Well I closed a deal on the 2011 Chevy Traverse. The newest addition to the fleet might be the favorite car. I spent $14,000 on this car without knowing everything I wanted to know. They even wrote a couple of blog posts about this. One was from the analytics person, the other was from the marketing guy. I consider those things level one marketing. I have much deeper questions and I even wonder if they chop up the data the various ways I would like. In addition I’m trying to understand what the time variable is an entails. I didn’t get a chance to plead with my Senior Account Manager that I really needed to know some of the answers to these questions because I can only buy one more vehicle, due to tax strategies and reasons, and I really want it to be the right one. I went ahead and closed on the deal because it is an awesome car, awesome shape, all the bells and whistles, it came with free onstar and it might be a ticket to make some strategic linked in friends.
One of the first things that I do is get the professional photography done. It looks so much better than what I can do, it is insane for me to do it myself. I think I was one of the first Turo owners in Denver to get my car professionally photographed through the Turo program. Mike Ricci is the professional photographer and he did a great job on all of my previous cars. I actually thought they did away with the verified photo program. Turo in a site redesign certainly made it much less noticable, which I feel is a mistake. Verified photos add transparency and professionalism to this “car rental” process.
I was trying to get my photoshoot set up even before I purchased the car. I was near Red Rocks ampitheater and state park where I would be purchasing the vehicle. I also wanted to get the shoot scheduled as a Gant chart would have this be one of the critical path steps to get the car ideally listed and rented. I reached out to Mike directly, if I meet you, you go in the database. I’m excited they have this program still and plan to take full advantage. Why isin’t there a search function for only cars with verified photos? Mike is out of state on business and at this point I reach out to my account rep to see if I can get a response. What is also fascinating is that when I put my listing up, (still hadn’t closed the deal yet.) I made sure the listing reflected this and was able to close a deal with a renter during the presale phase.
I reach out to my VIP Support Team at Turo, yes that’s a real thing. What’s interesting to me is this a thing/issue for the VIP Support Team. I’m not 100% sure that it is or what the philosophy is for the unit. The support team spends 99-100% of the time on rental issues and current rental issues. Does this fit in with the technical support team? If it is outside of their sphere of influence does it then fall upon the Senior Account Manager’s desk? Is this too small of an issue for them? I once had a job where I was a Regional Sales Representative for a telecom company. I had about 50 agents that I supported. I was the guy who flew in from out of town to close the deal. What a lot of my day to day job though was to remove obstacles, like getting my pictures updated on the website. Getting these pictures up will help me drive revenue. Great pictures make a difference in rentals. Getting them up in 24 hours versus potentially a week can mean the difference of filling the window between March 15-March 18th. Filling these gaps has a huge effect on my profitability.
It’s been a while since I had pictures taken of a vehicle. I hope the process is different and goes smoother. What happens is the photographer, Mike Ricci, we finally got it scheduled for today March 8th, 2016. Hopefully the sun will cooperate and I will have picked a good spot. He then does his magic, I’d take and like them unedited, simply because they are better than nothing. He then sends them in to Turo. They sit in a vortex and last time it took around ten days to get published to the site. Is this system fixed? Can somebody shake it loose and make it happen.
Long story short. My photoshoot got delayed again today. So pissed, had a lot of running around to do in order to make these things happen. Well tomorrow is another adventure.