In our video series Quality of Life, we’ve been exploring the mindset and process that Ali Reda used in December of 2018. That’s the month…

Do you need a 300 page website which ranks on Google search for every product that you sell, and makes your phone ring off the hook?

Do you need to be able to edit, change, add products at will, easily?

Are you in a hurry, and not tech savvy, and have a…

Watch Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x6r25dAmdg

During Flick Fusion's kick off event at the 18th Digital Dealer Conference, Dealer Authority's Executive VP, Subi Ghosh discusses her speaking session regarding vendor collaboration and panel participation…

How to perform in the Top 1%

I was talking with the woman I love yesterday. She loves me, yet, when talking about car salesmen, she is convinced their primary mission is to find a sucker. WHAT?? Those are…

Mobile technology is one of the biggest advantages open to dealerships looking to gain an edge over their competitors. Mobile apps are at the forefront of this trend. The mobile app space is rapidly growing with over 50 billion app downloads in 2013. By 2017, app downloads are expected to grow over 200 billion. An app for your dealership helps you perform certain functions necessary for brand awareness and excellent customer service, so dealers need to spend the most time selecting the right…

If not you could be losing a significant amount of revenue and market share! Dealerships across the country lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a year because they are not operating at their full potential. If you can't honestly answer the above question with a resounding yes, then take…

Written By: Robin Cunningham

For the last sixteen months I have had the incredible experience of being a lead instructor with the NCM Institute.  I have had the opportunity to work with hundreds of dealership managers in our multi-level classes for general managers, general sales managers, used vehicle managers, service managers, financial managers, and some private dealership training, as…

Rarely do we come across a dealer today who claims to have a sufficient number of vehicle sales personnel. When adding the word “quality” to “vehicle sales personnel,” the dealers’ claims of staffing success turn pretty ugly. Why is it so difficult to attract quality people for automotive sales positions?

Several years ago, I was working with a client in Southern California and conducting one of my rare sales training meetings. The subject of the meeting was "Developing and Engaging…

At the NCM Institute Center for Automotive Retail Excellence, the training that we provide in our Service Management courses focuses primarily on strategies and tactics. However, we have discovered that the effective execution of the strategies that we teach is most often hampered by an important missing ingredient:…

Fiscal cliff resolution good news for auto industry

Now if we could get by the debt ceiling without the drama; we could all smile! Click here What would that mean to you and your business?

Here’s your dilemma: One of your top performers--maybe a vehicle sales consultant, maybe a service advisor, maybe a technician, maybe an F&I producer--just advised you that he really wants to become a manager. Although you don’t really want to lose his production, you know that if you don’t appropriately address his request and desire, he might quit and leave, or maybe worse, he might quit and stay.

Here is what else probably bothers you about this situation;…

The original article I had scheduled for today is titled, Tactics for Improving Employee Productivity. But as I was putting the finishing touches on the content, I said to myself, “Self, you’ve skipped an important step! You shouldn’t be presenting tactics until you’re sure that your readers understand the differences between strategies and tactics.”

It’s my understanding that “strategy” is derived from the ancient Greek word,…

In my 25+ years in the automotive dealership training and consulting arena, I have been exposed to numerous dealership executives, department managers, and sales and service personnel who felt the need to be “on the job” 60, 70, and, yes, even 80 hours per week. And no matter how much you love the retail business and its diversity, excitement and challenges, that level of time investment in your business career will never allow you to achieve any type of reasonable balance between your…

Early in my retail automotive management career (back in the late 1960’s), I was fortunate to meet a renowned sales and management trainer. His name was Clint McGhee, and his training disciplines and materials provided the foundation of sales success, not only for my dealership, but for many others as well.  Following is one of Clint’s mantras, with which I may have taken a little editorial freedom:

“Avail yourself of every training opportunity.…

I’m sure you’ve heard this theme over and over: the automotive retail world we work in today is in continual flux, requiring continual adaptation and an unprecedented acceptance of change. At the beginning of each of our NCM Instituteclasses, we ask the attending dealership executives and department managers, “What is your biggest single challenge?” Although it may not quite come out of their mouths this way, the answer we…

In an NCMi Leading Your Dealership to Success course that I taught in April, I made three “punch-in-the-nose” statements in my introductory comments that were related specifically to the retail automotive industry:

1. Most (a lot more than 50%) auto dealership employees give…

That probably sounds like a funny question, but it’s a very important one to those of us on the NCMi faculty.  Many times our instructors have had managers show up for a class, some unwilling, who think they have been around the block enough times to be able to teach it themselves. However, low and behold, those same managers will leave the class with knowledge and understanding they didn’t realize they needed. The concept behind the question is that we all learn to master skills in…

I recently had the privilege of teaching our first NCMi class that is totally focused on leadership in automotive dealerships. We began this 1½-day class talking about “employee engagement,” and the general managers attending this session began positively nodding their heads, when I started this discussion with, “Surveys show that…

                1. Less than one in four American workers say they work at their full potential.

                2. One-half say…

Over the last 15 years, NCM Associates has provided hundreds of educational programs that delivered unparalleled training to thousands of dealers, general managers and department managers. However, there is one area in which we have admittedly fallen short…focused leadership training. Up until now, our primary focus has been on the “nuts and bolts” of dealership management. However, the NCM Institute faculty members, as well as many of the dealership personnel that…