Paul Meijer Tips for Vendors Marketing to Dealerships
Transcript
Kelly :nWhat are some other essential elements of a great vendor? Like, what is going to captivate the eyes of dealer principles? Outside of just something that they hear that this might resonate with? What are some of the things that you may offer and bring to the table? Or that you would consider in your experience?n
n Paul :nWell, knowing that there’s a specific place where they can go with total transparency, right? Nobody wants to be haunted and bombarded. There are some websites that you go on. The minute you click on anything, your phone blows up. And it’s the company that is calling you. Hey, I saw you were just on our website. When can you come in?n
nYou know, when, if I wanted to come in, I would have just shown up, but I want to do my research first. Or they just blow you up with email after email. You know, I have one company that wanted to do business with us. And I didn’t unsubscribe from them. Because I just want to see how far they can actually go? Here’s a person that contacted me, asked me for time, I scheduled time. Shortly before the meeting, I got notification. I’m terribly sorry. But something’s come up. We need to reschedule? All right, it’s the car business, I get it. So I looked at my schedule, I reschedule.n
nShortly before that next meeting, I get an email. I’m sorry, something’s come up. We need to reschedule my responses, you know, I appreciate life is busy for you. But clearly, we’re not a good fit. Because here I’ve taken two dates, mark them on the calendar to spend time with you, because you want it to find out more about us. And it’s not important enough for you to honor that commitment. So I think I’m going to pass on any further communication with you. And then what happens is they shift you into the spam bucket. So now, every day I get a different piece of spam from this company, promoting products that donu2019t even bring any value to me. I’m not a dealership, so I don’t really care about what they do with inventory. They couldn’t honor that and respect the time to have a conversation to find out how we can benefit each other. So you know, that’s kind of one of the examples.n
n Chas : How do you vet them?
nWell, you know, it’s funny how you talk about almost like the reputation management of, you know, once you get a fish on the hook, and then you do nothing with the fish, right? What does that do for the dealer? Well, they don’t want to talk to that person anymore. You know, Kelly, Kelly is really great at this. And he can chime in if he wishes. But like, I want to ask you a question because we live in the digital age. Right? So now a lot of that one on one, maybe that phone conversation it used to happen, where dealers are already like, like with your business, they’re already vetting people online. Right. So yeah, talk to me. So talk to me about this, how critical is it for a vendor to establish itself online, like in the form of, you know, SEO, Search, search engine visibility and reputation management, or, you know, in other words, like, how, what, how important is a business to make sure that they are visible. In a positive perspective, when that dealer goes shopping.n
n Paul : It’s critical, absolutely critical. Most people today don’t put themselves out there, for whatever reason. But you have to remember, everybody’s always watching. They may not comment, they may not interact with the post publicly. But rest assured, they’re watching. Sometimes you’ll see the dealer or a company will check out your LinkedIn profile, to see what you’re all about. It’s important to put out content to kind of brand yourself out there.n
nOh, and the mistake that a lot of people make is, you know, everybody’s a podcaster. Today. They all of a sudden become the next podcast sensation, they buy the microphone, they buy the camera and all this crap to start something, and then not finish it. So they’ll start all gung ho for a while, and then they’ll disappear. And then a few months later, they’ll come back. Hey, it’s me. Again. You haven’t seen me in a while. Some stuff has come up, but I’m back now. And then when they come back for that second time, they’ve put on maybe two, three episodes maximum, and then they’re gone for good and then you’re on to the next cycle.n
nSo kids, you got to put out content, you need to be consistent. But when I say consistent and putting content, that doesn’t mean just blowing up the airwaves with filler content. Right? Right. There are people that talk a lot, but say nothing. You need to put out good content, it looks, if you don’t have any content to come up with, if you don’t have it for that day, or those two or three days, don’t put it out. But to put something out just for the sake of putting it out, I don’t feel that’s necessarily a good thing. And there are probably many that would disagree with that.n
nBut I think that if you put out regular content, and you give back to the community, which has been good to you, people will start to notice. The whole concept of everybody’s always watching is one that came later on for me. I’m going into the third year of my podcast, Sunday night live show on LinkedIn. And I have a lot of people that always reach out to connect, and I thank them. And I say how did you hear about me? Have you seen my show? And I’ll hear from them. I haven’t seen your show. But my friend or my boss or my coworker watches your show all the time, said really well, who’s that? Find out who that is. Sure enough, you go look on LinkedIn. And you connect it a while ago, sometimes two, three years ago, but have never seen any kind of interaction online.n
nYet, that person is always watching when you pick up the phone and you have a conversation with somebody who you’ve been in tandem on LinkedIn with or in the social media space. And they quote something that you said a few years ago. Well, that tells you if they know that they’ve been watching you for a few years. So that’s why good content and consistency is key. If you don’t have something good, skip that day.
n Paul :nWell, knowing that there’s a specific place where they can go with total transparency, right? Nobody wants to be haunted and bombarded. There are some websites that you go on. The minute you click on anything, your phone blows up. And it’s the company that is calling you. Hey, I saw you were just on our website. When can you come in?n
nYou know, when, if I wanted to come in, I would have just shown up, but I want to do my research first. Or they just blow you up with email after email. You know, I have one company that wanted to do business with us. And I didn’t unsubscribe from them. Because I just want to see how far they can actually go? Here’s a person that contacted me, asked me for time, I scheduled time. Shortly before the meeting, I got notification. I’m terribly sorry. But something’s come up. We need to reschedule? All right, it’s the car business, I get it. So I looked at my schedule, I reschedule.n
nShortly before that next meeting, I get an email. I’m sorry, something’s come up. We need to reschedule my responses, you know, I appreciate life is busy for you. But clearly, we’re not a good fit. Because here I’ve taken two dates, mark them on the calendar to spend time with you, because you want it to find out more about us. And it’s not important enough for you to honor that commitment. So I think I’m going to pass on any further communication with you. And then what happens is they shift you into the spam bucket. So now, every day I get a different piece of spam from this company, promoting products that donu2019t even bring any value to me. I’m not a dealership, so I don’t really care about what they do with inventory. They couldn’t honor that and respect the time to have a conversation to find out how we can benefit each other. So you know, that’s kind of one of the examples.n
n Chas : How do you vet them?
nWell, you know, it’s funny how you talk about almost like the reputation management of, you know, once you get a fish on the hook, and then you do nothing with the fish, right? What does that do for the dealer? Well, they don’t want to talk to that person anymore. You know, Kelly, Kelly is really great at this. And he can chime in if he wishes. But like, I want to ask you a question because we live in the digital age. Right? So now a lot of that one on one, maybe that phone conversation it used to happen, where dealers are already like, like with your business, they’re already vetting people online. Right. So yeah, talk to me. So talk to me about this, how critical is it for a vendor to establish itself online, like in the form of, you know, SEO, Search, search engine visibility and reputation management, or, you know, in other words, like, how, what, how important is a business to make sure that they are visible. In a positive perspective, when that dealer goes shopping.n
n Paul : It’s critical, absolutely critical. Most people today don’t put themselves out there, for whatever reason. But you have to remember, everybody’s always watching. They may not comment, they may not interact with the post publicly. But rest assured, they’re watching. Sometimes you’ll see the dealer or a company will check out your LinkedIn profile, to see what you’re all about. It’s important to put out content to kind of brand yourself out there.n
nOh, and the mistake that a lot of people make is, you know, everybody’s a podcaster. Today. They all of a sudden become the next podcast sensation, they buy the microphone, they buy the camera and all this crap to start something, and then not finish it. So they’ll start all gung ho for a while, and then they’ll disappear. And then a few months later, they’ll come back. Hey, it’s me. Again. You haven’t seen me in a while. Some stuff has come up, but I’m back now. And then when they come back for that second time, they’ve put on maybe two, three episodes maximum, and then they’re gone for good and then you’re on to the next cycle.n
nSo kids, you got to put out content, you need to be consistent. But when I say consistent and putting content, that doesn’t mean just blowing up the airwaves with filler content. Right? Right. There are people that talk a lot, but say nothing. You need to put out good content, it looks, if you don’t have any content to come up with, if you don’t have it for that day, or those two or three days, don’t put it out. But to put something out just for the sake of putting it out, I don’t feel that’s necessarily a good thing. And there are probably many that would disagree with that.n
nBut I think that if you put out regular content, and you give back to the community, which has been good to you, people will start to notice. The whole concept of everybody’s always watching is one that came later on for me. I’m going into the third year of my podcast, Sunday night live show on LinkedIn. And I have a lot of people that always reach out to connect, and I thank them. And I say how did you hear about me? Have you seen my show? And I’ll hear from them. I haven’t seen your show. But my friend or my boss or my coworker watches your show all the time, said really well, who’s that? Find out who that is. Sure enough, you go look on LinkedIn. And you connect it a while ago, sometimes two, three years ago, but have never seen any kind of interaction online.n
nYet, that person is always watching when you pick up the phone and you have a conversation with somebody who you’ve been in tandem on LinkedIn with or in the social media space. And they quote something that you said a few years ago. Well, that tells you if they know that they’ve been watching you for a few years. So that’s why good content and consistency is key. If you don’t have something good, skip that day.