Richard Keith Latman - The Blog

iMagicLab Opens in SecondLife

Guess I don't need to write much because well, it's being written about everywhere.... Here are a link to the offical release and some pics. Enjoy! 

Keith Latman goes Mac *gasp*

I sold and bought my first PC a long, long time ago. Back in the late 80s I owned a Mac, I think it was a Mac2. I honestly thought there would never come a time where I would buy a Mac. Ever.

Then I upgraded my PC to Vista. What a disaster. I had grown accustomed to my PC freezing every now and then. Enter Vista and my PC was frozen more often than it was working. The biggest culprit was Microsoft Outlook.

The application has to have a memory leak. I could follow memory numbers as they grew and grew. Then as my email was downloading, the rules would stop working and everything went straight to my inbox. Spam and all.

When you get as many emails as I do. Thats a problem. When it also causes the system to freeze, its more than just a problem.

My first step was to get a copy of CPU Magazine with Vista tricks. The tricks helped. Everything froze or crashed less often. Significantly less often. But the annoyance factor was beyond belief. I dont run any special applications. I run outlook, Office and firefox. Thats it.

I had gotten to the point where I was embarrassed to be a PC owner. The thought of someone calling me and asking me to go to my computer to find something was paralyzing (ok, not that bad, but it sounded cool writing it).

This wasn't just a problem on my Desktop, it was a problem on my laptop with Vista as well.

So a few weeks ago I made the executive decision to buy a MacBook Air to replace my laptop (and now an iMac to replace my desktop).

I haven't looked back.

Its not that there aren't hassles with the Mac. There are two. One there isn't a version of Outlook for the Mac. As someone who has more than 10 years and gigabytes worth of emails in multiple outlook files, the concept of exporting and importing wont fly. So i am keeping my PC Desktop purely to download my emails into Outlook so I have a master database. But I only do so after deleting unimportant emails from the server using my Macbook.

The 2nd problem is the lack of the right mouse click. I know its a Mac thing to only have one button, but its a hassle. Sure there are work arounds, none of which are quick and easy for a longtime PC user.

Both of these are easily offset by 3 simple Mac elements that make me very happy.

First is that when I close my MacBook Air without turning it off, it doesn't lose power. It can sit there for hours and then work when I open it up.

The 2nd is that it rarely freezes up. Maybe 3 or 4 times in months.

Finally, i LOVE the fact that it boots up in 1/1000000000 of the time it takes my PC. It probably will add years to my life .. (ok an exaggeration).

Im not an Apple fanboy, but I love me some MacBook

How to Get Your Emails Delivered Part II

In a previous poost I gave an overview of all types of email bounces. Today, in the sequel, I want to cover a few of the hottest subjects in email marketing today: email blocking, email filters and false positives. I'll define the issues and terms and tell you what you can do to make sure your permission-based email gets through.

Where's my email?

"In 2002, the average consumer received an estimated 2,300 pieces of spam email. By 2007, the number is projected to grow to 3,600 pieces." Source: Jupiter Media

Is it any wonder that ISPs and corporations are now doing everything they can to stem the tide of spam flowing into their users' email inboxes?

But despite all of the efforts to decrease spam, a foolproof solution has not yet been created. And, as a result of current email blocking and filtering techniques (see definitions below), a lot of legitimate permission-based email is being blocked as well. In the industry, we call this a "false-positive."

What do "false positives" mean to you?

If you were one of the early admission applicants to Harvard University eagerly awaiting email notification of your acceptance or rejection last December, you could have been among 100 of those applicants who never received word. All because Harvard emails were inadvertently flagged as junk mail and blocked by AOL.

And, to quote Trevor Hughes, Executive Director of The Network Advertising Initiative: "If you're expecting a gift certificate from an online bookstore or a city meeting notice, you may never see it due to the blacklists and filters that are currently in place. Or a message to your accountant may bounce, if someone has put the server that handles your company's email on its blacklist. A message from a long lost high school buddy may be filtered if he uses too many exclamation marks."

Sounds grim, huh? It really isn't. There's light at the end of the tunnel.

Spam is universally recognized as an industry wide crisis on the Internet and experts representing all areas of knowledge are working together like never before to come up with a solution.

What can you do to make sure your permission-based email gets through?

If your email is being blocked at a particular company or ISP, ask your subscribers to help by contacting their postmaster and requesting to have your email "un-blocked."

If your email is being filtered, check your from line, subject line and email copy and avoid using key words that might look like spam to a content-based spam filter

• ALL CAPITAL LETTERS
• Excessive punctuation
• Excessive use of "click here," $$, and other symbols
• The words free, guarantee, spam, credit card, sex, etc.
• Redundant unsubscribe instructions

Finally, if some of your email is being blocked, know that you're not alone. And, if you are using an established email service provider, like iMagicLab, know that you are in good hands. Why?

Here's what a reputable email service provider does for you:

• Delivers your emails using the proper protocols.
• Maintains strong permission policies and an active anti-blocking team working on your behalf.
• Develops relationships with ISPs and is whitelisted (see definition below) to ensure their customers' permission-based email gets through.
• Provides reports and bounce management and helps you stay on top of current best practices-like including a failsafe one-click unsubscribe link in every email.
• Is at the forefront of the industry, protecting the appropriate use of email as a business and marketing communications tool through its involvement in organizations like the ones listed above.

And, if a problem does arise, a good email service provider gets more attention than you could ever get on your own. Help is here and there's more on the way. In the meantime, here is a glossary of terms to add to your repertoire:

Glossary of terms

Email Blocking - Email blocking occurs when the receiving email server (e.g. Yahoo!, AOL, Hotmail etc.) prevents an inbound email from reaching the inbox of the intended recipient. Most of the time the sender of the email receives a "bounce" message notifying the sender that their email has been blocked.

Filters - Filtering is a technique used to block email based on the content in the "from:" line, "subject:" line, or body copy of an email. Filtering software searches for key words and other indicators that identify the email as potential spam. This type of blocking occurs on a per email basis.

False Positive - A false positive occurs when a legitimate permission-based email is incorrectly filtered or blocked as spam.

Blacklist - It is common for an ISP to a use a blacklist to determine which emails should be blocked. Blacklists contain lists of domains or IP addresses of known and suspected spammers. Unfortunately, these blacklists also contain many legitimate email service providers. Just a few spam complaints can land an email service provider or IP address on a blacklist despite the fact that the ratio of complaints to volume of email sent is extremely low.

Whitelist - A whitelist is the opposite of a blacklist. Instead of listing IP addresses to block, a whitelist includes IP addresses that have been approved to deliver email despite blocking measures. It is common practice for ISPs to maintain both a blacklist and a whitelist. When email service providers, like Constant Contact, say they are "whitelisted" it means that their IP addresses are on a specific ISP's whitelist and are confident that emails sent using their service will be delivered.

How to Get Your Emails Delivered Part I

Undeliverable emails, email "bouncebacks" or "bounces" for short, are becoming more and more of a challenge for email marketers these days.

According to a recent Association for Interactive Marketing (AIM) survey, 77% of respondents had bounce rates up to 10%, and 23% had rates greater than 10%.

Why should you be concerned? Because customer acquisition is expensive, and email bouncebacks could mean the loss of customers and prospects that you paid dearly to acquire.

First, lets define some terms:

• A "Bounce" is where the proverbial rubber meets the email. This happens when a recipient's mail server rejects your email message.
• A "Soft Bounce" is often a temporary problem, thus the descriptive word "soft." It happens when the mail server confirms the recipient's email address, but even so, cannot deliver the message. The recipient's mailbox may be full or inactive, the recipient's mail server may be temporarily down or the connection may have been broken.
• A "Hard Bounce" is a message that's permanently undeliverable because the address is non-existent or invalid, or because the recipient's mail server is blocking your mail server.

Why so many bounces and what can you do about them?

Email address churn in your house list
People change ISPs, jobs and email addresses at random. Often you'll be the last to know. Some email address churn is normal, but the erosion of your house list can make a seriously negative impact on your bottom line.

What can you do?
Check with sales, support or someone on the front line in your company, and follow up by phone or by snail mail to recapture valuable customers and prospects.

In addition to your unsubscribe or edit interests link in your email, consider adding a note saying, "If you plan to change email addresses, or if you prefer to receive this newsletter at another address, please email us."

Remember, it is 7 times less expensive to market to an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one. The effort will be well worth your time.

The use of free email accounts
Many people who use free email accounts do so as a secondary mailbox. As a result, they do not check their mailbox often. Free email accounts, and some paid accounts, can hold only a limited amount of email, so many times newsletters and advertising email will bounce back as undeliverable.

What can you do?
You can try the same techniques as above and, assuming you have the recipient's permission, you could use snail mail to obtain their new email address. Try sending a postcard asking them to revisit your site to update their profile. The postcard should include a URL leading to the profile update area of your site.

Spam filters and blocking
ISPs and corporations are paying close attention to incoming email in the effort to block spam, or unsolicited email. Anti-spam filters scan email from and subject lines as well as email body copy for certain language. They can also detect mailing patterns, frequency and volume. Your legitimate, permission-based email could be bounced back to you by a spam filter, or your mail server might be flagged as a potential spam source. In either case, your messages won't make it through.

What can you do?
Use an email marketing service with a strong permission policy and an active anti-blocking team. Don't go it alone. Solid email marketing companies develop relationships with ISPs to be sure their customers' permission-based email gets through. A good email marketing service gets more attention than you could ever get on your own.

Ask your readers to help. If your email is being blocked at a particular company or ISP, ask devoted customers/readers to contact their postmaster and request to have your email "un-blocked."

And then...?

Analyze your bouncebacks
You should be using an email marketing service that categorizes bouncebacks and provides detailed reports that allow you to view and manage bounced email addresses. Take the time to analyze your bouncebacks and remove hard bounces from your list. It should also be easy to correct obvious typos in your list (e.g. ".con" instead of ".com").

Monitor your "reply to:" address
Many recipients are fearful of using the unsubscribe function as it has been used by spammers to verify an address, rather than as a legitimate unsubscribe function. So, be alert to unsubscribe requests coming to your "reply to:" address and permanently remove those email addresses right away.

Finally, pay attention to email address change requests coming to your "reply to:" address and honor those in a timely manner as well

Writing Logical Email Messages

As we’ve seen before, getting your inbound email under control will give you a huge productivity boost, but what about all the emails you send? If you want to be a good email citizen and ensure the kind of results you’re looking for, you’ll need to craft messages that are concise and easy to deal with.

First: Understand why you’re writing

Before you type anything into a new message, have explicit answers for two questions:

1. Why am I writing this?
2. What exactly do I want the result of this message to be?

If you can’t succinctly state these answers, you might want to hold off on sending your message until you can. People get dozens, hundreds, even thousands of emails each day, so it’s only natural for them to gravitate toward the messages that are well thought-out and that clearly respect their time and attention. Careless emails do not invite careful responses.

Think through your email from the recipient’s point of view, and make sure you’ve done everything you can to try and help yourself before contacting someone else. If it’s a valuable message, treat it that way, and put in the time to making your words count.

Get what you need

Although the possible topics and content of messages are theoretically endless, I’d propose that there are really just three basic types of business email.

1. Providing information - “Larry Tate will be in the office Monday at 10.”
2. Requesting information - “Where did you put the ‘Larry Tate’ file?”
3. Requesting action - “Will you call Larry Tate’s admin to confirm our meeting on Monday?”

It should be clear to your recipient which type of email yours is; don’t bury the lede. Get the details and context packed into that first sentence or two whenever you can. Don’t be afraid to write an actual “topic sentence” that clarifies a) what this is about, and b) what response or action you require of the recipient.

Since the Larry Tate meeting on Monday has been moved from the Whale Room, could you please make sure the Fishbowl has been reserved and that the caterer has been notified of the location change? Please IM me today by 5pm Pacific Time to verify.

This isn’t the place to practice your stand-up act. Keep it pithy, and assume that no one will ever read more than the first sentence of anything you write. Making that first sentence strong and clear is easily the best way to interest your recipient in the second sentence and beyond.

Write a great Subject line

You can make it even easier for your recipient to immediately understand why you’ve sent them an email and to quickly determine what kind of response or action it requires. Compose a great “Subject:” line that hits the high points or summarizes the thrust of the message. Avoid “Hi,” “One more thing…,” or “FYI,” in favor of typing a short summary of the most important points in the message:

• Lunch resched to Friday @ 1pm
• Reminder: Monday is "St. Bono’s Day"—no classes
• REQ: Resend Larry Tate zip file?
• HELP: Can you defrag my C drive?
• Thanks for the new liver—works great!

In fact, if you’re relating just a single fact or asking one question in your email, consider using just the subject line to relate your message. As I’ve said before, in some organizations, such emails are identified by adding (EOM)—for end of message—at the end of the Subject line. This lets recipients see that the whole message is right there in the subject without clicking to the view the (non-existent) body. This is highly appreciated by people who receive a large volume of mail, since it lets them do a quick triage on your message without needing to conduct a full examination.

Sadly, good email subjects have become something of a lost art, especially among more recent additions to the Interweb. It’s a pity, because you’re far more likely to get a favorable response from a busy person when they can quickly grok your message.

Brevity is the soul of…getting a response

It’s completely depressing to check your email at 4:55 in the afternoon to discover a gothic novel of a message waiting for you, spilling down your screen the distance of 2 or 3 scrolling pages. It’s certainly not the kind of thing that excites the desire to engage and respond. I mean just look at all that!

So, although—in typical Merlin fashion—I have only anecdotal evidence and hunches to prove this point, I’d wager that there’s one visual trick most likely to improve your message’s success: fit it onto one screen with no scrolling. There’s a reason those web ads placed “above the fold” cost a lot more than the ones stuck down at the bottom; it’s the only part of the page that you’re virtually assured that anyone will see.

Whenever you can, try to distill your beautiful epistle down to just one or two points about a given topic, and then whittle that down to the point where there’s plenty of white space left underneath your closing. Got more to say? Put it in separate emails with—again—excellent Subject lines, and a descriptive, concise opener.

What’s the action here?

If your message includes any kind of request—whether for a meeting, a progress update, a pony ride, or what have you—put that request near the top of the message and clearly state when you will need it. Do not, under any circumstances, assume that your overwhelmed recipient will take the time to sift through your purple prose for clues about what they’re supposed to be doing for you.

Depending on the style of your team and the volume of mail they create, you might even consider adding functional text headers to the top of the body outlining the exact nature of the message.

This email is:    [ ] actionable   [x] fyi        [ ] social
Response needed:  [ ] yes          [x] up to you  [ ] no 
Time-sensitive:   [ ] immediate    [ ] soon       [x] none

Sure, it’s geeky, but how many minutes have you wasted panning through a sloppy “project update” email only to completely miss the changed deadline or work request buried in the penultimate paragraph?

Remove the guesswork from your messages by thinking of them like friendly, civil work orders; you must not be afraid to ask for what you want, especially if you have any desire to actually have the recipient give it to you.

More good ideas

• Make it easy to quote - Power email users will quote and respond to specific sections or sentences of your message. You can facilitate this by keeping your paragraphs short, making them easy to slice and dice.
• Don’t chuck the ball - Emails to a thread are like comments at a meeting; think of both like your time possessing the basketball. Don’t just chuck at the net every chance you get. Hang back and watch for how you can be most useful. Minimize noise.
• A reminder never hurts - If you’re following-up or responding to an email that’s more than a few days old, provide context right at the opening. For example, "You wrote in February asking to be notified when the new asthma inhalers are in stock; here’s a link to the items we’ve now made available on our site…."
• Never mix, never worry - Unless your team really prefers to work that way, do not mix topics, projects, or domains of life in a given email. Inform everyone of Baby Tyler’s adorable antics in a different message than the one with the downsizing rumors and budget warnings.
• No thanks - I’m not married to this one, but I know a lot of people who swear by it. In more informal settings and in high-volume mail environments, it’s not necessary to respond with a “Thanks” email whenever someone does what you asked. Save your gratitude for the next time you pass in the hall; a one-word “Thanks” email can be crufty and unnecessary. On the other hand, don’t hesitate to thank someone for their time if they’ve truly done you a proper.
• RTFM - If you’re asking for help, make sure you’ve exhausted all the documentation and non-human resources you have at your disposal. When you do ask for help, be sure to quickly cover the solutions you’ve already tried and what the results were.
• Skip the overture - If you’re writing to a busy person with an actual question or request, resist the desire to swoon for 2,000 characters. Either write a fan letter or a useful email, but mixing them can seem tacky and disingenuous. Just go ahead and ask Gary Gygax for his autograph already.

iMagicLab or iCarMagic? What's in a Name?

Many of you have asked about why we changed the name of iCarMagic to iMagicLab so i thought I'd take a moment to tell you about it. OK, well, maybe I will take longer but by now you all know how I like to talk...

In late 2004 we received an email from a company named I-CAR who, according to their website, develops and delivers technical training programs to professionals in all areas of the automobile collision industry. They threatened trademark infringement and a host of other legal problems if we didn't change the name immediately. At the time we felt that iCarMagic was sufficiently different that we had nothing to worry about so we ignored the letter.

Late in 2006 the issue reared it's ugly head once again when we were served a lawsuit for the alleged infringement. After consultations with our counsel and an estimate that the cost of fighting a consortium of public car insurance companies could cost millions we reluctantly changed the name. The truth is that I understood their point; most dealers had been calling us "icar" by then anyway and the confusion was natural.

So there it is, the reason the name was changed was because we had to in order to avoid sharp legal costs. For those of you that know me you can imagine how hard it was to not tell them to pound sand :)

http://www.i-car.com/index_us.shtml

KL

P.S. And NO, the rumor on DR is not correct, we have not been bought by Google. It seems every week we're selling to someone (which is funny because we are not for sale)

The Internet is Dead

For the past 10 years I have literally been eating, sleeping and dreaming the Internet. I bought into the hype of the late 90's, continued believing in the virtues early in this new millennium and up to today believed that the Internet is on the cusp of revolutionizing everything we do.

I was wrong.

Depending who's version you believe, the product we now know of as "electricity" was conceptualized in it's modern form early in the 1600's by English scientist William Gilbert. A virtual litany of European, Greek, Middle Eastern and other smart folks had been playing with it before and certainly it did not begun getting delivered in product format until perhaps the late 1700's to early 1800. Can you imagine the World reaction to the advent of this remarkable product? I suspect the printing presses of the time hummed with news of the great revolution, the amazing capacity and the end of life as it was then known. In hindsight they were all right, but how do with think about electricity now. It's part of our life no doubt and makes everything we know possible but how many changes have happened to that product over the past two decades? The power grids are woefully outdated, we have brown outs in California during summer and we didn't even think about renewable energy until we were forced to by high oil prices and global warming.

Get my drift here? The Internet has changed our way of life forever and has thus now become a commodity to be used by humans just like electricity, flight and the nuclear bomb (all of which we now complain about). Over time the infrastructure will deteriorate (except of course for the wealthy industrial complex and educational usage) and its "pie in the sky" reputation will fade. The World has lost hundreds of billions of dollars building cyberspace and en-richened very few in the process. As always the rich have gotten richer and the poor poorer...

Just imagine the societal benefits if we had invested that money in education or clean water for the third world? According to the State department we could have provided lifetime health insurance for every man, woman and child in the United States just with the losses incurred during the dot com meltdown. Waste, greed and downright theft occurred then and it's occurring now with the mortgage fiasco: When will we learn?

OK, so it's true... Keith Latman is now bald

Many of you have emailed and some of you have seen the pictures on ileadtools.com so I thought I'd end the speculation and tell you that I have indeed gone bald. Why you ask? Here's Richard Keith Latman's Top Ten reasons it's fun to be bald:

• 10 - Hat hair doesn't seem to be possible
• 9 - People mistake me for an NBA star
• 8 - Random girls use my head as a mirror
• 7 - My ear hair is now a fashion statement
• 6 - I'm saving thousands on Rogaine
• 5 - I use less energy due to my new aerodynamics
• 4 - Dandruff is no longer an issue
• 3 - There's never a hair in my sink
• 2 -  My ears now look small compared to my forehead
• 1 - I can now say "who loves you baby" with a straight face

OK, now be quiet... here's a picture for those of you who are curious

How to Beat a Lower-Priced Competitor

It’s every dealer’s nightmare: another dealer in your market area begins slashing prices and cuts under invoice on every unit. You need a strategy for beating the low-ballers. So what’s the best way to proceed? On the one hand, all you need to do is drop your prices below the competition, and buyers will beat a path to your door. On the other hand, this approach will land you in a price war, and there are no winners in a price war — only survivors. Even if you manage to run your competitor out of business, chances are you may not have much of a business left when the battle is over. Luckily, it is possible to beat a lower-priced competitor without crippling your profits. That’s the good news. The bad news is that you’ll need to make major operational changes, and you’ll need to rethink how you communicate with customers. The changes required may not be for the faint of heart, but they’re better than the alternatives. So gird your loins, corporate warriors; you’re about to embark on one of the biggest strategy challenges you’ll ever face.

Select a Value Strategy.

Goal: Lay the groundwork for repositioning your STORE.

When customers prefer the lower priced of two items, it's usually because they believe the cheaper item is a better value. To compete, you need to get the customer to value your vehicle more than the competitors — regardless of the price. In my opinion there are four market strategies that accomplish this:

1. Lower your prices. Yes, this is an option. The challenge is to do it without destroying your own profit margins. (I'll explain how to do that in the next step.) The big danger here is that you'll end up with a price war, so you must ensure that you have what it takes to be the last firm standing.
2. Build value surrounding the vehicle. Customers will pay more if they're convinced your dealership or complete offering is demonstrably better than the competition. This superiority can be "rational" (like a package of services nobody else has), "emotional" (like a reputation for being "cool"), or a combination of both. Example: Car buyers pay more for Volvos because they're seen as safer than other cars.
3. Create a hassle-free experience. Customers will pay extra if your store is easier to buy from and visit than the competitor's. Example: Many shoppers happily pay more for the convenience of bagged lettuce, even though it is significantly more expensive than head lettuce.
4. Take ownership of the customer's results. Customers will pay extra if, in addition to providing the right car, you take responsibility for ensuring the customers complete and total satisfaction. Not just managing survey results here complete satisfaction of every customer sold.

Reposition, Readjust, and Reallocate

Goal: Make the internal changes necessary to support your strategy.

1. Lowering your prices = Changing your workflow to reduce costs. To beat low-price competitors at their own game while also remaining profitable, you need to squeeze every last drop of inefficiency and cost from your selling and service departments. Look at your commission plans, fixed salaries, wasteful advertising and just clean house. The lower your cost basis the better position you are in to play the price game if needed.
2. Building a uniquely better offering = Change the focus to total value. Determine through market research what in your marketplace will prompt customers to see your package as being unequivocally superior to the competition. This isn’t as hard as it sounds, think about what vehicles really need in your area: car wash coupons, snow tire changes and of course gas discounts are always good places to start.
3. Creating a hassle-free experience = Changing sales and marketing. Figure out why it’s difficult to buy at your competitor's store, and then make it easy to buy and service at your dealership. I can’t say this enough: SHOP YOUR COMPETITION AND EXPLOIT THEIR WEAKNESSES.
4. Taking ownership of the customer’s results = Changing customer support. Build a deep bench of brand and model experts who really understand the cars and trucks you are selling and be there for your customers. Since when did salespeople stop having to be experts? Customer support begins when they walk on the showroom floor and ends when they are no longer competent to buy another car. Get my drift? In a car dealership EVERYONE must be a product expert.

Promote the New You

Goal: Communicate your new value strategy to potential customers.

Once you’ve implemented all the operational changes required to reposition your dealership in the marketplace, it’s time to tell the world why your store offers superior value. That means adopting a communications strategy that matches your market strategy, as follows:

1. If you offer lower prices, mimic the competition's go-to-market strategy. Ensure that whenever a customer sees a competitor's ad’s, your store’s name is right next to it — at a lower price. Example: Kinko's searches out local print/copy shops and locates a franchise across the street, offering prices that the local shop can't match and eventually driving them out of business.
2. If you build a uniquely better offering, target your advertising. Reach customers in areas your competition neglects. I know this sounds the opposite of #1 but there are many, many places people don’t think of selling cars. Go back to the past and think Chamber of Commerce, local sports and groups. Example: Sony's VAIO PC business advertises in lifestyle magazines to reach female buyers, who are more likely to appreciate the VAIO's sleek design.
3. If you create a hassle-free experience, generate positive word of mouth. Make it easy for your customers to sell for you. Consider “tell a friend” coupons or offer referral fees. Example: “Network Marketing” products (like Amway) are typically priced higher than store-bought items, but they are sold by neighbors to neighbors (that’s the word of mouth) and drop-shipped to the buyers (that’s the hassle-free part).
4. If you take ownership of the customer’s results, create a presence as an industry insider. Get your sales consultants out to conferences, working groups, and industry-association meetings where they can work closely with others in the industry and create a reputation of a “can’t beat” team. You’d be surprised that when you create professional career salespeople at your store turnover will go down and sales will skyrocket.

Prepare a Plan B

Goal: Secure long-term competitive advantage with a secondary market strategy.

You’ve got a new pricing strategy and a new way to market it to customers. That’s great, but do you really have what it takes to pulverize the competition? After all, strategy doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Just as you are responding to your competitor’s pricing moves, they will do the same in response to you. If you’re only better than your competition in one dimension, you run the risk that your competition will focus on that dimension to leapfrog over you. If you’ve got the best package, the competition may figure out how to make a better one. If you make things easy for customers, your rival could make things even easier. To prevent this, it’s important to simultaneously execute a secondary market strategy that supports the first.

The challenge in executing a secondary strategy is that the four basic market strategies are, to a certain extent, mutually exclusive. Better car packages typically cost more. An “ownership of results” strategy often entails throwing resources at each customer’s problems until they are fixed.

Nevertheless, having a secondary strategy in place — even if you can’t make it fully effective — is a great way to keep competitors at bay because it makes it far more difficult for your rivals to beat you at your own game.

Most of all remember that no matter how far you get in remaking your dealership and trying to improve your strategy you are that much farther than everyone else. Most dealers simply never change and that’s why you can win using my 4 steps: after all it’s very easy to hit a steady target.

Good Selling.

Keith

Security and Car Dealers: The Hidden Truth

This morning I grabbed a new laptop and took a trip to a few dealerships in my area to check out security. As a former coder I’m not up to speed with the latest hacking techniques but I thought it would be interesting to see how much data I could get from these stores. Now before the privacy advocates go crazy here let it be known that this was a controlled experiment with a hard drive in the laptop that was wiped clean by our security team immediately following the test. No data from any customers of these dealerships were reviewed, looked at beyond a cursory glance and no staff member at iMagicLab had any access to anything. I went to 5 stores at random that did not use iMagicLab software and that I had no relationship whatsoever. Each store in the test did not know me, did not actively participate and probably would be really pissed off that I was doing this. At no time did I break any laws or use any devices or programs to enter into a network without authorization. With all the appropriate caveats in place, let’s look at the methodology and test results:

The Method

I decided before I started this that I would try the same techniques on each store. To make it fair I did them in the same order and in the same way. I was going to wear a lab coat as well but I thought that might stand out. Here’s what I did:

·         I scanned for a wireless network and if it existed I tried to connect to it

·         I went into each dealership and asked if I could use their internet connection to check my email

·         I used a freeware packet sniffer to detect and record network traffic

·         I used a printer reverse decryption program to read documents intended for a printer

·         I spent zero money on software products beyond the Vista software on the machine

·         I used the built-in Windows networking features to check out anything I could that was freely available without a password. If the file, directory or computer had security on it I made no attempt to open it or download it.

The Results

If you have a seatbelt on your office chair now would be a good time to buckle up: The results are really unbelievable. I’m chomping at the bit here to write the conclusions section here but I won’t if you promise that you will read to the end:

·         5 out of 5 dealers had wireless networks at the dealership. 4 out of the 5 actually had multiple wireless access points and in ALL cases I was able to access the dealership network by simply hitting the “connect” button. It’s important to note that some of these networks were ‘ad-hoc’ networks and were obviously created for the use of one or two people using a $60 usb instant wireless network product (the kind used by many consultants and trainers to run their laptops)

·         Every store let me hook up my laptop to their network without objection. Two stores actually instructed staff to get me a private room and a network cable.

·         Packet sniffing each of the networks was like being in a Harrison Ford movie. Social Security numbers, credit results and huge amounts of personal information just started streaming into my machine. All of the dealerships I sampled offered a huge amount of data available for the asking.

·         Printer page interception was more difficult but offered far more data than the packet sniffing. Where the packet sniffing needed to be assembled after the data was downloaded, the printer was always sent a complete page of information. It was very easy to get a nice package of info on every customer who was penciled or bought a car.

·         File downloads from unsecure directories included reams of pornography, staff reviews, customer spreadsheets and just about everything you can imagine. Several computers had text files or Excel spreadsheets including passwords for store systems etc. There was virtually no security anywhere once on the network.

What You Can Do

It’s really very simple; hire a security consultant and adopt a Security Strategy like this:

Layer 1 - A dedicated, private Internet connection.

A dedicated Internet connection like a T1 service will reduce the amount of unwanted attacks by about half.

Layer 2 – Only use Internet-based software that is truly secure

You know that little lock in the browser that says you are secure? Did you know that companies can buy that “security” for $199 without any background checks or technology? Scary but true, those certificates do nothing to help you tell that the company you are dealing with has done anything to secure your data. Only the new EV certification or higher can really be trusted to make sure your data is safe and that the Company you are dealing with is real. Login to eBay or PayPal and look at the address line in Internet Explorer (7 or above). See the green address bar? Green means go, anything else is a deal stopper.

Layer 3 – Make sure your DMS is secure

I could write here for hours but the Readers Digest version is that most of the technology nearly all stores use to safeguard their customers information is woefully outdated and has more holes than Swiss cheese. Call your vendor, conduct an INDEPENDENT security audit and make whatever changes you need to. Almost 50% of the data I was able to get came directly from the DMS systems in those stores. It’s just frightening.

Layer 4 - Securing the LAN with a reliable firewall capable of handling today's "Blended Threats"

A firewall that analyses data in real-time and monitors all traffic coming in and out of the dealership's Internet connection will help in protecting sensitive data. Intrusion methods change with technology. Dealership firewalls must be able to identify the traffic going through the firewall and be able to determine if this data is wanted, safe, and secure enough to deliver to the end user. Moreover, a managed firewall with timely updates will keep the dealership up-to-date with the newest technologies and threats.

Layer 5 - Securing the LAN through a repeating process of monitoring and adjusting

A security program is only as good as the party that monitors the attacks and adjusts the security policy appropriately. Without this continual process of monitoring and adjusting, a dealership will become further and further behind putting themselves at a high risk.

Layer 6 - Securing PCs with reliable anti-virus/spy ware protection.

Security starts from within the dealership. Since a network will be compromised at its weakest link. each PC must have up-to-date anti-virus protection. A corporate anti-virus solution is the best fit for dealerships of all sizes. Many of today's current corporate anti-virus solutions also include spy ware protection and key logger protection.

Layer 7 - Employee background checks, monitoring and education

Most theft occurrences start from the inside out. Usually this can be prevented by properly educating employees on ways in which they can help to protect the companies privacy and their customer's privacy. Examples include social engineering, proper passwords and storage of passwords, remembering to logout and locking their workstation when they leave. Background checks are absolutely necessary as our industry tends to employ folks that need money. Did you know that mortgage companies buy credit applications from salespeople for $10 per app? It gets worse and you need a real plan to make sure your staff is not working against you on the side.

While no dealership can be "completely" safe, securing each layer of the dealership is the best way to reduce their risk against threats from within and outside the dealership and mitigate any liability acts committed by attackers. Turning to experts in security, technology, and dealership infrastructure is the best way to make sure the dealership is better protected.

The Conclusion

Do I even need to write this now? While the results of this security audit were expected the depth of negligence was startling. Privacy and data safeguards are buzz words that every dealer talks or hears almost monthly but few actually take seriously. I know I don’t need to write this but the implications to the business and its customers are enormous. All the manufacturers have programs dealing with store security but here in Northern California, where you’d expect security to be up to speed, it’s obvious that dealerships just don’t get it. Make it your business to be secure and then make sure your customers know they are secure. In all the horror stories about car dealers the last thing we need is massive identity theft that can be traced to our stores.

It’s not too late: Call me, call someone, call anyone and get your dealership secure.