GOSO

By: Adam Boalt Adam, GOSO's founder, has started several successful technology companies and has won numerous awards over the years, including multiple write-ups in CNN, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes.

I just recently visited South Florida on business to meet with two automotive groups and educate them about using GOSO.  After a long day on the road discussing customer acquisition and retention strategies, I went up to visit my mother in West Palm Beach, FL.  To my surprise, the first thing she asked me to do was to help her buy a new car.  The first thing I asked her was, why don’t you trade your existing car in for a new one at the same dealership? (she was leasing a small luxury SUV)  She said that the dealership was rude and they said she was going to have to purchase two new tires before she returned the car on her 3 year lease.  All I could think about was how the dealership lost a sale over two tires and how easy it would have been to get her into the dealership to buy a new car.   The sale was lost and there was nothing I could do.

So we researched some new cars online and she decided that she thought that some of the new sporty wagons had more room than the small SUV’s.  After checking out a couple of different models, she made up her mind and we headed out to the dealership.  I try my hardest to be unbias in these situations since dealerships are my clients and I want to see them do well but they were so unorganized.  We waited at least 30 minutes before my mom impatiently said, let’s leave.  I told her that we had to give them the benefit of the doubt and to please be patient.

Somebody finally came over and helped out my mom.  Her credit score is just under 800, she wanted to put down $10k and finance the rest – basically A+ buyer.  She didn’t negotiate the price at all, she just didn’t want to deal with the old dealership and said, “as long as you return my old car to the other dealership and I don’t have to deal with them, I’ll be happy.”  It made me so disappointed to think that all my mom wanted was good customer service and nothing else from her old dealership.

As it turns out, we told the dealership to prepare all the paperwork and said we would pick up the car the next day.  When I got home that night, I checked out DealerRater.com, Yelp.com and a few other review websites and her new dealership had several negative reviews.  When I returned to the dealership the next day, I asked to speak with the sales manager.  I explained to him what I did and told him I wasn’t going to sell him anything, since this was his day to sell my mom.  (I know I could have used the opportunity to turn around and sell him GOSO, but I was more interested to see whether he would take my advice.)

In our conversation, I told him how excited my mom was about her new car.  I also showed him all the negative reviews about his dealership.  I explained that it was imperative to capitalize on my mom’s positive experience and make sure that she shared it online as well as with her friends.  I left it with him to initiate this free advice and in return I would show my mom how to post positive reviews online if he followed up with his promise.

Regretfully, there was no follow up.  I couldn’t believe it.  I emailed him and told him that he should use this positive experience to his advantage and he never responded.  My mom plays bridge with a pretty affluent group, he could have easily sold all her bridge friends a new car, but now he won’t.

The Harvard Business Review recently stated that “because companies can now interact directly with customers, they must radically reorganize to put
cultivating relationships ahead of building brands.”  No doubt.  “Companies have powerful technologies for understanding and interacting with customers, yet most still depend on mass media marketing to drive impersonal transactions.  To compete, companies must shift from pushing individual products to building long-term customer relationships.”

These two dealerships need to change their focus on short-term acquisition to a longer thought out acquisition and retention strategy.  The same study also said that dealership’s should “shift the focus from product profitability to customer profitability, as measured by metrics such as customer lifetime value and customer equity.”  I couldn’t agree anymore.

In the end, my mom is very happy to be driving her new car and sadly to say, two dealerships lost an opportunity to capitalize on her joy.