Archive for the 'selling-online' tag

Last month I laid out my thesis that a lot of the problems at dealerships are a result of a lack of hiring competent, educated, and professional people for roles that should be contributing more positively to the success of the shop. I finished up last month with my projection for how the dealership market was going to shake out over the next two years. One group at the bottom just goes away never to be heard from again, and a group at the top merge into larger groups that are run more by professionally educated businessmen and less by “enthusiasts.”

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.

Tags:Column, dealerships, E-Commerce, ecommerce, employment, internet, motorcycle, powersports, Powersports Industry, recommendations, selling-online

This is another one of those months where you’re no doubt going to walk away after reading my humble little column and cry, “My God! This man’s a genius! Why have we never thought of this before?!” OK… Maybe not… But it’s still a pretty good idea.

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.

Tags:Column, dealerships, E-Commerce, ecommerce, internet, motorcycle, powersports, Powersports Industry, selling-online

While I know that most of you see me as the ultimate guru of all things web (right?), the truth is, there’s a wealth of places out there other than me where you can (and really should) find out a lot more about things like e-commerce, internet advertising, and integrating social media into your overall internet marketing strategy and so on.

The truth is, this area of technology (especially social media) is forming and re-forming so fast that if you blink you’re likely to miss a development or a breakthrough that becomes the next “big thing.” You don’t want to be the one that misses out on the next hot trend do you?

If you answered “No!” then read on. If you answered “Yes!” then I’m not sure we have anything else to talk about frankly.

So, without further ado, this month I’m going to save you some time in filtering out the wheat from the chaff (ooohhh… an 18th century reference in a 21st century column!) and point out some of the resources that I find pretty valuable in keeping up with what’s hot, happening, and now.

E-Commerce

First and foremost is a resources that I’ve mentioned in the past when it comes to e-commerce, and that’s Internet Retailer (www.internetretailer.com). Internet Retailer has a print magazine that you can get for free, as well as several really well done e-mail newsletters that you can subscribe to. Internet Retailer is also responsible for the Top 500 Guide, which every year ranks the top largest e-commerce players in terms of revenue and provides a wealth of information such as traffic figures, sales performance data (conversion rates, average order value, etc.) that you can use to benchmark your own performance.

Next up in the e-commerce space is Shop.org (guess what the address of their website is). Shop.org is the e-commerce focus for the larger National Retail Federation (www.nrf.com). Shop.org puts out a great series of e-mail newsletters that do an excellent job of keeping the reader up on what’s going on in the e-commerce space. I find the coverage they provide to have a slightly different twist than Internet Retailer and between the two you can get a great picture of what’s working, what’s coming down the road, what you need to be doing to get ahead and once you’re there, to stay there.

Internet Marketing

As all internet marketing pretty much begins by looking through the lens of the search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN Live, etc. the best place to get your daily fix of search engine related wisdom is probably Search Engine Watch (www.searchenginewatch.com). They have a series of e-mail updates, as well as a worthwhile RSS feed and Twitter profile (@sewatch) that you should be reading. They cover pretty much all the aspects of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) that you will ever need to know (or at least could ever remember or implement).

The next excellent resource for internet (and even general) marketing is Marketing Sherpa (www.marketingsherpa.com). Marketing Sherpa has developed the reputation as the source for marketing best practices. These are real-world best practices, not high-level theory like you’d get from some place like the American Marketing Association. While they do offer some free reports and resources (their write-ups are free for the first week), to get the most out of what Marketing Sherpa has to offer you will need to pay for the annual subscription. You can sign up for a free trial subscription to check it out. I recommend that you do.

Social Media, etc.

Finally we have the increasingly important and dynamically changing world of social media and all of the hybrid offshoots of sites like Facebook and Twitter.

First up is a site called Mashable (www.mashable.com) who bills itself as The Social Media Guide. They do an excellent job of covering how to use the exisiting social sites both from the perspective of a user, as well as from the perspective of a business looking to use social media for marketing and promotional purposes. In addition they keep on top of the bubbling, churning, and chaotic world of emerging social media players as well as clever and useful ways to leverage the social media ecosystem of feeds, API, applications, and widgets.

Finally I’m offering up a great site, TechCrunch (www.techcrunch.com), that will keep you abreast of both the social media scene as well as the business world of the internet from a technical perspective. TechCrunch is actually billed as a blog, but it’s a blog (and extended media empire known as the Crunch Network) that headed by probably the best “new business” gadfly around, Michael Arrington. Michael and his team are plugged into who’s doing what, what it’s good for, who’s getting funded and who’s the newest member of the internet industry deadpool. It’s a great resource that you don’t want to miss.

So there you have it. A great list of summer reading when you need to know what’s going on in the world of the web. I’ve only scratched the surface by offering up the ones that I read on a regular basis. If you have some great resources you want to share, let me know!

Tags:Column, dealerships, E-Commerce, ecommerce, internet, marketing, motorcycle, powersports, Powersports Industry, Resources, Search Engine Optimization, selling-online, social marketing, social media, social-networking

If you were at Indy, perhaps you saw their booth announcing their new program. Or perhaps you’ve seen some of their advertising. Regardless of where or if you’ve heard about their new program, Motorcycle Superstore has a new initiative that may help you make more money.

What?! How can one of those “evil” internet retailers (and not just “one of”, Motorcycle Superstore is the largest e-commerce player in our market as rated by Internet Retailer in their Top 500 retailers survey for 2008) that so many of you hate have anything to offer your business?

The program that Motorcycle Superstore is rolling out is called the “Preferred Installer Program” and the idea is that dealers sign up with Motorcycle Superstore to be an installation “partner.” When a customer buys a qualifying product from their site, the part gets shipped directly to your dealership where you install and configure it on the buyer’s bike.

If you are familiar with the automobile tire and accessory company The Tire Rack, then this program is going to sound really familiar to you because it’s a model that Motorcycle Superstore’s Don Becklin has pretty much followed for their PI program.

Currently the program is only covering tires, exhaust systems, and Power Commanders, but that may be expanded in the future based on findings from customers and participating dealers.

Now that you know a little more about the program, you’re probably wondering what in the heck is this thing really all about. Where’s the scam? Is this some kind of big wooden horse that you’d be letting into your shop only to have a bunch of Motorcycle Superstore invaders come pouring out?

Not quite. You see, Motorcycle Superstore gets at least half-a-million visitors a month (per Internet Retailer’s estimates, I think the real number is much higher) and only like 2.5% of those people ever buy something from them. Where do the rest of those people go? Well, while the exact numbers are pretty much any one’s guess, the overwhelming majority of purchases in our industry still happen across a counter, face-to-face in a brick and mortar retail store.

Wait! But how can that be? I’ve heard for years how the internet is destroying dealerships and other powersports retailers. Customers come in, ask a bunch of questions, try on a bunch of stuff, and then leave to buy what they need online for a few bucks less.

That’s quite a paradox. Don’s company’s seeing millions of people doing a bunch of research online only to buy somewhere else at the same time dealers are saying that the same thing is happening to them! How do we resolve this paradox?

The truth is, you can’t. The reality is that certain customers, at certain times, for certain products are going to choose the retail channel that best suits their needs. It’s just a fact and trying to fight it is as pointless as tilting at windmills.

Motorcycle Superstore has realized this and has developed a program that they hope will allow them to sell more stuff, make it easier on their (and your) customers, and help support and build the dealer and independent retailers at the same time. It’s a way to grow the pie instead of fighting over the crumbs!

Face it, do you really want to sell a set of tires at close to, if not at, cost just to get customers in your shop? You really want to carry the inventory, or incur the ordering, freight, and receiving expenses on those tires in hopes of getting some extra service work or to attract a new customer into your shop? Of course not!

Just taking tires as an example, Motorcycle Superstore is probably the largest retailer of motorcycle tires on the face of the planet. They get deliveries by the container load. They are getting prices on tires you could never dream of. So it makes sense for them to build their business on that. However, the missing link is what does the customer do with them once they get them? There’s no way anyone is mounting modern sport bike tires on their new Ducati 1098 with a couple tire irons and some Vaseline. Let alone getting them balanced. They need you for that.

This doesn’t even scratch the surface for things like tuning setups for exhaust systems and Power Commanders. If you’re a tuning shop, get ready to fire up the dyno because you may have more work in the near future!

Now that brings me back a few years when I wrote that if someone comes into your shop carrying a new set of tires freshly delivered from some website under their arms, instead of treating that customer like some kind of scum, you should be welcoming them and even going so far as to just mount them for free in the hopes of making an impression on that new customer. Boy, did some of you have issues with that!

Ok, so maybe “free” was going a little far to make my point, but I stand behind my primary idea that someone else’s website’s sale got a new customer through your door. And I’m willing to bet some pretty decent money that your typical cost of new customer acquisition is a lot higher than you’d make off that set of tires.

And now here’s a program, set up by one of those “evil” internet discount shops, that is intended to formally allow you to do exactly what I was preaching two years ago!

I’m going to close this month with two last points. The first is a simple thought exercise where we imagine the following scenario:

A lifelong Kawasaki riders buys some new tires off from Motorcycle Superstore. Let’s say that Motorcycle Superstore make $30 bucks net from that sale (which is probably generous depending on shipping charges, etc., etc.). Your Suzuki and Honda shop was wise and followed my advise and got on board for the PI program and that customer has the tires shipped to your shop.

You get the confirmation email that the tires are on the way and you proactively call the customer up to set up a time for the service (you will do it that way won’t you? Surprise the customer with a level of service they weren’t expecting?). The customer comes in for the tire service and because your advisers have been reading Dave’s columns on selling service they are able to upsell something like a brake system flush, oil change, etc.

Now, while the customer is waiting for the service work to be done, they check out the new Gixxer. Maybe one of your sales people get them on it for a test ride. They like it! “Nice bike!”

They leave your shop with an amazing impression of great service and possibly a decision on the next bike that they’ll buy in 6-8 months.

Now what did this all cost you? Did you have to run an expensive TV campaign? Take out a full page in the local newspaper? No. You got all this because you lost the sale of a set of tires and you executed flawlessly once the ball was on your side of the court.

Finally, if you’re still not convinced that this program is something worthwhile that you need to get on board with, do this. Go to the Tirerack’s website (www.tirerack.com) and find an installer or two in your area that has signed up for their program. Take a long lunch and ride down to a couple and talk to the mangers there and ask them how that program is working for them in the automotive arena.

Then when you get back from your lunch, go to here (http://www.motorcycle-superstore.com/818/MNGR/Preferred-Installer-Dealer-Sign-Up-Information.aspx) to sign up for Motorcycle Superstore’s PI program. I’m willing to be another shop in your area is going to.

Tags:Column, dealerships, E-Commerce, ecommerce, marketing, motorcycle, powersports, Powersports Industry, selling-online

This month I’m going to be tweeting about Twitter. What it is, why you should care, and most importantly how you can use it in your business

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you have most likely been bombarded with mentions of Twitter in the media

Even members of congress were “busted” tweeting during President Obama’s recent national address http://tinyurl.com/dc394j

Briefly, Twitter is a “microblogging” tool (and now a technical infrastructure) that lets people post short 140 character tweets to the web

Twitter is a weird FrankenTech that exists somewhere in the spaces between RSS, chat, e-mail (albeit public email), blogs, and forums

Once you post your “tweet” to the Twittersphere, users that are “following” you will be updated with the pearl of wisdom you just posted

I admit, at first I didn’t “get” Twitter. It seemed like a pointless social-media distraction. I’m rapidly and drastically changing my mind

The best way to really understand Twitter is to sign up for it and start playing with it. Go to twitter.com and create a twitter account

Make sure you take the time to create a customized and branded profile. Include a link to your e-commerce or dealership website

Be warned going in, Twitter goes down a lot. Just Google “Twitter is down”. It happens so much, it’s *almost* become an endearing quality

Check out Twitter’s help site help.twitter.com to really understand all that you can do with it. As always, if you’re stuck, RTFM!

Posting to, and managing followers is an excellent task for your Community Relationship Manager!

Publicize your dealership’s twitter ID and encourage people that visit your shop or your site to sign up for twitter and to follow you

Put your twitter ID on your printed receipts, on your business cards, add a “Follow Us” link to your website and in your e-mail marketing

You need to understand some of the tools and technique of the twitter “language.” First, a tweet is the name for a twitter post

Next, you will see the @ symbol in tweets. This is a way for directly referencing or replying to another twitter user. Mine is @radicalpower

Another symbol you will see is #. It’s an unofficial trick that has evolved among twitter users to tag or categorize post content #ecommerce

Another convention you will see is RT for Re-Tweet. When you read something really interesting that deserves wider distribution you RT it

Here’s how it looks together: RT @radicalpower- I’m writing a great article for #Dealernews on how to use #twitter for motorcycle dealers

Twitter has really become more of a technical infrastructure. To get the most out of it you’ll want to use some of the twitter clients

Two of the most widely used and recommended twitter clients are www.twhirl.org and www.tweetdeck.com. Try them out for yourself and use one

There are some cool applications that tap into twitter so people can analyze the real-time twit-stream to see what the world is thinking

Check out Twist twist.flaptor.com to track trends or keywords and Twitscoop www.twitscoop.com to see what terms are waxing or waning

There’s even an easy to use tool, twitpic twitpic.com that lets you post pictures through twitter.

Because you only have 140 characters, it’s hard to enter long urls when you want to direct people to a certain site or page

The solution to this is to use a URL-shortening service. Tinyurl.com is the most popular but there are hundreds more See: tinyurl.com/yp8cba

A user-generated directory has popped at wefollow.com. You simply tweet to @wefollow with 3 #category to get listed

So the big question you have to be asking is, OK this is all very interesting, but how can I use this to make more money in my shop?

On the e-commerce side, you can tweet to all your followers when you add new, cool products to your website. That will drive traffic & sales

You can also run RT-based contests. Tell people that if they re-tweet a product detail page, or blog post they have a chance to win a prize

Follow this link http://tinyurl.com/cg8euq for a Google search on “retweet contests” to see some ideas of what others are doing

You can publicize web discounts or in-store specials that are good with a code that you tweet. This gives people motivation to follow you.

Build a social media ecosystem with twitter that points people to your blog posts, and a blog link that points people to your twitter ID

When people follow you, or RT you, make sure you thank them via a Direct Message or publicly via an @reply. Don’t forget to follow them back

You will want to make sure that you do frequent searches on twitter for you company name to keep track of what people are saying about you

I hope you found this series of tweets on Twitter informative and I invite you to follow me on twitter @radicalpower

And yes, each of the points above were under 140 characters!

Tags:Column, dealerships, E-Commerce, ecommerce, internet, marketing, motorcycle, powersports, Powersports Industry, pr, Search Engine Optimization, selling-online, social marketing, social media, social-networking, Twitter

As I’m sure you’re well aware, the economic model that currently supports most of Western Civilization appears to be in the process of a major melt-down. These tough times are going to call for some creative thinking to pry the money you need to keep your doors open from the hands of the customer that is worried about keeping their job or paying their mortgage.

This month I’m going to talk about discounting and other promotions. In the past I have laid out my general philosophy that if you run a proper operation you should not need to think too much about discounting. I still hold by that sentiment. I’m not talking about some kind of grand fire-sale along the lines of those furniture stores that seem to be going out of business every other week.

What I am talking about are developing, and more importantly communicating, discount-type promotions that entice a shopper to buy from you if they were not going to buy from you in the first place, or to buy more from you if they were buying anyway.

An over-arching theme is that you never give anything away for free. If you are giving it away (cue the Red Hot Chili Peppers), then it’s only logical that the customer is not going to ascribe any value to it. You want to come up with some manner of telling your customers that you are buying something for them. After all, that’s what you’re doing, so why not position it that way?

Some people may consider it a matter of semantics but I think it’s an important distinction if you are trying to do some type of discounting yet retain a brand identity different from the multitudes of internet discounters.

For example: You are not offering “free shipping.” You are paying for the customer’s shipping. So instead of “Free shipping on orders over $150″ you need to communicate it like “Spend over $150 and we’ll pay your shipping.”

Yes they are functionally equivalent, but I think the latter has more value. Sure not everyone is going to look at it that way, but it helps. And it’s the thought process behind this that should be driving you as you craft discount or promotion methods.

A next point is to remember that your goal of discounting should be to get people that would not otherwise buy from you at full price to buy from you at a price that you are still willing to accept.

Let’s say that you run a promotion that requires customers to enter a discount code at check out to get 20% off their orders. I would say that in most circumstances that you would want to publicise that code to customers via advertising like e-mails or off-line print ads, but not publicise the code on your site. If someone hits your site off a Google search with the intent of buying something you’re selling, and they are willing to pay full price, why in the world would you be willing to accept less? Use the e-mails and print ads to drive incremental traffic to your store and the discount to increase conversion.

A lot of this is going to depend on the type of business you run and the type of normal customers & traffic you have buying from your site. You need to do some in-depth analysis of your analytics and sales data from the past. The goal should be to come up with discount methodologies that enable you to get full price from people that were willing to pay full price going in.

Next, you should try to come up with methods to coax a higher level of spending from people already buying. A good way to do this that also brings them back on a later date to buy more are instruments like gift certificates that are good for a certain dollar amount once they spend over a set limit. Say, “spend $300 today and we’ll email you a gift certificate code good for $30 off your next order.” You are hopefully pushing those customers sitting there with $250 in their cart to add another $50 to get the $30 gift certificate that they may use another day. And of course hopefully on that next visit they spend more than the $30.

Obviously you’ll again have to dip into your analytics and sales data to try to come up with the thresholds and values that make rational business sense for these types of promotions.

And finally here’s one of those brilliant ideas that keep you coming back to read my column every month. Because so many of you non-snow vehicle related retailers are sitting there looking out of empty showrooms at piles of the white stuff, here’s an idea to generate some cash now and defer the outflow until you’ve got more organic sales going on in the spring. Sell something like a “spring certificate” on your site that is good for a certain percentage above the face value when used between certain dates in the future (the certificate’s magic window).

Here’s an example: “Buy our Spring Certificate this week for $200 and when you come back and use it between April 1 and May 31 and we’ll increase the value to $250!” If they use it outside the magic window it’s still worth the face value of $200. This allows you to get cash from the customer now on your books with a potential liability for a lower margin during a set window when you should be generating enough sales to cover it. And I can promise you that not everyone will use it during the magic window. And of course there’s even a percentage of people that will never use it at all. You do realize that some estimates put the amount of money that will sit there unspent on those “gift cards” around $10Billion for 2008? It’s possible that the amount of people that don’t spend all of their $200 at all may make up for the loss in margin from the discount.

Fine print: I’m sure there’s some accounting and/or legal magic your controller and lawyer are going to have to perform to account for the future liability, cash flow, proper wording, etc., etc., etc. so make sure you get all that squared away before you launch something like this.

I’m going to leave you with one overarching theme that I recommend you use in all of your advertising and marketing messaging: motorcycles and powersports are the ultimate escape from the strife that people are being bombarded with every waking moment these days. Motorcycles and powersports have always been about freedom and getting away from it all. If you’re bombing through the woods on a dual sport you typically don’t have a lot of spare brain-cycles to be worried about your mortgage. If your cruising past the majestic Grand Tetons with your significant other behind you and soaking it all in, you typically are not thinking about the annual return on your 401k.

We are in the escape business. Economic realities may be dictating that people are not buying new bikes, but we can sure as heck make sure we help them get the parts, accessories, and gear they need to get out and enjoy the vehicles they already own. Intelligent discounting and promotions in your e-commerce operation can be a huge help. For them, and for you.

Tags:Column, dealerships, E-Commerce, ecommerce, internet, marketing, motorcycle, powersports, Powersports Industry, selling-online

Last month I wrote about the importance of investing the time and energy to write your own product descriptions. Well, as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words so this month’s column is going to focus on visual merchandising or product photography.

One of the first things that I want to get out of the way is that I am in no way suggesting professional, high-quality product photography is easy or that anyone can do it. Some of the highest paid, working professional photographers are in fact product photographers. They don’t get that way because taking product pictures is easy. It’s a unique discipline with its own dedicated career path.

However, I’m not writing about taking pictures for advertising or high-quality, glossy brochures. I’m going to be describing taking pictures mostly for their pragmatic, informational value. The ability of a picture to display or describe a product in ways that would be impossible or too difficult and time consuming to do with words alone.

Why is it important that you invest in the tools, processes, and expertise necessary to take your own images, especially if you are selling products that have good imagery from the OEM or supplier (which unfortunately is an amazingly rare occurrence)?

Because your website is trying to actually sell the product. You are (hopefully) the last hurdle between your site visitor’s desire to own the product he’s looking at and actually spending the money to buy it.

If the visitor is really close to buying from you, but really needs to see how the bottom, or back of that widget looks, there’s a very high risk that they are going to go to another site or to a brick and mortar store to find out. If you have the photography or other visual merchandising (video, 360 spin views, etc.) to meet their informational need, you’ve just made the sale.

While the informational aspect of the visual merchandising is a primary concern, it should not be your only concern.  You should also want your photography to positively reflect a strong brand image for your dealership and the product that your selling. Try to make the images look as good as you possibly can. Blurry, over-exposed pictures taken on a beat-up, oil-spotted plywood table may not be what your customers are looking to see (however, sharp, well-lit pictures of cool products taken on a beat-up, oil-stained plywood table might be kind of cool!).

Driven by the requirements of huge numbers of eBay-type business the necessary equipment to take semi-professional product photography has gotten very affordable. There are literally thousands of sites out there (just Google “product photography”) that will teach you everything you need to know to get started. And if you don’t want to do it yourself, and don’t currently have someone on staff that can tackle it, craigslist or your local college is a great place to find people with the basic skills that are looking to build portfolios and have a vested interest in making your pictures looks good.

With all of those elements in place, there’s very little in the way of a rational excuse to not take this on if you are serious about setting yourself apart in the e-commerce market place. If you are not the place to go, that means someone else is.

Now to do the job right you’re going to need some basic lighting equipment, a good digital camera, an environment for your products, and the software necessary to make the images look good or to reformat them for your website.

You can get some really decent lighting systems (either constant light or strobe based) on eBay for very little money. Or you can go upscale and shop at places like B&H (http://www.bhphotovideo.com). Or you can even build your own. I know that professional photographers out there are going to want to burn me at the stake for saying this, but there’s really no reason to spend the big bucks for professional lighting gear for our purposes. You don’t need the fancy $40 bulbs and the $300 tripod and fixture. A $3.00 full spectrum compact fluorescent bulb in a $6.00 clip on fixture attached to a 2×4 wood stand works just fine.

However, there are some rules of thumb you need to follow. You want to make sure that ALL of your light bulbs are the same brand and the same type. you can vary the wattage/output, but you get into real problems with color issues if you use different types of bulbs. As long as all the bulbs are the same you can set a custom white-balance point in your camera or do color corrections in your photo software.

Next, you’re going to want to invest in a GOOD digital camera. That’s not really a problem anymore as you can get amazing digital SLR’s with great lenses in a kit for around $500 and non-SLR’s that have astounding built in lenses for around $350. I suggest www.dpreview.com to learn more about what camera to buy. I recommend getting a camera/lens that is as “fast” as you can get (i.e. an f value as close to 2.0 as you can get and when looking at a zoom lens that stays near 2 across the entire zoom range). This will allow you to shoot with faster shutter speeds without needing super bright lights and gives you the ability to use depth of field (DOF) to your advantage.

You’re also going to need an environment to place your products in. This could be a large light-box or light-tent you get off eBay or build yourself or something more creative like a table-top display. You may want to even consider something like a small studio where a beautiful model can display that carbon fiber fender a la QVC. Be creative!

Finally you’re going to need software to edit the images. This can be as simple as cropping and resizing to doing color correction or adding text. The big dog here is Photoshop. There’s nothing you can possibly ever need to do that Photoshop can’t handle either by itself of extended via plug-ins.

However Photoshop has an almost vertical learning curve and if the folks doing the work are not already well versed you may want to look at some software that is more purpose-based for product photography.

A package that is getting some attention is a program called “Bling It” (http://www.blingit.us/) that has some really simple abilities to spruce up the product shots. They have a free download so you should at least try it out. It allows you to place the product on different backgrounds and even do basic retouching of the product to remove scratches, fingerprints, etc.

Finally, if you are really going to take this on, you’re going to want to look at something that automates the workflow and produces consistent results. You might want to look at some of the products offered by Ortery (http://ortery.com). They are a little pricey, but if you have several thousand products to take pictures of, and want to do things like 360 spins and multi angles, these setups will let you do it all and save a lot of time.

Ultimately all of the investment you are going to make in visual merchandising is going to be paid back by higher conversion rates and therefore more revenue. Think about it… Would you settle for dust and cobweb-covered products displayed behind dirty and smudged glass in your showroom? Then why are settling for over-compressed, grainy, small, and generally poor looking product photography on your website?

If you are on one of the turn-key systems, you are currently stuck as none of them allow you to change or add to the product images that come out of the box. If you find yourself in that situation, pick up the phone and call them to request that they change their software to allow you, the merchant, to take more control over how products are displayed on your site. That includes being able to change or add to the descriptions and the product photography. Maybe if they hear from more of you they will make these capabilities more of a priority.

That concludes this two-part series on merchandising. Hopefully by following my advise last month on the words, and this month on the pictures you’ll start raking in even more money. Of course if you don’t do it, I’m sure someone else will.

Tags:E-Commerce, internet, Merchandising, Powersports Industry, selling-online

Every once and a while I’ll get someone saying to me, “Todd, you’re nuts to be giving away some of these ideas for free!”

Well, this month is another great example. As this is my last column of the year, consider it my early Festivus present to you. I guarantee that if you follow my advice in this column your dealership will absolutely, positively  make significantly more money next year even if you don’t have anything to do with e-commerce.

I’m going to tell you about one of the hottest areas of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) right now: Local Results!

At the Search Engine Strategies show that I just attended in San Jose I heard several experts mention that as much as 40% of all web searches that have to do with commerce (i.e. person does a search for widget with the intent of buying widget) have an intent to transact locally if at all possible. Obviously for things like services, that number is more like 100%. Oil changes and brake jobs are not going to get killed off by e-commerce any time soon!

The secret is based on the fact that pretty much the only people that use things like a phone book to find a business are typically sitting in a cave and/or not all that interested in internal combustion engines anyhow (much to the chagrin of your pushy Yellow Pages sales rep of course).

What do people use instead? Why the interwebs of course! They open up their browser and type in things like “motorcycle oil change Las Vegas”, or “atv tires”, or just about any combination of powersports related keywords and a location. Even if they don’t type in an explicit location, most of the major search engines use a technology called IP address geolocation to figure out where they are to add it to what you’re looking for to offer up more relevant search results.

So when someone in your locale types “motorcycle oil change ZIPCODE” into Google (or Yahoo!, or Microsoft’s Bing) does your shop show up in the Local business results for motorcycle oil change near Your Town? Does your competition? How much more business would you be getting if you did?

How do you get in those results? Well, it’s a combination of having a website that is properly optimized for the kind of content you’re hoping to attract people for (for organic search engine results) as well as making sure that you have a business profile created on all of the major search engines out there (and any and all local resource sites that cover your neck of the woods).

If that sounds like a lot of work, you’re right, it can be. And there are tons of sites, firms and consultants that can help you out. Just Google terms like “local search engine marketing” to see how many. Sure, you can hire an internet advertising firm to help you out, but I’ll do you one better. Instead of paying some marketing firm to manage and place your ads and to do the required SEO activity, hire someone internally to not only manage all of these locally focused activities, but to also become your local community relationship manager.

I go into this idea of a Community Relationship Manager from an events standpoint in some detail on my site (http://tinyurl.com/perpetual-events), but it really becomes valuable when you have this same local expert manage all of your local-centric SEO/SEM activity as well. And unlike general SEO/SEM activity that really is a hard-to-master specialty when you are trying to rank for highly competitive keywords across the entire internet, local SEO/SEM is much easier to get your arms around internally (especially if you are not in a technologically savvy/astute area of the country and your competition has not caught on to the potential yet).

I can almost guarantee that the price you pay for the right person to manage your local presence will provide an ROI at least 3X what you would get if you spent the same money you are going to spend on salary on traditional advertising (YP, radio, TV, print, etc.). AND you have the additional benefit of being able to closely track how well the work/money spent on this person is converting to new sales. Try that with a TV ad or an increasingly expensive newspaper buy.

You of course need to hire the “right” someone to make this work out to its full potential. If you need help figuring out who the right someone should be, drop me an email and I’ll help you out with the job description as well as where to look.

There’s almost no limit to what your community relationship manager/local internet marketing person can be doing. Promote your business events using tools like Zvents (www.zvents.com) or MeetUp (www.meetup.com). Zvents is way cool because when you enter in a new event on their site in your profile, Zvents sends that event out to all the partners that are buying their event feeds that are pushed out. So just by posting your event on Zvents, local print and online (newspapers, yellowpages.com,etc.) and local search engines (i.e. MSN’s Live) will also have your company and event information thus dramatically magnifying the reach you have to get more customers into your shop (to see that reach, go here: corporate.zvents.com/company/media.html).

Finally, while there are currently very real benefits to getting your dealership’s local-centric online presence spruced up, in the future it’s going to become even more important. Pretty much all current and planned cell phones have some kind of GPS capability as well as internet access. Stand alone GPS units are going to begin adding real-time data that goes way beyond just traffic.

When a couple is out on their cross-country trip and need service immediately, they are going to whip out their Google Android-based phone (why do you think Google wants to play in the cell phone market? ADS!!!)  type in “motorcycle service” or something similar. If your shop doesn’t show up and your competition (that read my column and did something about it) does, well my friend, you just lost money.

Happy Festivus!

Here’s a brief list of the major search engines and other local information providers to help get your dealership’s local presence up to speed (a side benefit is that search engines like Google will actually look at your listings in other places and use that information to help you rank in Google’s results).

www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter?hl=en-US&gl=US
listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php
ssl.search.live.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
dbupdate.infousa.com/dbupdate/startupdate
www.yellowpages.com/advertising/update_listing_form
advertising.superpages.com/spportal/
register.local.com/
www.truelocal.com/listabusiness.aspx
www.zoominfo.com/Registration/Register.aspx?type=6
www.infospace.com/info/kmaint/kdbadd.html
signup.yp.com/
www.yelp.com/signup

Tags:Column, dealerships, E-Commerce, ecommerce, internet, motorcycle, Motorcycle Advertising, powersports, Powersports Industry, Search Engine Optimization, selling-online, SEO

As we start to wind down this year I want to go back and cover an important topic that I touched on in a previous column some time ago as well as at my Indy sessions. Not enough is changing as fast as it needs to so I’m bringing it up again. I’m directing this column to parts, accessory, and apparel OEM’s in the hopes that it will eventually help us dealers and retailers when it comes to selling more of your products.

First and foremost if you want us (your retail partners) to sell for you, stop fighting against us! I can’t get over how hard it is to get the idea through to so many of you that we, the dealers and retailers, are on the same side. Our goal is typically to sell as many of your vehicles, vehicle related widgets, or vehicle riding apparel as possible to our willing and eager customers. We’re investing an insane amount of time and treasure to get the world to beat a path to our virtual doors. So why do you do so many counter-productive things that make us not want to (or not be able to) help you?!

First, what’s up with your MSRP models? I’m not talking about setting some insane MSRP that no one in their right mind is going to end up paying anywhere close. I’m saying that it would be lovely if you would give some consideration for your retailer’s need to make money when rationally setting your MSRP’s. Especially if you’re going through distribution. Every single link in the supply chain is going to expect their cut (whether they actually do anything of value to deserve it or not).

Get rid of every single link in your distribution chain that is not legitimately adding some type of significant value. In most cases that’s going to mean that you should stop using a distributor that doesn’t do anything more than basic warehouse and transport. Are they providing e-commerce and multi-channel merchandising support? Are they providing both forward as well as reverse logistics and handling customer service issues? Are they providing comprehensive aggregated demand forecasts that are farther out than your lead-times? Are they providing market and customer research data? Or better yet, are they selling their own lines that compete with yours? If you’re not shaking or nodding your head in the appropriate directions in response to those questions, you need to re-tool your distribution strategy.

So while based on your costs and your required profit margin an MSRP of $99.95 might look quite nice, by the time it gets to my website it’s just not going to be worth carrying that snazzy new doohicky if my gross margin is only 13%.

I mean sure, we can price it for more than MSRP to make a margin that justifies us carrying your product and providing the necessary level of customer service and support, but do you really think that’s a good idea? Especially if the customer can just go to your site and buy it for less? Which leads me to my next major issue…

Why are you selling direct? Seriously. Fish or cut bait. You’re either a direct sales model or you’re a channel sales model. Pick one! First you set an MSRP that’s unrealistically low, and then you go and sell on your own site at a price that only you can realistically afford to live on! I’ve got no rational reason to be selling your stuff on my site in those circumstances. It’s not worth the headache for a 3% net to compete with you! Why are you making me compete with you?! You’re supposed to be my supplier, my partner, my friend! Why are you stealing my customers?!

I’ve run into insane cases like where my site ranked much higher on a Google search for a popular, expensive, highly sought-after line of niche products than the OEM’s own site did! I could have sold the crap out of their products for them. So could the other 5 or 6 retailers that were also in the top 10. But instead the business geniuses at this company decided that they prefer to keep their MSRP at a level that could only realistically support selling off their own site. I tried to work with them. I laid out the business case. They even agreed that if they did things the way I was proposing they would probably sell more if they more fully supported their retail partners (especially the ones with vibrant e-commerce businesses). But they had their model and they weren’t going to change it. Whatever…

Now they get to spend all that extra money handling things like direct to consumer marketing and advertising, retail issues like customer service, shipping, returns, etc. etc. Instead of supporting and leveraging their retail sales channel (in this case e-commerce) they get to spend their money doing all the things that the retail partners they should have been working with are already doing! It’s insane!

I’m not saying that their aren’t brilliant business reasons why a direct to consumer model in this era of e-commerce, 3rd party logistics providers, and world-wide overnight shipping can work very very well. In fact I’ve got some fairly radical ideas that that very business model may be the predominant model for the future of our industry. I’m just saying that from what I’ve seen, most of you guys that are selling direct and selling through the channel have not really thought it all the way through.

I might not necessarily care if it was only yourself it was hurting, but I want to sell your stuff because my customers want it! Help me help you make more money for all of us!

Visit my site (www.radicalpowersports.com) where you’re going to see more written about these and other topics that have to do with radically overhauling how the motorcycle and powersports industry’s business models currently operate. How would you like your sacred cow burger cooked?

Tags:bad-business-practices, Column, dealerships, E-Commerce, ecommerce, internet, motorcycle, powersports, Powersports Industry, rant, selling-online

Last month I introduced the idea of using existing on-line social networking sites (MySpace, MeetUp, Facebook, etc.) to create a loose collection of on-line social experiences that you can use to drive real-world, physical traffic into your dealership (as opposed to using them strictly as on-line or e-commerce selling tools).

This month I’m going to expand that idea and introduce the idea of White Label social networking platforms. White Label platforms are similar to the idea of an e-commerce platform that I’ve covered pretty extensively in the past. They contain most of the features and functions that you’d need to carry out the tasks that the big social networking players have and you just need to customize the look and feel of the site, maybe add on or develop some custom plug-ins for expanded functionality and so on. Because of the extreme complexity in developing a social networking platform, this is typically a much better route than completely developing your own site from scratch.

By far the White Label platform that gets the most press is Ning (http://www.ning.com). One of the biggest reasons that Ning gets so much attention (and money) is that it was was co-founded by Marc Andreessen (he’s the guy that started a company called Netscape and is prety much singly responsible for introducing the idea of the World Wide Web to the unwashed masses of non-computer geeks so when he gets involved in something a lot of people take notice).

If you want to dig a little deeper a really good resource for a comprehensive list of white label social platforms is located on Jeremiah Owyang’s blog located here: http://tinyurl.com/2mwa6g. A lot of them are free, some are open source, and some you’ll need to pay for use.

For more reading check out this good article (it’s a year old and there’s new players and a lot of change in this space but it’s still a pretty comprehensive take on the idea of private/white label networking platforms) is located at TechCrunch here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/24/9-ways-to-build-your-own-social-network/. Of course there’s also a Google search for white label social networking platforms as well.

There are several pros and cons to creating a social networking site for your dealership vs. using one or more of the existing social sites out there.

Pros: Almost complete control and flexibility to make the site do what you need it to, unique branding possibilities, harder for the competition to copy you, your customers don’t require a separate login for each site (i.e. one for Facebook for social networking, one for YouTube to share videos, one for flickr to share photos, etc.),

Cons: Can be costly (in terms of time or developer pay if using a free platform or straight up expensive if paying for a platform), and probably the biggest drawback is that it’s harder to leverage the larger communities of established networks like Facebook, MeetUp, etc.

I want to spend a little time talking about the last con above. There are several initiatives like OpenSocial and Google’s Friend Connect that are trying to open up the Social Graph and make it more portable. So that the user (and more importantly the connections that make up the user’s network) will no longer be locked into say Facebook or mySpace. Each site or application will still do its own thing and serve its own purpose by using the user’s social network. It may seem like a pedantic distinction but its ramifications are huge on the social networking space. No longer will the value of a site like Facebook be established by the mere fact that it holds the leash to a user’s social network, but by what it does with that network.

So once you choose your platform you need to start thinking about how you want to use it to create a community around dealership. I’d suggest that the more features, functions, and tools that you can cram into it so that your customers can sort of do their own thing under your dealership’s auspices the better. A great example would be organizing rides. You’d want tools to allow the ride organizers to be able to invite other members of the dealership’s network and manage RSVP’s (think MeetUp or eVite functionality). You also want some kind of functionality that would allow you to display the ride route (maybe a mash-up integration with Google Maps) and even allow participants to download the route data in various data formats they can put into their GPS. You’re also going to want to have message board or forum where people can discuss the ride both before the event and after the event. A way for people to upload ride photos and videos are also must haves.

Now again, as I talked about last month, you could have links to all the various existing sites like YouTube, flickr, MeetUp, etc. on your site and force people to go on a snipe hunt to each one for every piece of the puzzle, or you could use your own socially networked site and create a uniform, harmonized, customized experience for your customers where they can do everythig they need or want to do under your virtual “roof.”

Tags:Column, community-marketing, dealerships, ecommerce, facebook, internet, motorcycle, myspace, powersports, Powersports Industry, selling-online, social marketing, social media, social-networking, web2.0, youtube