Please read, share and pass this article I wrote "Are You Treating Customers Like VIP's?" for Fixed Ops Magazines March/April 2013 edition along to everyone you know in customer service. It applies to every Industry we work in, not just Automotive retail. I am confident all of you who read and or share in it will take at least one, maybe several things back to your professional work environment, no matter what you do and immediately improve the way customers are acknowledged, treated and…

Be a professional specialist and not a “Jack of all Trades”

   My father was a farmer and contractor and was very good at both. But the one piece of advice that he gave me was when you had something important that you had to hire someone else to do, be sure that you hire a professional their field and not some “Jack of all Trades” because it will cost you less in the long run to hire a professional, someone that knows what they are doing rather than to hire someone that just  thinks…

Let’s call it what it really is, shall we? Despite efforts by Bing/Yahoo to stay relevant as well as efforts by Facebook and Twitter to enter the search game, there really is only one. For years, I’ve always had to add the caveat when discussing search marketing that “When I say Google, I mean Bing and Yahoo as well.”

I won’t be saying…

Neil Rackham, author of Spin Selling, blows traditional thinking about features and benefits out of the room when he introduces us to the term “advantages.”   Everyone has heard of the first two, but I love what happens to the sales process when the term advantage is infused  into the equation.  As with all points in Spin Selling, Neil clearly defines the word advantage and provides research to define its effectiveness in the sales process.

 …

Hey guys, I need some ideas on how to creatively sell a car by email, Advice?

On this week's Think Tank Tuesday find out why getting back to consumers immediately is vital to nurturing leads.

My business card has my title on it: Customer Advocate and Internet Marketing Visionary. It's the visionary talking to you right now, and like so many posts I've seen here on D.E. Of late, I think this is going to turn into a question.

Two groups I would like to focus my marketing efforts on are as you can guess are one; Baby Boomers, and two; the LGBT…

In the 1954 classic text, How to Lie With Statistics, author Darrell Huff asserts that there are  hundreds of ways that numbers can lie to you. Statistical interpretation is a subjective business - trends and correlation can be employed by the statistician to support pretty much any hypothesis. Graphs and charts can distort reality. Ratios and proportions can be meaningless comparisons. What we might think as…

Pound for pound, SXSW was a little disappointing this year, at least for search professionals. It's not that there wasn't plenty to do, plenty see, and plenty to hear. That's always going to happen when you're at a conference/festival with speakers…

Enhancements:

▪    Call Logging – Log customer calls, view contact history, add notes and create tasks or appointments

▪    Task Viewing and Completion – View customer tasks, task history and dismiss or complete assigned tasks

▪    Enhanced dashboard - A single view of alerts, tasks and appointments with “sliding icons”

▪    New Customer Dashboard…

Do you know who the author of your blog is? Well, it's mostly likely  you (or a team of handsome ghostwriters cleverly disguised as you), and if you are truly invested in a successful SEO strategy, you're blogging every single day, and even the occasional wild and crazy night. It's easy to get caught up in the flashy blogger lifestyle; the fast women, the loose…

Now that the focus in many industries is on data and behavioral marketing, marketing departments are increasingly better able to pinpoint areas in which they can improve. With the right data, not only can you determine your product’s demographic but now you can discover when and why your customers make that ultimate decision to purchase. That being said, just because you discover what’s wrong, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should share that nugget of wisdom with your consumer.…

This past week, I had the pleasure of attending two conferences that were completely different from one another. The week started (well, last week ended) with attending the infamous SXSW conference…

AutoNation USA, the #1 publicly-owned automotive retailer, opened its doors as a mega “one pricing” pre-owned operation in 1997. It built elaborate showrooms; county records show one was 218,000 square feet. The showrooms included a café, a playroom and an aftermarket display platform.

Kiosks with computers were placed throughout the store enabling consumers to efficiently check out in-stock inventory or to submit a loan application. Customers were greeted at these kiosks by…

Do you believe in luck? Do you consider yourself a lucky person or are you waiting for your ship to come in? There is a difference between luck and randomness. You should create your own luck and remove the randomness of your results.

Recently, I conducted a sales meeting for a business. Before I gave the meeting, I entered the meeting area before the sales team arrived and I taped a $20 bill to the bottom of a chair. During the meeting, I asked everyone to stand up and then…

Don't commit digital Suicide.   

Sitting in a few conferences over the past few weeks, I have been able to confirm my suspicions.  There are many dealers and vendors that think tradition media is dead.  They are on the road of committing digital suicide for dealers all over the country.  If you are lucky enough not to be infected by this yet, you will be able to dominate your market easier than ever.  I should mention…

ALBANY, N.Y. – March 25^th, 2013 – Auto/Mate Dealership Systems (http://www.automate.com) announced today that Mike Esposito will be presenting a workshop at the 14^th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition in Orlando, on May 9^th at 11:00 a.m. How to Increase Service Growth Through Auto Dispatching is aimed at dealers, general managers, fixed ops and service managers who want to increase efficiencies and…

Im starting a BDC department and I need some advice on some different techniques i can use to make this operation successful. any advice?

Thor is a god, specifically, he's the thunder god, super specifically, he's the Norse god of thunder, storms, and beating the pulp out of things with his magic hammer, Mjolnir (just imagine I did the umlaut on the o). Thor is an unruly god, short on temper and long on power. When he approached, you never knew for sure if you were getting the clenched fist or the open palm (though smart money…