Fixing Cars

Gary Vaynerchuk, who if you don’t know who that is, I feel sorry for you.

First of all, Gary has been a tremendous influence on me and so many others but this morning, the video he did on Small Town Rules, wow. In 2.5 minutes Gary NAILS what’s happening right now and why businesses that want to prevail will learn how to CARE:

Here’s the gist, small towns are where everyone knows everyone’s business. This is what is happening, globally, insanely correct.

Yesterday, I’m driving from dealer to dealer trying to see which ones might want to work with me, and the content services I offer, Content-as-a-service or CAAS.

So first one I stop at, walk in, up to the front desk, ask to speak with the manager. Speaking. Sir, I provide content for dealer websites, new articles, blog posts, videos, etc. Do you have a site that has publishing tools? Nope.

Then the grandstanding commenced, we’re part of the largest dealer network in the US, AutoNation. If they determined we needed content, they would provide it.

Ok, fine. So nothing unique about your dealership is posted on your site then. Silence. Well, I write content that gets into a newsletter, and 10,000 customers get that.

Then one of his sales guys said “you know I tried to get one little blurb added and it was like trying to get a billed passed through Congress“. I literally almost jumped over the counter, gave the guy a hug, fired the manager, and promoted this guy. But I’m not ready to get arrested, yet.

AutoRevo launches their own iPhone application for cars, which announced today, promises to help dealers sell cars faster. Perhaps it may help with accessing the data, but did they miss a big opportunity here?

AutoRevo Mobile allows the dealers to manage inventory on their iPhone. The application reads barcodes after the salesperson snaps a pic and allows them to edit the vehicle information. The app enables them to upload additional pictures with the ability to edit prices and manage the leads they have coming in.

Carfax is also integrated, so they can perform vehicle history reports from their mobile device. Great, so they made a application that caters to themselves as opposed to the customer who is still waiting for someone to make the buying experience unique and engaging.

Seems like a convenient tool, but I can’t see how it will help them sell cars. Having access to data is great, it may help them reduce the time it takes to research their inventory, but that doesn’t mean they can sell more cars with it.

At a time where finding sales and competing for customers is critical to success, I’d say an iPhone app like this is more self-serving for dealers than providing value-added services to customers. I have not seen the application, perhaps its a great tool for productivity. I just don’t see why companies are not trying to build applications that connect them with their customers, through social networking and other types of digital media.

Another option would have been to consider an app that would allow customers to interact with the inventory, essentially giving them more control over their experience prior to visiting the dealership. Tools like this one by AutoRevo could be very useful to consumers, in a sense allowing the consumer to have access to the inventory, run carfaxes, and edit the prices they’d pay for a given car. Surely there would be some that may toy around with the app and lower the prices, but I think allowing the customer to set a price might produce some interesting opportunities.