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:…

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…

Entrepreneurs: They Embody the American Dream

The late Peter Drucker once said, “Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.” CCI practices entrepreneurship.

Small business owners by the millions are eagerly waiting for the next election to learn how the upcoming years will effect not only their ability to grow and profit, but to continue toward the goals that are infused by their enthusiasm. They want to…

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…

NCM Associates was on hand at NADA 2012 with the express purpose to open a dialogue with attending dealers and managers to listen to their issues, concerns, successes, and desires relative to their automotive dealership operations.  It was a great opportunity for us to connect with dealers inside and outside the NCM family and as always, the conversations were compelling in many ways.  In particular, one dealer told me about his vision for developing his future leaders, which I found to be…

Social Media Tip #105~ FACEBOOK TIMELINE



This week's social media tip is specifically for personal profiles: Facebook's new Timeline feature was just recently rolled out to the public, and it has a lot to offer, both for personal use and for professionals looking to increase awareness of their business.



To get Timeline for your Facebook profile, visit the Timeline Facebook page and follow the…

It is no secret that we are all experiencing some difficult times in our respective economies and that these times are causing many in the automobile industry to question their career paths. However, even in these challenging times, there are those that continue to flourish because they seem to know something that many or their counterparts do not.  These individuals continue to give themselves pay raises every month and every year.  They have figured out some time ago that they have to make…

Expectations – we will perform in direct proportion to the way we see ourselves and the way that those whom we respect see us.  The expectations of the individuals wearing the title of salesperson have been evolving as the reality of a new marketplace becomes apparent. The Internet has impacted a great many things about the world that we live in to include how we work.  Gone are the days when salesmen use to go door to door carrying their wares selling them to housewives. Now you have…

For the past three years I have used my account at Compete, Inc. to monitor sites like DealerElite and ADM... The following charts and monthly traffic analysis is provided by Compete, Inc. which is the same marketing research company that Google frequently utilizes to measure and report on website traffic and engagement by Internet users.…