Day 13

I have a really bad cold today, so I'm dragging. But work still goes on.

Today started with an interview with a new vehicle salesperson. This will likely be the last one for the week.

I signed our dealership up to be the exclusive dealership for Pontiac, Buick and GMC's to all the Sam's Club members in our area. That accounts for about 240,000 members in the tri-county area. For only $550.00 per month, I'm thinking this will be a really good deal. Just the exposure alone will be well worth the investment. Along with the new vehicles, we'll also have our entire used vehicle inventory exhibited on the Sam's Club website. From what the Director of Sam's Club Auto is saying, he's already to begin sending leads to us.

The afternoon was spent creating the graphic emails that will be sent to the internet leads. They'll be 8 in all, including the autoresponder. Within the new Autobase internet module, we'll be able to automate the process to send each email at a pre-determined interval once we place the lead in the "tried to contact by phone with no success" folder. Then once the lead has been contacted, the emails automatically stop once you put them into the "already contacted" folder. It sure saves a lot of time.

Had a meeting with the Reynolds and Reynolds form rep today. He asked me how I like the DMS, and I told him I really didn't want anything to do with it. I'm a windows-based kind of guy and don't enjoy working with dos-based systems. Even in the past, I had no trouble getting into the program, but could never seem to get out of it. But with my responsibilities, I really won't be using it. Frustrating!!

My new Internet Appointment Coordinator will be starting next week. I'm excited. I have installed an Appointment Coordinator in every internet department I have setup, and it's worked great. For those dealerships that don't wish to develop a full-fledged, dedicated internet department, this is the way to go. In the last store I developed, they sold 40 internet sales on 122 appointments last month, which is a closing ratio of 33%. And with one Coordinator, they've been consistenly doing those numbers. Not bad!

I'm going home to get some rest. Take care.