I had an article published in the January issue of Dealer Marketing Magazine which has generated several emails, phone calls and text messages to me by dealerELITE members.  I thought it would be appropriate to post the original, unedited version of the article I wrote, which was cut down quite a bit to fit in the space allocated by the magazine. So here it is, a story about a leader in the auto industry who had a big and lasting impact on me when I was in my early…

Mary Kay Ash said, “There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.” Today, you are standing in the hallway of Life; one hand is pulling the door of yesteryear,…

Are going to be able to sustain the momentum you established in your used vehicle departments in 2012? Or perhaps your used vehicle department performance wasn’t so good, and you’re promising to do better in 2013?

At NCMi we just finished a record year in terms of the number of classes we taught and the amount of dealership personnel we were able to help educate to better understand the true workings of their…

Imagine your store without salespeople. Well Kind of. This is the direction I feel like Car Dealerships are heading and honestly I believe it’s the best thing that could happen to an industry that has been decimated with negative press and the barbaric sales tactics that drove that press. In the information age it’s not necessary to go to those dealers anymore. Reviews tell you who they are. The internet provides you the information and pricing you need to make informed decisions without…

When it comes to Marketing with Twitter and Facebook, nothing is more important than the knowledge of how users interact with those services. Twitter hasn’t been making many major changes, but Facebook is constantly implementing new things and letting…

First and foremost, it’s important to understand that Facebook (and social media in general) is a communication tool. It’s a way for businesses to connect with customers and a safe venue through which customers and potential customers can interact with your business.

With that said, let’s look at the other two primary…

After much anticipation, Facebook announced the incorporation of a new search feature into the popular social media platform yesterday.  Graph Search utilizes the information users have been sharing on Facebook and allows you to search with it.

While Facebook’s platform already includes the ability to perform web searches, Graph Search allows you to find more of what you want through your friends and connections. Every search provides individual results catered to only you.…

Computer attacks continue to make headlines and dealership executives are left asking if their systems are sufficiently protected. In 2011 the FTC demonstrated its willingness to impose severe penalties on dealerships who fail to protect customer financial data. On January 11 the US Department of Homeland Security warned computer users to disable Java to protect agains a serious security exploit. The Java attack can redirect the unsuspecting computer user to a malicious, data…

Automotive Internet Sales.com Interviews Aaron Johnson, 16 Year Automotive Sales Veteran & NEW Internet Sales Director! from Dealer Synergy on Vimeo.

http://www.internetsales20group.com…

It seems like every week there is a new digital or Internet conference. Information is flowing and being digested at a pace never seen before in history. To go along with all the new information, there seems to be matching software, programs and gadgets that are supposed to streamline, make sense of and monetize all the information and change. Unfortunately, none of those programs or gadgets is the real answer to making money in today’s marketplace.

Every one of those new…

A recent study by AdAge, which has been tracking such things since 2009, shows that there are over 180,000 people on Twitter who claim to…

“Accessories Success Gameplan” presented by auto industry veteran and expert Sidney Haider provides dealers with an easy process to generate an additional $500 per copy

San Francisco, CA – January 15, 2013 – izmocars (www.izmocars.com) today announced that Sidney Haider, president of the Company’s AddOnAuto (AOA) division, has been selected by the National Automobile Dealer…

We haven’t talked about Pinterest on the blog for awhile, so we wanted to revisit the budding social network. Recently they’ve made some pretty major moves by cutting out fake users and allowing business accounts to authenticate themselves, and they just keep progressing into “necessary for …

We’ve all come across it, a negative review. It’s almost like a scarlet letter. You know it’s around but you really don’t want to address it. That’s probably the worse thing you could do, so the question remains--how do you respond to a negative review?

1. Find out their story
   1. Take…

The One Line Repair Order

Recently, I was invited to tour the new facility at my favorite dealership during a service visit.  From first glance, everything appeared to be in the framework of a typical dealership, until I got to the customer lounge.  This space had drawn a crowd in front of a large bank of glass windows.  I was curious about what all the excitement was about.  Did the dealership install an animal viewing area? …

The vast majority of business websites out there tend to stay laser-focused on their goals. Whether they’re intended to sell a product or generate leads, it seems that all of the content placed on their websites works towards this end. While there’s something that can be said about the strategy, changes at…

For those of us who have been in the automotive business for more than 30 years certainly have heard of Zig Ziglar, Joe Girard, and Jackie B. Cooper. For those of us who started in the automotive business within the last 10- 20 years have heard of Dave Anderson, Jim Ziegler, David Lewis,Grant Cardone,Tom Stuker and Joe Verde, Alan Ram.



But now with social media in full swing and the Internet being able to give every one of us…