Part of our marketing is to monitor help wanted ads for sales people.  I've seen some that should be very effective, but far too many are less than acceptable.  The only way to describe them is pure laziness.  The only other possibility is that the dealer is still running the sales department on "The Warm Body Theory."  That's where dealers who are stuck in the 1980's still believe that if they keep hiring warm bodies, eventually they'll end up with some "natural" sales talent.…

 ActivEngage, the most trusted name in live chat brings the top ten blogs and auto news stories right to you! We monitor industry trends, current events and the auto dealer community every week to bring you the top ten blogs and automotive stories from around the globe. In this weekly edition – portraits made out of beef jerky, alternate…

Facebook is undeniably one of the most influential companies on the internet; they dominate the social media landscape and cause web-wide rage with even the most minor of updates. Could they do more, though? They certainly seem to think so.

The social media…

It seems as though Google continues to be more transparent than in the past, which is great for webmasters. At the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Francisco last week, I had the chance to take part in a Q&A with the famous Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team.  One of the attendees asked Matt about the Penguin update and what it meant going forward.  I’m paraphrasing Matt here, but he said that webmasters should expect Penguin updates to continue and to be "jarring" for a…

After reading many blogs about the topic of fake followers, I decided to do some investigating on the topic for myself. I found that the business of buying and selling fake Twitter followers is booming, according to a study by Barracuda Labs: Among the top 100 Google search results for the term "buy Twitter followers" are…

Google announced this week that they would be making further adjustments to their algorithms, specifically with the Penguin and Panda parts of it. If you’ve been reading our blog and following our advice you should have nothing to worry about because you will already be creating good content. If not you might want to pay attention because the adjustments to the algorithm are…

VinSolutions has been named the 51stth fastest growing software company and is ranked the 616th fastest growing company in America overall for 2012. 

Every successful business wins because it has at least these dimensions:  The Paper, The Plan—and The People.

Pop-up advertising has gotten a pretty negative rap over the years. Maybe that’s due in part to the 90s, when pop-ups would frequently flood your browser window, unfettered by blockers or anti-virus software. Perhaps pop-up ads deserve their negative connotation; they’re intrusive, gaudy, and difficult to escape from. But…

Fusion of Best-in-Class Video and Lead to Show Incentive Solutions to Drive More Showroom Visits and Conversions

New York, NY – August 21, 2012 – HookLogic, the leading provider of ecommerce media solutions and services, today announced a strategic integration with Authntk, a video marketing platform enabling auto dealers to use mobile devices to quickly and easily create an engaging, personalized video email for each lead. As a result of this powerful new…

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As I travel and work with dealerships all over the country I am constantly amazed at how often I find that the CRM in dealerships is not…

If you’re involved with the marketing aspect of your web presence, then you’ve probably heard of internal links. Simply put, they’re links on a website that lead to other pages on that same website (hence ‘internal’). Does your business utilize them? It not, you’re missing out on one of the most powerful and reliable methods of lead generation and…

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…

As each customer walks into a showroom, salesperson’s heads immediately go to the door. Their heads start spinning and kicking into “sales mode”. Maybe they have a pre-loaded script in their heads of what they say. Maybe they fly by the seat of their pants. The end goal is always the same; to sell the customer a car.

With all of the different ways to interact…

How do you use iPads to Enhance Your Dealership's Sales Process?

More and more dealers are hopping on board this growing trend and consumers are loving it. The Customer Experience is the next battleground so get on your A game!

See latest on Best Practices...

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Live Chat Provider ActivEngage, Inc. Ranks No. 121 on the 2012 Inc. 500 with Three-Year Sales Growth of 2,626.9%

NEW YORK, August 21, 2012 — Inc. magazine today ranked ActivEngage, Inc., the automotive industry’s most trusted…

One measurement of website success tends to get overlooked a lot in favor of other, bigger numbers like traffic and bounce rate. That measurement is conversion rate, what percentage of visitors to your website convert into a lead. One of the biggest factors when it comes to…

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…

August 19, 2012





Martha Washington... “I’m determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be. I’ve learned that the greater part of happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.”





That sounds just like Paul in Philippians

4:12... “I have learned

[to be] content in…every situation.”





If you want to go from surviving to thriving, make…

Writing content for your website? Use the inverted pyramid style. Why? Your customers want information in an instant. They don’t want to read through copy to find what your keypoint is. Whatever your essential message is, put it first. Most Web users skim through content in an “F” pattern.  They look more…