A Quebec-based financing company is helping dealerships boost sales by taking advantage of the non-prime market.

The ripple effects of the pandemic extend well into the many branches of the automotive sector — including auto financing, where companies are drafting programs to offer guidance to dealerships on how they can take advantage of the growing non-prime market.

One such company is Quebec-based Iceberg Finance, which recently expanded into the Maritimes and Ontario with the goal of helping to restore debtor-owed credit and facilitate transactions for dealerships so that they can increase their revenue in this area, according to Réal Breton, CEO and Founder of Iceberg Finance.

“We have a lot to offer to help our customers close more deals,” said Breton in an interview with Canadian auto dealer. “We have a unique auto financing program and we also offer a cash loan program called IF Xpress that provides loans between $1,000 and $7,500.”

Réal Breton, CEO and Founder of Iceberg Finance

Iceberg Finance was founded in June 2012 and initially focused on financing insurance products such as credit and replacement insurance, as well as extended warranties on a separate loan. But soon after, the company extended its services to include non-prime auto financing — a key area in the market for dealerships to focus on.

As for its IF Xpress program, it can be used for down payments; to cover negative equity; to help maintain the profit margin of a transaction; to finance the sale of parts, accessories and equipment; to finance vehicle repairs, and also recreational and leisure vehicles — among other things.

The company also offers other programs, such as one to finance insurance products or extended warranties on a separate loan.

Another program rewards customers with good paying habits by reducing the balance owed on their current loan, among other things. For dealership clients, Iceberg Finance also created a rewards program — one that provides them with free payments they can distribute to future customers when they reach a certain level of monthly sales.

As for what the future may hold, Breton said they are looking to expand throughout the rest of Canada.

“We created a very specific plan — we don’t improvise. Our business plan has been approved by our board of directors and we will start with these provinces (Ontario and the Maritimes), which represent a huge market,” said Breton. “We are very confident about the future.”

As for what the future may hold, Breton said they are looking to expand throughout the rest of Canada. “We created a very specific plan — we don’t improvise.”

Now is a key time for businesses like Iceberg Finance to expand — particularly as the near- and non-prime market continues to heat up. It is also a time for dealerships who are not yet dipping into that segment of customers to reconsider their own game plan.

The post Helping guide dealerships on non-prime opportunities appeared first on Canadian Auto Dealer.

As consumer expectations for a faster, smoother, and more digital car-buying process firmly takes root amid the pandemic, companies like Carbeeza are using the efficiency of an app and harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to try to accurately predict the best financing scenarios for Canadians looking to purchase a vehicle.

It is one of the latest ventures for Sandro Torrieri, President of Carbeeza, who has been involved in a number of software and hardware companies. In an interview with Canadian auto dealer, he said the company identified an opportunity to provide dealerships with a new marketplace that allows them to advertise their products to consumers.

Sandro Torrieri, President of Carbeeza

“More importantly, we will be able to derive sales and opportunities that they haven’t been able to in the past by utilizing new types of technology, conventional and new types of artificial intelligence, derived by Carbeeza,” said Torrieri. “We’re able to provide dealers with consumers that are basically ready and active to purchase a vehicle — on-demand, if you will.”

Financing scenarios are offered to all types of consumers, from super prime to subprime, and every increment in-between. Torrieri said the company will be able to deliver those consumers to dealers in an efficient and effective manner, and at a very low cost to the dealership.

With the escalating cost of consumer acquisition, due in part to a drop-off in foot traffic and an increase in online research prior to purchasing a vehicle, Carbeeza may very well be a welcome convenience, particularly as the COVID-19 virus rages on and lockdowns and other measures continue to impact businesses across Canada.

“Dealers have had to spend an incredible amount of incremental money to attract those consumers to their doorstep,” said Torrieri, adding that Carbeeza aims to help dealers cut through the clutter, attract consumers, and drive them to dealers that have the appropriate deal, “because that is what they are looking for.”

“The whole point of Carbeeza is to drive deals to the dealers,” said Torrieri.

He said the company tracks the behaviour of lenders in the marketplace and are able to predetermine which lender will finance the consumer, no matter their financial position.

They are able to analyze the lenders with the use of AI by first asking the consumer four simple questions that Torrieri said are non-identifying and non-intrusive. The tactic helps ensure there is very little drop-off from consumers, while also ensuring the company can identify the consumer and their financial position.

From there, Torrieri said they can match the consumer to a lender based on their “lender-behaviour artificial intelligence machinery engine,” which can determine which lender will finance the consumer. And although there will always be a lender to finance a consumer, the deal structure, interest rate, and term length will vary.

“Our machinery — our engine, is able to determine the consumer’s credit profile, determine the lender that will provide that consumer with financing, and what we’re able to do upfront is we’re able to tell a consumer who the lender is,” said Torrieri.

For example, for a specific vehicle type the company can provide the consumer with the number of lenders that will finance them without actually identifying them, along with the probability of finance in terms of percentage (89 per cent, 96 per cent, etc.) and the interest rate offered by each lender. Torrieri said the company will also provide information on the deal structure (such as if there will be a required down payment, co-signer, and so on). All of that information, he said, is 97 per cent accurate at the time.

“The whole idea behind Carbeeza is to make that information available and to help dealers be able to attract those consumers at a very low cost, in terms of consumer acquisition costs,” said Torrier.

Asked what the difference is between third party lead-generation companies and Carbeeza, Torrieri said the leads they deliver are provided at a “very low” cost and there is no risk, as their focus is on customers who are committed to purchasing a vehicle. There is no service charge for dealers to set up the Carbeeza service either, and no charge for uploading their syndicated data into the system or to provide that information to consumers. The only time dealers pay Carbeeza is when there is a bonafide customer transaction.

“Most people are going to look at us as a lead generation company, which is wrong, because we’re not providing leads, we’re providing sales,” said Torrieri. “We’re not looking to provide them (dealers) with a service, we’re looking to provide them with value.”

Carbeeza is a North American, currently bilingual (English and French, with Spanish to come) product that will deploy first in Canada and then in the United States. The company intends to deploy first in Alberta, and then in other provinces with approximately three-week to one-month intervals. The first launch will take place in the first quarter of 2021.

The post Using AI to predict lender probabilities for auto financing appeared first on Canadian Auto Dealer.

Sean Thomas

An increase in the implementation of technology and its use by numerous companies has led to greater efficiency for businesses — but it’s also expected to pave the way for greater cyber security risks.

U.S. automakers were reportedly one of the leading targets of hackers in 2018, according to an FBI report obtained by CNN. And in terms of auto retail, A&R Solutions began noticing an interesting form of phishing attacks creeping up in car dealerships last year.

“The thing is, they (hackers) realize that dealers are the low-hanging fruit because there’s turnover, there’s not proper training for cyber security. They don’t have the budget for the IT and they’re an easy target,” said Sean Thomas, VP of Technology at Dealer Security and Solutions Architect, A&R Solutions.

A&R Solutions was first launched around 13 years ago by former Reynolds & Reynolds employees. They created the company to fill a void in the market to help dealers with IT support and networking. Fast-forward to the present, and today the company describes itself as Canada’s largest automotive-focused full service IT provider, offering a range of products that include things like hardware and server backups — and cyber security solutions.

The company offers a number of products like anti-virus protection and gateway protection, but in 2019 they grouped them all together. Thomas said they did this to help their clients tackle more than just the “old-fashioned attacks.”

“The security landscape is evolving so quickly that now it’s more of a cybersecurity thing,” he said. So the company created an all-encompassing package that covered both the old-school cyber attacks and the newer ones. That package includes cyber security training, cyber security auditing, dark web monitoring, Microsoft advanced threat protection, and standardized email signatures.

“The old stuff — antivirus and gateway protections, is kind of like the windows on the car; you need them rolled up,” said Thomas. “But the new stuff is kind of like the locks on the car, and you need to lock the car too because the criminals are discovering different ways of getting into cars now. So we have to protect all those points.”

A&R Solutions covers cyber security training, phishing training, spear phishing training, next-level protection for email (against hackers trying to impersonate another person), and protection against phishing attacks, among other things. Its dark web monitoring allows the company to keep tabs on data breaches.

Asked whether it makes a difference if the dealer is using a Mac or a PC, Thomas said they are both susceptible. Macs are not immune to malware.

“Malware and viruses are generally aimed at Windows users just because they’re the biggest base. But there is plenty of malware out there for Macs, and they get infected just as easily,” said Thomas. “But if you’re aiming at a dartboard, you’re going to aim at the one that covers 90 per cent of the market, right? Especially for car dealers, it’s probably 99 per cent of the market.”

IT training and training on how to use the cyber security solutions and identify impersonators is one way dealers can protect their business, and likely one of the most effective ways at this time.

A&R Solutions has employees spread across the country, from B.C. all the way to Quebec and Newfoundland. They are currently working on a cyber security app.

The post Old-school cyber protection won’t cut it appeared first on Canadian Auto Dealer.

An Ontario-based company is using photos, videos, and text-messaging to add efficiency, trust, value, and speed to your service department to improve the customer experience and help boost sales.

With Canadian auto sales down nearly every month this year, according to data from DesRosiers Automotive Consultants (DAC), it may be more important than ever for car dealers to increase the revenue they generate from the service department.

It’s what companies like AutoServe1 are focused on: helping the dealership increase efficiency in the service department while opening the door to more repair orders — and thus more profits, according to Kole Hicks, VP of Sales and Marketing.

“If we boil it down in a nutshell, we’re a tool that helps people understand what’s wrong with their car, creates a higher level of trust, and in turn generates profit for the dealership in an efficient way because we take advantage of text messaging over voicemails and emails,” said Hicks.

The Toronto, Ont.-based company launched around six to seven years ago and is currently active across North America — including in Quebec, with a bilingual platform.

AutoServe1 offers what is known as DVI, or digital vehicle inspection, in dealership service shops across North America. They consider themselves a communication tool, the “remove the clipboard out of a technician’s hand and document what’s wrong with the vehicle with photos and video” kind of communication tool.

“Throughout the process, the consistent multi-point inspection is faster, it’s more streamlined and it creates more value for the customer.” — Kole Hicks, VP of Sales and Marketing, AutoServe1

The idea is that photos and videos create the trust customers need to understand what is wrong with their vehicle, and between the customer and the dealership, while also serving to communicate the findings to the customer. Text messaging is also used to communicate the issue to the customer, which is a fast and efficient solution to a process many consumers today would argue is traditionally slow and painful.

Asked why dealers should care about products like these, Hicks said paper forms are outdated, they take too long, and they do little to streamline the service experience. He argues that a digital solution can be tailored to fit the dealership and work with the staff.

“Throughout the process, the consistent multi-point inspection is faster, it’s more streamlined and it creates more value for the customer,” said Hicks. Using a DVI or digital vehicle inspection tool “ensures your store’s liability is covered in proper repair documentation; it enhances customer understanding by showing them exactly what’s wrong with their vehicle; it promotes customer trust for the service; and it promotes customer trust that the service was both accurate and important.”

As for what AutoServe1 is planning for the future, Hicks said they have a “whole slew of things” they want to bring to the solution and product. One of those things is a payment solution, which they aim to roll out in the short-term.

Right now the company’s product focuses on discovering what the issue is with the vehicle, using real-time communication with the customer to keep them abreast of the situation, and getting an approval for the work. The payment solution would be an efficient alternative to the traditional process, allowing the customer to pay for the approved fix via mobile phone. “(It will be) the Uber of fixing your car,” said Hicks.

The solution will undergo beta testing and is expected to launch before the end of the year. The company is also working on products that will help improve communication before and after the service appointment, such as follow-ups for deferred or declined work.

“Service departments have a bad rep for trust. People feel they get recommended on a regular basis for things that they don’t need and it’s just a cash cow,” said Hicks. “Recommended maintenance is part of the challenge of that. And when you’re selling recommended maintenance they’re good processes, but they don’t create an experience.”

He said introducing photos, videos and documentation for a customer’s car — a car that they have an emotional attachment to, is a great way to create trust.

The post There’s value in modernizing your service experience appeared first on Canadian Auto Dealer.

It’s no secret that automotive retailers need to connect with consumers and cultivate leads in the online sphere; this is the new battleground, and dealers know they need to be where the consumer is.

But while this information is well-known within the retail environment, identifying which digital tools will maximize leads and conversions without breaking the bank is not always an easy matter. For Alexi Venneri, Co-founder & CEO of Digital Air Strike, the focus should be on new targeted digital advertising technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered messaging tools.

In an interview with Canadian auto dealer, she said targeted digital ad tools will allow dealers to “really reach in-market car buyers and service customers in a way that guarantees Return on Investment (ROI) with quantifiable leads,” while the AI-powered messaging tools “can respond to all customers on multiple platforms, 24/7.”

This includes Facebook Marketplace, which Venneri said is “huge” for pre-owned sales because customers expect immediate responses. “Having a user-friendly way to help customers, and not just capture their information, is vital.”

Digital Air Strike is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, with clients in various locations, including the U.S. and Canada. Venneri said the company was started at her kitchen table in 2010, when she was running an advertising agency for dealers. At the time she said she was not able to find the technology to leverage social media and monitor review websites, so she decided to build it herself.

“This was at a time in the recession when dealerships were really cutting their marketing budgets, but I knew that social media, when used the right way, could be a great tool to connect with car buyers and service customers,” said Venneri.

Since then, the company has grown to five office locations with 200 employees. It provides social media and reputation technology, advertising solutions, lead response technology, and AI-powered intelligent messaging/virtual sales assistants.

When asked why dealers should consider Digital Air Strike among the pool of North American digital retailing providers, Venneri said the company was built with the help of car dealers that were originally her business partners. Having this basis helped ensure the company remained focused on being partners with its dealers, while also offering them guidance around their overall marketing budget to ensure they are maximizing “their every dollar” to boost sales.

Over the last year, Digital Air Strike has acquired three technology companies to round out its consumer engagement and digital retailing platform. This includes adding AI-powered intelligent messaging, targeted advertising solutions, and advanced credit analytics that Venneri said more accurately gauges a consumer’s credit score and interest rate eligibility.

“We are continuing to help dealers better serve their customers by allowing more of the communication and transactions to be done online,” said Venneri. “By leveraging technology we help consumers get the right information at the right time, while giving our dealer clients a big advantage — and all while saving them manpower/expense of doing things manually.”

The result is meant to provide consumers with a better experience, and dealers with the opportunity to spend less on advertising while also generating more leads (and by extension converting them into sales). Furthermore, there is also the potential for dealers to lower their staffing costs.

The best advice Venneri can offer dealers is one which they have heard often, but which bears repeating: pay attention to and invest in what’s happening online. Consumers want immediate responses to their inquiries, and are becoming increasingly comfortable completing transactions online — including on social media. But they are also less patient, so their retail experience needs to be a good one.

Consumers want immediate responses to their inquiries, and are becoming increasingly comfortable completing transactions online — including on social media.

A study conducted by the Retail Council of Canada (RCC) and RCC’s Marketing Advisory Council, in partnership with Google Canada and WisePlum, found that “Time-pressed Canadians are more demanding and more likely to switch retailers if their experience is frustrating,” according to RCC’s 2018 news release. It adds that today’s consumers have an expectation that the retailer will provide them with a more convenient, seamless and integrated shopping experience “no matter how they shop.”

For dealers looking at low-cost and effective tools to better connect with consumers and service their customers online, including through texting and chat messaging, Venneri suggests the following: “Be open to new digital mediums and adjusting your traditional marketing spend and vendors.”

The post The digital tools that maximize ROI appeared first on Canadian Auto Dealer.

In a world where car dealers can be overwhelmed by companies pitching them complex systems to improve their performance, sometimes a “no-brainer” that’s easy to use and implement, and that delivers can’t miss financial results is a breath of fresh air.

That’s what QQuote appears to offer car dealers who are looking for a way to effortlessly sell more tire packages and accessories.

The QQuote tool takes complex tire and rim matching calculations that usually requires a salesperson to visit the parts department, and delivers the results instantly so that they can be shared with a customer. It helps the sales and F&I teams aid consumers in making a quick decision. And results within dealerships show that having instant access to information can lead to a dramatic spike in sales.

“It’s a no-brainer,” said Susan Gubasta, President & CEO of Mississauga Toyota, and former President of the Trillium Automobile Dealers Association. “We increased our tire business by over 200 per cent last year with this tool.”

“It is the ‘easy button’ for the variable side of the house. It provides three levels of quotes: Premium, High Value and Economy within seconds. You get consistency of price throughout the store and you will get the all-in price based on what options you choose,” said Gubasta, whose dealership has been using it for more than a year. “As our margins are continuing to be compressed by competition in the marketplace, we need to look to other areas for gross generation,” she added.

“It removes what I call the turnstiles — the things that slow down the buying process,” says Gubasta. “It takes mere seconds to generate quotes. We are not only just selling tires consistently in parts and service, we are also selling them in the front end of the store because it’s such an easy tool for product advisors to use.”

Gubasta says they now use the tool to present winter tire packages to car buyers all year-round so buyers can amortize the costs and add it to their monthly payments. They also offer tire storage to help boost service retention.

“Think of the time savings on the employee side, and the time savings for the parts department alone having to quote all these tires during busy tire season,” said Gubasta. “They can’t keep up. Now it takes seconds for every quote.”

Gubasta’s dealership is now going to add the QQuote accessories quoting tool to further boost sales of those products too.

“As our margins are continuing to be compressed by competition in the marketplace, we need to look to other areas for gross generation” — Susan Gubasta, President and CEO of Mississauga Toyota, and former President of the Trillium Automobile Dealers Association

It might not be rocket science, but the system was developed by a mechanical engineer who worked in the aerospace industry and on the Canadarm named Andy Dalrymple. He’s the Founder and President of QQuote, and formerly was CEO of a company called Tire Butler.

“It’s about making it easy for the dealership staff and consumers,” says Dalrymple.

He says the tool lets anyone at the dealership — and not just the tire expert — to feel confident in providing an instant quote to consumers. Consumers can also access the quoting tools themselves on the dealership’s website.

For dealerships, the system also provides full backend analytics that helps them keep track of all the quotes, monitor tire and accessories sales, and even help identify star performers who are selling lots of tires and accessories packages — and those that need more training. “I think that’s the most powerful part of this,” says Dalrymple.

“It’s the backend that’s unbelievable,” says Gubasta. “You can market to the consumer if they didn’t buy. That’s another priceless aspect to this. It’s not a one-time shot.”

Dalrymple says the dealership can showcase the OEM tires and package and accessories, and also the aftermarket products available for the vehicles they sell.

The QQuote system presents consumers with three options, good, better and best and at least for Mississauga Toyota, the majority of consumers opt for the best or premium offerings.

The service costs dealers $499 a month. “At the end of the day it doesn’t cost us anything, it’s done so well for us,” says Gubasta. “It’s a win all the way across. It’s customer retention at the end of the day when you sell tires and accessories.”

For a demo, visit: https://qquote.com

The post Quoting tool boosts tire and accessory sales appeared first on Canadian Auto Dealer.

Charlie Bass, Vice President, Sales, PureCars

How one company helps dealers leverage data to make more informed decisions about their digital ad spending

Car dealers spend a significant amount of money on digital advertising. But not everyone is keeping tabs on their advertising attribution, nor are they able to see the big picture of what their true return on investment really is.

This is where companies with digital solutions aimed at helping dealerships dominate the digital ad realm get their foot in the door. They exist to help automotive retailers better understand where their money is going, what it’s doing, and how they can boost profit margins through the digital ad space, according to Charlie Bass, Vice President of Sales at PureCars.

“Our objective is to help dealers leverage data and insights to make more intelligent decisions in both their advertising spend, and what’s really working to help drive sales,” said Bass. “It’s a numbers thing.”

Helping dealers with their digital ads spend can mean anything from pay-per-click advertising on Google or Bing, to retargeting on popular Canadian websites, as well as Facebook advertising and everything else that revolves around digital media.

PureCars is a U.S.-based company that launched in 2008 and only recently (nearly two years ago) entered the Canadian market. One of their products, known as SmartAdvertising that was
built specifically for the auto industry,
is a platform that comprises search engine, marketing, and optimization.

It touches on areas such as search (search-relevant features for customers), social (Facebook), display (to boost retargeting and brand awareness), and video (YouTube).

“When dealers buy pay-per-click ads on Google or Bing, which also includes display advertising, our tool can help them with prospecting efforts to identify market shoppers who are actively looking at other sites, and then serve up display ads to entice them to come to your website,” said Bass.

PureCars can also include a code throughout the dealership website to ensure they have visibility into which vehicles are being looked at by consumers. The data they pull includes details like the trim level that was searched, or in some cases the VIN on a used car.

That data can then be used to display ads related to that specific vehicle. Even if the consumer did not submit a lead to the store or call the dealership, the data from their search can be used to display an ad that reveals a drop in price on the vehicle they searched. “It’s almost Amazon-esque, if you’ve ever put something into your Amazon cart and not made the purchase,” said Bass.

SmartAdvertising also touches on fixed operations to attract consumers into a dealership’s service drive to sell them a set of tires or offer them an oil change, for example. And because it’s digital, it allows auto retailers to track their ad spends more easily than direct-mail.

“I think the fixed operations side is a huge opportunity for growth, and I still see maybe only 10 per cent of dealerships in Canada investing digital dollars into that side of the business, which is really what keeps the lights on at the store,” said Bass.

Another tool they offer is called Signal: an attribution suite that helps identify the many signals that drive people into the store to buy the vehicle. It allows dealerships to measure all of their advertising attribution to better understand what is actually impacting their sales. They can use the tool to look at all the different touch points a consumer makes, which Bass said could be as many as 20 different websites, before they purchase a vehicle.

“Signal uncovers what impact each of those websites had in the path to purchase. And again, this data is anonymized to comply with the privacy laws,” said Bass. “But we can then tell the dealer at a pretty high certainty, about 80-plus per cent, how effective each of their advertising mediums are and what is actually driving people in to buy vehicles.”

It all sounds rosy, but dealers hear a variety of tunes every day and are constantly urged to adapt, integrate, and ensure they are paving their digital path along the industry’s evolution. So why should they care? As Bass explains, they are investing tens of thousands of dollars or more, monthly, which equates to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in digital advertising. As a result, dealers need to know what this spending is actually doing for their business — what is their ROI?

If a dealer spends, for example, $100-200 to drive a consumer into the dealership and ultimately purchase a vehicle, PureCars will be able to share with the dealer how much gross profit they made on that vehicle thanks to the company’s tools.

“Or they can do that on their own as well, where they can then give a true ROI beyond what we would consider a vanity performance metric, or KPI. Because at the end of the day, click-through rate or cost-to-click, doesn’t sell cars,” said Bass.

He believes his company can create a unique experience for buyers online, similar to how Netflix can ensure the TV shows or movies displayed on a customer’s page are unique to them. In the case of a dealership’s website, the goal would be to ensure the ads create a unique experience thanks to a unique offer that is based on where the consumer is at in their buying journey.

The post Put your digital ads to good use appeared first on Canadian Auto Dealer.

A Quebec-based company has launched a bilingual online sales training platform to help dealers across the country improve performance and profits.

Relationship selling is a key factor in achieving success within the automotive retail industry — and employee training is at the core of it, according to Robert Levesque, President and Owner of Levesque Academy.

“The first thing to get slashed in a dealership or OEM budget is the training budget,” said Levesque, in an interview with Canadian auto dealer. “When things slow down the first thing to go is the training when in fact it is the most important part. This is because today’s consumers are more educated and more informed than ever before.”

Levesque has been working in the auto industry since 1984, first in the retail space and then in consulting. His academy is based in the municipality of Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! in Quebec, although his services are anything but a joke. The academy offers training, management and coaching to companies across Canada geared towards helping them grow their business at a “reasonable and affordable cost,” said Levesque.

“Studies have shown that on average dealers spend 64 times more on driving traffic through the door, than they spend on training their sales people handling this costly yet profitable traffic,” said Levesque. “Why spend such a large amount of your budget on bringing people to your showroom just to have mediocre sales people ‘serve’ them?”

In his experience, the greatest ROI is seen when dealers combine initial training with post-training support. This is because around 85-90 per cent of sales training has no lasting impact after 120 days, according to ES Research Group. A 2015 report from Aberdeen also shows that when post-training reinforcement is introduced, 34 per cent more first-year sales representatives achieve the quota that was set for them.

On the consumer side, 80 per cent still consider a conversation with a salesperson to be most useful when gathering information at a dealership, according to a 2018 Deloitte Global Automotive Consumer Study. The report also reveals that 80 per cent consider the interaction with a real person (a friendly relationship with the dealer) to be very important.

It’s one of the reasons Levesque Academy launched a bilingual, online sales training program in February. “The idea is that, for $20 a month you can access first-class bilingual sales training and coaching with no contracts or term obligations,” said Levesque. The platform is “meant to help sales people of all skill levels, as well as to help dealers, offer very affordable post-training support to truly maximize the ROI of their training dollars.”

The platform includes an easy-to-use interface where users can register, browse and complete courses with printable certificates. They also offer other printable tools, coaching, webinars, podcasts and videos with industry leaders and professionals, and access to an online community/peer group.

Some memberships also allow sales reps to connect with Levesque directly for one-on-one training or online group training. The training approach is based on relationship selling.

Levesque said the low cost of the platform will help users take ownership of their selling skills and cover the cost on their own — allowing the dealership to improve performance and profits, while also reducing training costs and employee turnover.

The post Employee retraining tied to consumer experience appeared first on Canadian Auto Dealer.

Car dealers want digital retailing tools that will help them increase their sales while also reducing costs, according to Marty Meadows, co-founder and President of Automotive at Mobials.

The London, Ont.-based software development company launched about five and a half years ago, with the intention of meeting that first need: more sales.

“We had dealers telling us: ‘we need to increase our sales, we need higher conversion from our websites. Can you deliver us tools that deliver value to a consumer, deliver a lead back to us, and commission a contact in a way that gets us higher conversion?’ And that’s where we focused,” says Meadows.

At the time, Mobials offered a single product and it was strictly mobile testimonials. They discovered then that, within Canada, there was no consumer-facing marketplace like Yelp or DealerRater — but for dealers. And there were no customer reviews on any of the large classified websites. So the company created a review platform, sold it to dealers, and then signed syndication deals with auto classified sites.

Mobials has since evolved to offer a range of products that help solve key pain points that consumers encounter along their research journey. The more value a dealer delivers to consumers, the greater their chance of getting a lead.

The company’s digital retailing solutions touch on everything from vehicle accident verification (currently in beta) to dealership reviews, trade-in value, insurance and financing options and online reservations.

These tools are meant to help dealers boost sales through lead conversions from their website domains and marketing programs.

But recently Meadows says dealers have been telling them something else: they need to reduce costs. So Mobials relaunched their Automotive Suite of digital retailing and e-commerce products under one roof and named it AutoVerify.

Marty Meadows

“One vendor, with five, six, seven different value propositions and one price point” — allows dealers to reduce their costs and increase their ROI. “It’s a simpler value proposition to present to the dealer. And it’s the one that they were demanding” — Marty Meadows, co-founder and President of Automotive at Mobials

According to Meadows, putting it all under one umbrella — “one vendor, with five, six, seven different value propositions and one price point” — allows dealers to reduce their costs and increase their ROI.

“It’s a simpler value proposition to present to the dealer. And it’s the one that they were demanding,” says Meadows. “In a nutshell, at the highest level, we’re doing it because it makes it more professional. It’s an easier brand to be able to solidify in the market. And fundamentally, it’s what dealers have been telling us that they want.”

The AutoVerify brand launched in January 2019 with the goal to reduce costs, increase sales and satisfy customers. The suite focuses on three KPIs that dealerships typically struggle with: how can dealers reduce their costs; how can they increase their sales; and how can they ensure good CSI and SSI scores? And perhaps more importantly, how can they make sure they are satisfying their customer?

“We very much focused in on those three KPIs for our suite, and making sure we can deliver that value to a dealer,” says Meadows.

Meadows says dealers complain they have too many vendors sending them invoices each month for services like reviews, credit, e-commerce, and they are getting “500 dollar-ed or a thousand dollar-ed a month to death.’

Meadows says their philosophy has always been to look for inefficiencies and solve them for the dealer.

The post Changing with the times appeared first on Canadian Auto Dealer.

Mark Allen

Continuous improvement is the name of the game for Quorum Information Technologies. The Dealer Management System (DMS) software specialists say they work hard to give their XSellerator DMS solution a distinctive edge over competitive offerings.

The result is a dealership and customer management system with a genuine difference, says Mark Allen, Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Experiences. “The typical role for a DMS is to take care of the transactions. It works as a recording system for everything that a dealership does,” says Allen, who is based in the company’s Michigan office, with a role that covers all of North America.

Quorum has “flipped that equation upside down” in developing XSellerator, he says. “We’ve taken a bit of a unique focus on the role that a DMS can play within the dealership.”

Instead of concentrating only on transactions, Quorum puts the spotlight squarely on revenue generation. In addition to automating, integrating and streamlining processes in all departments, XSellerator includes tools that can maximize revenue opportunities in areas such as Customer Relationship Management and service inspection and quoting processes, says Allen.

“We started an initiative several years ago, called Make More Money,” says Allen. “It has evolved a lot. We’ve added lots of components within the software to augment the system to actually help dealers generate revenue for themselves through serving their customers better and increasing their customer satisfaction.”

There are now 10 Make More Money toolkits, including a system called VIP, which stands for Vehicle Inspection Process. It started, according to Allen, as a tool for merely doing some inspection.

“It’s grown since that time to an entire service line system that encompasses everything from appointment setting and shopping scheduling, all the way down to how inspections are conducted within the service drive-through, with tablets and tools like that,” says Allen. “It’s really become an entire indexing process for service. We built that within our DMS.”

Dealerships can monitor things like how many tech inspections are being conducted, how many quotes are being created, how many dollars per hour are being sold.

There are now 175 dealerships actively using VIP, with impressive results according to Allen.

Another component that has “really got legs,” according to Allen, is one called Communicator. It helps dealers communicate better with customers, and internally.

“The entire system is Communicator-enabled,” says Allen. “At any point, with any transaction — whether it’s in the sales process of a new vehicle, or whether it’s in the service — the person conducting the transaction can communicate, right from within the transaction code.”

System triggers, called plug-ins, are effective, says Allen.

“Lots of dealerships set them up so the minute the customer makes an appointment, it sends them a reminder, then maybe sends a reminder again the next day. Like the other things I mentioned, we track these things. We find that when the dealer turns on the reminder for the day before the appointment, the show rate goes up — which of course is money, right?” says Allen.

While much of the communication that happens is customer-facing, a set of plug-ins also help to keep track of things internally.

A good example is a tech who identifies the need for a part when repairing a vehicle, says Allen. The tech sends a request for the part. The parts department notifies the tech when it’s ready to be picked up.

“It saves all that time on the technician walking over to the parts department and waiting at the counter for someone to help out, search for the part and give it to them. This is much more efficient,” says Allen.

And because it’s all within a single, seamless system, the dealer doesn’t have to buy any third party tools, says Allen.

It saves all that time on the technician walking over to the parts department and waiting at the counter for someone to help out, search for the part and give it to them

Quorum has found that by implementing tools within the DMS, dealers have “increased their customer pay for dollars per repair hour significantly.”

According to Allen, Q3 incremental Customer Pay Service and Parts Revenue (average per dealership) totalled $33,157,671. That represents a year-over-year increase of 21 per cent.

While there will be no slowing down of the company’s continuous improvement efforts for XSellerator, Quorum has a number of additional irons in the fire.

Last year, Quorum partnered with a third party company called Autovance which offered a vesting tool for the vehicle sales and promotion process, and began selling it to customers directly. “Everybody liked it so much that we bought the company,” says Allen.

In November, Quorum acquired DealerMine, a CRM company based in Saint John, New Brunswick, with a speciality in service CRM and call centres.

The company is also aiming for growth in the U.S., by developing the sales piece of the system to meet some specific U.S. market needs.

The post A DMS with a difference appeared first on Canadian Auto Dealer.

An Ontario-based provider of high-resolution digital photos of new and used cars is helping dealers increase interest and sales

The use of stock images for new and used online vehicle listings can negatively impact a dealership’s business, whereas custom quality photographs can actually help improve sales.

Research shows that, not only do stock photos struggle to rank high in image searches — they are also quickly losing their appeal with consumers.

It’s one of the reasons why Car Media 2.0, an Ont.-based service provider of professional, digital photographs for new and used vehicle listings, is drumming up so much business.

According to the company’s Founder and President Bart Tecza, they were able to capitalize on a concept that not many dealers or third party car listing sites were fully using when the business launched — that consumers want good quality custom images.

“Some things are fundamental in life, period, and to that I would describe quality,” said Tecza in an interview with Canadian auto dealer. “If you can deliver quality, and consistency as well, that has a life of it’s own and it travels all by itself.”

Tecza’s company has been operational for six years. One of its primary goals is to get consumers excited about the cars they are shopping for online. Doing this involves the use of custom, high-resolution new and used vehicle images and the implementation of more suitable, engaging backdrops.

As for dealers, the idea is simple: if they can increase the interest of their cars for consumers, then they will increase their sales.

That concept has allowed Car Media 2.0 to grow over the years to include 25 full-time employees, and approximately 150 photographers and 300 clients across the country — and all thanks to referrals.

Tecza originally started the business by visiting dealerships and making the case for having a professional photographer shoot images of the vehicles, instead of using traditional stock images or low-quality photos taken by the dealer in poor lighting conditions, and with a less-than ideal background. Over time, and with the clients Tecza won over, he was able to gather data and conduct A/B tests that suggested his method actually did help boost sales.

In fact, one of his clients — Oshawa-based Ontario Motors — was among the first stores to adopt the Car Media 2.0 method for both new and used cars. Within three months, the dealership sales jumped dramatically, according to Tecza. “If you’re able to represent inventory better than the business across the street, you’re bound to get the attention. Especially if around you no one is doing it — and if that radius is large.”

He adds that others clients have also experienced increases in sales after adopting the company’s services. “At the beginning, the numbers spiked through the roof,” said Tecza. “I had sales managers, in the form of testimonials, reporting 15, 20-25 per cent spikes in sales to their previous years after joining Car Media 2.0.”

The company offers several packages based around their initial service offering of having a professional photographer visit the dealership twice a week, although Tecza says the frequency can be adjusted. Graphic designers then work on the images to ensure delivery to the client within 24 hours for next-day delivery. These are high-resolution photos (3,000 x 2,000 pixels) that can be uploaded directly to the dealer’s listing website by Car Media 2.0 staff to save them the hassle of doing it themselves.

All the photos are adjusted to appear consistent, with backgrounds replaced, seasonally adjusted, and vehicle images are optimized (colour and contrast corrected), according to Randy Price, Head of Sales and Business Development at the company. “It’s all about the ideal consumer experience.”

Price said the entire process is coordinated through the company’s photography department and an online tool known as 2.0 Hub. An app, created as an extension of the service, is also available.

“It’s a tool that we developed that can run on an iPhone (and soon Android) that allows our photographers and dealership staff, should they choose to use self-service, to actually capture the video in a consistent manner — shooting a sequence of photos that allows them, using something of a paint-by-numbers approach, to start with the exterior of the vehicle and work their way around and then shoot pictures of the interior,” said Price.

The app has allowed the company to grow beyond Canada and extend its services into the United States. There is also a larger plan to push beyond the U.S. and into other markets globally in the coming months, and to localize the app for these specific areas.

A full suite of products, which also includes a video offering that is currently available, will be deploying over the next few months in Canada as well. In the more immediate future, the company also plans to deploy a product in Q4.

The post Boosting sales with slicker photos appeared first on Canadian Auto Dealer.

Consumer demand for tire storage has increased over the years, and as a result it has presented dealerships with both opportunities and problems to consider as they aim to meet this growing customer need.

A decade ago, only 20 per cent of Canadian drivers used winter tires. Today, that number has increased to 65 per cent with projected continued growth, according to Domenic Ismaele, CEO of Tire Storage Solutions, who adds that Quebec is one of their biggest clients due in large part to mandatory winter tire regulations.

“The demands (for tire storage) are increasing, and it really truly is one of the best and only revenue and retention tools to ensure customers return to the dealership twice per year,” says Ismaele. “Of course, with this brings the problem of housing and managing a high volume tire storage program for customers. Doing this effectively and efficiently will only happen if they (dealerships) have a proper system in place.”

Tire Storage Solutions (TSS), which is exactly what its name implies, offers a Global Tire Management Services software or CRM that helps dealerships and storage facilities better manage and track tires, along with any increases in the scale of their operation.

In the province of Quebec, LAR (Leader Auto Resources) are one of their clients and are currently storing tires for more than 20 dealers. Groupe Gabriel, which has 22 dealerships, installed the system several years ago.

One of the perks of using the software is that it integrates with most dealer management systems (DMS) currently used in the auto industry. It also does away with the need to duplicate information and use Excel spreadsheets, helping instead to reduce the amount of time and labour required by dealer personnel to manually input customer information.

For example, when an appointment is made on the dealership DMS system, it is then notified that Mr. or Mrs. Smith is coming in on a certain date. Dealers can also use an online web portal and mobile app to manage seasonal tire storage appointments, inventory and logistics — but whatever they choose to input that appointment, the system will “shotgun blast” that information to the warehouse, to the service staff, and in their portal, says Ismaele. “There are a lot of backend things that happen that don’t need the intervention of humans,” he adds.

Ismaele says the system also allows dealers to monitor inventory, movement, tire and rim conditions and measurements, and that multiple reports for issues (such as worn tires and damaged rims) are available.

“Reports like the Worn Tire and Rim report, can easily be executed by dealer personnel who can then effectively sell tires, rim refinishing, wheel balancing, alignments etc., while the customer is driving their vehicle,” says Ismaele. “It also gives dealers the option of off-site seasonal tire storage with a TSS partner warehouse. This allows the dealerships to reap the customer retention and revenue stream benefits of offering seasonal tire storage, even if their facility does not accommodate for storage.”

The system’s barcode label feature is also worth noting, as the custom label is specific to each customer and comes off the DMS information. Dealers can scan the barcode using the TSS mobile app to input any additional data or comments they have about the tire — such as damage or other important notes. It’s something that sets TSS apart from its competitors, according to Ismaele.

“This allows the dealerships to reap the customer retention and revenue stream benefits of offering seasonal tire storage, even if their facility does not accommodate for storage.”

Overall, the TSS system is meant to provide users with improved visibility, accurate inventory management, and seasonal tire storage reports — all of which aid in customer retention and up-selling. “In a nutshell, we are in the business of relieving the pain points a dealership experiences when storing seasonal tires,” says Ismaele. The technology also aims to ensure that dealers and other users have complete coverage and clarity on what it is that they are doing, and that if they find anything wrong with the tires, they can be cleared of the blame.

TSS, who is now celebrating their 10th year in business, recently expanded its services to Germany, and will attempt to further penetrate the European market. Demand for tire storage systems is high in countries like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway due to winter tire regulations.

In Canada, aside from Quebec, British Columbia and several other provinces include some form of law around winter tires or chains, offer discounts and low-interest financing, or they simply recommend the usage even though it is not required by law. Consumer education on the matter is also growing.

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