Hoblit CDJR and Hoblit Ford Auto Group Cultivates Sales & Service
Usually, when Americans think of California, they think of warm, sandy beaches and the bright lights of Hollywood. Possibly even the beautiful orange groves and wineries in Napa Valley. However, what most individuals fail to realize is that California is also rich and diverse in farmland that consists of rice fields, dairy farms and almond and walnut orchards.
Agricultural communities don’t usually lend themselves to successful automotive dealerships due to the low drive-by traffic, but one fourth-generation family dealership has plowed through the competition of massive auto malls and made a distinct name for itself in the Golden State.
In 1949, Chad Hoblit’s great-grandfather started the family’s Ford dealership in the small Northern California town of Colusa, where the current population has held at less than 6,000 people. In 1999, the generations
of Hoblit’s expanded their company by purchasing the Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and
Ram (CDJR) dealership in Woodland, CA. Although this location was only 20 miles from downtown Sacramento, it still identifies itself as a rural community.
Today, Chad Hoblit runs the CDJR Woodland dealership, while his brother and semi-retired father run the Colusa location. In 2011, the family hired Gayland Schmitt as a partner and general manager. Since then, the Chrysler store has grown to 104 employees and the Ford store to 45 employees.
A Focus on Farmland
The rural landscape presents challenges and opportunities to both dealerships. While Woodland is a much larger city than Colusa, it is by no means a huge metropolis. The town currently boasts a total population of 60,000, and, according to Chad, they house a few restaurants as well as some mom-and-pop shops.
“The Sacramento River basically separates the whole Sacramento region from the rural, farming region,” Chad said. “Once you go over the river, and past the Sacramento Airport, it turns into nothing but farmland.”
Schmitt concurred. “This isn’t a destination store. No one comes out here to search for cars. They come out here because they are drawn in by our advertising and enticing website features.”
To surmount the locations’ disadvantages, the company has always made catering to the agricultural clientele an integral part of their family business and motto.
“By catering to the local community and farmers in the heart of Northern California farmland, we have really focused on selling and maintaining trucks,” Chad continued. “For me, growing up in such a small town and with all these farmers and friends, I’ve noticed that either you are in ag industry or somehow associated with it. Since they all drive trucks, and need them for work, our focal point has always been on big truck sales.”
By adhering to their target market and focusing their marketing efforts and business philosophies on serving these customers, the results certainly paid off. Some customers come as far as 200 miles away just to purchase a vehicle from their stores.
“When people come out here from Sacramento or the Bay Area, they’re used to the auto malls and brand-new facilities, Chad said. “When they come here, they’re very pleased. They really appreciate the old nostalgic throwback of a small-town and a family-grown atmosphere. It’s like going back to the ’50s or ’60s really.”
While the small-town atmosphere is welcoming, the reason customers know about the stores’ services is due to the company’s detailed attention to their marketing strategy and website presentation.
“We view our website as our virtual showroom,” Chad said. “It’s where people can browse, shop and conduct their whole transaction online without having to step foot in the dealership.”
Marketing Strategy Success
Gayland credits their employees, their marketing technology and the processes that they’ve put in place for the company’s success.
“I’ve been in the car business for over 25 years now and have managed to bring in a lot of good employees and managers,” Gayland said, later adding, “We’re hopefully going to sell 3,000 new cars this year.”
Marketing is a critical component to Hoblit’s success. Since pairing with Team Velocity, their YTD total sales have increased by over 16 percent and monthly service ROs are now up 55 percent.
“I just believed in their marketing,” Gayland said of Team Velocity. “What they’re doing for us is in our perfect market, which is probably like a 30-mile radius, is tremendous. They’ve increased our sales all while driving sales to our service department. They’ve helped us build a solid core for our business. Our nearest competitor used to be number one in the Sacramento region, and we’re beating them now! We’re the number one Ram truck dealer in California, and I’m hoping that this year we’ll become number two in the nation.”
Team Work
Reaching not only more people, but the right (buying) people is critical — and as part of the marketing with Team Velocity, Hoblit has redeveloped their branding message by highlighting their staff and hassle-free transactions.
“We have a great team, and we approach it a little differently,” Gayland said. “We really pride ourselves on being family owned. We’re not an auto mall. We’re in a small town. We get people from LA, Arizona and all over the place.”
“We have an outstanding and experienced staff here,” Chad said, “We don’t like to waste our customer’s time, and our targeted process is really where we try to keep it simple.”
“We’ve been marketing toward the consumer who wants to go online, find the vehicles they’re looking for, have the vast selection and if we don’t have it, we’ll get it at no extra charge,” Chad continued. “With this process we’re able to get customers pre-approved, work the trade-in numbers and pretty much work the whole deal before they come in. Our goal is and has always been to create a frictionless and seamless sales process. They’re in and out, hopefully within an hour, maybe two. The goal is an hour, but when we’re backed up, it’s hard. We don’t spend
a lot of time negotiating the deal, but unfortunately, even with only four finance managers, it takes a little while to get people out of here sometimes, but that is the idea.”
Chad and Gayland both agree that the company’s emphasis of keeping family-friendly environment really helps fight off the nearby auto mall competition.
“People hate the car-buying process, so we try to transform that into a more pleasurable and enjoyable experience.”
Service Solutions
With customers traveling long distances to purchase vehicles, there’s often a struggle to retain them for service. Hoblit relies on the work of Team Velocity to keep the service department business growing.
“We’re retaining a lot of our customers through our service department,” Gayland said. “The ones who are 200 miles away are definitely a little harder to retain, but with Team Velocity, they’ve helped us attract more customers in our appropriate market. Thanks to them our service depart has grown immensely.”
The company has added an offsite facility with 14 lifts in it for truck and large commercial vehicle service. In addition to the agricultural vehicles, Chad said there are many
businesses in Sacramento and the East Bay area that don’t have a convenient place
to have their vehicles serviced.
“We’ve been able to double — and almost triple — our capacity,” Chad said.
“Now, I’m looking for a third facility to do even more service,” Gayland said.
The company also has a great success rate with Team Velocity’s vehicle upgrade program. Their program successfully matches customers with their next top upgrade model and provides them with relevant, payment-based offers.
“I have one full-time gal who actually makes calls every day, calling customers about the upgrade program,” Gayland said. “We do so well with it, I’m actually interviewing a couple more people to help get more deals out of it.” The company’s success has led to the purchase of more lots, including a Ram Truck Center, and they’re looking to expand even further — all while keeping the family, small-town atmosphere in-tact.
They are also looking forward to the year ahead with celebrations for a 70th anniversary for the Ford store and a 20th anniversary for the CJDR store.
Like the surrounding farmland, the Hoblit dealerships are poised for years of continued growth in the California sun.
This article is dedicated to the memory of Wayne Hoblit, Founder, Owner and loving parent.
Hoblit Auto Group uses Team Velocity’s Apollo Technology Platform® to manage integrated marketing campaigns for sales, service and equity mining. Apollo automatically generates and deploys campaigns across mail, email and digital advertising, offering consistent messaging and branding, and provides a web-based dashboard to track results in real-time.
What can Apollo help you with?
Digital Retailing or Digital Roadblocking?
Digital retailing continues to be one of the hottest topics in our industry, but almost everyone I talk to has a different explanation for what they consider digital retailing to be. So, on a recent cross-country flight, I Googled What is digital retailing? I thought the following definition was most logical:
Digital Retailing, at its most basic level, is a series of experiences that allow consumers to easily maneuver and engage with your website at different stages of their purchase journey.
Personally, I believe that every dealership attempts to have a great digital retailing solution. Who doesn’t want to execute the above definition for their current and prospective customers? But, in reality, are we? Consider your most important customer, the one your dealership already has…your existing customers. They make up a vast majority of your sales and service transactions. But how easy is it for them to maneuver and engage with your website at different stages of their purchase or service journey? Most likely it is not easy, regardless of the dealership’s brand, size, or location. Although I love Audi, my personal experience with my dealership is a good example of what consumers experience every day.
Here’s how it started:
I received a nice personal email from my dealership with a lease offer on an A6 Premium for $469/month for 36 months with $2,999 down, driving 7,500 miles annually. (The disclaimer listed some nice rebates, but it is doubtful a typical customer would read the fine print.) So far, so good. Interested, I clicked the link that directed me to their website/VDP.
Once there, I hit my first roadblock:
And, I am met with a second roadblock:
Invested in time and now just curious, I resubmit my information and click for a third time and – unsurprisingly – am not taken to my personalized offer. I spend more wasted time configuring a lease on their digital retailing widget, careful to make sure I replicate every term listed in their original email to me. And finally, my offer!
Just kidding, I hit roadblock #3:
Surely, I’ve just made an error and can still get the offered lease payment? Just in case, I Google Audi A6 Premium lease payment, and…
Roadblock #4 appears:
About an hour later, a nice young lady from Audi calls me, and I ask her about the personalized email offer I received earlier in the day, and politely explained I was unable to find it on their website or in any of their advertisements.
Roadblock #5 is presented in the form of her explanation:
This made me wonder, as I often do, if the dealership leaders spend any time walking through exactly what their customers experience? It sounds simple, but I am guilty of not doing this at my own company. It’s like calling our main phone numbers versus dialing our employees’ mobile phones directly. The phone systems and processes are so bad, slow, and cumbersome that we just go around them now. The bottom line is that it’s a painful process even for your best repeat customers to get realistic and accurate information to purchase their next car or schedule their next service online, and it shouldn’t be.
Some people reading this will correctly state that the dealer is not allowed to share their best prices until a one-on-one relationship is established. However, how much more established can it get from a current customer who purchased an Audi and services it at that same dealership? Technology, as advanced as it is, should be able to distinguish between an existing customer and a prospective new customer. In fact, automotive dealers are in the rare group of businesses that don’t separate customers online experience from their prospects. If you think about the businesses you interact with almost daily – Amazon, your bank, insurance, credit cards, online entertainment, every major hotel and airline – they already know who you are and treat you as such. Customers are roadblocked because they are treated like a “lead” instead of as an existing customer.
You would also be correct to point out that the company who emailed the customer also has no control over the website company, which has no control of the retailing widget to configure payments, and the website company has no control of the company that does the Google Ads. This is true, and part of the issue that makes Digital Retailing feel way more like Digital Roadblocking for customers.
The solution is in the palm of your hand! Consider Apple: they created a platform that integrates and interacts seamlessly with consumers and their lives. Conversely, look at dealerships: consumers are forced to jump through hoops when it comes to dealership technology. They are forced to juggle a brick flip-phone, an original iPod, a digital camera, all of their credit cards, cash, and a clunky GPS system just to keep track of their journey and reach their destination – when all they need to be given is a single smartphone (i.e., Apple). Consequently, the lack of consistency kills a dealership’s credibility.
Realistically, Digital Retailing is only going to happen in our industry with integrated technology platforms that provide a series of experiences that allow consumers to easily maneuver and engage with dealership websites at all stages of their purchase journey, not just the one that particular vendor executes.
Digital campaigns that click with your consumers
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Mission Improbable 2.0
As I have both previously said and written, it is improbable that most dealers can truly be successful with so many different companies and technology platforms being utilized to operate their businesses. Most dealerships are up to 10-15 different ad/technology companies even before you start counting all their 3rd-party widgets/plug-ins. How can any business create an excellent customer experience for sales or service with so many independent software applications that were never designed to integrate with each other? It’s the definition of Mission Improbable.
I generally spend more time with friends not in the business on these longer holiday weekends. And since they know what I do, I get to hear about their car-buying experiences, which I love. Below is a quick summary, from a friend’s POV, of a Labor Day Event email designed to upgrade his 2017 Audi Q7 to another Q7 or the new Q8 over the long Labor Day weekend.
I told him what the dealer does behind the scenes to execute even the most basic shotgun email marketing, much less something more complex like digital advertising, which could involve another 4-5 additional companies:
Before I tell you the ending, I asked him for his opinion on what he thought about the process:
“Awful. Absolutely nothing makes sense. How can they know my name and my current vehicle but send me a blast with an Audi A3 and A4 offer? I drive a Q7; do customers downgrade that often? Why didn’t they link me to the vehicles I would logically be most likely to buy? Finally, when I did find the vehicle and wanted to get more information, I clicked the link to ‘Buy Now’ and a new experience opened up, and they asked me for my name and phone number to continue. Why would the dealership send me an email then ask me to provide them with information they already know? How much more difficult can they make it? The button should have said ‘Don’t Buy Now.’ And the capper – even after I did all that, they called me and didn’t even know I was already a customer.”
I was shaking my head and thinking Companies A, C, and D don’t have any idea who you are, what your relationship is to the dealership, or the car you drive… so to them you are Joe Public. Company B knows more, but it doesn’t matter because they are sending you to Company C’s public website with a retailing widget from Company D. It’s just broken. Mission Improbable.
He continued, “They don’t treat their customers like the public – they treat us worse than the public because they make me provide them with data, like my name, car, trade value, that surely they have since I am already their customer. After all, they emailed me, right? And the more places I shopped online, the less consistent my experience became. It ended up being just as hard to buy somewhere else.”
I explained that dealerships get stuck with so many platforms that don’t integrate, that his “awful” online experience would have been pretty similar at 95% of dealerships. His online experience, however, was (to him) a direct negative reflection of how he perceived this dealership’s operation – four independent companies involved in a basic Labor Day email that ended with Company D asking a current customer to fill out a form before he could have the privilege of upgrading his vehicle.
And we are so numb to this poor experience that we celebrate the 1% of consumers who tolerate this “upgrade” experience as a victory. Company D didn’t generate a lead; they simply gave the dealer back very basic information of a current customer the dealership already had.
I firmly believe we can do so much better, but not without new integrated technology platforms or the adoption of new modern standards of integration, which seems quite unlikely given today’s climate.
My wholehearted belief is that one fully integrated platform should be used for the majority of a dealership’s marketing and advertising, as well as technology that clearly distinguishes between existing customers and new customers. I am hoping that OEMs will take a strong look in the future at how they endorse or include stand-alone “silo” solutions that will never integrate with each other versus broader platforms that are already integrated by design.
Team Velocity Announces New Partnership with Audi North America
Team Velocity’s extensive suite of premium digital advertising services are now co-op eligible through the Audi Partner Program.
Team Velocity Announces New Exclusive Interview on Worldwide Business with kathy ireland®.
Team Velocity Named on Inc. 5000’s Prestigious 2019 Fastest-Growing Companies List
Team Velocity makes its 6th consecutive debut for its record-high revenue and employee growth from 2015 to 2019
WASHINGTON, DC – August 22nd, 2019 – Team Velocity, known for its ground-breaking technology platform, Apollo®, was recognized for the 6th consecutive year as one of Inc. 5000’s fastest-growing private companies in America. The Inc. 5000 list honors the most successful and inspiring independent and midsized businesses across the nation based on revenue growth from 2015 to 2018. This prestigious list includes well-known companies such as Microsoft, LinkedIn, Facebook, Timberland, Oracle, and more.
Team Velocity was co-founded by David Boice and Budd Blackburn in 2005. Since then, Team Velocity has taken the automotive industry by storm with its revolutionary omni-channel automated marketing technology, products backed by artificial intelligence, and aptitude for innovation and success. Team Velocity has reached its all-time record high – more than 54 percent – in revenue and growth.
Recognition on the Inc. 5000 list has become the hallmark of entrepreneurial success for privately-held companies in the United States for the last 38 years. To qualify, companies must generate at least $100,000 in revenue by 2015 and $2 million in revenue by 2018. This year, Inc. 5000’s honorees aggregated a total revenue of $237.7 billion― surpassing last year’s record high of $206 billion. All together these companies amassed more than 1,216,308 jobs in a three-year time span, increasing the three-year growth rate to approximately 454 percent.
This year’s Inc. 5000 Conference and Gala will be held October 10 -through October 12 in Scottsdale, Arizona. The event brings together all honorees and alumni to recognize their achievements, entrepreneurial success, and contributions to the economy.
“Words can’t describe how honored we are to make the Inc. 5000 list for the sixth consecutive year. We only hope to continue to strive and grow for not only our employees but our clients.” – David Boice, Owner and Co-Founder of Team Velocity
“It all boils down to the people. Without the continuous support of our employees and phenomenal clients, this success would not be achievable. We are forever thankful.” – Budd Blackburn, Owner, and Co-Founder
To learn more about Inc. 5000, its review process and the complete list of recipients’, visit: https://www.inc.com/inc5000/index.html.
Just Text Me
Text is now the preferred method of communications for U.S. adults. It has a 99% open rate compared to email’s 20% (at best), making it a far more effective form of communication. However, most dealerships’ websites still have countless clever – and annoying – ways to attempt to get a consumer to fill out a lead form. I get it, but it’s time to think like customers living on mobile devices in 2019. Ask yourself: when was the last time you filled out a form or chatted with a company from your mobile device? Now — when was the last time you sent a text?
Some dealers have a basic widget on their site allowing customers to text their major departments. That’s a start, but it’s an overlay or pop-up that often interferes with the user experience and must be closed in order to navigate. Like most things in our industry, these widgets stand alone and don’t integrate with a dealership’s customer database. For text to really work, it must integrate with your most important database and be prolific in ALL your advertising.
Heeding these new stats, we recently developed a new texting platform for consumers and dealers within the Apollo platform, aptly named Apollo Text. This is a quick overview of how it works and why it is performing better for our dealerships than the 3rd party widgets they used before.
If you want to substantially increase engagement from your marketing as well, I suggest following these five winning principles of text:
So, not only do many customers prefer to begin and end their engagements with text, it’s also the best datapoint your dealership can gather. The ability to cross-reference consumers unique mobile numbers against your sales and service transactions make text the most reliable way to attribute an ROI to all your marketing and advertising efforts.
No matter who you work with, if you follow these five principles for text, I guarantee you will see an increase in qualified leads, response-rate, and ROI attribution.
#NoMoreCoreModels
Remember the good old days. “Hey Mr. GM, the incentives just came out and I was hoping you could email us the very best offers on your top core models? From there, I can forward them to our (human team) and have them create your ads as quickly as they can. Next, we can rush these ads to your OEM compliance group and after 48 hours of back and forth, our team will send the compliant ads back to you for final, final, final approval. By then you can make sure the offers are still correct. Now it’s somewhere between the 10th and 15th of the month and we can start marketing for about 15-20 days. As soon as the new incentives are released next month, we can start this circus all over again.” Sound familiar?
Ask yourself, are those really the good old days? Not really. If you are still doing this with multiple vendors every month, it’s a colossal waste of your time, highly inefficient and has your dealership on the advertising sidelines for far too long. If your vendor suggests you utilize a “tool” so that you can figure all this out yourself, it’s even worse. Don’t forget, your job is to sell and service cars and ensure your customers are taken care of 24-7. It’s their job to handle all your marketing and advertising initiatives.
Typically, this is the trend I tend to see. You’re still getting some of those “offer” calls or emails, but not from your digital partners. See… they just went way, way, way back to the ’80s. To the point where your ads probably look like the version below.
They are so generic they don’t even need to call you; they are near useless to the consumer and easily compliant because they have no relevant information that an OEM compliance department would even bother to check.
Your ads should be based on your inventory and the vehicles you have in stock to sell and deliver. You should spend time pricing your cars competitively and consistently on every digital medium you can. By the way… so should your pre-roll videos, display ads, TV commercials, emails, direct mail, etc. For example, your ads should look like the ones below and the rest will take care of itself.
You should be in “play” 24 x 7 x 365. Why? Because technology has changed so much that Google, Bing, YouTube, and Facebook all have technology platforms that allow your inventory to be uploaded and updated daily. Remember, your sales ads should always reflect your current inventory. Why advertise something you don’t have?
That being said, technology has changed but your consumers have not. They still want to know two things, “do you have it and how much is it?” What has changed is their ability to find out relevant information instantly… anytime and anywhere.
So, what does this mean? Stop generically advertising your models, none the less your “core models.” It does not work with today’s consumer. Eliminate the phrases so often associated with our business that instantly create distrust such as but not limited to:
Together, we can end generic advertising.
David Boice
Founder and CEO
Team Velocity Raises the Bar on Lead Generation with Enhancement to New Texting Platform, Apollo Text.
Team Velocity Awarded AWA Awards at NADA; Releases ApolloGo Mobile App
Team Velocity’s sophisticated technology platform, Apollo®, and ApolloGo mobile app take the industry by storm at NADA.
WASHINGTON, February 4th, 2019 – The 10th Annual AWA Awards presented by PCG Companies awarded Team Velocity with the Digital Marketing Innovation Leader and Rising Star Awards at NADA 2019. These awards recognize companies for their marketing technology that help dealers effectively buy, sell and service more cars. Team Velocity was recognized as an Innovation Leader for its marketing automation platform, Apollo, and its new digital retailing product, Transact.
Team Velocity was recognized for their revolutionary technology platform, Apollo. Apollo aids both dealerships and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) with technology that combines artificial intelligence (AI) and marketing automation to deliver hyper-personalized campaigns across a number of marketing channels. Apollo has been proven to increase results by as much as 250%.
While Apollo is comprised of many features and capabilities that enhance dealers’ profits and visibility, it’s Apollo’s comprehensive digital marketing product suite that took home the Innovation Leader award this year at NADA.
Apollo’s intelligent digital advertising platform is 100% automated to create, deploy and update data-rich ads across every digital medium, including Paid Search, Remarketing, Display Advertising, Social Media and Video Pre-Roll. This exclusive technology provides dealers with unlimited VIN-based ads for both new and pre-owned inventory and ensures consistent messaging and creative across all digital touchpoints.
Of Team Velocity’s recent digital product releases, one product in particular stands out amongst the rest: Advid™. Within a matter of minutes, Advid builds dynamic, payment-based video ads for every make and model the dealership sells, and automatically delivers these videos to YouTube. Every video is automatically updated nightly as inventory, incentives and pricing change.
Amongst Team Velocity’s newest achievements, is the public release of the ApolloGo Mobile App. The transformed Apollo desktop platform allows dealers to work leads on the go, from anywhere, at any time, all from the palm of their hands.
ApolloGo contains all the notable features included in Apollo but enables users to track all opportunities, communicate with customers directly via text and receive Hot Opportunity Alerts straight to their phone.
To learn more about ApolloGo or download the app, visit: https://teamvelocitymarketing.com/apollo/
About Team Velocity:
Team Velocity™ is revolutionizing the automotive industry with cutting-edge technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to help dealers sell and service more cars. Made by dealers, for dealers, Team Velocity’s proprietary technology platform Apollo® analyzes years of sales and service data to predict who will buy, what they will buy, and when they are ready to service. Apollo’s sophisticated AI automates the entire communication and marketing process by delivering hyper-personalized campaigns across every touchpoint, maximizing ROI and lifetime revenue.
For more information, visit www.teamvelocitymarketing.com.
More about the AWA Awards:
Since 2008, AWA has become a benchmark in the automotive industry for outlining and reviewing technology that enables dealerships and OEMs to aid their revenue with cutting-edge technology in digital marketing, design, management tools and social media. The qualified experts at PCG conduct thorough reviews and research the best products for car dealers to optimize their investment and deliver the best customer experience.
For more information about PCG and the AWA Award, visit: http://awa.autos/
AutoSuccess: The Top 10 Companies to Watch in 2019
Apollo eliminates the risks of traditional marketing techniques by utilizing sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) that generates dynamic, offer-based campaigns through omni-channels including search, display, social, preroll, email, text, direct mail, personal websites and landing pages. Apollo eliminates the need for multiple platforms by combining everything into one easy-to-use, automated platform that reaches each dealership’s perfect prospects with a consistent message across all marketing channels and is the only platform that runs automatically 24/7, producing hyper-personalized, payment-based ads on real inventory.
Designed to support the automotive retail industry, Apollo and Team Velocity’s suite of capabilities successfully increase revenue and efficiencies for both dealerships and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
BOTTOM LINE: Predict, track, sell and service more customers.
Learn more about Team Velocity and the other 9 companies to watch in 2019:
AutoSuccess Story: Hoblit Auto Groups
Hoblit CDJR and Hoblit Ford Auto Group Cultivates Sales & Service
Agricultural communities don’t usually lend themselves to successful automotive dealerships due to the low drive-by traffic, but one fourth-generation family dealership has plowed through the competition of massive auto malls and made a distinct name for itself in the Golden State.
In 1949, Chad Hoblit’s great-grandfather started the family’s Ford dealership in the small Northern California town of Colusa, where the current population has held at less than 6,000 people. In 1999, the generations
of Hoblit’s expanded their company by purchasing the Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and
Ram (CDJR) dealership in Woodland, CA. Although this location was only 20 miles from downtown Sacramento, it still identifies itself as a rural community.
Today, Chad Hoblit runs the CDJR Woodland dealership, while his brother and semi-retired father run the Colusa location. In 2011, the family hired Gayland Schmitt as a partner and general manager. Since then, the Chrysler store has grown to 104 employees and the Ford store to 45 employees.
A Focus on Farmland
The rural landscape presents challenges and opportunities to both dealerships. While Woodland is a much larger city than Colusa, it is by no means a huge metropolis. The town currently boasts a total population of 60,000, and, according to Chad, they house a few restaurants as well as some mom-and-pop shops.
“The Sacramento River basically separates the whole Sacramento region from the rural, farming region,” Chad said. “Once you go over the river, and past the Sacramento Airport, it turns into nothing but farmland.”
Schmitt concurred. “This isn’t a destination store. No one comes out here to search for cars. They come out here because they are drawn in by our advertising and enticing website features.”
To surmount the locations’ disadvantages, the company has always made catering to the agricultural clientele an integral part of their family business and motto.
“By catering to the local community and farmers in the heart of Northern California farmland, we have really focused on selling and maintaining trucks,” Chad continued. “For me, growing up in such a small town and with all these farmers and friends, I’ve noticed that either you are in ag industry or somehow associated with it. Since they all drive trucks, and need them for work, our focal point has always been on big truck sales.”
By adhering to their target market and focusing their marketing efforts and business philosophies on serving these customers, the results certainly paid off. Some customers come as far as 200 miles away just to purchase a vehicle from their stores.
“When people come out here from Sacramento or the Bay Area, they’re used to the auto malls and brand-new facilities, Chad said. “When they come here, they’re very pleased. They really appreciate the old nostalgic throwback of a small-town and a family-grown atmosphere. It’s like going back to the ’50s or ’60s really.”
While the small-town atmosphere is welcoming, the reason customers know about the stores’ services is due to the company’s detailed attention to their marketing strategy and website presentation.
“We view our website as our virtual showroom,” Chad said. “It’s where people can browse, shop and conduct their whole transaction online without having to step foot in the dealership.”
Marketing Strategy Success
Gayland credits their employees, their marketing technology and the processes that they’ve put in place for the company’s success.
“I’ve been in the car business for over 25 years now and have managed to bring in a lot of good employees and managers,” Gayland said, later adding, “We’re hopefully going to sell 3,000 new cars this year.”
Marketing is a critical component to Hoblit’s success. Since pairing with Team Velocity, their YTD total sales have increased by over 16 percent and monthly service ROs are now up 55 percent.
“I just believed in their marketing,” Gayland said of Team Velocity. “What they’re doing for us is in our perfect market, which is probably like a 30-mile radius, is tremendous. They’ve increased our sales all while driving sales to our service department. They’ve helped us build a solid core for our business. Our nearest competitor used to be number one in the Sacramento region, and we’re beating them now! We’re the number one Ram truck dealer in California, and I’m hoping that this year we’ll become number two in the nation.”
Team Work
Reaching not only more people, but the right (buying) people is critical — and as part of the marketing with Team Velocity, Hoblit has redeveloped their branding message by highlighting their staff and hassle-free transactions.
“We have a great team, and we approach it a little differently,” Gayland said. “We really pride ourselves on being family owned. We’re not an auto mall. We’re in a small town. We get people from LA, Arizona and all over the place.”
“We have an outstanding and experienced staff here,” Chad said, “We don’t like to waste our customer’s time, and our targeted process is really where we try to keep it simple.”
“We’ve been marketing toward the consumer who wants to go online, find the vehicles they’re looking for, have the vast selection and if we don’t have it, we’ll get it at no extra charge,” Chad continued. “With this process we’re able to get customers pre-approved, work the trade-in numbers and pretty much work the whole deal before they come in. Our goal is and has always been to create a frictionless and seamless sales process. They’re in and out, hopefully within an hour, maybe two. The goal is an hour, but when we’re backed up, it’s hard. We don’t spend
a lot of time negotiating the deal, but unfortunately, even with only four finance managers, it takes a little while to get people out of here sometimes, but that is the idea.”
Chad and Gayland both agree that the company’s emphasis of keeping family-friendly environment really helps fight off the nearby auto mall competition.
“People hate the car-buying process, so we try to transform that into a more pleasurable and enjoyable experience.”
Service Solutions
With customers traveling long distances to purchase vehicles, there’s often a struggle to retain them for service. Hoblit relies on the work of Team Velocity to keep the service department business growing.
“We’re retaining a lot of our customers through our service department,” Gayland said. “The ones who are 200 miles away are definitely a little harder to retain, but with Team Velocity, they’ve helped us attract more customers in our appropriate market. Thanks to them our service depart has grown immensely.”
The company has added an offsite facility with 14 lifts in it for truck and large commercial vehicle service. In addition to the agricultural vehicles, Chad said there are many
businesses in Sacramento and the East Bay area that don’t have a convenient place
to have their vehicles serviced.
“We’ve been able to double — and almost triple — our capacity,” Chad said.
“Now, I’m looking for a third facility to do even more service,” Gayland said.
The company also has a great success rate with Team Velocity’s vehicle upgrade program. Their program successfully matches customers with their next top upgrade model and provides them with relevant, payment-based offers.
“I have one full-time gal who actually makes calls every day, calling customers about the upgrade program,” Gayland said. “We do so well with it, I’m actually interviewing a couple more people to help get more deals out of it.” The company’s success has led to the purchase of more lots, including a Ram Truck Center, and they’re looking to expand even further — all while keeping the family, small-town atmosphere in-tact.
They are also looking forward to the year ahead with celebrations for a 70th anniversary for the Ford store and a 20th anniversary for the CJDR store.
Like the surrounding farmland, the Hoblit dealerships are poised for years of continued growth in the California sun.
This article is dedicated to the memory of Wayne Hoblit, Founder, Owner and loving parent.
Hoblit Auto Group uses Team Velocity’s Apollo Technology Platform® to manage integrated marketing campaigns for sales, service and equity mining. Apollo automatically generates and deploys campaigns across mail, email and digital advertising, offering consistent messaging and branding, and provides a web-based dashboard to track results in real-time.
What can Apollo help you with?
Team Velocity Now Participating in the General Motors Dealer Digital Solution Digital Advertising Program
Team Velocity is now participating in Enhanced Digital Advertising and In-Market Retail.
We are proud to announce that Team Velocity has completed all requirements to participate in the Digital Advertising Program under the GM Dealer Digital Solution.
This allows Dealers the opportunity to leverage in-Market Retail (iMR) funds to reimburse themselves for the cost of their Digital Advertising services. Please refer to the iMR Dealer Program guidelines located at www.gmlam.com for further information.
Providers who are participating in the Digital Advertising Program provide advertising solutions that include:
If you have any questions about the benefits of Digital Advertising Program, please do not hesitate to reach out to our Support Team at 703-783-9759 or via email at https://teamvelocitymarketing.com/gm for further details.
AutoSuccess Story: Freedom Auto Group
Improving Lives, Helping Customers
Most customers don’t arrive at a car dealership thinking their life will be improved during the process of buying a vehicle. But at Freedom Auto Group in Pennsylvania, that’s exactly what the owners seek for their customers—life improvement.
This unique auto group offers no-negotiation needed upfront car pricing and employs “Life Improvement Specialists,” not salespeople. These specialists are not paid commission, but earn salaries based on how well they serve customers, challenging the typical automotive dealership customer experience.
THE PATH TO FREEDOM
In 1967, 4-year-old Evelyn Chatel, along with her mother and her young brother, escaped communist Cuba on one of the historic Freedom Flights that transported Cubans to Miami.
When Evelyn was 18, a friend offered her a job as a greeter in the service lane of his Miami dealership. Over the years, she advanced in the dealership, becoming service advisor, warranty administrator, service manager, and service director. She credits her ascension to curiosity and assertiveness. “I wasn’t afraid to ask questions or speak up if I knew that it was going to be helpful for the betterment of the group.”
After 17 years with the first company and shortly after it was sold to Group One, she joined AutoNation. She spent seven years at AutoNation, at one point winning an all-expenses-paid trip where she met and struck up a friendship with Eric Savage, whose father owned a few dealerships. One year later, Savage bought the stores from his father and asked Evelyn to be his partner. “And that’s how we ended up in Pennsylvania,” she explained.
DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY
“Eric and I are both very passionate about not doing the same things that everybody else does,” Evelyn said. “We knew that dealerships didn’t have to be operated the way they’ve always been run. We didn’t know what that was; we just knew it needed to be different.”
In seeking to establish a different approach, they began by putting the employee first. They believed if they took care of their people, those employees would, in return, take care of the dealership and its customers.
Along the way, they adopted a program called THE ACT FORMULA® — accountability, communication and trust. THE ACT FORMULA is an active learning and development experience designed to build a positive and productive culture, providing the foundation needed for people to work at higher levels of performance and stimulating a comprehensive adoption of training programs.
Through teamwork initiatives developed in accordance to the formula, the Freedom Auto Group also established five elements essential to transforming the dealership into a life improvement business.
“We came up with our REACH statement,” which stands for Results, Enthusiasm, Accountability, Connection, and Honesty — fundamental concepts for their program.
But for Evelyn, there was still something missing. She then discovered the book The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann, which provided the final piece of the “Life Improvement Company” puzzle. The book essentially suggests “if you give unconditionally without expectation of getting, you will get well beyond any expectation that you gave. And that is who we are,” Evelyn said.
This gave birth to their Life Improvement Business practice and promise.
“We didn’t want to just sell and service cars. We wanted to improve lives,” Evelyn said. “But I know that sounds crazy in this business.”
She continued, “We take care of our customers because we want to take care of our customers, not because we need to just sell them a car. We want to make the experience better than anything they’ve ever encountered. We take care of our people because we want to take care of our people, not because we expect them to work longer and harder in return.”
Being in the life improvement business also means Freedom Auto Group is committed to the community. Freedom invests in projects that advance the lives of people in their Pennsylvania communities. Every year, Freedom dealerships contribute more than $200,000 and Freedom employees provide more than 1,000 volunteer hours to community causes.
Today, REACH symbolizes Freedom’s Core Values, guiding behavior and decision making throughout the dealership.
CHANGING A CULTURE OF COMMISSION-BASED SALES
Today’s customers present new challenges for dealers — they come to the store having researched the vehicle they’re interested in, from specific model features and specs to pricing and warranty life.
“The consumer is smarter than ever,” Evelyn said. “They have all that information at their disposal.”
The partners focused on the concept of “one price” — the price on the car is the price customers pay, no haggling, no negotiating.
This concept would become instrumental in creating an environment of life improvement for customers. But it was not without its challenges. Changing to a one-price store wasn’t going to happen overnight, and there would be a few naysayers along the way.
“The number one biggest challenge is people,” Evelyn said. “It’s a cultural change for most, and we lost a few people because they said they believed in the negotiating process.” While she was hurt by their departure, Evelyn knew that at the end of the day, they might have left anyway because “our culture is stronger than any payment plan.”
The company now employs more millennials, more women, and more people who are driven by factors other than money.
With consumers knowing the price of the car from the get-go, Freedom Auto Group’s next challenge would be standing out from the crowd. With their core values in mind, they knew the customer experience would have to be the difference maker.
“Now, the salespeople are here to serve you,” Evelyn explained. “And they don’t care what car you pick, because it doesn’t matter to them. There’s no commission base. They are now doing the right thing for the right reason, not because they are going to get a special spiff on that car because it’s been aging on my lot. It’s simply our mission to help customers buy a car and not sell them a car.”
“Life improvement to us is not only just for our people and giving them a place where they work but giving customers a place where they feel proud to do business.”
MARKETING THE MESSAGE OF LIFE IMPROVEMENT
Once the team was on board with the company’s new philosophy, the next step was to get the word out to the market.
“That’s when Team Velocity came in,” Evelyn said. Embracing Freedom Auto Group’s core values, Team Velocity developed a marketing strategy that made it easy for customers to understand the one-price approach and life improvement philosophies of the dealership. Team Velocity’s campaign showcased Freedom Auto Group’s value proposition and its “Freedom 5” suite of benefits.
Freedom Auto Group uses Team Velocity’s Apollo Technology Platform® to manage integrated marketing campaigns for sales, service and equity mining. Apollo automatically generates and deploys campaigns across mail, email and digital advertising, offering consistent messaging and branding, and provides a web-based dashboard to track results in real-time.
Freedom Auto Group uses Team Velocity’s Apollo Technology Platform® to manage integrated marketing campaigns for sales, service and equity mining. Apollo automatically generates and deploys campaigns across mail, email and digital advertising, offering consistent messaging and branding, and provides a web-based dashboard to track results in real-time.
The Freedom 5 benefits are designed to improve the lives of customers by offering a 100 percent money-back guarantee, hassle-free upfront pricing, no salespeople and no commissions, bucks for basics, and Freedom Direct in which Freedom comes to the customer for sales and service needs. Freedom also offers free car washes with every service, no-charge state inspections, and complimentary loaner cars.
This 360-marketing strategy was executed for delivery across traditional mass market mediums, such as radio and print, as well as targeted in-market mediums, such as direct mail, email, paid search, display, social media, and in-store point of sale.
While it’s been less than six months since the rollout, Evelyn said they have realized exceptional results with the help of Team Velocity’s innovative strategies.
“I’m hearing from the showroom floor and getting letters and cards from customers saying ‘Wow! This was an easy way to buy a car… Wow! We didn’t have to go back and forth… Wow! They really listened to me; you guys made it my process, not your process.'”
“That’s what life improvement is about,” Evelyn explained. “You give unconditionally without expectation of getting, and you get back beyond anything that you gave. That’s what we do.”
What can Apollo help you with?
Team Velocity named a finalist by Google for Video Advertising Innovation Award
Team Velocity named a finalist by Google for Video Advertising Innovation Award
Team Velocity, a marketing technology company based outside of Washington, D.C., has been named a Video Innovation finalist in this year’s Premier Partner Awards, presented by Google Partners.
Google’s Premier Partner Awards honor innovation in digital marketing across Search, Mobile, Video, Display, Shopping, and Growing Businesses Online. Team Velocity was named a finalist in Video Innovation for its latest product, Advid™, an automated video advertising solution that creates automotive model-specific, payment-based videos that are updated on YouTube nightly.
Team Velocity offers a comprehensive digital marketing solution backed by its technology platform, Apollo®. Designed to support the automotive retail industry, Apollo creates and delivers dynamic, automated, omni-channel marketing campaigns to in-market audiences based on behavior prediction analytics. Working hand-in-hand with Apollo’s intelligent offer management system, Advid creates hundreds of dynamic, high-quality video pre-roll ads in minutes and uploads those ads to YouTube automatically every night.
Team Velocity’s award submission included a case study on its long-term client Paragon Honda, describing the impactful results Advid delivered for the dealership. “Marketing today is all about relevance to the customer and attributing advertising spend to revenue. Video is the fastest-growing consumer medium, but traditional television advertising costs a fortune, offers little targeting and zero attribution. Google explained how video advertising on YouTube can better target in-market audiences and be attributed to store visits. We knew we wanted to shift some of our marketing budget away from traditional advertising efforts and into YouTube’s TruView platform. We put Team Velocity up to the challenge knowing the power of their technology. The results were incredible,” says Brian Benstock, Paragon’s Vice President and General Manager.
With Apollo, Team Velocity had the ability to target in-market audiences with relevant ads and provide attribution reporting on search and display, but video offered a unique set of challenges. For video ads to be relevant to the customer’s shopping history, advertisers would need a video for every model, which would be costly and time consuming to produce. The ads would also need to include the actual payments to provide the customer what they really want to know. However, offers and payments change frequently and need to meet state and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) compliance regulations. On top of all of this, YouTube lacks an API, meaning every video would need to be manually uploaded, creating the biggest challenge of all.
Costs aside, it was clear that attempting this process manually would be impossible to scale. Team Velocity would need technology to automate the process. Thus, Advid was born.
Paragon Honda was the first dealership to pilot Advid. With just 20 percent of its budget allocated to video advertising, Paragon saw 47 percent of its store visits attributed to video.
Team Velocity is part of a select group of digital specialists that Google celebrates as Premier Partners. To qualify as a Premier Partner, digital marketing agencies and professionals must pass a series of exams, and prove their expertise in using and applying Google’s advertising products.
Premier Partner Awards 2018 winners are scheduled to be announced in October at g.co/PartnerPartnerAwards.
About Team Velocity
Team Velocity™ is revolutionizing the automotive industry with cutting-edge technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to help dealers sell and service more cars. Made by dealers, for dealers, Team Velocity’s proprietary technology platform Apollo® analyzes years of sales and service data to predict who will buy, what they will buy, and when they are ready to service. Apollo’s sophisticated AI automates the entire communication and marketing process by delivering hyper-personalized campaigns across every touchpoint, maximizing ROI and lifetime revenue.
For more information, visit www.teamvelocitymarketing.com.
Team Velocity Recognized as one of Inc. 5000’s Fastest-Growing Companies of 2018