At last week’s semi-annual meeting of NCM’s divisional directors, 20 Group moderators, Retail Operations consultants, and NCM Institute faculty members a good discussion developed around the topic of Service Advisor Compensation. The common questions that several on our staff were seeking answers for were as follows:

1. Has there been any significant change in advisor compensation…

When it comes to our data and how it affects our business, how we can and must make money with it, retail automotive needs to wake up!  We need an "Internet Moment"--but, first, what the heck is that?  Understand that the "Internet Moment" was birthed this way at a very famous company:  The mid 90’s were a crazy time at Microsoft. The Internet was taking off, and it had left…

Top five social media influencer and MINI USA marketing head close DSES and open JDPA events; discounted combo-ticket pass for the consecutive events available

SALT LAKE CITY, UT – August 7, 2012 – DrivingSales and J.D. Power and Associates today announced that Scott Stratten and Tom Salkowsky will keynote a special session, sponsored by Cars.com, that bridges the 4^th annual…

Dealers United Selects KPA from 70 Website Vendors for August Member Deal 

In addition to the website deal, current Dealers United members can take advantage of SEO services offered by KPA   

Sarasota, FL – August 7, 2012 - Dealers United, the first service to truly leverage the buying power of individual dealerships, launched their August member…

General consensus in advertising today is usually that the most effective advertising is specifically targeted to a narrow field of people that you want to reach. For years this has been accomplished with complicated technology and it has definitely shown performance improvements from non-targeted to targeted ads. This level of targeting has never been available for…

What can a blog do for a dealership website, exactly? Some of you may have heard ActivEngage CEO Todd Smith speak on the digital conference circuit. Automotive thought leaders contact Todd first for marketing tips on the latest advertising strategies. Marketing…

As every service manager knows, it is next to impossible to find good service advisors and technicians. I will save the technicians for another time but this one bothers me the most.

Service advisors work hard long hours. Usually eat breakfast and lunch at their desks and take the bulk of the blame when something goes wrong. They are the people who come into contact most with your customers and yet most of them have no formal training. Why? Well mainly because it is not…

Today’s educated consumer empowered by knowledge they acquired on the internet has little patience for a self-serving dealer message.  A click of their mouse will answer their questions and find a vehicle that fits their needs leaving little reason to visit a dealership. Truth be told, the brick and mortar auto dealership is not necessarily the most efficient business model for cost conscious consumers or profit driven auto dealers to achieve their respective goals.

Future solutions…

Listen, sorry about the headline, that’s not actually what this is about (though it is a true story)…but it proves a point: people can’t help but click on weird news headlines!

We all know blogging is a crucial aspect of any business’s search engine optimization…

True Story. In 1995 I worked for a large multi-franchise dealer who sold 50-100 cars per day. One day in 1995, the dealer, who rarely came to the store, delayed opening all departments to have a breakfast for the 450+ employees.

The topic or theme of the breakfast was "Teamwork". The Dealer spoke as well as a guest speaker who had written a book on teamwork. We all left with a coffee cup with "Teamwork 1995" on it and a copy of the other speakers book. We all left pumped up and ready…

Is It Time To Reevaluate Your Opinion About TrueCar?

I have seen many issues polarize dealers, and at times energize them during my 30 years in the car business. Very few issues have rallied so many people in the auto industry to cry out than the advent of TrueCar’s advertising…

We all know it's impossible to make every customer happy. There are often confusions in the automotive industry that consumers simply do not understand. They can do unreasonable things to try to get back at the dealership when they perceive that they were not treated properly.

This was a challenge a decade ago and before when word-of-mouth was arguably the most important factor in the success of a dealership.…

Having looked back over nearly two decades of automotive advertising from newspapers to niche auto and RV magazines, I find it interesting that nothing has changed. The methodology and strategy has had no improvements which begs to ask: are the results getting any better or are they continuing to diminish?

One of…

For those of you who know a little bit about me, you know that I  worked in the print media and advertising industry for nearly a decade and grew up around the industry my entire life. I want to spend a couple of minutes discussing some concepts that I am more than confident will help your dealership in attracting new and returning customers so that you can…

http://gigofund.org/news-2011_veterans_day_gala-11_11_2011.html

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=37e_1238350167…

Former General Motors U.S. sales and marketing boss Mark LaNeve has been named chief operating officer at Ford's agency Team Detroit.

Mark LaNeve…

The customer / vendor relationship is an important one. Customers rely on vendors for different aspects of their business that affect their bottom line, in one way of another. Vendors rely on customers for income — and a bad experience can lead to a drop off in current and future business.

Following up on the last blog "Who's Fault is it?" this article, I will recommend 10 things that a customer must do to preserve the value of a relationship with the Vendor. And since relationships…

 Loyalty Is The Heartbeat Of Your Dealership

A few years ago I can recall a conversation that I had with a dealer whose dealership has been around since the 1920’s. He said you know what troubles me most Shawn? “Our customers just are not as loyal as they used to be back in the day, how can we make them loyal again? In this case the problem…

Social media is a broad term that covers a lot of sites on the web these days. Its a term that has a lot of connotation attached to it, and recently, companies have been paying big money for anything that shows a hint of success in the world of social media. Need an…