1. automotive management
News
Ford urges dealers
to sell the car, not
the discount
News
Vauxhall in bid to
take on Ford
Transit dominance
e
New car market
New car sales top one million
at the halfway point of 2010
www.am-online.com
July 2010
Fleet and SME demand provides a post-scrappage boost
Sales analysis Click here
Best practice
SMMT International Automotive Summit
AM Awards: Focus
on winning ways Cable signals
end to state
aid for car
industry
Coalition still undecided
Used cars on EV subsidy
Fall in values is SMMT summit
sign of traditional report Click here
market pattern
Editor Jeremy Bennett Tel 01733 468261 email am@bauermedia.co.uk
AM, Media House, Lynch Wood, Peterborough, PE2 6EA. Published by Bauer Automotive

2. Best practice: AM Awards focus
Traditional and e-marketi
By David Bale, of MSX International in service and sales – as long as the relationship
This year MSX International with the customer is maintained and not re-created
was again delighted with the everytime they walk in. All awards entrants had
number and the quality of significant initiatives to profile customers and
applications for the AM Awards. 2009 was a ensure that every sales and service event was a
predictably tough year with most business plans good one: ‘No questions asked’ money back guar-
structured around customer retention and antees on car sales if the customer was unhappy;
maintaining realistic positions in the market. servicing that was planned to fit a customer’s busy
Award applicants again showed vast amounts of lifestyle and not just planned to optimise work-
professionalism and attention to detail that allowed shop loading.
them to fully exploit all areas of opportunity. All entrants exhibited the same high regard for
Undoubtedly scrappage was the single identif- employee retention. Huge focus on initial candi-
iable factor that affected performance in small car date selection, then focus on analysing their
segments. In some cases there were customers performance, then similar focus on training to
queueing up to buy new cars. drive the correct performance. Staff churn in these
In other areas focus was always on customer dealerships was similar to other organisations, but
satisfaction and improving process around lead the churn was on newer and less skilled
management and existing contacts, through the employees.
lifecycle of vehicle ownership. In summary it is clear that, if your sales person
The winners demonstrated a clear strategy for stays for a significant period and your customers
their specific market. need long-term attention your sales person estab-
This article is one of a series for AM which reflect lishes a pipeline of existing relationships that
on the best practices in 2009 and how they ensured supports the target you are setting them.
success. The articles focus on six areas:
�� Marketing, e-marketing and lead generation Lead creation is not an exact science
�� New, used and fleet car retailing But award winning entrants did show the
�� Customer focused service process essential feature of lead creation is constant
�� Streamlining bodyshop process and improving attention to improving feedback across all
CSI marketing channels.
�� Parts sales - retail and wholesale growth Marketing activity can be broadly split into three
�� Customer retention areas:
�� Traditional marketing
A customer is for life and so is a sales person �� E-marketing
It has long been recognised that the sale of a car �� Call centre activity
is a single event, but over the lifetime of a single It is important that these three areas have to be
customer there is more opportunity than this, both completely integrated, but in analysing approach

3. New car News Best News digest Used car Showroom Recruitment AM
market practice market contacts
ing and lead generation
and best practice it is possible to take each one Being visible in the community at shows and
separately. shopping centres generated initial leads. But visible,
modern, well located showroom and service
Visibility press and promotional campaigns premises were still used for drive-by leads.
All the successful campaigns were built around a
clear value proposition for the customer. Even in E-marketing
the recession there were a number of good oppor- The website is the obvious central point for this
tunities around which a marketing campaign could activity. All applicants focused on the same areas
be developed: Servicing specific vehicle age, for the base website:
segment profiles or developing themed campaigns �� Simple landing page with corporate identity and
for example. Campaigns were also structured, clear links to website areas and search engine
based on detailed customer feedback. Consistency optimisation with daily analysis of web traffic
and integrity across all channels for each campaign �� New cars sections making full use of available
was essential for success. OEM marketing material, significantly not redi-
Larger dealer groups developed a non- recting any lead directly to the OEM or using their
automotive group corporate identity often around vehicle configurators
family values, but always endeavouring to empa- �� Used sections making full use of quality photo-
thise with their fleet, small business and retail graphs and video to present vehicles with access
customers. This was coupled with an aggressive to online appraisals, GAP, F+I, green costs and tax
media calendar to deliver the campaigns in a timely calculators. `Make us an offer’ attracts a click
manner. through to a sales person.
'Campaigns were
structured, based
on detailed
customer
feedback'

4. Best practice: AM Awards focus
Service sections on websites had the most vari-
Blueprint MSX International ation. There was no consistent list of features
In Europe, MSX International owns eight across all sites. The best websites allowed service
regional hubs covering 28 countries and booking online and enabled online review of service
delivers automotive services at European history for clients through their login-access.
and local level in 28 different languages. Others had extended warranty and service
With more than 16 years’ presence as an propositions. Most sites had service schedule
automotive retail networks solutions information and telephone numbers and email or
provider in Europe, MSX International chat options to access service reception.
supplies more than 1,200 automotive Social networking media such as Facebook and
experts in Europe to OEMs, NSCs and Twitter were being experimented with. Other
dealerships. mechanisms, such as ezine-type newsletters or
customer favourites car search settings seemed
Skilled staff to be better at producing true leads.
MSX International applies proven automo- Associated marketing, links to other sites within
tive processes (ISO & 6-Sigma) to manage the community and links to non-automotive life-
all types of service and operates under SLA style type sites were used to attract local leads of
and KPIs. All staff are skilled and trained in the correct profile while stand alone sites away
matters like brand environment, culture from the main site were used to attract new, non-
and history, dealer networks’ specifics, loyal customers. Amongst the metrics used to
automotive, technical and customer measure websites’ success, conversion was the
handling. most interesting. Conversion rates of 0.5% to 3%
were quoted, but in all cases it is the improvement
MSXI Dealer in conversion rate as the site is established rather
The technical platform MSXI Dealer, than the actual value that creates the return on
consisting of our service management tool, investment. The least considered metric was the
Book IT, and our lead management time for any page to load which in some cases
platform, Sell ITis a highly effective solution was still too slow to maintain customer attention.
for increasing service, aftersales and repair The essential feature of websites demanded by
revenues and professionally handling sales customers was integrity and consistency. The best
leads. entrants had solved the problem of establishing
It enables MSX International to approach internal content management teams, updating the
current and lapsed customers at the website daily and ensuring data was only ever
optimal times within their vehicles’ lifeycle entered once to avoid inconsistent information.
so that the experts can pro-actively book The best entrants had also solved the problem
service appointments, conduct promotional of fully integrating their e-marketing into their
campaigns for accessories, extended other activities with essentially a seamless flow
warranty and sell additional new, used and from website to call centre to sales or service
fleet vehicles. reception without a customer having to call twice
or ever repeat their request.

5. New car News Best News digest Used car Showroom Recruitment AM
market practice market contacts
Virtual case
Best practice: The pre-requisites directly up to 8% of leads for new and used
of efficient lead management vehicles sales.
Traditional marketing, in combination with
e-marketing and call centre activities, Stage 2: Lead assessment and
generates additional interactivity with the qualification
customer where consistency is vital. At this stage, every incoming lead from the
Dealers with the same lead quality can have channels described in Stage 1 is assessed for
vastly different close rates and in this race data clean-up and data enhancement. Leads
there is no room left for second place – are are then qualified for the processing stage.
all dealers equally armed? The main difficulty here is that an ‘industrial’
lead factory actually runs using many different
Stage 1: The lead factory data sources and IT systems. These need to
The traditional direct marketing method communicate together, often by dedicated
combined with showroom activity isn’t interfaces.
sufficient for sustaining dealer business when Stage 2 usually includes monitoring and
new vehicle sales are dropping. In addition, the history processes in order to enable tracking
product mix of new vehicles is generating of every lead and maintain confidence in the
lower margins and putting additional pressure lead management processes for the sales
on the sales volume bonus. executives.
E-marketing can efficiently complete
development of the potential lead pool with Phase 3: Lead processing
one major constraint: even if the leads from Having a regular flow of qualified leads is a
the internet actually have the same quality as necessity that has no value without the highest
any other source – and this isn’t usually standard of lead processing in place until the
admitted – they have to be qualified and close of the sale. This is discriminatory and
processed extremely fast, ideally through unfortunately still not well implemented by
managed call centre activities, in order to every dealership, especially for leads coming
reach the optimal conversion rates. from multiple sources, such as the internet.
The aftersales activity, very often relayed in a
secondary position, has actually the best
quality cost ratio per lead for the dealerships,
having a highly implemented customer contact
strategy. For instance, a customer lifecycle
management programme driven by aftersales
is capable of generating a continuous flow of
leads in aftersales, but also can contribute