Ok, so you finished with one of the worst months you’ve ever had-now what. You have two options in this situation; you can hold court on the black top and cry a river to a bunch of guys who don’t really care or you can plan for a better month. Speed is everything to your sales career and you must have two mindsets when navigating through your month: That of a…

by Kathryn Carlson

 This Job will pay between $100,000 and $140,000.

Must have Ford Experience

10 years of Automotive Reatail

Must live in Florida

Call Chris Saraceno at 321-960-6133 or email resume to cbskmc@aol.com

Today the Information Week website posted an article by Eric Zeman that shared a statement by Andy Rubin, SVP of mobile and digital content for Google, stating that today over 850,000 Android devices are activated PER DAY.

This is up from 550,000 activations a day just 4…

I've been involved in the TrueCar discussions for months now, sometimes prominently.  And the idea of protecting the dealers'--nay the industry's--data has become very, very important to me.  Thank you, Jim Ziegler, for goading us to pay attention to these issues.

However, lately I've taken to also looking at these points:  Is the "Data Horse" already out of the barn?…

While at NADA, I heard quite a bit of buzz about mobile websites. Does my dealership need one?  If I already have one, do I need to actually optimize it?  Is mobile traffic really growing as rapidly as everyone says it is?  Should I be making my car dealership’s mobile website a priority to sell more cars?

The answer to all four of those questions is absolutely, unequivocally--YES.

Some…

Title tags should be a part of the SEO strategy of every car dealership website.  Why?  Its contents not only provide the text for the blue-links shown on search engine result pages (meaning users use them to help decide whether or not to click onto your dealership’s site), but also tell search engines what each unique web page contains.

Many auto dealers leave this important SEO aspect up to their dealership website providers.  For those…

How can you make sure that the processes you have throughout the dealership are executed every time….. and with every customer?

This has been and still remains one of the toughest things to get accomplished in the dealership.

Every dealership throughout the country has their own processes and procedures when it comes to selling and…

It's been said that nothing in life is guaranteed, yet one thing is certain in sales: There will always be objections. In the sales profession, objections are a necessary evil. After all, if there were no objections there wouldn’t be a need for salespeople; thankfully the products do not sell themselves and need advocates like you and me, to favorably demonstrate the…

If a product or service is priced low, does that mean it has less value?  We've all heard the saying, "Perception is Reality", and to many, a product or service which is priced high, is automatically assumed (we all know what assume really stands for) to have more value.  However after talking with a number of clients and dealers about their current and past vendor relationships, I've found in many cases, its just the opposite, and more times than not, over promising and under delivering is…

By now you have a completed December 2011 Financial. (If you don't, all I can say is WOW)

Look in the box that says "Profit/Loss".

Are you happy with what you see? Would you say that 2011 was a good year an   average year or a "I'm gonna have a stroke!" year?

Whatever your results your EOY(End of the Year) statement is a CTA (Call To Action) for 2012.

Here are 3 Calls To Action you might want to look at if you a looking to KSA in 2012. (You can figure that one…

Hello Dealer Elite Members,

I have been working with Dealerships all over North America for quite a while now. The thing that amazes me every day is that dealers, service writers, Sales Managers and Sales people fail to capture the information they need to follow up their customers every day.

Step One: Ask Great Questions

If you don't ask the right way you will not get the information you need.

Step Two: Make sure there is a benefit for…

Most recently there has been a bold new wave washing over the automotive dealership landscape. Beginning with TrueCar, whose CEO bragged about using data to eliminate dealerships and  lower profits below True Cost. He arrogantly taunted us with claims of "Transparency" which has become the "Buzz Word" of every vendor using our own data to virtually put us out of business, to steal our customers information, and sell it, pass it on to their affiliate companies, and otherwise resell it to…

How often do your sales consultants or sales managers have to respond like this to customers to whom they’ve just presented or demonstrated a used vehicle?

“Don’t worry about that clunking noise we heard. I’ll have a technician get it fixed in a jiffy.”

“That smell will go away as soon as the carpets are thoroughly dried out.”

“After we do a front end alignment, it won’t pull to the right…

Google+ has been promoted lately by many in the SEO industry as a "must-do" for local businesses to help their search engine optimization efforts.  While an important tool for SEO moving forward, there are other areas your dealership can utilize to keep your search engine optimization on the cutting edge.

Here are a couple of additional things your car dealership should be keeping an eye on to keep your SEO efforts top-notch as the search landscape continues to change:…

The following article is authored by, and reprinted with permission of, Kenneth Shilson, founder and president of the National Alliance of Buy Here, Pay Here Dealers. 

Franchise dealers enter 2012 with many of the same challenges they have faced for the last 24 months: a) excess facilities; b) needing more vehicle sales; c) declining credit scores of their customers; and d) tougher credit approvals from financing subprime sources. In response, many are looking at…

Is anyone reading this old enough to remember travel agents and travel companies?  The Internet eventually killed them and rolled them all into Expedia, Priceline, etc.  I met a travel company owner back when Priceline was just taking off, quite a wake-up call to the travel industry, and he was buying up companies and agents as fast as he could:  He was convinced he was…

Beyond increased purchasing power; the time for women to be visibly employed in a variety of positions has arrived, and could well be the next steps to success in competitive dealerships.



As a forward-thinking dealership that is already Certified Women-…