In our video series Quality of Life, we’ve gotten to see so much about the high-level sales process of Ali Reda. We want you to be comfortable and successful in this business, and to do that you’ve got to know that your time is…

 Perfection is unsustainable, while personal progress is obtainable.

Stay green and let yourself grow!

When someone claims to be “green”, what first comes to your mind?  They are making an effort to reduce their carbon foot print on mother earth?  Maybe they are a vegetarian?  Or they are actively recycling?

When I hear…

Did you ever perform this calculation for your dealership Service Department? Whenever we do this exercise, either in the field with one of the NCM Retail Operations clients or in the NCM Instituteclassroom, the result always knocks the socks off the dealership management team. Here’s how the math works:…

Written By: Steve Hall

When we ask service managers how important technician efficiency is to profitability, they most often say that “it goes hand-in-hand” or “if they aren’t efficient, you won’t make money.” I agree with their comments, but am constantly amazed with how they quantify “efficient.”

It seems that we have become accustomed to thinking a technician is efficient if they hit our flagged-hours goal for the week. At times this is true. Everyone can have a bad day, or…

Written by: Steve Hall

When we ask service managers how important technician efficiency is to profitability, they most often say that “it goes hand-in-hand” or “if they aren’t efficient, you won’t make money.” I agree with their comments, but am constantly amazed with how they quantify “efficient.”

It seems that we have become accustomed to thinking a technician is efficient if they hit our flagged-hours goal for the week. At times this is true. Everyone can…

A top 10 nationally-ranked auto dealer called me recently and asked me to do an assessment. I said no problem, I’ll send the list of schedules that I need from your controller and we can get started. The dealer responded no, not that assessment, the management assessment that we did two years ago. Based on the urgent tone in his voice, I asked, “Tell me what’s going on?” The dealer explained that in 2011, the store had a record year in volume, market share and net profit. Based on that year,…

Today's Up To Speed article is contributed by Dave Anderson, president of Dave Anderson's Learn to Lead, an international sales and leadership training and consulting company. Prior to beginning Learn To Lead, Dave enjoyed an extensive and successful career in the automotive retail industry

Self-esteem is defined by the dictionary as: a realistic respect for or…

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:…

Since it is that time of year, here are some ideas for commitments you may wish to make for 2013. As you’ve heard me say many times, “If you measure it and then scoreboard it, performance will improve!” Many of you are probably measuring and scoreboarding some of the following key performance indicators, but I doubt if any of you are measuring all 11 (a “lucky” number) of them:

1. Actual flat rate hour Productivity per Technician against objective on a daily,…

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;…

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…

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…

Everyone I talk to seems to have their own conception of what the 80/20 Rule is all about, but very few people in the retail automotive business fully understand its dominant principles and how they should be applied to our business. Nonetheless, I’m a believer that the 80/20 Rule can and should be used by every sensible person in their daily life. The successful utilization of this principle can multiply the profitability of auto dealerships and the effectiveness of any…

It’s time for a continuation of the mini case study focused on the objectives established and challenges faced in building processes to develop, measure and manage OTDBs in the operating departments of an NCM client automotive dealership group. In our article titled OTDB Measurement and Management – Part Two, published on March 20, 2012, I discussed the structure of the vehicle sales department and the general expectations that we defined and communicated to the members of the sales…

It’s probably because of my college training in industrial engineering, but I’ve always been fascinated and challenged by trying to define any meaningful relationships between “opportunities to do business” (OTDBs) and sales results. After a half-century of experience in the retail automotive business, I’ve concluded that there truly are consequential metrics associated with selling both vehicles and service at an auto dealership. 

For instance, do you know how many good vehicle sales…

At last week’s semi-annual meeting of NCM’s divisional directors, 20 Group moderators, Retail Operations consultants, and NCM Institute faculty members a good discussion developed around the topic of Service Advisor Compensation. The common questions that several on our staff were seeking answers for were as follows:

1. Has there been any significant change in advisor compensation…

Last week I attended NCM’s semi-annual meeting of all its divisional directors, 20 Group moderators, Retail Operations consultants, and NCM Institute faculty members, who, along with our CEO set aside two and a half days to dialogue about what’s happening around the industry and within the company, and how best to address the needs of our clients.  As usual, it was a great encounter, with far too much agenda content and discussion for the overall time allotted.

One of the topics that…

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…

I am again continuing the mini case study focused on the objectives established, and challenges faced, in building processes to measure and manage OTDBs in the operating departments of an NCM client dealership group. Today, my focus is on one of the greatest vehicle sales opportunities that most dealers enjoy, but fail to capitalize on.

At one point during this engagement, I had asked the dealer principal if he was satisfied with the strategies being employed to develop vehicle sales…