True 2% Car... We are idiots

I get that 2% is a nice market share and that True Car will grow this year. But I read an article yesterday that also states that they only accounted for 2% of the market share. I own a direct mail company and I bet if we did some numbers we would find out that direct mail accounted for 5% plus of the market sales last year. (I wish we could get that kind of publicity) True Car is Advertising and we are giving them a ton of publicity and a lot of our time and energy for a 2% share and a company with a ton of legal problems in a bunch of states due to their business practices and the way they are paid per deal. Here are my points of interest and would love some comments and feedback.

These are the top three reason we (including this article) are idiots for giving these fellas too much of our time.

Its ONLY 2%!!!!!!!!!

#1. Do they deserve our time and energy? I know if I was Scott Painter I would be loving every move we make to discuss it including this, my stupid post. Isn't that great marketing? Stir things up and wait for the public to start chatting about it and get tons of extra miles from it?

#2. Like a highly paid sports figure that people complain makes wayyyyy to much.... are we the dealer body not paying them for the leads? The exact people who think True Car will make extinct and kill profits are we / you their customers? Are we not buying the ticket to see that guy play ball?

#3. Wouldn't you like this kind of exposure to your business? I will not be posting again about True car until they reach 5% plus of the market share.... Until then back to business making my dealers profitable.....right now I'll take 98% of normal business and sleep tight.

Troy Spring

President

Dealer World

610-570-3022

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Comment by Troy Spring on January 4, 2012 at 1:33pm: Thanks for the info Stan, I agree the more i look in to it. And like I said why would a dealer worry about it if the average closing ratio is only 5-8% that means like what happened to a dealer of mine a customer walked in with the thing and bought a car from a dealer who isn't even signed up. I don't like it all but I think we giving them more attention than deserved.

Comment by Stan Sher on January 4, 2012 at 10:53am: Trust me. 2% is a BS number. I have had a chance to experience TrueCar for a full week. They are taking over a whole market. A dealership that gets 600 normal leads from their sources (that are not out to hurt them) now gets 1600. 1000 comes from TrueCar and they sell 30-40 cars per month out of it. That is a 3-4% closing ratio when we should be at 10%. I found out calling these leads that the customers are being steered in that direction. TrueCar has done a great job getting in front of the consumers with their commercials and marketing. But when 70% of your leads are 80-120 miles away and they do not want to make the drive no matter what value you give them or how good of a closer you really are you start to really see what a horrible company TrueCar is. If you want to clutter your CRM with garbage and let your DMS be used to extract data that will be used against you then TrueCar is your solution.

TrueCar is not a friend to the industry. TrueCar is worse then cancer.

I spoke to a BDC manager from a NY Chrysler Jeep Dodge dealership. He called me because he was looking to contact his TrueCar rep and when he googled to get contact information he stumbled on my blogs. He actually defended TrueCar saying that he does well with them and they are good. When asking him how he feels about getting the runaround from leads that are 80 miles away he simply responded that he does not waste time on internet leads at all. He follows up with them for 7 days and if nothing happens he just gives up. He did not believe that a lead needs to be managed for 90-120 days. I wonder what training he got. That is not a good BDC Manager at all. I cannot believe that dealers allow that to happen.