I have watched countless presentations from dealers who want a change from their employees. Generally, these discussions don’t go well and the tone of the dealer is one of superiority that controls the conversation and doesn’t ask for input. Their authority is never in question and I am confident all of…

Reshaping The Industry’s Economy

The millennial. Individuals born between 1980 and 2000 comprise ‘one of the largest generations in history’. In a recent article “Millennials Coming of Age”, by Goldman Sachs, millennials are not only poised to reshape the economy, but are about to move into prime spending years. Millennials overtook Baby Boomers, ages 51 to 69, as the largest generation according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Women of all age groups are…

Black Book, a division of Hearst Business Media that provides industry-leading used vehicle valuation and residual value forecast solutions, released its Used Vehicle Retention Index for September, with the Index increasing from 112.6 to 113.9, its largest month-over-month gain since March 2012. Click here to obtain a copy of the latest index data.…

Recently I was training an advisor that told me he wants to be great. It challenged my thinking so I thought it would be interesting to write down some thoughts on being a great advisor. Most would say this is a numbers business and great would mean incredible numbers. The most common question I receive is how do I get those…

In the age of digital technologies, it is clear that customers demand more. What the customer wants must become a prerogative. Every store, every interactive kiosk, every car dealership. We all need to understand the power that digital signage has when it comes to improving the user experience.

Digital Signage Today recently published five…

DealerELITE members are invited to the 2017 Automotive Analytics & Attribution Summit (AAAS) in Boca Raton, November 8th, and 9th. As a member of this powerful online community, DE members have a special discount on tickets for the Summit. Please visit this page which is exclusively for DE members: …

Why should we focus on women? The facts may shock you!

There has been a lot written about the importance of catering to your female clientele. Unfortunately many dealerships don’t completely understand why this is so crucial to current, and more importantly, future business.

I’m a woman who has been working on service drives and developing…

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…

Are you a talker or a texter? Or do you prefer sending emails? February 2017 data show that US smartphone penetration surpassed 80 percent in 2016 (source: ComScore), making this growth the largest so far. However, the most basic…

We've all heard that expression, "The tail is wagging the dog." In retail, that usually means our sales staff is dictating management rather than the other way around. Usually, the fix occurs when new management or a new training process comes in and everyone gets to start on the same page. However, the decision to change process or change personnel is at the dealer level.

Lately, a much larger tail has been dominating the countryside and predicting the end times if we continue as we…

Things have changed considerably with the state of marketing measurement and we wanted to know how dealers are adapting to new measurement tools like Multi-Touch Attribution. So, in April 2017, we decided to ask and surveyed approximately 120 dealers for our State of Automotive…

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Joe: It’s a pleasure to have on once again to CBT News, Sally Whitesell. She’s the founder and CEO of sw Service Solutions, and a recent speaker at the Women in Automotive Conference. Sally, we appreciate you taking the time. We know you are busy, you’re always on the road…

Education is the process of facilitating learning. It is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Training is teaching or developing skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. Its particular goals are improving one's capability, capacity, productivity, and performance.…