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28 • May 26, 2014 • Powersports Business MOTORCYCLE www.PowersportsBusiness.com www.PowersportsBusiness.com MOTORCYCLE Powersports Business • May 26, 2014 • 29 BY DAVE McMAHON EDITOR IN CHIEF Views of motorcycles and other powersports vehicles on CycleTrader.com, the industry's largest classified marketplace, are increasing in both frequency and scope, according to Cycle- Trader.com vice president Jack Webber. With a cold and rainy Q1 in the rearview, consumers are visiting CycleTrader.com in record numbers. In fact, annual visits to Cycle- Trader.com reached more than 38.2 million in 2013, a significant leap from the 25.7 million in 2011 and double the 16.5 million annual visits in 2009. "Things are looking up for 2014," Webber said. "And how the consumer will view our units this spring and summer will be dramati- cally different than just two years ago." The dramatic upswing shown by the data reveals that consumers over the five-year period from 2009-13 are continuing to show growing interest in motorcycles. "In 2009 and 2010, what we saw at Cycle- Trader in terms of overall visits to the site, interest or enthusiasm from the consumer segment, really hit a very low point for us," Webber said. "That makes sense, knowing the economic situation. There just weren't an awful lot of people coming to CycleTrader thinking about spending money." "Then what we saw beginning in 2010 and ending in 2011 was a real dramatic turnaround in those consumer tendencies, in terms of inter- est. Without question, on CycleTrader.com, there's been a dramatic return and increase in the overall enthusiasm. The last three years have seen significant year-over-year growth." With pre-owned sales continuing to rise annually and new unit sales stabilizing, it's a combination that has shown promise. "New unit sales are no longer falling, enthu- siasm and interest on the consumer side has returned in a big way, and our hope is that the combination of those things results in new unit sales coming back," Webber said. MOBILE USAGE ON THE RISE Not only are more consumers viewing bikes on CycleTrader.com than in the past five years; they're doing so via mobile. Webber said that 45 percent of traffic to CycleTrader.com comes from mobile devices such as web-enabled smartphones and tablets. That number was less than 15 percent in 2012. "One thing that has happened in a very signif- icant way is the channel in which consumers are conducting that search or that exploration today, in comparison to how they were doing it just as recently as two years ago — the advent of mobile as a search channel for consumers," Webber said. "Mobile has exploded in the motorcycle industry in terms of consumers adopting that channel as a way to conduct and spend time doing their research and exploration." Similarly, CycleTrader.com has taken action to ensure that the user experience is both informative and efficient for consumers. "That's become an important part of our business, understanding how to serve content to mobile consumers, and it's different than it is on desktop. We understand that when mobile shoppers are going through that experience, they want speed and stability," Webber said. CycleTrader.com has spent much of the past year pushing its content into the cloud, so that regardless of geographic location, the con- sumer experiences "lightning-fast, sub-second" results after each click, Webber said. Perhaps most interesting from an industry standpoint is that CycleTrader.com's mobile growth has been incremental. "It hasn't come at the expense of desktop traffic," Webber said. "It's new consumers whose preference for shopping is via mobile devices, and they're coming and finding our content there. The net result is that the traf- fic result, much of it via mobile, is leading to increased leads for dealers, and ultimately leading into more unit sales. Because of the advances that are happening with mobile as a search channel and what we're doing from a technology standpoint, we are delivering sig- nificantly more leads to our customers today." MARKETING PUSH CycleTrader.com's sponsorship of the Rock River Powersports Yamaha race team has pro- vided the brand with on-site marketing oppor- tunities at Supercross and Motocross events. At the Supercross race in New York, Cycle- Trader.com teamed up with the Motorcycle Mall in New Jersey to host a race team event at the dealership. The autograph signing party report- edly attracted 1,000 consumers to the dealership. "We do that in each race city," Webber said. "It's allowed us to reach audiences that we may not have been reaching through our existing channels. Based on the demographics, it's a great chance to bring CycleTrader to a younger generation of future riders." In addition to old-school marketing tactics, Webber added that the company is now paying nearly 300 percent on paid marketing that bol- sters search engine optimization enhancements. "That balance of SEO and SEM continues to drive our efforts on the digital and mobile marketplace," he said. PSB Bike had more March views than any other 2013 model For the first time, Kelley Blue Book is present- ing to Powersports Business readers exclusively the top 20 motorcycles for the most cur- rent model year of used bikes, based on views on KBB.com. The 2013 Kawasaki Ninja 300 soared above all the other 2013 model year bikes to claim the No. 1 spot on the list. The Ninja 300 received 47 percent more KBB.com web hits for March 2014 than the No. 2 bike, the 2013 Harley- Davidson FLHX Street Glide, which in turn received 81 percent more KBB.com web hits than its nearest competitor. "These top two bikes clearly dominated interest in the 2013 model year," said Lisa Pelissier, senior powersports analyst at Kelley Blue Book. The top 20 list is populated exclusively by three manufacturers (in order of appear- ance): Kawasaki, Harley-Davidson and Honda. The bikes on the list represent a variety of motorcycle types, from sport bikes to cruisers, touring bikes, and even a dual sport bike and a trike. All models on the top 20 most researched list show hefty increases in page views com- pared to February 2014, just a month ago. Interest is up 11-80 percent for the bikes on the list in just one month. "Interest in metric bikes is strong," Pelissier said. T h e t o p 1 0 m o s t researched metric street bike list is dominated by Honda, which holds eight spots. Only two Honda families appear on the top 10 list, including the VTX1300 and the Shadow 750. Seven out of the eight Honda models received fewer page views on KBB.com for March 2014 than 2013 Ninja 300 lands at No. 1 on KBB.com list percent of salespeople attempted to forward the sale. Last year that number was 53 percent, and this year it reached 63 percent. Can-Am Spyder and Indian dealers were both added to the list for the first time this year, though Pied Piper has been monitoring Indian for several years. Can-Am's first time on the chart earned the brand an above-indsutry-average score of 107, and Indian wasn't far behind with a 102. Though the top OEMs were the biggest contributors to the industry's increase in 2014, KTM (measured by on-road bikes only) and Aprilia, which had the worst scores overall, both saw double-digit increases. CAN I HELP YOU? While dealers have come a long way in many cat- egories and some individual stores have achieved 100-percent scores on some questions, the indus- try overall still has a few hurdles to overcome. One that O'Hagan noted this year was the likelihood of salespeople to ask, "Can I help you?" In 84 percent of the mystery shopping trips conducted, salespeople asked that question. "That's a pretty striking statistic because if you talk to any sales trainer — and this isn't unique to motorcycles — anyone being taught to sell is taught to ask open-ended questions, and you're also taught to make a positive first impression. And the best you can do for your positive first impression is 'Can I help you?'" O'Hagan said. "And the craziest part of that is half the time the response is, 'No thanks, I'm just looking.' Now what the customer really is saying is, 'I don't know you.' What they're really saying, I mean if you gave them truth serum, what they'd say is, 'I'm so psyched I'm in a motorcycle dealership! I mean this is wonder- ful! I have all kinds of things to say!' But what they're really saying is, 'I don't know you. You're a salesperson. I've been conditioned to send you off because you're going to bother me.'" TEST RIDES When it came to the all-important test ride cat- egory, dealers again improved. As far as offering an immediate demo, deal- ers made the suggestion 23 percent of the time, returning to a level not seen since 2009. It's a number O'Hagan is happy to see improve because of sales implications. "Salespeople who offer immediate test rides half the time — not even 100 percent of the time — sell 44 percent more motorcycles on aver- age, than the group of dealers who do not offer immediate test rides. I mean, it's not subtle, so it's been interesting to watch it change," he said. Future test rides have also seen improve- ment. Pied Piper began measuring salespeople offering a future demo in 2010. Since then, the industry average has hovered around 20 percent, but this year it increased to 29 percent, which O'Hagan says is promising. "We've found that there's about an 80 per- cent close rate on those come-back test rides, so even if I have a bike on the showroom floor, and I have to take it off and prep it and run the risk that I'm turning it into a slightly used bike, I need to do that," O'Hagan said. When immediate test ride offers are added with suggestions of future demos, the numbers look even brighter, with 52 percent of dealers offering one or the other, compared to 39 per- cent in 2013. "Pretty much everybody agrees that test rides sell motorcycles. The only bone of con- tention is well, it's kind of difficult to provide test rides, and we could list a dozen reasons why test rides for motorcycle dealers are complicated. Logistically, they're difficult," O'Hagan said. "On the other hand, we see this math that says some dealers who have figured it out. They figure out a way to make it happen, and let's look at how many bikes they sell — well, lo and behold, they sell a whole lot more bikes than the dealers that don't." The improvement in test rides, mixed with increases in other categories, shows that the industry is on an upswing in terms of prospect satisfaction. "The math is just so clear that dealers who follow these very simple behaviors religiously end up selling a whole lot more motorcycles," O'Hagan said. "So when the PSI scores go up, that's telling you that the dealer networks are selling more effectively, and selling more effec- tively means higher sales, so it's great for the industry when the PSI index goes up." PSB PIED PIPER CONTINUED FROM PAGE 26 Visits to CycleTrader.com making 'dramatic turnaround' 16,490,000 16,296,000 25,670,000 35,916,000 38,206,000 0 5,000,000 10,000,000 15,000,000 20,000,000 25,000,000 30,000,000 35,000,000 40,000,000 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 CycleTrader.com annual visits Helping With Horsepower kick starts youth program Joel and Jacki Tomkinson, head of the Res- ervation Restoration project, are utilizing the Helping with Horsepower Bike Rebuild Program curriculum to provide students with hands-on repair and customization skills using an Ironhead Sportster donated by Black Hills Harley-Davidson of Rapid City, S.D. Throughout the program the youth will be developing problem-solving skills, self-con- fidence and learning an important life lesson: You can repair and rebuild anything in your life with the right tools and inspiration. "My husband Joel and I are heading up Pastor Mike Brennan's Reservation Restora- tion Project. We work with the youth and train them to restore motorcycles, while teaching them how the Lord restores our lives," Jacki said. Many industry-leading companies recog- Black Hills Harley, Klock Werks lend support CycleTrader's race team sponsorship has provided an ideal marketing partnership for the brand. CYCLETRADER.COM ANNUAL VISITS Source: CycleTrader.com P26x29-PSB7-Cycle.indd 28 5/14/14 2:17 PM