Welcome to this week's edition of Black Book Market Insights, with in-depth analysis of used car and truck valuation trends and insights straight from the auction lanes. Click here to download the full report.

As summer picks up steam, so does the depreciation of just about every car segment with the exception of Premium Sporty Cars, which has outperformed the average car for eight straight weeks. Click through to see how cars…

Optimizing your service engagement with women is the key to client retention. I had the pleasure to be on ServiceDriveToday of @CarBizToday and share ideas on how dealers can do just that with this growing customer base. Click here to view interview and learn more:…

C.S.I. of course is our strongest marketing message we can deliver, but are we covering the bases? Most dealerships are extremely focused on C.S.I and so are their salespeople.  Ironically with that said, even though our number one source of customers is our previous customers the sales person who sold the…

Most car shoppers have the opinion that car Salespeople are basically dishonest and will say or do anything to make a sale today.  It has been that way for a long time and is the reputation of our business in general stemming from decades of car…

The service department tends to be the busiest place in a dealership, and service managers must stay in tune with what’s going on. While meetings and discussions can be useful, at times they only result in vague ideas the service staff never acts upon. Just like in any organization, a service department is only as good as its leader. Sometimes, you have to get in the…

Car advertising is heavily slanted towards price. The buying demographic has shifted to women who now make up more than half of the sales, and influence over 80% of the deals. Today, it makes sense to move advertising to accommodate this powerful market sector.

Did You Know?…

While I tend to do a lot of phone training, it’s not my favorite skill to teach.

This is not because my phone skills training lacks substance or robustness or even uniqueness – it provides all three (and you can even get most of it for free online) – it’s because that no matter how much phone skills…

An Open Letter to the Automotive Industry - Ken Potter

I spent the last three years working at TRUECar with a great team of people under me listening to dealers, industry executives, and my team on how to best serve dealers.

I first want to thank those dealers that allowed me to come visit their stores and hear their very candid feedback, concerns, and thoughts on how we could serve them better. I will be the first to say we didn't get it right for everyone, but we did grow…

I've been pretty torn over the last few months. On one hand, I'm so pleased to see that dealers (and even some vendors) are really starting to embrace building content pages on their website. On the other hand, I'm concerned that many companies are starting to promote building these pages as their complete SEO strategy. What's worse is that many dealers are starting…

There’s no better story about the perils of loyalty than that which played out in the summer of 2010. At the time, Lebron James was the most desired free agent in all of basketball. For the prior two seasons, he had been pressured by fans to announce whether he would stay with the Cavaliers, or leave for another team. Cavalier fans were intensely loyal to James, who was a…

In this industry we often do things simply because they have been done before. Why not throw out the rulebook and do things because we SHOULD or WANT to? You don’t need anyone’s permission to pave the way for your dealership. It all starts with an idea that becomes a plan to present to those who need to buy in. You need to be that voice. I know it seems far fetched…

According to Wikipedia* Reputation Management is the influencing and/or control of an individual's or business's reputation.

Reputation Management - Do You Know How Your Business Is Perceived? 

To better your business reputation, make sure you follow up with your customers. This is especially the case if your business is larger. You need to make them feel important. Consider…

I don't enjoy calling out vendors. It's something that I think is unprofessional in most situations. Sometimes, when a vendor is truly hurting the automotive industry, it must be done and I have to do that today.

We have a client being hounded. This other vendor has been telling them that our philosophy of using onsite and offsite content to…

Some of the finest people I know are in the retail automotive business.  Many of them are folks I’ve met as I travel throughout North America and Canada doing car sales training or teaching our Dealership management training courses.…

We've all heard the phrase, "content is king." The question that you should ask about your content is whether or not it's worthy of being the king of something important or the king of crap. Unfortunately, much of what is pawned off as content turns out to be ruling over nothing important.

I've said it in different ways in multiple articles and videos in the…

Tammy Darvish, Lisa Copeland, Shea Holbrook Headline Inaugural Women in Automotive Convention

The first-ever Women in Automotive Convention will draw upon top female success stories as it assists the automotive community in recruiting, retaining and developing female employees and leaders. Women make up just 17% of…

When we first built our company in 2013, we had a big fear. It was a sense of urgency that drove us to make aggressive moves, hire talented people when we didn't have the revenue to support them, and drink lots of coffee to stay ahead of the competition. The fear came from the certainty that automotive social media vendors would catch wind about the true power of…

What used car shoppers are looking for most of all is peace of mind. As a dealer, you should be educating your staff, and marketing your vehicles, to deliver that peace of mind. The fact that you spend internal dollars reconditioning trade-ins and from-the-auction inventory should not be withheld from today’s consumers. If anything, sharing this information with them can help improve both your merchandising efforts and customer confidence in their purchase…