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Sharp Shooter

Business is good! You really think I should continue my marketing efforts?

Tory Hornsby | 08/23/2019

I’ve written about this before, but there are only 2 types of dealers:

1. Market-Driven Dealers. Their success is almost strictly dependent upon their market, location, and having a hot OEM in a good economy. This is where a lot of dealers are right now… especially on the metric side. Business grows outside of their control, so they can’t replicate it, which leaves them extremely vulnerable. 

 

2. Marketing-Driven Dealers. This type of dealer controls (and therefore creates) their own success by marketing to their buying base with the right media and good message every single month.  I’ll jump into the buying base subject below.

While there’s no denying a great economy, a great location and a hot OEM make a difference, being a Marketing-Driven dealer is still the way to go. In fact, the best combination is to be a Marketing-Driven Dealer with a hot OEM when the market is booming!  The challenge is you can’t control the economy. There are peaks and there are valleys. And no dealer can impact the national popularity of the OEM they sell. You can hope these things work in your favor, but hope is not a strategy. 

Have you ever read Stephen Covey’s book, “7 Habits of Highly Successful People”? 

My favorite of the seven habits is the first one… Be Proactive. It’s all about taking responsibility for your life. You see, life doesn’t just happen. Whether you know it or not, your life is completely designed by you. The choices, after all, are yours. You choose happiness. You choose sadness. You choose decisiveness. You choose ambivalence. You choose success. You choose failure. You choose courage. You choose fear.  Every moment, every situation, provides a new choice. And in doing so, it gives you the perfect opportunity to do things differently to produce more positive results. 

Unsuccessful people really struggle with that concept. I mean, they would never choose to be unhappy or unsuccessful, so it must be something or somebody else’s fault. Business is like this too… we get to choose our actions, good or bad, but our choices have consequences, good or bad.  All of the problems, challenges, and opportunities we face fall into two areas. The Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence.

The Circle of Concern represents all the things over which a person has little or no control, but yet impacts their life. Unsuccessful people focus their time and energy here. They must find something to complain about!  Again, they’d never choose to be unhappy or unsuccessful, so their ‘bad luck’ could never be their fault.  Here’s a word to the wise… if you can’t change it, MOVE ON!

The Circle of Influence represents all the things in your life that you CAN do something about. This is where successful people focus their time and energy. It just so happens that marketing falls in this area. That’s why you’ve got to make the decision to consistently market to the right people using the right media with a good message, and this is being a Marketing-Driven Dealer. 

It starts with your buying base. As a refresher, these are the folks who live close to your dealership and fall into 3 buckets:

1) Active Customers – these guys have spent money with your store in the last 12 months.

2) Inactive Past Customers – they’re past customers, but they haven’t spent money with you the last 12 months. 

3) Conquest Prospects – these are the enthusiasts who live in your top-performing zip codes, but they’ve never spent money with your dealership. 

The majority of your sales over the next 12-months will come from these 3 groups, and the key is consistently staying in front of them, so YOU earn their business when they begin to shop.

Our new Bullseye program is designed to scientifically go after these folks and give them a reason to respond, provide their name, email address, phone number and tell you what they’re most interested in purchasing right now. Then, our staff picks up the phone and calls to set appointments for your sales team so you can sell more units and make more money!

We also utilize our Onboarding System to identify which customers are viewing inventory on your website, email them an approved buy-back offer, and our internal Call Center makes live calls to these folks too. 

I’ve got more to share with you about our Bullseye program and how it predictably grows your sales. For more information give me a shout at 1-877-242-4472 or visit www.psmmarketing.com.  

- Tory

P.S. Want to submit YOUR question for “Ask Tory”?  Just email your question to marketing@powersportsmarketing.com and let Tory know what question you’d like to have answered in a future issue of the UMM Newsletter.
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I'm looking for something new for my marketing... what do you recommend that really works?

Tory Hornsby | 07/22/2019

Have you heard about our new Bullseye program?  

Most marketing is ‘spray and pray’ that’s designed to get your name out there and build your brand, and targets everyone. Instead, our Bullseye program only goes after the people who are most likely to buy from you. After all, only 5 to 6% of the population are powersports enthusiasts. That’s it. So, the best way to grow your dealership is to target enthusiasts who ride what you sell, buy the stuff you sell and who live in your backyard. 

The Bullseye program goes after 3 groups of people… 1) Active Customers – These are the guys that have spent money with your store in the last 12 months. They’re already active, so our job is to keep them engaged with your dealership because let’s face it, your competitors are trying to steal them from you.  2) Inactive Past Customers – While these ARE past customers, they haven’t spent money with you the last 12 months. They’re lost, and our job is to reactivate them.  3) Conquest Prospects – These are the people who ride what you sell, live in your top-performing zip codes but have never spent money in your store. Our job is to grow new customers for your dealership by getting them to give you a try.  Between these three groups, this is where the vast majority of your sales are going to come from over the next 12-months. 

So, we have the right list of people to go after, now let’s look at how we reach them. We start by targeting folks on Google and social media. We’re able to show ads specifically to the customers and prospects in the 3 groups mentioned above, so as they’re browsing the web, searching on Google and checking out social media they’ll see your ad. 

We also send out 3 Programmatic Emails during the campaign to increase results and drive additional traffic to your website. Programmatic email means that once a customer has opened or clicked in the email, we can track every page of your website they visit, forever. With this technology we’re able to create more leads by monitoring who views inventory pages on your website.  Then, our system automatically sends them a 1-to-1 email with a buy back offer from your Sales Manager. 

We also utilize direct mail because it’s the best way to conquest new customers, and it’s the most noticed media. While people can easily miss an ad on the radio, TV or a billboard (and other media), nearly 100% of people check their mail on a regular basis. They look at each piece of mail they receive, and they have to decide what to do with it. And when an enthusiast gets something powersports related with a good offer they pay attention and it drives results. Plus, there’s zero waste because everyone we target is already an enthusiast.  

In addition, we add a web banner to your website, activate our lead generation pop-up, and provide you with signage and fliers for promotion in the dealership.   

Harley-Davidson released a study few years ago that showed it took an average of 29 touches before someone purchased. A touch can be seeing an ad, an email, receiving direct mail, visiting your website, stopping by the dealership, and more. The Bullseye program is designed to maximize touches over a 2 to 3-week timeframe. We drive traffic to your website, generate leads, send personalized Buy Back Emails, push people through the sales funnel faster, and then we take it to the next level by incorporating the power of the phone.

Our in-house call center will make live calls to the leads we generate, and we also call the prospects who view inventory pages from all the additional traffic we drive to your website. We set appointments for your sales team to knock down, and generate Hot Leads, which are prospects interested in buying, but for whatever reason they can’t commit to a specific appointment time. 

So, to recap, the Bullseye program puts your dealership in-front of thousands of your most viable prospects by utilizing several online and offline strategies.  We boost traffic to your website. We get prospects to self-identify if they’re interested in buying something from you right now. We automatically send your website inventory visitors a buy-back email. Then our internal call center picks up the phone and sets appointments and generates Hot Leads for your team. 

For more information about our Bullseye program, call 1-877-242-4472.  

- Tory 

P.S. Want to submit YOUR question for “Ask Tory”?  Just email your question to marketing@powersportsmarketing.com and let Tory know what question you’d like to have answered in a future issue of the UMM Newsletter.
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Question: We quantify the results of individual marketing campaigns, but it feels like we’re missing something.

Tory Hornsby | 04/24/2019

 

It sounds like you’re on the right track with individual campaign tracking… keep it up. What you’re missing is tracking the bigger picture. This reminds me of one of my past experiences.
In the late 90’s, as a young Tory, I became the Sales Manager of a Powersports dealership. I was so pumped and ready to jump in and make a difference from day one. I had read books, consistently absorbed info from the industry trade magazines, and learned a lot about what to do from my previous Sales Managers. Of course, they also taught me a ton about what NOT to do.  

I still remember my very first sales meeting. I wanted it to be perfect. I had been taught the importance of having a written agenda for every meeting, so I printed out a copy for each attendee. The agenda included product knowledge, sales training, an overview of current incentives, and monthly goal setting.

During the goal setting session, I asked each of my salespeople, “How many units you gonna sell this month?”  The first one said, “32 units.”  Well, he had never sold over 30 units, so we all celebrated this big goal! We hooted and hollered, and I excitedly wrote down his 32-unit goal on the board and moved on to the next salesperson. 

When I asked salesperson two, I could see his wheels spinning because he normally sold more than the first guy. Now there was no way he could say less than 32, so he said, “put me down for 37 units!” That was also more than he’d ever manage to get out the door, so we hooted and hollered again, and I wrote down his 37-unit goal on the board. 

Once we finished the individual goal setting exercise, we set the dealership’s monthly goal.  As you can imagine, it was a HUGE one. We worked so hard, pushing every unit out the door we possibly could to hit that goal and when the dust settled at the end of the month…. we didn’t even come close! 

We had set an unrealistic goal that was based on hype and feelings instead of facts and data. 
Over the next couple of months, I learned that there were only 2 ways a salesperson can increase their sales, and setting an unrealistic goal wasn’t one of them.

1. Work with more customers. 
If a salesperson normally works with 100 customers, increasing that to 120 will result in more units sold. This can be accomplished by being hungrier and getting more showroom ups, answering the phone more often, following-up with Be-Backs (the Be-Back bus usually doesn’t come back without follow-up), calling past customers, and prospecting when they’re outside of the dealership. 

2. Work on selling and people skills to increase closing ratio.
If a salesperson normally closes 15 out of 100 customers (15% closing ratio), increasing that to 20% will move the needle big time. This can be accomplished by constant training on every part of the sales process. From the greet and getting past “just looking,” to handling objections/closing, and everything in between. When you do both, the results quickly start to compound.

Just like this, your marketing must be accountable for increasing business, and it boils down to 2 things you can easily track.

1. Increase your number of active customers.
So how do you quantify if more customers do business with your dealership in 2019 than did in 2018? Run a report of only those customers who’ve spent money with you in a specific timeframe and compare year-over-year. While the ultimate goal is to have more active customers at the end of the year, I recommend tracking this every month. Your marketing must maintain active customers, reactivate inactive past customers (haven’t done business in more than a year), and conquest new customers. 

2. Improve your average customer value.
To determine your average customer value, simply divide your 2018 revenue by the number of active customers that year. Your marketing must consistently stay in front of the people most likely to do business with you and give them a reason to visit the dealership. If they visit more frequently, they spend more money.

PSM Marketing has a MARKETING SYSTEM designed specifically to grow these 2 numbers. If you’d like to systematically grow your dealership in 2019, give us a call at 1-877-242-4472, or visit www.psmmarketing.com for more information.


- Tory 

P.S. Want to submit YOUR question for “Ask Tory”?  Just email your question to marketing@powersportsmarketing.com and let Tory know what question you’d like to have answered in a future issue of the UMM Newsletter.

 

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Ask Tory: Are other dealers across the country as slow as we are right now?

Tory Hornsby | 02/21/2019
I’ve received a few phone calls from dealers as of late asking how other dealers across the country are doing. Of course, these calls seem to happen more often in the off season. As I often joke, no matter how hard we try to avoid January in the motorcycle business it ALWAYS seems to happen, every single year.

We’re never going to get rid of January, so we must learn to overcome it. While it’s probably never going to be one of your best months (unless you’re a snowmobile dealer, or you’re located in a hot climate), you can still drive in customers and prospects, increase year-over-year sales and be more profitable. 

And it’s not just January. It’s no secret that 2018 was a very lackluster year for many dealers, but many dealers DID grow.  In fact, a good percentage of the PSM clients I’ve spoken with had decent growth in 2018.

What’s the difference?  There are a million intricacies for every dealer, every market (and even more excuses) of why their dealership is different and didn’t grow.  But if we strip away all the B.S. it comes down to having fewer customers spending less money. 

On a side note, I get a chuckle every time I hear a dealership say, “But we’re different.” Of course they’re different! Every dealer has a unique market area and distinctive challenges. In fact, if you didn’t grow in 2018, I’m sure you could name the reasons why… the entire powersports industry was down; your market area is depressed; factories laid off workers; the government shut down; the price of (fill in the blank) was up/down, etc. 

The list of reasons goes on and on and the thing is, your reason is probably correct! Still, my response regardless of the reason/excuse is… what are you going to do about it?   

Back to stripping away the excuses… if you didn’t grow last year it was because less customers did business with your dealership and/or your annual customer value was lower than the previous year. Period. How are you going to get more customers to do business with you and increase average customer value for 2019?

PSM Marketing has the solution. We call it the Predictable Growth System, and it starts with knowing where you are. Are you a $4,000,000 store that had 2,000 customers active in 2018 with an average customer value of $2,000?  Or maybe you’re a $15,000,000 store that had 5,000 active customers in 2018 with an average value of $3,000.

What is your number?  You can’t improve what you’re not tracking. Heck, you can even break it down month-by-month. Divide February 2018’s revenue by the number of customers that did business with you that month. Now you have your target and it’s time to improve. 

Our Predictable Growth System determines which prospects and customers are most likely to do business with your dealership, and then we go after them every single month with several different media. The end result is better loyalty and increases sales from your customer base AND an increase in the number of prospects (new customers) who do business with you. 

We don’t just focus on selling units because the goal is to increase the total number of customers who do business with you, and the average value/spend at your dealership. It doesn’t take a much to have a big impact! 

For instance, if the $4,000,000 store mentioned above increased by 20 active customers per month and their annual customer value by $240, they’d be a $5,017,600 dealership. (2,240 x $2,240) That’s why our system focuses on increasing sales in all of your profit centers. 

Here’s what gets me excited… a good marketing plan can get more customers to do business with you, and it can get them to spend more money. For more information on our Predictable Growth System and learn how you can grow in 2019, visit www.psmmarketing.com or call 1-877-242-4472.

- Tory
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