Unlocking the Secrets of the Internet - Part One: Paradigm Shifts

by Chad Carr

It has been well over a decade since the Internet bubble burst and almost two decades since we were first told that there was going to be "a new medium that would change the way we do business, the way we learn and the way we interact."

Remember the early conversations you had about topics such as, "Is it time to build a web-site?" "Will people really buy things over the Internet?" "Just what should be on your website?"

To some, these questions seem like quaint reminders of the past. And yet, for most of the business owners I talk to, the Internet is just as big a mystery today as it was back when their kids first started telling them that they should build a website.

Today, dealers know that they are supposed to have a web-site, they know that they are supposed to be trying to get people to come to that web-site and then to the sales center, but beyond that most dealers have no formal Internet Marketing Strategy and few can point to any real success using this tool in their sales and marketing mix.

To a degree, our industry can be forgiven for being behind. It was sort of easy to imagine people selling books or airline tickets on-line, but who would have thought people would buy a house on-line?

We clung (and most still cling) to the belief that customers are going to have to touch and feel expensive things like houses before they buy them and that as a result we didn’t have to figure out how to compete in this new Internet marketplace.

We also believed (and many still believe) that people would want to deal with someone locally, so we only had to be a little bit better than the guys down the street to succeed with the Internet.

Unfortunately, we were wrong. Customers have proven that they are willing to buy just about anything over the Internet and they are willing to buy it from just about anywhere.

Today, your customer does not buy the same way they bought yesterday, and tomorrow they will not buy the same way they bought today. The reason is that the Internet has changed everything and will continue to change everything again.

Many of you recognize these changes instinctively, but few of you know what to do about them. There are painfully few sources for good answers regarding how to respond to this radical shift in the way we retail.

Over the next few months, I will uncover just what has changed and how you need to respond to these changes to grow your business through the Internet. In addition to explaining what needs to happen in straight-forward language, I will, when possible, direct you toward resources than can help you take action.

In the balance of this article, I would like to explore some of the paradigm shifts that have been brought about by the Internet over the last decade and how they have or will impact your business.

Proximity no longer matters

It used to be that by putting up a retail store in a market where people bought homes, you were pretty much assured that some of those people would give you the chance to sell them a home. Proximity was a safety net for many dealers for a lot of years. You didn’t necessarily have to be great at marketing and getting your story out. You didn’t have to have the flashiest ads or the best inventory. As long as you were "on the strip," a certain number of prospects would stop by and give you the chance to sell them a home.

Today, proximity has a totally different meaning. People are more comfortable sitting in their own home talking on the computer to someone a thousand miles away than they are getting in the car and driving five miles down the road to visit a stranger at a retail center.

At their computer (or on their smart phone), they are in complete control. At a dealership, they are under someone else’s control, and very few people like that.

Furthermore, the Internet has taught our customers that it is, in fact, safe to buy expensive things from far away from people we have never met face to face. People are already comfortable buying computers, vacations, boats, cars, RV’s, televisions and appliances on-line. Houses are next.

Size & Selection no longer matter

We did this to ourselves. People would love to see fully furnished homes in the exact floor plan they are considering so they can imagine themselves living in the home. But as an industry, we can no longer afford to have 30 furnished and environmentally displayed homes on our sales center. Now we can custom order anything for any customer and we use samples and pictures and floorplans to help them imagine their home.

That is exactly what you can do on the Internet, only you can do it better on the Internet. Customers are now completely comfortable with idea of getting the exact size, color and style they want. Customers have been trained that if they can’t get it at the local store, the local store will go on-line and find it at another store. If the store can’t find it, the customer has been trained to go home, log on to the Internet and find it for themselves.

Having a wide selection no longer matters because on-line, the customer doesn’t have to be limited to looking at 30 houses; they can look at every house, from every manufacturer, and from every stick builder and real estate agent, too.

The sale starts at least six months before you meet your customer.

A recent study by JD Power & Associates found that 80% of all home buyers will spend six months to a year or more researching their new home before they will ever talk to a sales person about their new home.

That means, by the time a customer talks to you, they have been "shopping" for at least six months. During those six months, you are on trial. Those shoppers are looking for reasons to disqualify dealerships so they can narrow their search down.

The customer that sends the e-mail asking how much your houses cost. Did you ignore him? If you did, he is going to ignore you back.

The customer that walks on your lot and says, "I’m just looking." Did you follow-up with her? If you didn’t, she is not likely to follow-up with you.

Your potential customers can get the information they are looking for from hundreds of different sources. If you want to sell them a home, you need to figure out how to be one of those sources. And you need to figure out how to do it before you meet them.

Face to face is no longer the best way to build relationships

As a lifelong sales person, this is a hard one for me to swallow and I imagine it will be for you, too. However, look at your children and compare the way they interact to the way you interacted with your peers when you were their age. My 13-year-old son does not talk to girls. He will not let me talk to him about talking to girls. Yet, he spends hours on Facebook interacting with girls everyday.

I don’t know how, why, or when it happened, but today we are more comfortable as a society communicating through our machines than we are communicating face to face.

That means that if you want to build relationships with your customers, you are going to have to learn how to build those relationships on-line over the Internet. Here’s an example: One of my most successful clients is an RV dealer in a tiny little town with a population of under 1,000 people. He is going to sell over 1,500 RV’s this year.

He has people come to him from all over the country to pick up RV’s and they are no less expensive than they would be at their local dealership.

This dealer’s secret is that he knows the importance of building relationships on-line. He is the friend and confidant of his customers long before they are ready to buy. He teaches them everything they need to know about buying and then he helps them to buy from a friend in the business.

Traditional Marketing is almost useless

84% of all home buyers report that they starting their search for their new home on-line. As many as 92% said the Internet was their primary source for information during their home buying process.

I don’t want to put newspapers, radio stations or outdoor advertising companies out of business, but if 84% of your customers are looking on the Internet and you are spending money somewhere else, that is foolish.

There is no such thing as insider information

Recently, war-time military secrets were posted on the Internet at a site called "Wikileaks". If the Pentagon can’t keep their secrets off the Internet, what in the world makes you think your customers can’t find out anything they want about your homes, your business, your staff, your prices, your costs, etc.?

The Internet has completely democratized information. All information is free and available to anyone who wants to look for it. That includes good information and bad information.

Your role has now changed from being the person with specialized information to the person who helps your customer sort through all the specialized information available to them so they can make the right decisions.

While this is a simple concept, the implications are huge. It used to be that we shared our insider information only with qualified prospects and customers; now our role is to share our information with everyone so that those people who want to act on that information can come find us.

Good retail customers don’t come to you, you must go to them.

Because proximity no longer matters and relationships are built on-line and the sales process starts months before a customer walks onto a lot, you must figure out how to go out and meet your customers at their computer screen in their living room.

Your prospects have so many choices that they no longer have to come find you.

You must figure out a way to get your customer to start thinking about you and your product before they even know they are interested in you and your product.

You must figure out how to make yourself useful and interesting and valuable to people whom you have never met.

Stay tuned for next month’s installment where I will begin to share with you exactly how to do just that. If you can’t wait you can join me for a free on-line webinar by e-mailing This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Type "Internet Secrets" in the subject line and I will send you your free invitation. ##