The old adage "We learn something new every day" can easily escalate to "We can learn many new things each day if we ask questions and listen to the answers."
So it was with my interview with Todd Olson, owner of Quality RV - featured in the Dealer Spotlight section of this month's Newsletter.
While the interview was for only 15 minutes or so, I could barely keep up with his insights into how to capture the leads he is generating not only from the Internet but also from Facebook, Twitter and the new Smart Phones.
With Todd's permission, I thought I would share some of what is working for him.
- At one time, Todd was one of the first of very few dealers to use videos of a customer's visit to immediately follow up. What makes this an effective marketing and sales tool for Todd is that each customer gets an e-mail with the You-Tube video link or a Flip Video right after their visit. Quality RV is the very first dealer most of the time to get back to that customer with a video.
This is important because the customer has probably visited five or six dealership on their shopping day and Todd wants his video in their hands first. This next day, first-in-hand feature is critical.
- You-Tube has proven to be especially effective because of their indexing capabilities. If a customer is looking for a specific unit, they can use You-Tube like using Google thereby making You-Tube a powerful search engine.
- The social networking of Facebook and Twitter are working for Todd. The key is to use them and dialog a lot. The more you post, the more this will get others engaged and talk about you and how they love their RV.
Todd puts some of this dialog on his web-site and is converting a lot of it to testimonials. He posts a steady stream of information about events like units on sale or hot dog day and comments such as, "What a beautiful day it is today and why not come visit with us," etc. This dialog keeps customers engaged after the sale and builds on-going relationships that pay off because your customers start talking about you.
- Todd has one sales person doing the main engine work with this social networking - an assigned responsibility of that position. If this person doesn't do it well, Todd will give it to someone else. This person gets all the e-mail leads from the Internet directly as well as all the phone calls as a result of the Internet. Three weeks into this month, there have been 50 such e-mail leads. On top of that, he maybe gets 200 telephone calls from the Internet, but that is hard to gauge.
- Todd realizes if he gets an e-mail from the Internet that the customer has probably e-mailed six or seven other dealers so he makes sure the customer gets a very, very quick response.
These customers are not waiting around to get responses from all six or seven. They will generally run with the first responder. Todd says you will lose that Internet customer if you are not the first to respond.
Todd gave the example or four leads he just recently tracked at random; each was answered with a personalized e-mail within 15 minutes by this salesperson. Todd emphasizes the responses have to be personal - not canned.
- To reinforce this quick response process, Todd bought and equipped this salesperson with a Smart Phone. Todd sort of laughs when he says that now this salesperson answers all those e-mails and twitters almost immediately. The only time he doesn't is when he is in church.
I was impressed with how enthusiastic Todd is for the business he is getting out of his brick-and-mortar sales locations augmented substantially with his use of very current social networking technologies. Todd reiterated several times that it's not the Internet or social networking that is getting him his quite spectacular results - it's all about the follow up.
