Pub. 11 2012-2013 Issue 3

N E W J E R S E Y C O A L I T I O N O F A U T O M O T I V E R E T A I L E R S 21 new jersey auto retailer W W W . N J C A R . O R G HUMBLE BEGINNINGS  continued on page 22 O ur Autobytel marketplace for Ford was border to border. We were convinced owning this piece of the Internet marketplace was essential to our Dot Com strategy even though we didn’t now what our strategy actually was as a deal- ership. Candidly, we didn’t even really know what “Dot Com” meant. Our original website from 1996 had no inventory and just a few pictures and descriptions of our dealership. It took about three minutes to load using dial up modems, but at the time it was cutting edge. Our dealership, like many others at the time, participated in an Internet land grab not realizing that the territory was infinite. We assumed there was a defined layout, much like the real world, and opportunities would be limited. We needed to act before someone else took the market. Little did we know that Autobytel was just the beginning and that the Automotive Internet Marketplace would go through multiple iterations over the next 15 years and change would remain constant. In the late ‘90s dealerships were investing heavily in hardware and software at a remarkable rate with little or no return. There were no CRMs as we know them today in place at dealerships. Most of us had salespeople working out of plastic card boxes where prospect and customer data was compiled on 4x6 cards. The data was written with extra care so we knew birthdays, spouse names, kids names, likes, dislikes, nuances, etc. to enhance our opportu- nity to build owner loyalty. If we needed to drum up business we would take our card boxes out and call and handwrite letters to our previous customers. If only we kept up these same great habits when we went electronic with our CRMs. Very little is known about our customers and prospects today even though it would seem even easier to keep track of them. I sometimes pine for the days where we truly knew our customer wants and needs because that’s what it took to drive sales and owner loyalty. When our dealership started using the Autobytel Lead Manage- ment Tool with our dial up connection you could literally hit send on an email and go get a cup of coffee and it would still be sending the message when you got back. Things were so slow compared to today, but they were extra fast compared to postal mail so we thought it was cool. There were no email blasts because we didn’t have the capacity and spam was essentially unheard of. Roll the clock forward to 2012 and you realize how smart it was for dealers to invest heavily on the Internet because if we hadn’t we wouldn’t have the results we have today. Back in the late ‘90s a lot of dealers felt customers would be buying cars directly online and that the franchise system would be dismantled in favor of customers buying from the factory. The investments made then became the foundation for what we enjoy now. If CarsDirect, CarOrder, Carpoint (Microsoft) and even Priceline hadn’t pushed dealers so hard competitively we may not be the savvy group we are today. All of these business models provided the threat to the Dealer Franchise system that motivated us to create sustainable online retailing models that allowed dealers to survive then and thrive today. With 90% of customers using the Internet at some point in the car buying process we all benefit from this early investment. Automotive E-Tailing’s Humble Beginnings Lead To Remarkable Present BY DAVID KAIN, KAINAUTOMOTIVE.COM In 1997, on the NADA exposition floor, my father and I became a “franchised” Autobytel dealer for the Ford brand in Kentucky. We already had a website so this was our next logical step. There was no Google, Yahoo, Bing or YouTube. Mark Zuckerberg was only 13 years old and Facebook wouldn’t be around for another 7 years. No one was Yelping or DealerRating online about our products and services and the Automotive e-tailing future was really intriguing.