I wish I’d taken a picture of this mailer I got last week from the hometown Ford dealer. It was so awesomely scammy I’m afraid my description won’t do it justice. Full color, quality card stock, they really went all out. One side was designed to look like the cover of USA Today, and had some fake-news article talking about Cash for Clunkers or some other auto-loan program.
The other side actually had a real car key taped to it, along with a picture of a new Ford Focus and a Mercury Mariner, saying if your key opens the car, you win it, no strings attached! Since dealers are required to list stock numbers in ads like these, you can look up the inventory online … and to my surprise, both vehicles were actually in stock.
The mailer also advertised 2 cars to be sold for $88 dollars. A 1988 Towncar and an early 90′s Saturn. For that price, there’s plenty of cash left over for rims.
Aside from the possibility of winning the cars, you could also win $10,000, a big screen TV, a diamond tennis bracelet, an iPhone, or a vacation for two. There was a scratch-off section on the flyer that revealed 3 diamonds. OMG did I win the diamonds? I know a special someone with a birthday coming up!
Having worked in the car industry, I knew better. But I kind of wanted to see what it looked like to the average customer who thinks, “It’s probably too good to be true, but what do I have to lose by going in?” That, and I was due for an oil change.
So I didn’t win either car. No surprise there. But the diamonds from the scratch off game? The friendly contest rep (who I believe actually worked for the marketing company, not the dealership) informed me, “Diamonds mean you won the vacation.”
At this point he takes my flyer (so I couldn’t take a picture…should have thought of that beforehand) and replaces it with one from Worldwide Travel Center that details how to go about claiming my 3-day, 2-night dream vacation. It takes all of 2 seconds of reading the fine print to see that this company is a huge scam, as the first page of google search results will attest to. Terms and conditions: “1. This mail-in offer provides accommodations for two (2) adults, at least one of whom must be gainfully employed.”
Hmm, interesting that a company that’s offering free travel and that’s “not a timeshare” would care about the income level of it’s customers. I didn’t read all the Ripoff Reports on these guys but it’s clear they’re super shady. They could really use some online reputation management help.
Speaking of reputation management, it’s easy to see why car dealers have the reputation they do when they run promotions like this. Think of the message they’re sending to potential customers, customers who’ve already made the effort to physically come to the dealership. They’re led to believe they won diamonds and instead get this fake vacation package from some travel company that leads the league in scam complaints. Business is about trust, and I’m afraid this dealer just cost himself a lot of trust in the community. But I’m actually OK with that. Marketing is marketing and if that’s how they want to it, that’s fine. Hopefully they sold some cars and made some money to make it all worthwhile.
Which leads me to the real problem I had with the whole experience: the complete lack of effort to try and sell me a car! Not that I was going to buy one, but I definitely expected a little back-and-forth. If I was the owner I would be pissed! If you’re going to play the bait-and-switch game, at least play it well! The whole idea of these mailers is to get people on the lot to have an opportunity to sell them something. Like I said, they were really well-done flyers (in that scammy sort of way), and I’m sure they were really expensive. And the sales staff was blowing it big time.
I wandered the showroom for 15 minutes with not one sales rep greeting me. I finally went to the sales manager’s desk and asked how I could find out if I won the car. He introduced me to a salesman who — and I mean this in the nicest way possible — didn’t appear to be all there in the head. We had about a 100 yard walk to the used car lot where the contest was being held… no attempt to build rapport, ask what kind of car I drove, what my payments were like, what I thought of the new models, nothing.
Then after discovering I didn’t win the car, he has me sit down in the waiting room to see the contest rep about the diamonds. And then he left. Are these people no longer paid on commission? Seems like some basic sales training could go a long way. Because for all the fancy mailers and showroom traffic they generate, nothing happens until somebody sells something.
But there’s hope in the form of a lesson from online marketing. In the online world, landing pages are your “salespeople.” Those are the pages a customer first sees after clicking on your link or ad. They are endlessly tweaked and optimized for maximum performance. And there’s no reason real-life sales teams can’t be optimized in a similar way. If some method or personality doesn’t produce, try something or someone new. Once you generate some positive results you can keep tweaking your process until it becomes a well-oiled machine and your closing rates are the envy of your peers.
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Fascinating article Nick on how important it is to make sure your entire sales & marketing process is running smoothly… A hitch at any point disrupts your whole pipeline! I’m also amused by the old-fashioned spam mail they sent using newer methods (flog articles, scammy prizes, etc.) And I appreciate the nice link to TruReputation Score! :)
Nick,
I love it fella. If you want attention at a car dealership, go with young kids armed with dripping ice-cream. You have never seen people run around so fast. You will hear “how can I help you” in 30 seconds…
Nice write-up on RIM’s by the way.
Dad thinks you should forward you observations to your former CEO. Maybe he’d like to know what’s going on, or not going on in his dealerships.
Excellent content. Thanks for posting.