January 2010
PROFESSIONAL HISTORY
Thank you for allowing me to be your Ford/Lincoln/Mercury regional Digital Marketing Consultant. I look forward to bringing you viable, real-world solutions and best practices to help your Internet Sales Department reach the next level.
Here's a few quick words about my Internet car sales credentials:
- For almost two years prior to joining the FLM Digital Team I was an Internet Salesman at Boardwalk Volkswagen, the largest VW store in Texas. During my stay there I was "Salesman of the Month" four times and, for 2009, I was Boardwalk's "Salesman of the Year" (172 units).
- For two and a half years before that I was the Internet Sales Manager at Subaru of Dallas (TX). In both 2007 and 2006 I was recognized by Subaru as a "Top 20 Salesperson" in the South/Central region, receiving the Subaru Summit “Peak Performer” award in 2007 and the Sales Stars “Silver Award” in 2006.
While at Boardwalk Volkswagen:
- I wrote my own email follow-up templates and email/phone follow-up schedule.
- Managed the store's eBay sales efforts.
- Conducted regular mystery shops of area VW franchise stores.
- Started an industry blog to share best practice Internet sales and merchandising strategies.
While at Subaru of Dallas:
- I personally customized the dealership's Cobalt website, doing all the HTML graphics, text and layout work.
- Managed two online used car salesmen.
- Shot photos for new and used cars.
- Started a blog to educate consumers on the workings of the retail car business.
- Directed the store's Google AdWords and organic SEO efforts.
- Managed the store's eBay sales efforts.
- Was a volunteer beta tester and consultant to Subaru and Cobalt during a national website changeover.
- Single-handedly built and launched an online Subaru store DiscountSubaru.com that turned out to be ahead of its time (and ultimately failed).
Along with my successes I have made plenty of mistakes, some of them near-fatal. So, not only have I learned what works in Internet car sales, I have also learned what does not work. If you give me the opportunity, I believe you will find that I know how to sell cars on the Internet and can help you convert more of your leads into sales.
A LITTLE PERSONAL HISTORY (for those who are interested)
How does one end up in the Retail Internet-based Automobile Sales business? For me it was a colorful and utterly unexpected journey....
In 1972 I wandered into Austin with some hippie musician buddies from my Pennsylvania home town and immediately fell in love with Texas and the Capitol City. Though my friends soon went home I stayed, and when the Austin "Cosmic Cowboy" scene arrived I was right in the thick of it. All of the musicians in town were friends back then; Asleep at the Wheel, Willis Alan Ramsey, Jerry Jeff Walker, Doug Sahm, Willie Nelson, the Fabulous Thunderbirds , Stevie Vaughan (the "Ray" came later) and countless others, many now forgotten, were my friends and neighbors. If you went to school in Austin during this period you know what a special time it was. By the late 70s/early 80s I was in the Uranium Savages, Austin's infamous satirical musical comedy troupe. It was around this time, however, that I had the big awakening and discovered that my 30th birthday was just around the corner. 30 years old and still living the Austin artist/bohemian/slacker lifestyle? Better not. Time for Phase 2.
I was dating a Dallas girl at the time and when she got out of law school we moved to her home town of Dallas. She passed the bar and became a practicing attorney (and my wife) and I fell into my 2nd career; homebuilding. For the better part of the next fourteen years I was in the homebuilding business, production and modular, in Texas, New England and the Mid-Atlantic states as a salesman, sales manager or sales & marketing director. In that business, the high times are unbelievably high, and the low times are unbelievably low. Plus, if you are doing it right, you are working 7 days a week and at least 360 days a year. It is not an industry for the faint of heart. Or for a guy who wants to see his family from time to time. One day I realized that my oldest son, then 8 years old, had been playing Sunday afternoon league rec center basketball for two years - and I had never been to one of his games. A second lifestyle had caught up to me. Time for Phase 3.
A year later I discovered the PC explosion. I bought a home computer (a big at the time 166MHz/2GB desktop - for $2,400 too. How things have changed) and discovered that my old Radio-TV-Film degree from UT had come in handy after all. I produced and directed two business learning CD-ROMs for homebuilders, then convinced the multi-media company that made them for me to hire me as a salesman and producer. Suddenly I was swept up in the dot.com/telecom insanity, selling streaming video, custom multimedia services and/or enterprise eLearning software for training and marketing purposes to American Airlines and the big Dallas-based telecom companies, plus Compaq Computers in Houston and Computer Associates up in New York. It was a fast and wild ride. But - we all know what happened next. By 2003 that business was gone for good. Time for Phase 4.
I was idly Googling one day when I discovered that an old pal and his partner had just opened the first exclusive Subaru dealership in North Texas, Subaru of Dallas. I went down there to see what it was all about and, at their request, I built and operated two online performance parts stores; www.hotsubarus.com and www.pcpcdallas.com. In two years we developed them into some of the most successful online stores of their kind, so in 2005 Phil asked me to come over to the new car sales side of the building and develop a strong Internet-based new car sales business for the dealership. I did - and there I remained until June 2008 when I got the opportunity to join Boardwalk Volkswagen.
In January 2010 I was asked to join the ADP Dealer Services Ford-Lincoln-Mercury Digital Marketing Consultants team.
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