How many times have I asked a sales person, "Have they driven the car?" Do you have any idea how many times I hear, They drove it at the other dealer or they don't have time to drive it or my favorite. They already own one that is three years old.  Really?  You are going to waste all that time on a write up when your chances of closing a deal without a demo…

Women are the fastest growing segment of car buyers at car dealerships, spending billions of dollars annually on new and used cars, as well as car service and maintenance.

They’re more confident, educated and prepared to make smart car decisions than ever before, and thanks to dealer rating websites like Women-Drivers.com, Facebook, Twitter and other online outlets, women are also voicing their opinions on those decisions in greater numbers.

Car dealerships have to treat women…

Insignia has been shouting it from the roof tops for over 10 years. Auto parts stores and Ebay have heard the word, it’s taken root and produced bountiful profits. And now automakers are recognizing the trend and developing new vehicles with thousands of OEM accessories and customization options. Check out how Dodge is doing this with the Dodge Dart, click the…

Twitter is growing quickly as a social network, and as it does, businesses are cluing into the fact that they can connect with a whole new market by maintaining a Twitter account. It can be tough to get the hang of posting on the site, but remembering a few simple tips can help.

• Think twice about automating your tweets. It’s tempting to…

If youʼre active on social media (and you better be), than recently you may have seen people on your social networks talk about Pinterest. The site is growing rapidly, already ranking above long running sites like LinkedIn. Knowing this, of course the next thing you want to know is if itʼs a…

In the city I live in, there is a run down, nasty looking house taking up some prime commercial real-estate that I'm pretty sure every Realtor in town has taken a crack at trying to sell. Seriously! Every couple of months there is a new sign out front from some poor real-estate…

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…