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About Kim Clouse

Posted by Kim Clouse | Posted in Helping the Auto Industry | Posted on 23-06-2011

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Automotive Change

If you want to succeed pay attention

Kim Clouse has been involved with automotive internet sales and process for over 16 years. He is a charter member of the AAISP, and winner of the Lemons to Lemonade Award given at Digital Dealer. Kim spoke at the 4th Digital Dealer Conference in Orlando, the 5th in Grapevine, Texas in 2008 and the 6th in Las Vegas for 2009. At the 6th Digital Dealer Conference, Clouse moderated in the roundtable discussions for automotive internet sales professionals. Kim Clouse also spoke in the general session at Digital Dealer and spoke in a separate breakout session for auto dealers and internet sales managers from across the United States the same day. Kim is managing owner of I Auto Consultants LLC which recently merged with Level 3 Creative LLC. Together, they will provide new and innovative solutions that will set new standards for truly assisting car dealers. One of these solutions, Dealer Report Cards,™ provides interactive car dealer reviews, ratings and pro-active reputation management. Coupled with the social media management solution Social BDC they will help remove all of the snake oil flowing through dealerships every day. Another product, Webpush™ will change the way we interact with our customers forever. These products have been tested, improved, and tested again to minimize the current ridiculous learning curve or just “trust me” factor that has car dealers falling through what seems to be a never ending dark bottomless pit of confusion.
Kim only works with select strategic alliance professionals who are quantifiable and share the vision of bringing about true change at the dealer level. By assisting automotive professionals with awareness of customer satisfaction levels quickly, problems are addressed in a pro-active metric rather than being reacted to. Think of it as “Daily CSI”
The company’s services also include:
*Dealer needs analysis and assistance with the development and implementation of the correct process
*Assisting in creating successful dealership policy in all departments
*Proper consequence with adherence and implementation practices. Process and policy are nothing without consequence.
*Proactive Car Dealer Reputation Management including hosting customer evaluations and reviews on the Dealer Report Cards platform and all social media.
*The most comprehensive Managed Interactive Social Media Solution available for automotive (personal interaction on demand or in real time.)
*Website design, development and deployment with quantifyable results.
*SEO
*Video syndication with campaigns on demand including video ppc.
*Avocar, making dealer inventory appear alive for commercial broadcast and web applications
*Helping the dealer control cost, increase customer satisfaction and ROI while avoiding the Snake Oil in this industry.
Kim Clouse has been a member of Southeast Toyota Pro’s – Master Level, GM Mark of Excellence for multiple years, Cadillac e-certified and Honda i certified. His training experience is in all GM makes, Honda, VW, Mazda, Toyota, Ford, Nissan and Hyundai. Kim has extensive experience in marketing and advertising as well.
From budget analysis and strategic planning to in studio pre and post production, engineering and mastering.
If you want to succeed pay attention.

Managers, Are You Leading or Just Passing Through?

Posted by Kim Clouse | Posted in Dealer Process | Posted on 28-05-2011

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Every dealership I have visited lately has the phone calls tracked or not, going to the switchboard. Then they round robin to sales staff if the ISM is busy “We know that never happens;” The problem is either the GM, GSM, or phone king, will not make it mandatory that the salespeople have inventory, incentives, and information open on their desktop all day. They all have computers but they refuse to use the data or, the login to pertinent data is top secret. I knew it, gotta have a 4 square right?

Managers who keep information from sales staff are practicioners of Bovine Skitology period.
We know all of our customers are online. We know the manufacturers and everyone else who can gives them data that is, for the most part correct. Below is what I hear when I listen to calls. But are all of the walk in customers immune to the data flow we are feeding to the universe?  It is simply impossible. Be ready or stay away from customers, period.

Thank you for calling ABC motors: ” Yes new car sales please” one moment: “new car sales this is Joe Bob,”
“kelp ye?” (Yes seaweed) ” I am calling about the 2006 Camry you have listed on usedcars .com, gold with tan leather, is it still available?”
“Yep sure is” ” can you tell me anything about it?” “I think it has been marked down to $21699 but I can beat that a little” “Really, online it says must go $14650.00 out the door” That’s a typo” Oh, okay do you know what it should actually be?” ” Naw but I can git with the manager and call you right back, whats that number?”   click:

And they tell everyone about this highly professional individual.
The other thing is “get this now,”  we have started slipping away from the basics again. I know  it is hard to believe, not us.
Now that people are selling cars we are right back to the shortcuts. If you are always looking for the easy way out, get out of
the car business. You are the reason we we have obstacles with our customers and they have a hard time respecting us.
This is our problem. Get rid of the dead weight and start practicing customer service.

Either way you loose the deal.

Does anyone else see this? If you are doing this, do you need to be at Burger King saying, “would you like some fries with that?”
When phone prospects buy 85% of the time, why screw it up? If you do not know what you are doing or you do not feel comfortable,
stay away from the phone, pay attention and learn.
Managers, do not lose focus on the fact that you are responsible for taking up slack. In a store the other day I watched in amazement as a lady
who had lost her vehicles in the recent storms call back 3 times to get to someone. Instead of just taking the call, the managers had to find a sales specialist
to do it. Yep, five more minutes observing fault instead of contributing to leadership.

I’m just sayin!

Sell Cars, Have Fun. It is still possible.

Kim Clouse

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