Extracted comments from the post Dealers in California… by Arnold Tijerina.

Levi Arevalo commented, “Commissions are an archaic form of compensation that need to be eliminated.  Salaried workers with reasonable quotas would be more adequate.”

Jim Kristoff commented, “I believe the “NEW” model of automotive sales professionals need to be compensated in this way.

1. Salary – (majority of their pay)
2. Small volume…

Ask yourself, what true baggage am I carrying on a daily basis that is now a barrier for my growth in my entire life? Everyone has something keeping them back. Get rid of the baggage. Do not allow another day to go by, without seeking out a way to crush the barriers.

Fact: It was a Wednesday afternoon in 1993, a real nice fall day in New England.…

1. How long have you been a Dealer Elite member?

We joined Dealer Elite from the inception of IntellaCar to help us stay on top of emerging trends during our development process. We wanted to be a part of the Dealer Elite platform that integrates best in class for a variety of different processes.



2. What do you like best about Dealer Elite?

Dealer Elite members are among the most cutting edge, innovative and engaged dealers, who are…

If you're a dealer not satisfied with current performance, these ideas may be useful.

Honesty and Ethics Rankings

A November 2010 Gallup poll asked consumers to rate the level of honesty and ethics of various professions. Nurses, military officers and pharmacists were at the top. Lobbyists and car sales people were on the bottom. (See graph below) There are many highly honest, ethical and good dealers in the business, yet these polling results have…

Hey DealerElite members,

The 11th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition is having a sweepstakes for a FREE registration to the conference. Anyone is eligible to win so I encourage all dE members to enter! CLICK HERE TO ENTER!

 …

Selling twenty or 30 cars a month.  Holding gross.  Prospecting through the…

Sometimes your biggest weakness can become your biggest strength.

 Take, for example, the story of one 10-year-old boy who decided to study judo despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in a devastating car accident. …

How to leave Messages that generate business for your dealership?

We have found that most dealerships get one phone number when speaking to customers. In addition to this fact they usually have only the home number. Due to this fact our BDC’s need to make a large volume of calls in order to speak to a small volume of customers.

What this means is we need to leave a large volume of messages for customers. Due to this fact we have also developed a number of tactics to improve…

Who can you trust?  That’s a hard question.  In business, we all want the answer to be ME.  As we were forming AutoNetTV, one of the issues that kept coming up in our market research was trust.  Trust, or some variant, was among the top 3 concerns of every service center owner, service department manager or service advisor we interviewed. …

Great leaders understand more than anything that it is ALL about the people…..

The people… are the driving force of any organization…..

Don’t believe it???

Go ahead and hire some bad ones and let me know how that works…

When salespeople get to work in the morning, what's their goal for the day?  As managers plan the week or the month, what outcome are they focusing on?  When dealers set their sites on year end, what do they see? Usually, in each case, whatever it is, it's not enough.  Sales people want a sale, or a commission.  Managers focus on total volume or gross.  And dealers see that they ended up above water. 

Unfortunately, with visions like that, even if you accomplish what you set…

The sport that so many predicted I would excel at due to my size was actually the sport where I floundered.  When it came to the hardwood, the only skill I had was shooting free throws.  My coaches could have just given up on me and focused their attention on the superstars on the team, but instead they invested time and energy into the one thing I could do well.  In place of teaching me to drive down…

Chances are, since you’re reading this post, your dealership or company is involved in social media. That’s good - it’s hard to imagine how difficult it will be moving forward for organizations that have not embraced social networking. Although Social Media is relatively new (and certainly exciting), its meteoric growth has unfortunately caught the early attention of the legal powers-that-be.

Despite the widespread use and misuse of social networking at work, 45 percent of all…

Mike overy of the BDC experts will show your sales, service and BDC team how to reach more customers. After over 20 years teaching dealers we have found that contact ratios are as follow.

100 Calls 20-30 contacts and 4-8 appointments with one contact number.

These numbers are of course based on a trained BDC staff member calling sales, service or internet customers.

We are asked by customers, clients, owners and sales and…

I’ve often wondered what makes salespeople go from optimism to pessimism in such a short amount of time. (i.e. 30 day wonders) When they first hit the pavement, they are full of optimism; I mean they believe every customer is a buyer.  Eventually, they become pessimistic; their speech begins to change; all buyers are liars and all of them are buried or idiots. As…

Small businesses and owners SHOULD understand the importance of branding! What is branding? It is everything your company does or doesn’t do. Influenced, evaluated, judged, compared in the minds of your audience every given moment of the day. This DOES NOT mean that your spending budget needs to double, or you need to get a second mortgage on your home. How about offering the BEST, most Exceptional,  Unforgettable customer experience with some outstanding character? Not just be the…

Now the first thing we need to remember is that certain people gravitate to certain lines of work and for that matter, certain groups. Being a sales person doesn't make you a certain way, being a certain way makes you gravitate toward that line of work. Now if we agree on the sociology of the group, we see why this maybe more of challenge than you think.

The outgoing, friendly person who enjoys making friends traditionally moves toward a sales type of work.

The technical type…

You better hope they are!!

For those of you who have been in the car business a while, the service business has changed dramatically over the years. With the quality of vehicles getting better and aftermarket garages getting bolder, we have to rely on servicing vehicles as much as 'fixing" vehicle. 

So to service a vehicle, you need to sell service. 

I've overheard numerous service calls that went along the lines of; "Mr Customer, you need brakes and…