion, an inferior product and much worse service.
  You’d think that if anyone could get a discount it would be me so they’d have a pretty good reference account… Nope… It’s not until now, in a down market with an obviously inferior product are they offering any discounts to try to shore up customers that are finally realizing that they’ve been overpaying for years. If you happen to have been a customer of Company B, and they offer you a discount going forward, make sure that you ask if you can get that discount back-dated for all those years they were over charging you.
• Here’s a real shocker… The person that I talked to on the phone, a guy that I’ve met at a few Indy shows and you would think would obviously know that there’s a fair chance that I’ll talk to people about our conversation, didn’t hesitate to take advantage of opportunities to totally rip apart the parent company that had just spent an obscene amount of money to acquire them. So here’s an executive at the company ripping apart his parent company to a potential, and somewhat influential, customer. What does that say about the internal dynamics of the entire operation and its internal corporate health?
• Backing up the above indications of bad blood between the acquired and the acquirer was that when I was at Indy and talked to several guys from another division of the acquiring company about their thoughts of the soon to be corporate sibling, they ripped them apart. Not just a little either. These are not rumors about hostility within the overall organization. This is my first-hand account with both sides of this company being openly hostile to the other guys.
• So obviously there’s something really messed up at that company and it’s just one more giant indication that I’d never want to recommend them to anyone, let alone choose them myself.
• I even offered the following to them: “If you are interested in detailed reasons why Company B was not chosen, and think that my input/reasons would help your development in the future, let me know.” Nothing… OK, fine. Maybe in spite of my position in the industry, my years of experience, my demonstrated success in e-commerce in the motorcycle industry they figured I was full of crap and had nothing to learn from. Might have been worth a discussion or two though, no?

Now again keep in mind that both of these vendors knew who I was. That by signing me and the dealership where I worked it would be at least a tacit, and at best an overt, endorsement of their company and their products.

And in both of these cases they acted as if they could care less. I was stunned. I expected a little more effort.

So, I’d say that if they were willing to treat me like that (and let’s not forget, I’m really, really important around here! ), before I’d even signed up with them, you gotta wonder what would happen if I was a customer and ran into “issues.”

So once again. Total… Fail…

50 Below:

With 50 Below, you’re getting a race ready factory bike. You even get factory support in the form of their Marketing Account Executives that will work with you, as part of the standard package to help you get your site working the way it’s supposed to work. They want to help you win. Let them!

So then I move on to 50 Below… Keep in mind that I went into this whole process positive that 50 Below was going to be the absolute worst. So much so that I had considered not even including them.

Why?

1) The solution they first offered a few years ago was so God-awful horrible. That whole page turning, flash-based, parts catalog based shopping experience was just miserable. The templates were eye-searingly bad. Etc. etc.

2) They had had some pretty significant financial and/or legal issues in their recent past that I thought indicated that they were at worst shady and at best irresponsible. Everyone I talked to about 50 Below, even today, universally says something along the lines of:

• “Are they still in business?”
• “Didn’t they all get hauled off to Gitmo?”
• “Don’t they try to keep your domain name if you leave their service?”
• (It should be pointed out that a lot of this FUD was being propagated and encouraged to propagate by good ol’ Company B above… Oh… Look… One more reason to not pick Company B… They like to play dirty.). For the record, none of the above was true or at least true to the extent that it was portrayed. If you want to know what really happened, talk to 50 Below. They will explain it to you.

Or better yet, check this out…

I didn’t know this at first, and I bet most of you might not know this, but 50 Below is also involved in other industries other than powersports. For instance, they are the only approved provider for franchised UPS stores. They are also the sole, authorized website providers for various financial and insurance firm’s independent advisers like UBS and Smith Barney.

I’m willing to bet that all those companies probably did a fair amount of due diligence when they decided to pick 50 Below. WAYYYY more than I did and I’m willing to bet WAYYYY more than you’re going to do. You think they would have picked 50 Below if the rumors were even close to being true? Yea. I don’t think so either.

And does being involved in those other industries mean that 50 Below is not “focused” or “dedicated” to the powersports markets? Hell no… It means that they are diversified across multiple industries so that when crap like what’s hitting our industry now happens, it doesn’t cripple them. Now if all you’re involved in is the powersports industries and things start getting bad, what do you lean on? Oh… Right…Nothing.

So onto the results of my investigation…

About 5 minutes into the presentation on their product offering I was really, really impressed with

1. the improvements they had made in the last few years and
2. how astonishingly far beyond the other two competitors they were.

Their website designs are composed of modern best-practices. All that crappy table based layout stuff that they had used in the past, and that the other two companies still used was gone with clean and efficient CSS based design. Nice!

Their shopping experience, what they are calling EZ-Shop, finally addressed the horrible practice of catalog based shopping. Customers can shop by category, brand, and even fitment to the model of vehicle that they own. This is seriously an order of magnitude better than the other two solutions. If you care about e-commerce at all as a part of your overall business strategy, this feature alone is reason to pick 50 Below. The fact that they are kicking ass on so many other features as well just makes this such a no brainer solution.

Is 50 Below perfect? Nope. Is it better than the rest? Absolutely.

Are there things I’d like to see changed or improved? Yes. And you know what? They are really interested in making those changes. In fact they already have plans, prototypes, or almost released features to address a lot of the things I’d like to see. They seem to actually be very committed to making their product better and better and providing more value and better service. What more can you ask for from a partner?

If 50 Below would have had an offering like they have now when I began the work on the sites I manage, I would have used it. Or to put it another way, if I was going to go to work for a new dealership today with the goal of creating another world-class internet presence I would use 50 Below as the platform upon which I would begin my work. No brainer.

Where do you want your techs to buy their tools? Snap On? MAC? Or some dude selling crap from China out of a van at the flea market? Same deal.

Does this mean that just because you use 50 Below you’ll automagically end up with a website that shows up #1 in all Google results and generates millions of dollars in e-commerce revenue? Not a chance. Just because you buy a Ducati 1098R can you jump on it and win an WSBK title? Nope. But if you have an amazing rider and a talented team working on it, you’ll have better than a fighting chance.

I get from 50 Below a real sense of forward momentum, valuable progress, continuous improvement. Moving forward at an amazing speed. In the time I’ve spent working with 50 Below I’ve seen a team of dedicated individuals that are hell-bent on creating the ultimate platform for the motorcycle and powersports industries.

In conclusion (finally…), I just spent the better part of a week in Duluth meeting with the folks from 50 Below. Seeing what they’ve got going on, seeing what’s coming, etc. I wanted to make sure that if I was going to get behind promoting something that I could do it in good faith.

After doing that I’m even more convinced that I made the right decision for A&S to use them for my projects and that I can recommend them as the default, no-brainer, “what are you waiting for?”, go-to solution for the motorcycle and powersports industry when it comes to turn-key internet presences.

Why do I want you to all move to 50 Below? Because I want to be able to actually help this industry start using the web so you’ll be successful. I’m sick of seeing dealers wallow around with no website, or crap websites, and not be able to tell you in simple terms how to do the stuff you need to be doing.

Now I can. Call 50 Below. Tell them you just read this and you’re ready to start taking responsibility for getting your dealership into the 21st century.

Here’s some more details about how and why I’m working with 50 Below:

• I contacted them to see if there was anything I could do to help them get more dealers to use their platform. Why? Because I could not understand why anyone except in the most unusual of circumstances would not choose 50 Below. I have a very limited tolerance for irrational behaviour. If after reading this, and after really digging into the three options out there you don’t choose 50 Below, well, I’d love to hear why. Seriously… If you don’t pick 50 Below, tell me why. If it’s a valid point, I will ask them to address the issue. If it’s a legitimate issue, I’ll update this post with that info.
• They are paying me a small consulting retainer to do things like write tutorials for their newsletters and other educational materials in the future. This fee also includes an advertising component for the banner on my site. Trust me, it’s not a lot of money and if I didn’t feel that I was doing the right thing to recommend them to you, the amount of money they are paying me would never be enough to get me to do it.
• I absolutely, positively, do not make any more or less money if you sign up or don’t sign up with them.
• And to be very, very clear, just because I write for Dealernews there is not even the slightest connection between my personal opinions and conclusions and anyone at Dealernews. I will not involve myself in any activity at Dealernews that involves the review or discussion of the competing platforms while I’m working with 50 Below.

This month I want to pass on a suggestion about how you can make sure that you have the best e-commerce and customer service operation out there: Go shopping!

I’m sure that somewhere in your list of goals and desires for your e-commerce operation that you want your customers’ experience with your shop to be as good as it possibly can be. Not just better than anyone else, but good in an absolute, C.S. Lewis-ish, sense as well. After all, just because everyone else is horrible is no reason for you to be horrible too, right?

So how are we going to do this? We’re going to pick five to seven other e-commerce sites and take them for a test ride. I suggest that you choose two to three of the big e-tailers and catalog sites (i.e. Motorcycle Superstore, Knee Draggers, Bike Bandit, or Dennis Kirk) and then choose three or four dealer-run sites that also sell to the same markets that you do.

Your goal is to probe and test their systems. Their online systems, as well as their human, customer service systems. You need to create a standard testing process or protocol for how you’re going to do the test, and then apply that same protocol to each shopping experience. You’ll then grade or judge each retailer to not only see how well they are doing, but to come up with ideas for how you can be doing things better. Find something that’s horrible? Make sure your systems are set up to avoid it! Find something that’s amazing? Make sure your systems are set up to include it!

After all, if you don’t do this, how in the world will you ever know how good you have to be to be great? Trust me, your customers most likely shop with companies other than you, and they know who’s naughty and who’s nice. If you don’t have the same sense for where you stack up, based on first-hand experience, I’m willing to be that you’re not doing things as good as you think you are.

So what kind of things do we need to test? I’m going to offer up a few suggestions for things that you can do to see how satisfying, helpful, flexible, easy, etc. the experiences with each retailer is. Remember, one of your goals is to break their systems. You’re trying, through somewhat reasonable, real-world inspired actions, to become a nightmare customer. You want to be reasonable about it, but (based on years and years of first hand experience) I can guarantee that regardless of how wacky, far-out, or unreasonable you are during this test, that there are real customers out there that are worse than anything you can think up. If you’re new to this, you’ll have to trust me on this. If you’ve been around a while, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

First, pick two to three products that everyone carries so you can shop for the same stuff with each retailer. I suggest that one of the items you pick is a product that you know is hard to get, is frequently out of stock, has a long lead-time from the supplier, etc.

Now on to a few suggested tests (remember, these are just suggestions to get the ideas flowing… Come up with your own, relevant tests):

• Go to each retailer and place your initial order. Use their site search to see how hard it is to find each product. can you find them by drilling into their categories? Are all of the attributes like color

• Give them the wrong address: Give them, say…, your personal address with you order online, then call up a few hours later and have them switch the address to your shop’s address. Wait and see where the products end up.

• Order a hard part that requires installation and once it arrives, call them and see how helpful they are at helping you install that part on your bike.

• Order something like a pair of riding boots or riding gloves (or underwear… Seriously… It’s happened… Yes. Gross.), wear them and use them to the point where it’s obvious that they’ve been used, and then try to return them. Does the retailer give you a hard time or do they accept the return gracefully?

• On those out of stock orders, call them up at least once a day to check status. Make note of how patient they are with your badgering. Also, make note if you get conflicting or otherwise funky promise dates. If every time you call up you get a different answer, or every time you call up you get told “two weeks”, regardless of how many weeks have passed, that usually indicates they are not really looking into it or telling you the truth.

• After you place your order online, call them to change something with the order. The size… The color… Add an item… Take an item off… Then call back later that day and make another change. Then wait to see if you get what you’re expecting to receive. If you don’t get what your expecting after making the changes, call them up and find out what happened. Ask if they have a record of your calls to make those changes. If they do, they are using a good CRM system. If not, then they’re flying blind.