Careful planning is fundamental to success
Short-term thinking is a dangerous practice no matter what business you are in. For auto dealers, however, it seems that the consequences for it are not as dire. Or are they?
Earlier this year, an auto group was formed which acquired a handful of dealerships. Naturally, along with the acquisitions also came vendor relationships and term contracts. In an effort to maximize resources, most (if not all) of these agreements were renewed without consideration for their long-term impact. Within the first 6 months this auto group ended up canceling more than one of the re-newed agreements and signed up for similar (and hopefully better) agreements with other vendors.
You could argue that the decision to re-new these existing agreements was short-sighted. You could also argue that doing so was appropriate and that canceling them so soon afterwards was inevitable. The point is that anytime a decision is made that impacts the long-term business operation and which is then negated shortly there afterwards is the result of POOR PLANNING and SHORT-TERM THINKING.
Recently I met with a dealership interested in a new online marketing strategy, or so I thought. What they really wanted, it turned out, was a “website”. While there, my team explained that our services were designed to promote a dealer’s website through organic search engine marketing and social media and that while not having a website in tact to properly represent the dealership would be an obstacle, the importance of putting together an online marketing strategy for their website-to-be was of equal if not greater importance than the website itself. The dealership seemed to agree at the time but then a week later it was explained to me that they had decided to just focus on getting a website launched and then get with us on the marketing sometime in the future.
The outcome could be attributed to a variety of things, including ineffectiveness in our own representation or communication, but the unspoken response I heard from the dealership was that they had their sights set on building a website and that everything after that was a distraction they would deal with afterwards.
This is an all-too-common scenario in the car business and I think it demonstrates the way many dealers think. The Internet is an overwhelming and ever-changing medium for many people and so it is intimidating to for some to approach it in ways not familiar to them, or at least in ways not yet popularized by their peers. Five years ago, many dealers we still fighting with the idea of whether or not they should have a website for their dealership. Three years ago dealers were jumping on the PPC bandwagon.
Today, dealers are faced with the reality of using the Internet to built lasting transparent relationships with their customers. It’s everything they have been able to avoid for the past several decades now staring them in the face like was depicted in the epic poem Beowulf.
ps - Shouts out to Brian Hoecht of Ai-Dealer for his wizardry in reflecting on this great tale of our time.
