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.

Shouldn’t Your Online Reputation Be Accurate?

For the last year I have watched all of the industry blogs, trade magazines and networks describing the best way to manage your reputation. If you Google car dealer reputation management the results are staggering. Pages and pages of different opinions on the appropriate way to make sure all of your good reviews show up. Then, there are the manipulation tricks to cherry pick and post only good reviews and appear in the top spots on search engines.

Uhmm, excuse me, but do we as automotive professionals  actually think that our prospective customers and previous customers are gullible enough to think we are telling the whole story? Especially if they have had problems at a particular car dealership and all that is available is customer testimonials explaining how great that car dealership is; I certainly hope not. Customers and prospects are much more comfortable seeing the bad along with the good and they also want to see what the dealer or the sales person did to fix it the issue.  That is one of the many areas addressed directly by Dealer Report Cards

If your reputation is not important to you and you do not care about customers and prospects, then you need to leave the car business. You are part of the problem that makes us less popular than visiting the dentist. The professionals at automotive dealerships on the pavement and in the service and parts departments deserve to be recognized for their hard work.

They have thick skin and are not afraid to address their mistakes then take the proper steps to correct them. They would rather have the whole story displayed and yes, the customers that are just taking advantage of them need to be exposed as well. We all know they exist and can seriously damage an individual as well as a dealer’s reputation. Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone yell foul on those individuals? Dealer Report Cards will do that too.

The main reason I started this crusade and made the decision to get involved with Dealer Repot Cards is because everybody screams ” help the dealers” and we should. But more importantly, does it makes more sense to provide online tools for these professionals so it’s easier for customers to find them? Without employees and customers car dealers will not exist.

I have firsthand experience with being reviewed by an angry customer and after the dust settled it was funny how I got excellent marks in every category on Toyota’s survey. But after four years my customers’ negative review, where he called me a liar, is still coming up in various web searches fed by the posting on Dealer Rater. When I requested they remove my name from the title and leave the review as it stood I was told they would check into it. Funny, now that I am an owner of a company that competes with them, it is being indexed with changes made to it. Of course, I kept a copy of the original for my records.

Dealer Report Cards assists auto retail professionals, the customers and the dealer by letting the truth shine through. We will do our very best to give you the tools you need to show your good reputation and  automate your social media marketing efforts while allowing you to react with your various streams like you should. We have other features and functionality that you will learn about as we go, but pitching dealers’ snake oil is not part of the plan.

Kim Clouse
Dealer Report Cards.com