Auto Dealer Monthly Magazine is the daily operations publication serving the retail automotive industry. This automotive publication serves dealer principals, officers and general managers with the latest best practices.
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Daryl K. Tabor What You Missed at the 2012 CRM Convention Daniel Wright called the 2012 CRM Convention in Las Vegas a "need-to" for auto dealers like he and his brother, John. Co-owners of Right Place Auto Sales, a small BHPH store in Houston, Texas, the two were apparently not alone in their thinking. The first-ever CRM Conven- tion, sponsored by Auto Dealer Monthly as part of the 2012 Industry Summit, drew hundreds of dealers from across the nation to hear trade experts share solutions for best utilizing CRM tools to drive sales. The two-day con- vention also gave inquisitive auto retailers the opportunity to kick the tires of various cus- tomer management practices through unbiased feedback from fellow dealers. "You can't do this in a vacuum," said John Wright, referring to the need for dealers to be open to new ideas in order to be successful. The Wrights made the trip west despite the relative pinch it put them in as owners of a small business with only a handful of personnel. "A lot of dealers say they can't get 34 away from their stores," Daniel said. "You can't afford not to." The competition is stiff for the brothers, whose five-year-old dealership lies just north of Interstate 610, which rings the fourth-largest city in the nation. "There's no time to feel safe in this business. Every time you look out the door, you have to look both ways," he added. Altogether, more than 1,200 dealers, vendors and industry experts convened in the Nevada desert for the CRM Convention and Industry Summit. Many CRM CRM ex- hibitors were on hand, offering dealers a peek at their respec- tive systems and walking them through the latest CRM tools and methods. "The show was much larger than I anticipated; it was well-structured and flowed smoothly," said Brad Kalivoda, manager of Fiesta Motors in Lubbock, Texas. "I enjoyed seeing a different take on the industry than I am accustomed to." The purpose of the CRM Convention was to help deal- ers get the most from their current system or find a system that is the right fit for their operation. Convention chairman Greg Goebel said the goal when the conference was conceived almost two years ago was to send auto retailers home with at least one thing that would pay for their attendance "10 times over." In fact, he added that he would be disappointed if deal- ers didn't get even more value from the session lineup. "It all comes back to mining your own database," the CEO and publisher of Auto Dealer Monthly urged, emphasizing that, collectively, customer data is underused by dealers. "The bottom line is, from my point of view of the automo- tive industry as a whole, we stink at it." That ineffective use of re- sources can be rooted in many causes, but three primary rea- sons came to the forefront during the convention: not having the right CRM tool, a failure to fully and correctly implement a CRM system, or simply failing to see the impor- tance of CRM. While many dealers legiti- mately don't have the right CRM system for the size and scope of their business, said Mike Overy of Proactive Dealer Solutions, managers often wrongfully finger their CRM technology as the reason for dwindling phone calls and visits from cus- tomers. That, in turn, can lead a dealership to go from one product to the next to find a solution when they need look no further than the mirror. "Many dealerships overthink it," he said. "You can't keep switching CRMs (and expect it to solve your problems)." Shaun Raines, executive director of DrivingSales Uni- versity, agreed. "There's never going to be a magical little sys- tem with leprechauns jumping out and doing the work for you. We expect more of a CRM than [we expect of] people," he said. "How often has someone in your dealer- ship refused to use a CRM simply because they didn't like it? That's the tail wagging the dog. Hire the right people." Other dealers simply fail to