Your customers don’t sing a cappella-there is always music accompanying their lyrics, but we salespeople get so hung up and hell-bent on what the customer is saying that we miss the intent behind it. We get bogged down when a customer lyrically demands our rock bottom price, to only have their trade appraised, to not demo…

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"You don't get paid for the hour.  You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.” 

~ Jim Rohn

Recently, I had a day in which the time seemed to sit still.  I glanced at the clock for the tenth time and it was only 1:30pm.  How could this be?  I felt like…

Here is this week's Used Car Market Report from Ricky Beggs, Editorial Director of Black Book. Everywhere I turned this past week I was being told of 70% to 80% sales conversions definitely indicating a booming market. One buyer even said the opening bid was many times higher than his planned top bid. And the actual…

How do you know you made it? You know, your successful? How do you know? Is there a real way to tell that you made it? Is it driving a big Mercedes Benz or a bigger house. I strongly desire to be successful. Some people say that I am already there. As for me, not so sure. So sometimes that question comes to mind. Zig Z says it means "doing the best we can with what we have"? How do you define success? Well to me it is not a bigger car, house or material things. In part it could be having the…

Warranty work is a large part of any service department’s revenue. The recent announcement by the NHTSA mandating manufacturers to use specific labeling on recall notices could prove to be very helpful to dealers; helping them get the work faster and at a lower cost. However, there are challenges associated with this and dealerships need to be prepared to handle them. With…

Maximizing your Advertising Budget on Craigslist

With the advent of $5 ads on Craigslist, what are you doing to ensure you are maximizing your Craigslist advertising budget for your dealership?  There are multiple software providers and ways for dealerships to post ads, but not all services are equal.  Now, that you are paying for each ad it is not just…

Automotive management tasked with the job of recruiting car sales people in addition to their other duties, often find themselves underachieving in terms of production. …

Welcome to the inaugural Women’s Wednesday blog. As the leader in connecting women+families with Certified car dealers, look for brief educational tips and nuggets from us to weave into your sales and service practice to expand your sales to women. With our deep vertical expertise, we are here to assist with suggestions to make doing business with women a natural, core value and expression at your dealership. With that, let’s begin:

While women influence over 80% of all car purchases,…

Do you want to grow your business without working more? Find out ways to move the rocks in the road that are stopping you from moving forward. That's this week's tip on Think Tank Tuesday.

Part of my life was spent in Southeastern Oklahoma.  I remember teenage boys coming to the ranch dressed in their "good jeans" with a tucked-in "nice shirt" and driving their daddy's "dress truck".  The purpose was to show my aunties and uncles, that they were gentlemen and worthy of the responsibility of the social company of the young…

When Matthew McConaughey won the Oscar for Best Actor (the movie was Dallas Buyers Club) he accepted the award saying that there were “3 things he needed each day.” Those 3 things were:

If you’ve ever lost your voice, then you know what a challenge it can be to get your point across. Like orators and singers, salespeople need their voices NOW in order to positively influence their customer’s behavior. Unfortunately, we salespeople abuse our voices- instead of being an influence we become more of a nuisance because we suffer from verbal…

Customer retention is one of the biggest challenges you and your dealership face, leaving you with one simple question- How do I keep my customers? Acquiring new customers can cost as much as five to seven times more than simply retaining existing ones. To enhance your customer retention, you need to get innovative and proactive. Your first task is to find where your audience is and where it’s going. The answer is mobile. 62 percent of the population has a smartphone, and that number is only…

It's been said that you can never be completely successful without goals. We hear it constantly. But what steps should you take when setting and reaching these goals?

1. Realize the WHY:

Why are you setting this goal? What are you trying to accomplish…

Even if you don’t believe, as I do, that high sales staff turnover is the number one issue facing the auto industry today; we certainly can agree it is right at the top of the list. There is not one positive thing that happens at our dealerships as a result of high turnover, and the benefits of low sales turnover are so obvious that I don’t need to list them.

High sales turnover has completely undermined training efforts. It creates the mental attitude amongst many managers…

Social marketing may be the next best thing but, like all successful next generation solutions, it is built on the foundation of proven old school wisdoms. Word of mouth advertising pre-dates today’s technology driven social marketing as a proven way to build a business.  The fact that people like to do business with people they like and that trust is the foundation for any transaction is a reflection of human nature which is the basis for long term business…

Grind it out, til you find it out

Last summer I spent a great deal of time teaching my daughter how to drive a stick shift.  Eventually she picked it up after a lot of frustration on her part and mine.  During that time the old phrase “grind it til you find it” kept playing through my head as she tore through the gears of my Jeep.  Thankfully we both survived and so did my Jeep and today she has the skill and knowledge of being able to drive a…