So, you’ve recognized the value that social media and content marketing present for your business. You faithfully promote your Facebook page to your audience through your marketing efforts, e-mail signatures and website. You’ve enlisted employees or executives in your organization to start creating unique content for your blog or website and are seeking out content daily to…

We all know the term “declined service repair.” Increasingly, I hear service departments are having a hard time keeping customers in the service lane to get those declined services done.

Imagine if financing didn’t exist for vehicle purchases. Chances are that very few would ever be able to own one, despite the desire to do so. The same situation applies to service repairs. I bet that a good number of your customers are declining service repairs not because they don’t want them, or…

Why Not Now?

 

This is the time of year that most people begin looking forward to next year, setting goals and objectives to reach. There are several ways to work the numbers, as some people want the objectives to be lower and easy to obtain. Others set their objectives aggressively, believing they can accomplish more. Some manager’s use…

SEO and realistic expectations don't go well together. On both sides of the aisle, there are issues that harm the digital marketing campaigns of businesses across the country and cause doubts about SEO as a viable and ROI-driven service.

The problem starts with SEO vendors. For years now, the focus has been on achieving…

As we get ready to embark on a new year, we will dedicate the last two issues of Women’s Wednesdays in 2015 to an ultra-sophisticated topic….the Brain. More specifically, the science of how it works, or Neuroscience. Why? Leveraging scientific knowledge about the brain creates a better sales process, drives more dollars to your dealership’s bottom line and creates happy women customers that remain loyal to your dealership. Toning down the Limbic System and firing up your Neocortex will help…

Welcome to this week's edition of Black Book Market Insights, with in-depth analysis of used car and truck valuation trends and insights straight from the auction lanes. Click here to download the full…

"Watch my #HUMPDAY VIDEO "Have a baby" #SERVICE #ADVISOR #SALES #TRAINING #AUTOMOTIVE #CARS - click here to watch video:http://ow.ly/VDzhK"

It's the Holiday Season

The holiday season makes it the perfect time for your dealership to join in the spirit, get customers excited, and make sure you’re the go-to destination for their holiday car shopping.  Not only are consumers looking for big-ticket items like vehicles, but they’re also on the lookout for stocking stuffers like service gift certificates, oil…

It happens every day. You sit in your morning meetings and you review the daily log from the day before and you ask each salesperson, “What is going on with Mr. & Mrs. Smith?” And then it happens, the salesperson goes blank and gets that “deer in the headlights” look. You wait….. and nothing. Across the table there is always “the guy.” You know, the salesperson who…

If you haven’t heard, it’s getting harder for businesses to reach their audiences on Facebook unless they’re willing to spend some money. Estimates are that the average reach for a company post on its Facebook page is around 2-6 percent organically. There are only two ways to increase that. First, by paying for Facebook ads. And secondly, through interaction…

Consumer Experience Meets Technology 

Consumers are continuously putting information and data about themselves into the online world, and in order to take your dealership to the next level, it’s important to focus on what’s being said.  Creating a positive overall customer experience is integral to the success of your dealership, and that begins where shoppers are…

Ever wonder why CarMax is the largest seller of pre-owned vehicles, selling more than any other company?  They retail 160,000 used vehicles just about every quarter and make approximately $2,200 per unit front-end profit -- over $350M.  If you do the math on 153 locations, each store averages 348 unit sales per month and grosses right at $800,000. In addition…

Recently Auto/Mate received a 'Best Places to Work' award from the Albany Business Review for the sixth year in a row. We have also been voted a 'Top Workplace' by the Times-Union multiple years in a row. Focusing on employee happiness has long been one my top priorities. People often ask me how I do it, but before I answer that, I'd like to explain why I do it.

This is a fact: your customers will never love your company unless your employees love your…

"The have time..."

By: Alan Ram

I speak at a lot of dealer 20 Group meetings and one of the questions I ask of the Dealers at every meeting is, “do your managers listen to every sales call on call monitoring?” A reasonable question, right? The overwhelming majority of the time, here’s what I get:

“I wish my managers listened to sales calls, we probably listen to 20% of them or some other lame answer along…

There is an old saying that good things come to people who wait, but better things come to those who go out and get them.

In the car business we often think of aggression as something used to control the Customer and get them to do what we want.  This kind of aggression is not good and has no place in our industry.  We certainly want to be aggressive…

So today I'm going to talk sport again. Seems to be a bit of a default analogy for me...

Like many Aussie kids, I wanted to one day play cricket for Australia when I was a kid. My childhood hero was Dean Jones, and of course my cricket kit was filled with all the gear exactly the same as Dean Jones. I even wore my zinc cream on my nose just like Jonesey. I remember watching him hit 145 runs in a one day, and thinking "I'm going to do that when I grow up..." So from the age of 9, I…