Holman Auto Group, with 10 dealerships in Pennsaukin, NJ, and 10 dealerships in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, has successfully served the southern Florida, southern New Jersey and the Philadelphia-Delaware Valley areas since 1924. Holman Auto Group has earned its reputation as an exceptional “five star” store with impressive sales and service departments, even boasting of one repeat customer who has purchased 12 Saturn vehicles over the past nine years because he felt his sales consultant, in his words, “always treated him fairly and with respect.” Leading the way to customer loyalty in sales and service is the dealership’s fervent belief in giving back to the communities that support their success.  In totality, the dealer group has contributed approximately $1.4 million to various non-profit agencies. This admirable community-based approach to business is the result of the philanthropic mindset of Steward Holman, founder of Holman Automotive.

As you would expect, Holman has gathered a team of employees who share his values and work hard to embody the type of leadership that he exemplifies. One such employee is compliance manager, Bob Delano. Delano works to ensure the dealerships’ continued success through Internet marketing ingenuity that exceeds customer expectations through comprehensive search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) roadmaps. Since he began his position as compliance manager, all 10 northern dealerships have consistently generated 20-25 percent more leads every month by enlisting technology-savvy experts to help build comprehensive business development centers (BDCs), and a cohesive IT department and Internet committee to expand and execute on Delano’s creative and robust Internet marketing strategies. Read on to discover how the “knowledge is power” Internet marketing approach, carefully crafted and mindfully pursued by Holman Auto Group, has
led to greater leads, sales and many faithful customers.

Please tell me about your background. How long have you been with your dealership? What positions have you held prior to your current role? When did you enter the auto business?
I entered the automotive business about 10 years ago as a sales consultant. Prior to 1998, I worked at Southland Distribution Center along the East Coast for 16 years as an account manager. The Southland Distribution Center was acquired by another company, so I made my move into the auto industry. I worked as a sales consultant for approximately two-and-a-half years and then began performing work in the Internet department for Holman’s three Saturn stores. From there, I took on Holman’s two Infiniti stores as well. Eventually, I took on Internet sales for all 10 northern dealerships at Holman Auto Group.

How many people work in your department?
We operate a bit differently in each of our 10 stores. For instance, we have a business development center (BDC) at the Ford location that includes four people. They handle all service call activities as well as Internet lead follow-up. Their BDC manager manages the Ford and Lincoln Mercury stores. However, our Saturn and Infiniti stores have sales consultants who manage the leads directly.

No one reports to me as my official title is the compliance manager for Holman North; and as such I manage or review much of the advertising initiatives for our dealer group. At one time, I managed the auto group’s web site, but now that’s in the hands of the IT department. We also have an Internet committee that directs our Internet marketing efforts and the IT department is charged with follow-up on those activities. Most of our Internet marketing activities are directed by the sales consultants at each of our stores. Our organization is a product of implementing a solid CRM tool and having managers in place to back up the system. We currently use Autobase.net as our CRM vendor. We appreciate the product’s ease of use and quality. It’s relatively simple for our sales consultants to use. Plus, as you become more familiar with the program and you move people from store to store, it’s a good idea to have consistency of product. In the end, I believe they provide a stellar platform for managing and keeping abreast of our customers’ communications.

What percentage of your dealership’s overall sales is generated from the Internet?
Our overall Internet sales range between 20 to 25 percent.

What tools or lead generators have really worked on your site to pull in leads?
Dealix.com, Cars.com and AutoTrader.com have all done a stellar job in generating quality leads for us. Although I do appreciate the results they’ve provided for us thus far, the reality is that third-party lead generators in general are being done away with. I say that because the manufacturers are taking over that particular market. For example, Ford Direct will buy all the Ford leads and then sell them to us. Consequently, if I tried purchasing them on my own, I would end up paying double via the third-party vendor. We used to spend a lot of time trying to decide which third-party vendor to work with, but now it’s come to a point where all of our third-party leads are purchased directly from the manufacturer. Our Infiniti store signed up for that program last year. Ford Direct has been involved in the program for quite a while, as well as our General Motors stores.

What interactive media resources do you utilize? And, please tell me what services they provide and why you decided to go with them.
Not much other than our standard web presence, including the ability to communicate back and forth with our customers with our advertising tools, our different payment calculators as well as our own specials.

Do you help design/update your dealership site? For example, update inventory, create specials, add photos, etc.
At one time, I was 100 percent involved with the design of our web site. Now, we’ve created an Internet committee located out of our Florida dealer source that makes all the high-level decisions related to the design techniques, design recommendations and Internet specials that are incorporated onto our web site. They take all of our used vehicle pictures and post them to the web site as well as post them to Cars.com, AutoTrader.com and Dealix.com. There are individuals on that committee representing each of the 10 dealerships.

The technology they use from DealerSource.net is awesome! It allows them to scan a VIN number, which gives them most of the information off of that particular make and model. Next, they just point and click on the different options and ‘voilà’! – a complete presentation of the vehicle is loaded onto our web site. While it’s under the supervision of the IT department, it’s managed directly by our used car managers.

In the past, our web site required a great deal of expertise as far as daily maintenance. Now, modern technology allows our site to be much simpler and updates and maintenance can be done at the store level. More specifically, each store can seamlessly incorporate their specials for new and used inventories in a point and click fashion. These initiatives are tactically executed at store level by the IT department (four individuals) with our Internet committee making the high-level design recommendations. That being said, I still recommend the vendors that we employ for inventory updates.

How do you use e-mail campaigns to generate leads?
From a local standpoint, meaning our individual dealerships, some of the sales consultants are more effective than others at generating leads and they exemplify this by distributing an e-mail blast to their individual customers. The same can be said about our BDCs. Some will manage their customer e-mail blasts via their CRM tool. However, our monthly e-newsletter, the IMN Loyalty Driver dealership e-newsletter product, works as our primary customer contact tool.

We began using IMN about two years ago. It’s a very positive piece both as in a ‘feel good’ material that our corporate office enjoys seeing go out to our customers, as well as an effective marketing tool that keeps our name in the market place. IMN is primarily designed to generate traffic back to our web site. At times, I’ve seen as much as three times more activity during the period when our e-newsletter is out in public sight. We also send out the e-newsletter by brand instead of by dealership. Ultimately, we end up creating and distributing seven or eight e-newsletters based on our brands versus our 10 dealerships.

Can you give me an example of a successful e-mail campaign that pulled in a good number of leads?
To be perfectly honest with you, the answer is no. Our e-newsletter provides us with the quality leads we’re looking for. We couldn’t be happier than with the response we’ve received thus far via our e-newsletter. It’s a highly effectual tool and we’ll keep using this stellar platform for reaching new and current customers.  

If you could keep one tool from your current interactive arsenal to generate leads, what would it be?
If I were allowed only one interactive tool, it would have to be our e-newsletter from IMN. The primary reason is that it’s a customer contact tool that keeps the domain name in front of our customer base, even when they’re not looking to buy a car. The design of the newsletter is sent in such a fashion that, to me, says. “I’m not trying to put my hands into your pockets every time I send you a newsletter.”

For instance, we allot various segments of our newsletter to focus on everyday life issues, including ‘how-to’ sections, like a recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies, or a ‘feel good’ piece about travel. Our e-newsletter presents itself as an intriguing design piece that hopefully our customers look at, read, and associate with our domain name, but it is not a hard-sell piece. Don’t get me wrong, there’ll always be offers found within our e-newsletter; however, it’s not our sole focus. It’s not just a sales generator, but also a customer contact piece that inspires loyalty and keeps our dealership front-of-mind so that when customers do need a service or vehicle, they’ll think of us first.

Please take me through the process from when an Internet lead is received, to how it is eventually closed (via a sale or a long-term prospect).
The lead comes into our individual dealerships directly off our web site, or via Ford Direct, or from one of our third-party lead generating partners and deposited into our customer relationship management (CRM) tool. From there, the lead is randomly assigned to a sales consultant based on who is on shift that day. It also comes with an alert to the manager, whereby if the lead isn’t answered within an hour, the manager will reassign it and talk directly with John, Billy or whomever and say, “You have a lead that’s been reassigned to you, so answer it quickly.” We promote the concept that all e-mails will in fact be answered in a very short period of time.

Our CRM tool prompts our sales associate with the next follow-up rule, which is to contact our customer with a phone call, followed by e-mail contact. The entire concept is to do everything that you can to bring the customer into the showroom floor because they shop online, but purchase at the dealership. In my view, you can’t sell customers a vehicle over the phone, nor can you over the Internet. The only place that you can sell them is on the showroom floor because it’s the sole location where they can sign the documents to purchase their vehicle.

In the early stages, the primary attempt is to set up an appointment and get the customer into the dealership. This goal also coincides with that of the BDC because their initial contact with a customer may be, “This is the customer service department calling. I understand you asked about a particular car on our lot. When would be a good time for you to visit us and see what we have?”

Now, part of your question here is, “How important is follow-up?” I believe follow-up is vital to the lead process. It’s imperative to follow up with your customers until they buy, or they tell you to go away. This philosophy entails being consistent, which undoubtedly includes a 30-day, 60-day, 90-day or 120-day follow-up process because some Internet shoppers are not shoppers, nor are they buyers at this point. This notion stems from the purpose and value of our e-newsletter; it helps to keep our dealer name in forefront of our customers’ minds so when they do become buyers, they’ll remember our name and buy from us.

The obvious “next step” is that once you obtain an appointment, you bring them in, sit them down and show them the car. Now either they buy or they don’t buy. If they don’t buy, you then place their contact information back into the follow-up program. If they do buy, you then place their personal data into the customer follow-up program. As you continue to make contact with them, they’ll remember your name and eventually buy from you. That’s how it’s done.

There are a lot of new tools in the space getting attention: blogs, social networks, SEO and SEM. Do you use any of them? If so, how have they worked? If not, do you have plans to?
We’re currently involved in SEO marketing initiatives that include key word purchases. However, we’re not pursuing these efforts across the board at all the dealerships, only some. For example, if I believe a particular dealership intends to aggressively follow up on their SEO efforts, then I believe it’s a good investment of our monies. If I know that one of other stores doesn’t view SEO as a key part of their advertising mix, then it’s not a good spend. It’s the nature of the beast and what one should expect while managing Internet marketing for multiple dealerships.

With the same work ethic and strong commitment to community inherent to Steward Holman‘s nature, Bob Delano has proven himself to be an exceptional leader for Holman Auto Group. His belief in simple yet effective Internet marketing strategies, and focus on distributing customer communications that offer insightful and interesting articles paired with dealership specials to engender customer loyalty; instead of only pushing the ‘hard-sell’, has consistently kept Holman Auto Group at the forefront of customers’ minds. Delano’s quest for knowledge and new ways of communicating with prospects and customers has led to greater profitability for Holman Auto Group, which because of the auto group’s commitment to giving back, translates to greater rewards for the dealerships’ local communities.

bdelano@DigitalDealer-magazine.com