No matter how many new marketing options come onto the scene, automotive direct mail continues to prove itself as one of the most valuable tools in any car dealer’s arsenal. Why? For its ability to drive new sales.

Direct mail is not only something that prospects can see and…

The last quarter of the year rolls around and you begin to hear some common refrains:

• "We are waiting until the first of the year"
• "Starting in January I am going to..."
• "We have to wait until spring when business picks up"
• "The first of the year I am really going to get into it."

Here's the reality for most people who make these statements: The calendar is the only thing that changes.

If you are waiting for the calendar to change…

Every salesperson is really in two businesses: the people business and the marketing business. If you are great with people but don’t have any customers to demonstrate this quality to, you’re in trouble. Marketing must become the No. 1 function of any business, including sales. Marketing precedes sales.

Begin to think in terms of leads, not sales. You need marketing that will generate leads. Most salespeople think only in terms of advertising. Salespeople either wait…

It's the Christmas season and Santa Claus is everywhere you look. It's also the time of year to reflect on the year past and look forward and plan the new year. Santa Claus is a great sales model in both cases.

First of all, Santa Claus rewards you based upon the past year. If you were a good boy or girl you get rewarded. Ask yourself if you were a good boy or girl…

I had the pleasure of watching a very informative webinar last night that really brought home the importance of having a robust dealership presence online.

I truly enjoy studying the shift in advertising from the traditional way of doing business to the modern way of doing…

Do you hustle? I mean really hustle. As a kid growing up I was a huge fan of the Big Red Machine, Cincinnati Reds baseball team. Pete Rose became my favorite athlete. Forget about Pete Rose as a man and all his personal shortcomings, Pete Rose gave it his all every time he stepped on a baseball field. Pete truly earned his nickname Charlie Hustle.” If you want to be successful, no matter your looks, talent, connections or anything else have going for you, you have to learn to…

Surveys continually show that people dislike buying a vehicle. Although the numbers have gotten better over the years, people still dislike the car-buying experience. The key word here is “experience.” Everything you do is sales and selling. Every person in the dealership is in sales. Everything the customer sees is selling. What message is the customer receiving?

Selling today is not about feature-benefit selling alone. Any dealership that is being trained primarily on…

 “The more things change, the more things stay the same.” This quote can be an accurate reflection of most industries. With all the massive changes underway in the automotive industry, the majority of the industry operates in much the same way as it did 50 years ago.

One small part of an industry begins to change and reaches what Malcolm Gladwell termed in his book the “tipping point.” That tipping point allows the change to gain momentum and become norm for an industry. This…

Everyday managers walk into their dealerships in the morning and start their day with tasks or TO-Do list items. Unfortunately, those items rarely involve direct interaction with their sales team. The ultimate place for managers to be is in front of customers and salespeople.

Salespeople need interaction and input. If a manager allows a salesperson to direct their own day by their own design without input and coaching, the results will often be lackluster and will lead to…

The average dealership hires a salesperson and, after a brief introduction of paperwork, allows the salesperson to begin talking to and selling to their customers. Some dealerships may send the salesperson to a meeting room to watch a series of perfunctory training videos and then cut them loose on the showroom floor to sell. Either way, the day of unleashing an untrained salesperson on a well-trained customer is dead.

The days of counting on a steady stream of traffic and…

        It's no secret that those of us who train for The Dealer Resource Group, spend a ton of time on the road.  A lot of windshield time can make you listen to anything on the radio to just hear some noise and stay awake.  That happened as I was driving 11 hours to get to our last assignment.

           I'm hitting the seek button on my rental's radio for what seemed like hours when it finally found a station.  I heard that familiar twang of the guitar and knew this was a country…

Everyone talks about change, but few people embrace it. Change is growth, and growth is positive and unavoidable. If you don’t change, the world will change without you and leave you behind. In business today, change is occurring at a rapid pace and is causing the death of traditional salespeople as we know them.

In the age-old process of selling, the emphasis has been on a linear “road to the sale” process. Step One leads to Step Two and so on. The Internet information age…

Every year at the NADA Convention, the exhibit hall is full of CRM and BDC companies displaying their wares. Dealers spend massive amounts of money in a frenzy to buy the “magic button” CRM or BDC solution for many reasons. Unfortunately most of those reasons aren’t valid. Putting great tools in the hands of below-average people with below-average processes and little-to-no accountability equals a waste of money.

Let’s look at some of the underlying reasons why dealers buy…

Fellow Dealership Vendors - Would you like the best Live Chat Software for your own website for free? No Problem, just contact me, and I will get you started.

There is no obligation at all to do business with us, just wanting you to see and use what we have created.



This will be our top…

With over 75 million users, over 6000 photo uploads in the last minute, over 72,000 photos tagged with jump, and over 3 million photos geo-tagged this month. Flickr is quickly becoming an extremely important digital marketing tool because it allows your dealership to market your inventory and brand through a very visually attractive social medium. Flickr can…

Do you feel like you are missing out on something? Are you confused as to what the next step is in making your dealership successful? It’s a different ballgame than it was even just a few years ago. The traditional dealership is dead and you must bury it to prosper in the future.

For years, the car business could be a forgiving business. There was room for a lot of error in a dealership, and yet a dealership could still be profitable. Those days are gone. Dealerships…

The traditional dealership is dead but some have not had their funeral yet. It seems as though as much as some things change in the auto industry, as many things stay the same. Every week our trainers observe things in dealerships that look and feel like the 1960’s.

Let’s take a look at some things still commonly observed in dealerships that are outdated and should be changed.

1) Manager Towers – High towers built for…

#1 Korean singing sensation Psy has unseated pop idol Justin Bieber on the YouTube charts.

“Gangnam Style” officially became the most-viewed video in YouTube history Saturday, beating out previous record-holder, the Biebs’ “Baby.”

Clocking in at 805 million views, the video that spawned invisible horse dancing bests “…

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WILMINGTON, NC - NOVEMBER 20, 2012 - After careful evaluation, New York publishers John Wiley & Son have selected two of Americas top trainers to be added to the family of books known as the "Dummies" franchise.  Trainers John Fuhrman and…