If you’ve been in the car business for a while, you remember the days when customers in need of a vehicle would drive to your lot, walk through the inventory and then talk to you to make a deal. Today, the process ends with a walk on the lot; the actual sales process is online. This fact has made it tougher for dealers to engage car shoppers in an effective way. Most of us really miss the days when you could have an actual conversation, back and forth right when the car shopper is interested.

The solution to this problem is to have the live discussion happen while the shopper is actually on your dealership’s website. The solution is chat. Put simply, car shoppers visit your site, push the chat button, and they are suddenly talking to a salesperson about the car that interests them. This gives the salesperson the ability topersuade, something a plain website cannot do.

Mark my words: If you have a dealership website that does not have chat, you can plan to be at a disadvantage against your competitors, soon. Here at the magazine, we have seen how well chat works for converting shoppers to buyers. When we saw the evidence, we sought out Contact At Once!, a company that is leading the chat revolution for dealers. We have agreed to cosponsor a chat education website that is being created by the folks at Contact At Once!. This site should be up and running sometime in September, so stay tuned. In the meantime, if you want to get chat rolling at your dealership, check out Contact At Once! 866-358-3880 or www.contactatonce.com.

PCG Pit Stop Schedule• Get on the leading edge of digital marketing for dealers

St. Louis—August 14^th

VancouverBC—October 18^th

Seattle—October 21^st

Sign up at www.pcgpitstop.com/ or call 888-340-9379.

Driving Sales Executive Summit• October 9^th-11^th at the Bellagio, Las Vegas

Our friends at Driving Sales are having a conference for the most innovative auto dealers in the U.S. Sign up at www.drivingsalesexecutivesummit.com.

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