Ladies' night at the local bar includes free drinks for the ladies.

What's the intention?

Where the women go, the men will follow – and the men will pay.

Ladies' Day at the car wash where all women receive $2 off their extreme wash.

The next day is Men's Day.

Does anyone see these efforts as "misguided"?

In a bar, the women are being used as…

Generally when I begin with a client, I have a casual conversation with the manager of every fixed operations department to determine what they know and how I can best serve them to get to the next level. The most common training they have received is where their desk and the coffee pot are going they are released to get to work. I have met service managers with over 30 years of experience that didn’t even know what their effective labor rate was or how to improve the result. Now I…

The following is a great article from women-drivers.com, speaking to dealerships about the power of being women-friendly.

What are you and your team doing to target the female consumer?

Top 10 Certified Women-Drivers Friendly™ Dealers in the US

 

The female consumer has spoken and out of 1300 dealerships in the United States receiving reviews, the Top 10 Certified Women-Drivers Friendly™ Dealers are in for 2011. The Certificate…

If you were afforded the opportunity to work at a dealership under the guise that you must first invest 25, 50, or even $100,000 would you pony up? If you did elect to invest such a large sum of money, would you even be the least bit curious as to what kind of return you would earn on your investment? Once you’ve finished your latest Sportscenter analysis of…

Post one of ten posts I will be making leading up to Digital Dealer 12.

If you are one of the best dealers in the country you are using 10% of your Secret Weapon…what is it?…

Teaching the “7 Habits” to a 4th grader? Yep, you bet! It’s not only about the progression of knowledge, but rather the integration and formation of a belief system.

It’s not just your ordinary curriculum and not just an ordinary school. Instead of sitting down for a typical parent-teachers conference, we were led on a student…

I have been asked multiple times in my life how do I make every dealership I go to head in the right direction?  I think the answer is really simple and always hope it comes across as humble as possible.  Here it goes.

There are three key elements…

As some of you may know, I served as the director of ecommerce for the Asbury Automotive Group (NYSE: ABG) a few years ago. One of the most rewarding things about working for a publicly-traded MegaDealer Group was the ability to not only negotiate from a position of strength (we had over 120 franchises back then), but also the luxury of relying on a team of experts to help us always select the best of the best providers of any product or service.

While our process was exhaustive (we…

As a "3rd Party Vendor" Partner with a couple of dozen dealerships here in Central Florida, it is both a privilege and a frustration listening to recorded sales calls that my Company of employ produces for my Dealer Clients. The first bit of pain usually occurs when the call is answered at the dealership. If the caller has to navigate thru several automated options I can literally hear and feel the tension start to mount for the prospective buyer. When a real live human being answers "Thank…

Should we be concerned that GM, Cobalt, and Google decided it best to create Google Places pages for all GM dealers?



Has anyone seen effects in organic search?



Is it all a little "Big Brother-ish" ?



Do these broad sweeping activities border on collusion when considered in the context of organic search and Pay-Per-Click advertising.



When vendors get that close to "Google" what are the unintended or intended consequences to the invisible hand of free…

Professional Service Advisors are Action oriented. They don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what is The Right Thing To Do because they already know what the Right Thing To Do is.

These Advisors have a sense of Empowerment and that leads to Empowered Action.

Empowered Action by definition is when one has the ability to do something with the Customers Best…

Minute details can make major differences when it comes to having a successful sales career. It’s not the mountains that break your sales career; it’s the molehills- the tiny fundamentals you have let slide throughout your career. One such technique is the write-up; every dealership has an 8-10 step Road to the Sale program that literally walks a salesperson…

I wrote this blog post (CLICK THIS LINK) on ADM almost 2 years ago, titled, "We need to Re-Position and Re-Name The Internet Department," on AutomotiveDigitalMarketing.com, but the subject matter is more relevant than ever. An "Internet Sales department" will, sadly, no longer be sufficient for car dealerships going…

The car business is known for its loud and often over the top conversations.  In the dealership we pay attention to the loudest sales people, managers, etc.   The quiet employees in the background usually get ignored. 

How's that working for you?

I just came across a quote: …

Our colleague Stan Sher wrote a pretty good tear on the issue of searching for the Next Internet Manager to blame for sales failures.  I have to say I agree with his sketch there.  I think, however, that it is not just Internet Managers.  It can be nearly every manager…

The role of a car salesperson in selling a vehicle is enormous. Car sales is not just a sale of product but is a bouquet of satisfactions that you have to sell with it. It is the usefulness of the product for the buyer, the ego massage, how others look at your buying decision etc etc. This role can be played best by the salesperson as he interacts one to one with the customer and he can project the USP as per the preceptional requirement of the customer.

A salesperson from my…

Wouldn't want to get branded as sexist!

Recently Grant put up an article titled, "CNBC's Becky Quick Is Quick to Paint Car Salesmen as Sexist and Stupid."  In the article Grant calls Becky to task for making such a broad generalization and then calls her out…

But you couldn’t be more wrong about microsites!

I have had a few dealers reach out to me lately on Microsites being a bad idea and even one of the largest industry providers asking me if dealers using them will be “Black Listed” by Google…REALLY?! 

In this video Matt Cutts from Google explains his OPINION on microsites and calls out a post by Vanessa Fox “Microsites A Bad Idea Most of the Time”.

 …