Automotive News - October 21, 2013 - Supplement - S14

14 ❙ OCTOBER 21, 2013
KEN STOEPEL FORD-LINCOLN, KERRVILLE, TEXAS

FordDirect helps give Texas store's
Internet sales whiz more time to sell
Printed in Automotive News Dec. 10, 2012
Bradford Wernle
bwernle@crain.com

erry Massey, general manager of
Ken Stoepel Ford-Lincoln in Kerrville,
Texas, can remember the incident like
it was yesterday.
The nightmare started with a miscommunication between his staff and a customer
over which month her first $460 payment for
her new vehicle was due. Instead of complaining directly, the customer posted a
message on Google accusing the dealership
of misleading her.
"We had a slight misunderstanding between a business manager and a salesman.
The lady thought we had lied to her about
her car payment. It went viral within a matter of days. She's got our reputation right in
the palm of her hand," Massey recalls. "Here
we are a President's Award winner."
Ken Stoepel Ford-Lincoln tried to settle the
issue by giving the customer a free payment,
but the scars endured. The incident helped
lead the dealership to seek outside help
managing its social media reputation.
"As the car dealer, we're guilty until proven
innocent. We need some help to manage our
reputation," says Massey, 42.
So this fall, Ken Stoepel Ford-Lincoln
signed with the FordDirect Social Media and
Reputation Management Service. FordDirect began offering the service in July and
has signed about 150 paying dealerships,
says Ryan Soffa, senior vice president of
product development at FordDirect, a joint
venture between Ford and its dealers to help
them establish a more effective online presence.
For Ken Stoepel Ford-Lincoln, subscribing
to a prepackaged reputation management
service had another big benefit. It freed ace
Internet salesman Michael Rodriguez to
spend more time selling cars.
Before coming to Ken Stoepel Ford-Lincoln, Rodriguez, 33, had been on a very different sales and marketing career path:
working on big corporate accounts for such
computer companies as Dell and Cisco Systems. After he was hired at the dealership in
2007, he blossomed as a car salesman.
Rodriguez's tech skills served him well at
the dealership. But he was almost too good

Michael Rodriguez can spend more time
selling cars via the Internet now that he no
longer has to handle social media chores.
It's "such a refreshing relief," he says.
at handling an array of tech-related tasks -
from making sure his colleagues were following sales leads to taking digital photos of
cars and posting them to the dealership Web
site to composing monthly e-mail blasts to
customers. For a while, Rodriguez was even
the go-to guy for computer troubleshooting
and repairs.
After the workday, Rodriguez spent many
evenings on his home computer tending Ken
Stoepel Ford-Lincoln's social media sites, responding to customer posts and posting notices to the community about events at the
dealership.
In short, many of the tasks Rodriguez had
performed were just what FordDirect's service now will do for the dealership.
Says Massey: "It was too much. He's the
kind of guy who has that kind of passion and
commitment. He was spread kind of thin."
Massey wanted Rodriguez to spend more
time at his original specialty: selling cars via
the Internet.
Now, Rodriguez can hand the social media
duties over to FordDirect.
"It's such a refreshing relief not to have to
do that," said Rodriguez. With more than 10
social media channels out there, FordDirect

is "hitting a lot of media channels you just
can't keep up with."
Says Todd Smith, a former Chevrolet dealer who now is CEO of ActivEngage Inc., a
provider of online chat services for car dealers: "For a lot of dealerships, selling cars and
running a dealership is a difficult business in
itself. Marketing has changed so much and
changed at such a rate that the average dealer struggles with what to do. The dealer
doesn't want to make a mistake. Mistakes
cost money and dealers don't operate on
such a margin they can afford to make a mistake."
So they're turning to services such as the
FordDirect Social Media and Reputation
Management Service or General Motors' GM
Primary Reputation Management, Smith
says. Those services have vetted myriad service providers and packaged them for dealers.
FordDirect, for instance, contracted with
Digital Air Strike, a Sunnyvale, Calif., company, to handle the social media chores under
its new program after a nine-month bidding
process that included two other providers, a
FordDirect spokeswoman said. She did not
identify the other bidders.
For the $399 monthly Premier-level fee,
dealers get an adviser assigned by Digital Air
Strike.
That adviser will engage with customers
and provide content. For the $799 Elite-level
fee, the adviser will respond to every customer posting.
Says FordDirect's Soffa: "On the reputation
side, there are 20 different sites we'll manage
for reputation and social media" including
Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube.
"Every dealer has more satisfied customers
than unsatisfied customers," says Massey.
"One thing the Ford program does is helps
us get the happy people up there."
The FordDirect program has paid big dividends in that department, he says. "We've
doubled our friends and fans in one short
month. Our impressions have gone through
the roof."
Says Massey: "Everybody is looking at your
Yelp ratings" these days. "You have to have a
solution. It's going to make you more accountable and make your people more accountable. The better reputation you have,
the more likely your customers are to come
back." c

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