19 years old, walking down Huron Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2,100 miles from home, I watched the wad of chewing gum I had just spit out arc into the street; and realized that my momma had lied to me.  As a littler shaver she told me toalways spit my gum into the street to “strengthen the tires of the cars that run over it”.  For well over a decade I…

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…

J.C. Penny once said, show me an executive with no ambition, goal, or plan of action and I'll show you a stock boy.  But, show me a stock boy who has ambition, desire, goals, and a plan and I'll show you a success story.

Do you have a specific daily plan of action to reach the top?  PLAN YOU DAY AND WORK THE PLAN.

 …

Twitter has a new profile format. Unfortunately, most of the manufacturers haven't taken full advantage of it yet. Don't make their mistake.

Ford is one of the only ones that has already changed their's. It's not great - they picked an image that made reading the text a challenge - but at least they have something up. The same is not true for Toyota or many…

I was visiting a dealership, yesterday, and observed the interaction between a young internet salesman and one of the New Car Managers.  The young ISM had received a request for quote, on a new vehicle, and had approached the desk for help.  The Manager's response was, "Just get 'em in".   When the young ISM started to speak, he was cut off with another chorus of "Just get em in".  With nothing but an email address, I'm sure he responded with something like, "price…

If you aren’t too keen on search engine optimization, I’m here to help you whether you’re going to SEO your website yourself or outsource it. First thing's first, you must always have a strategy.

Pre-Plan

Search engines consider a number of factors when determining how to index. For example, the way the pages of your site…

On the TODAY show earlier this week Twitter SEO, Dick Costolo made a live appearance to announce updates to the Twitter experience. The changes will affect the look and feel of profiles both on Twitter.com and on their mobile apps for iPad, iPhone, and Android. Twitter users will now have the option of a header-photo not unlike what you have on your Facebook profile. You…

Here is a must read for all managers and dealers! Ever wonder what your employees and their spouses go through to make your store money? You should! Read this...

http://hpendergast.blogspot.com/

letter 1,

Tim,

Thanks for all your help!

 I can not tell you how pleased we are with you and your company. You and your team breath a breath of fresh air into the event and mail business. I look forward to our continued relationship. You certainly have a great group of real professional straight shooting car guys. I will recommend you to any dealership any time.

 Let me know if there is anything I can do for you. One thing for sure is any dealership in…

"Success leaves clues." I'm not sure where I heard that quote, but in coming up with my top 10 ingredients of sales superstars it certainly resonates with me. First let me define my definition of a sales superstar: Anyone that consistently sells 20+ units a month, and or puts $50,000 in gross on the books; month in month out.

I've compiled my list of 10 ingredients that these sales superstars have in common. Let me know some of your favorites.

1. Superior attitude &…

My buddy Richard A. Browne, who is a huge talent in automotive fixed operations wrote this awesome blog that dealers need to read.  I reposted it here. So here goes...

Scams, Rip Off Report, Poor Business practices, Misleading, Painting the picture of this could be you. Are you a the victim of giving it your all and not seeing your pay check increase but your hours have? This is the current trend in most of today's automotive dealerships and automotive vendors. In the past 3…

Google just rolled out a new feature in their AdWords service: the shared budget. Basically, it’s exactly what you would think it is. It lets you create a single daily budget that is then shared by multiple campaigns in your AdWords account. The idea being that this will make it easier for businesses to optimize their AdWords accounts, enabling them to achieve higher …

Big Data is hard to think about for some and so it becomes nebulous:  So, what is it?  It IS a business advantage--it’s not Internet 2.5 or Internet 3.0, it’s Internet^10.  These are some of the coming things possible (some already here!) for dealers to target for SALES with Big Data:

1. KNOW when your current customers are shopping elsewhere for…

Does your car dealership have a plan in place for marketing its service center? You need to encourage people to return to your dealership after their vehicle purchase for service, and you also need a strategy to pick up new leads just for service.

13 Tips for Automotive Service Center Marketing from…

I had a great time at AutoCon 2012 meeting and learning from the awesome list of teachers. I look forward to bringing these ideas to my service Department team and moving forward into the future...The past is the past!

I had the great pleasure of being part of the AutoCON team this year for the first annual event. It was held at the Aria hotel and casino in Las Vegas earlier this September. During the conference, I was able to see all my automotive heroes speak and they all inspired me to become even better. Some of them…

Whenever I ask this question, I’m usually very disappointed with the answers that I receive. This past week, when I queried a group enrolled in the NCM Institute's regional Service Management training class in Charlotte, NC, only 20% responded with a “Yes.” My disappointment continues, and…

When we surround ourselves with people who believe what we believe, CUSTOMER LOYALITY and TRUST EMERGES!

WHAT do you do every day?

HOW do you do it?

WHY DO YOU DO IT and WHO really knows about it?…

There is more to email than just having great content, the perfect subject line, and having a perfect layout. What about spam filters? When it comes to your email being filtered, the Return Path Sender Reputation Report identified the following key factors ISPs consider:  IP Reputation, Infrastructure and Content.

Here is what  Tonya…