NADA 2010 Convention & Expo in Orland Florida
–This is a dual post by myself and Alex. Mine is the following and Alex’s is below.
Attendance this year was low – – dealers and vendors.
Parties were at a minimum 🙁
The sessions were good, the ones that I was able to attend (not many). The dealers attending this year seem to be more in tune; not just looking for new shiny objects but also looking for some substance. Looking for features and benefits of a solution/vendor can provide.
This is a quick review on what myself and Alex had seen on the floor in regards to different/new products and solutions.
Cars.com was very proud of their new Cars.com Mobile iPhone App. 2 Thumbs up!!
One of the newest players that was on the innovative side this year was DealerMouth. DealerMouth wants to help dealers maximize their online visibility while building ongoing rapport directly between the salesperson and the customer with the use of individual sales and service personnel micro-sites. This could be a great employee retention tool for dealers!
Elead CRM has been on a roll with encompassing several (inventory management, market analysis, CRM, Service Marketing, Direct Mail, Desking, Call Center) solutions under one central roof. I was toying around with their mobile lead management – no real time to dig into it but first impressions were positive.
Homenet was talking up their new pay by lead with ebay local. Get your entire inventory onto ebay local and only pay $25.00 a lead (email and over 30 second phone call). They are also providing pay per lead from Edmunds, $35.00 will get you a “qualified”, high closing lead directly from Edmunds.com. Hopefully those leads are closing at a 30-40% clip 🙂
Clickmotive was proudly showing off their FusionMobile websites. Offering custom header graphics, splash pages and navigation icons. What impressed me most was how fast the sites where and the fact that they also offer a dealer Group mobile portal. ClickMotive claims that their FusionMobile suite is averaging a 30%-50% conversion rate.
The showcase of mobile apps were on the rise this year. Premier netcomm solutions – DealerApp was just one vendors showing off their iphone app for dealers. I liked the fact that they offered a one time price that included 1 year of any available upgrades while getting your app into the iTunes store.
DealerApp makes it easy to access any part of your website (mobile or not). Inventory listings, coupons/specials, announcements, directions while sending leads and inquiries straight to your CRM.
Autotrader was showing off their NEW dealer scorecard reports. Find out how your dealer stacks up again the competition in your local and national market.
Polk was introducing their automotive lists online – http://automotivelists.polk.com/. Dealers can now quickly jump online and order their targeted automotive marketing lists. Reach profitable prospects for new vehicle, used vehicle, and parts & service campaigns.
I’m sure by now, everyone has seen or at least heard of GOSO — GOSO offers web and social media marketing suite for dealers. Not only do they have a slick inventory module for your dealers facebook fanpage but they have a reputation management piece, custom landing pages, testimonial management and inventory broadcasting. It’s worth taking a look at.
Car-Research was introducing their completely revamped modulated CRM. Another CRM vendor bringing several solutions under one “roof”. Their Dashboard and Enterprise Reporting was looking impressive. This company seems to fly under the radar but should be given consideration if you’re in the market for a CRM.
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This portion is By Alex (excuse his laziness and forgetting his camera 🙂 )
I was on a mission to meet with some very specific vendors and make sure certain folks from Checkered Flag got to speak with the right people. In sitting down with Dealer.com I think we came up with a good way to keep our Dealer Principle engaged with the continuing push toward online advertising. What does that mean to an Internet Sales Person/Manager/Director?
We are developing a report that compares Internet leads to sold DMS data and then backs those sold records into some very comprehensive details showing advertising sources and click-paths. To take it a step further, this will be followed-up by a formula that can show what kind of money needs to be spent to achieve certain results. This will be fantastic for dealers who have been on Dealer.com for a while and have a good history of data to show these results. For the Dealer Principle it simply says “spend this much more and you’ll get this much more traffic”. I personally think it is going to take us a few months to get things very straight, but the vision and data is right. It all makes sense and should provide some unbelievable insight!
Secondly, I was on the hunt for something that would bring my DMS parts inventory to my website without too much fuss on our parts departments’ manual labor time. WHI Solutions seems to be on track to do that. There is still a lot of polishing they need to do to make their customer portal look and act more modern, but they have the feeds and are definitely heading in the right direction. I’d love to see a partnership between them and some of the site hosting companies. The site hosting companies can build the customer and dealer interfaces, while WHI supplies the data.
Thirdly, I wanted to take a look at DealerTrack’s AAX. In my market I am getting concerned that there are too many dealers using Pre-Owned Pricing software and we’re just pricing ourselves against one another driving the market down. It is one thing to have only a handful of dealers on these products, but it is another when almost every dealer is on it. I’m not saying that AAX is any better than vAuto or First Look, but I wanted to see if they had anything that might help some of the pain we’re feeling in my market. The discussion was not concluded at the show and I think there is still a lot of debate circulating over this genre of dealership software.
Overall, the floor at NADA 2010 was very manageable in a single day. Although I wished I was there for a second day, I still feel that what I got accomplished was very productive. I’m leaving quite a few other products out that deserve mention, but I must say that the newest player who was truly innovative this year is DealerMouth. They provide a solution for sales agents that could start a whole new generation in dealership social media!