Setting goals on Facebook is extremely important. As I wrote last night, it’s the root cause of one of the biggest challenges businesses are facing in Facebook marketing: a lack of a proper strategy. If you…

 Be Different, Be Special and Sell Yourself.

“This would be a great business if it weren’t for the…

About a month ago I was asked when speaking before a group about what I thought the biggest mistake was that businesses were making on Facebook. I replied, “lack of coherent strategy” and went on about how too many business pages seemed like they were posting for the sake of posting, that they didn’t appear to moving in any particular…

This article was written by David Ciamballa, partner with the Rawls Group.

You may recall an accident a couple of years ago  where a pilot encountered inclement weather while attempting to land in Buffalo. Following the accident, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a statement from which we learned that the pilots apparently lost focus as they were engaged in idle conversation while descending below 10,000 feet. By the time the pilots recognized they were in trouble…

If you ever want a crash course on the latest social media studies but don’t want to spend the money to do them yourself, just watch the Super Bowl. You have to assume that if companies are spending millions to produce and distribute 30 second spots for the big game, they’re going to research what’s working today.

This year’s…

You keep hearing that dealers are making good profits in Buy Here Pay Here. You have decided that you would like to pursue the business. What is your next step? After all you may have been in the car business for years. You understand buying and selling cars. You know how to run a compliant Finance Department and a profitable shop. Isn’t BHPH or LHPH just other ways of financing cars?

The answer is not as simple as it might seem. A BHPH or LHPH operation takes…

If you haven’t already done so, it’s that time to review your 2012 performance in detail. In what areas did you fall short of your goals and why? Where could you have generated greater gains and how? Don’t allow January to slip by without these facts in writing and a discussion of how you can best move forward in 2013.

A common F&I pay plan in the automotive industry is known as the grid. It compensates managers based on their per vehicle retail performance and products sold…

Rarely do we come across a dealer today who claims to have a sufficient number of vehicle sales personnel. When adding the word “quality” to “vehicle sales personnel,” the dealers’ claims of staffing success turn pretty ugly. Why is it so difficult to attract quality people for automotive sales positions?

Several years ago, I was working with a client in Southern California and conducting one of my rare sales training meetings. The subject of the meeting was "Developing and Engaging…

NCM® Associates has been facilitating 20 Groups since 1947. And even from those early days, our moderators and member dealers have focused on the Net Profit to Gross Profit Percentage (Net-to-Gross %) as a key metric of perfor­mance measurement. Over at least the last three decades, the NCM 20 Group community has established 30% Net-to-Gross (BOT*) as the “best practices…

I’ve started hearing the second worst advice coming from social media “experts” that I’ve ever heard. It’s just a notch above “buy thousands of fans and followers” on the social media advice scale.

If someone tells you to “be sure to post something X-times a day on social media even if you have to throw something up.”

I know…

We simply sell again. The internet will not sell for us. If we let the internet market do our selling we will continue to drive the margin down until there isn’t any profit left. We will build value in your dealership, your product and your sales staff then discuss price.

 The internet customer is currently free to browse as they please, shopping price after price. NO ONE is selling to this market! Imagine a customer phones in and asked for price and your new salesman…

The Universe Made Car Sales People And This Is Who We Are!

 

I am proud to be a salesman, because more than any…