“I wake up in the morning and p!ss excellence.” – Ricky Bobby
First place. Winner. Champion. The Best. No matter what’s going on in the world, We want to win.
Yes, it’s a special time and things are really weird, but someone still gets first place in your pool every month.
“Yes, I want to make money but if anyone says they don’t care about being in first place, they’re just lying to you.” – Eric Schimmels April, 2021
Fountain Forward teamed up with Eric Schimmels, GM of Hiley Buick-GMC in Fort Worth, to take over the #1 spot in the competitive pool after a year of absence from the podium.
And by the time 2022 started, we did just that – hit #1 in their competitive pool despite battling unstable inventory conditions.
Here’s how it happened:
Eric and his operation are fundamentally sound. We all know that stands out in the auto business.
The operation at Hiley already included a strong sales team Eric put together before working with Fountain Forward, but there was a hole.
Eric knew he could feed his sales team with more and better opportunities while spending less. But he wasn’t sure what to do until he completed his free strategy call with Fountain Forward.
The hole was found in their marketing, sales, and communication data. After digging through their CRM, Google Analytics, and essentially every other report available, we built Eric a new plan.
Fountain Forward built a strategy to increase the quality AND volume of opportunities for the Hiley sales team. More importantly, we wanted to ensure that the sales staff at Hiley CASHED IN on those opportunities, too – all while spending LESS on their monthly marketing budget.
That’s the blueprint. Tie the whole darn thing together and do it WELL.
Get more, pay less, AND make sure that money gets to the bank.
We followed our standard process for implementing our “get more, pay less, and make more” goals:
- We analyzed all sales, marketing, budget, and vendor data to find where Eric was losing money.
- We presented the facts and our improvement suggestions to Eric.
- Eric trimmed all unnecessary expenses we identified in step 1.
We inputted new marketing, advertising, and sales changes with Eric and his team. See how we did it below.
Hiley GMC’s new media mix allowed the dealership to stay flexible and focus on priority vehicles to navigate a market with uncertain inventory.
When we first put the new media mix in place, the GMC store had almost 0 new cars on the lot. We focused on used inventory until the dealership’s new inventory allocation improved slightly.
They also took advantage of our Stock Your Lot program, but that’s a whole other story.
Suddenly, an increased allocation of new 2022 GMC Sierra 1500 Limiteds gave the dealership another shot to compete with the pool. The GMC dealership’s new media mix allowed the dealership to do a 180 on the ad side to focus and succeed moving one main model of choice.
In today’s market, it is more important than ever to be able to be nimble as a dealership and pivot regularly based on what inventory allocation your dealership is given.
The Result:
After not being the top dealer for 7 months, Hiley GMC became the top dealership in their competitive pool in January 2022!
It’s no coincidence that Hiley GMC now has the largest inventory selection of 2022 Sierra 1500 Limited Crew Cabs – in a market where inventory matters more than ever before.
These results are similar to other dealerships we have worked with around the country.
If you’re curious to see if we can help grow your dealership in a similar fashion, just click the button and I will give you a call.
At the very minimum, we’ll evaluate the Marketing Mix at your dealership and hand it to you with our recommendations. Cheers.
