No matter how good your hardware, software and personnel; if the phones aren’t ringing and website traffic is weak, it’s all for naught. Before we go any further, we must understand that technology and human resources are but tools, not ends in themselves.

Just because you have a great phone system doesn’t mean it will ring incessantly; because you have a wonderful website, that people will visit it in droves; or because you hire and train the finest employees, that they will have much opportunity to ply their trade.

Without having already established a critical mass of consumer interest and activity, the application of technology is proverbially placing the cart before the horse. Far too often, principals assume (or are sold the premise) that the purchase of one technological service or another will solve the essential problem of weak patronage; that their investment in some new innovation will somehow generate new prospects that will suddenly flood the establishment with calls and email; the result a newfound book of business.

Unfortunately, lack of consumer interest in your enterprise is something that no technological service can remedy; the hard truth is, developing your audience requires that you literally go out and get it, just as you always have before; using traditional methods.

As such, one should not confuse the capability of technological services to increase the likelihood of closing existing traffic, with the generation of the traffic itself; for no software or technology based-service can drive quality traffic to your establishment in numbers substantial enough, cost effectively, to be considered a viable solution to the underlying problem of insufficient consumer interest.

Read more about dealers and technology in The Internet Department in 2010.

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Internet / BDC reference