Real Social Selling for Car Dealers (and others) – PART 4

 

Real Social Selling for Car Dealers (and others) – PART 4

TRANSCRIPT: Now, let’s understand, I talked earlier about these social avenues. All of these social avenues that have to have interaction, the ability to be viral and I want to be clear that there are a lot of wasted social efforts out there, people who think they’re doing social selling and they’re really not because they’re not actually selling anything through these channels.

Earlier, I talked about the need for interaction and viral being required for social media efforts. Platforms without these are a complete waste of your resources. That means money, time and effort. They are great waste of all those and LinkedIn, unless you’re in a B2B business or you’re a recruiter, LinkedIn is really a personal resume and a networking site to advance your career. It has not been effective for social selling, for people who sell to the public.

See, today is about social selling that actually sells something. While your ROI measurements can include things like engagement, everything you do with social selling needs to pass the DISC test, does it sell cars? The DISC test. Now, for your industry’s equivalent, so the DISH test, does it sell homes? The DISB test, does it sell boats? The DISS test, does it sell sofas? The DISRV test, does it sell RVs? Everything you do on social has to pass that test, does it sell the things that I want to sell.

Now, I’m just going to be brutally honest with you. Twitter, that’s a waste of everything. If you’re looking for some SEO value, okay, but if you’re looking for any social ROI, your business or your sales person, avoid Twitter. Now some of you are like, “Steve, we really have to be there.” If you feel you have to be there, then set up your Facebook post to automatically spam Twitter because that’s what you do with your spamming it and nobody is reading it because no buyer is reading your tweets and no buyer is interacting with your tweets.

Look at this mess. Look at this mess. This is 50 Lexus dealers that we could find and they all sent the same tweet. Now, here’s the problem with that. There’s no dealer SEO value for these 50 Lexus dealers that sent the exact same tweets. Since it’s all duplicate content and all the tweets have a link back to the OEM site. Not even to the dealer site.  I don’t even know. Are the dealers paying for this? This is a waste. This is a waste for the OEM. It’s waste for the dealers. It’s a complete waste and it’s not social selling.

Some of you are saying, “Steve, surely. With 50 dealers, there had to be some interaction. They have to have interaction, they need to go viral.” Twitter barely has the ability to go viral even for viral tweets. It’s not as viral as Facebook can be. It’s not long and lasting as what Facebook can be, but think about this. I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying, “Steve, with 50 dealers. Surely there were a few hundred total likes and retweets. I mean just six interactions per tweet would equal 300. 50 dealers posting the same thing. They got six interactions each, that’s 300 interactions. That’s got to be worth something?”

How about this? How about a total of two interactions. Two total, not two per tweet but out of 50 tweets, I found two total interactions. One was a like from probably a bot. This guy with his mug shot picture up there or whatever it is. This guy has liked 80 thousand tweets including one of the dealer’s tweets he liked. It’s probably a bot because he’s only done one tweet of his own and he’s liked 80,000.

We got one like from a bot that’s liked 80,000 other tweets and we got a retweet from someone who hasn’t even set up a profile picture yet and he has a whopping 18 followers. Please, please. Argue with me that that’s not a complete waste of time and money. It is absolutely a waste of time and money and if you want to do social selling and you feel like you have to be on Twitter, then let’s post on Facebook and let’s take it through to Twitter.

Now, some social platforms pass the DISC steps. You need them to pass the DISC steps. Does it sell cars but don’t get bullied in to some worthless platform just because cool kids at some conference said you needed to be there. Remember Pinterest? Pinterest had a big push a few years ago in automotive. You’d go to the conferences and if you talked bad about Pinterest, you just weren’t very smart.

Listen, Pinterest was a waste of time and money for so many dealers who listened to the “experts.” Now, I understand some of you, “No, Steve, wait. We sold some cars on Pinterest.” Okay, great. You put in this much effort and you sold this many cars. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s return on investment and so let’s focus on the social platforms that pass that DISC test for us. The way to do that is know your place.

What’s going to resonate with your buyers is different based on each entity. For example, the OEM. What’s going to resonate with their buyers is things like branding. They have a cool performance car, a new Mustang, whatever. Logoed merchandise. They can be on lots of platforms. The OEM Ford, they can be in Pinterest and it’s valuable to them because they’re doing branding but when you get down to the dealer level, really what’s going to resonate with customers today on social media is things that you do in your community.

The customer service things that you do and then any deals you have, real deals. Not just vomiting inventory on them but showing some real deals. Finally with the sales person, what’s going to resonate with people and have you social selling, selling cars, selling trucks, selling RVs, selling whatever is that trust. That’s going to resonate. Having trust, creating a sense of being authentic, projecting authenticity and being a friend in the business. You cannot develop that through Pinterest. I’m sorry. If you’re selling furniture, maybe. Most of you are selling cars, you’re selling homes, you’re selling RVs.