The biggest news of automotive M&A came at the end of the year as Dealertrack has agreed to acquire Dealer.com. Following their…

As the holidays quickly approach, many companies are giving back to their customers. Through toy drives, volunteering at local charities or fund-raising, businesses across the nation are pooling their resources to help the needy. Some businesses, however, have chosen to direct their resources to the people that help them remain successful: their customers. And it’s paying…

The basics of down payment....

VinSolutions®, a marketplace leader in automotive software, announced today that its customer relationship management system (CRM) has received certification as a certified BMW iSTAR Partner.

(Logo: …

Swapalease.com, the nation’s largest car lease marketplace, reports lease credit approvals were down slightly in November compared with October levels. The year-to-date approvals for customer credit finished November at 72.6%, compared with October levels of 72.8%.



Over the last three months, the lease credit approval rating has slipped to 67.9%, and under the 70% healthy level on the…

Customer satisfaction and customer loyalty are two different things. The Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) scores that many dealerships and manufacturers rely on as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) do not really have much to do with building loyalty. Customers can be loyal to a company and have an unsatisfactory experience, or they can have a very satisfactory experience without being loyal to the company.

I believe the CSI surveys should be phased out and replaced with…

Now is the time of year when everyone begins thinking about the New Year and what 2014 will bring.  It is a time when people think about how and what they can change to make the new year better than the last. They resolve to make changes to improve their lives in the coming year.

Here are 3 resolutions you can make to improve your level of success in 2014.…

As I've said on many occasions, there are only a handful of social media websites that you need to focus on at your dealership. Despite claims that you need to be on dozens of them, the real ones that are making an impact today and in the near future are Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest with Instagram, Foursquare, Tumblr, and LinkedIn sitting comfortably in…

SEO for Car Dealers: Why You Should be Using It

“I have no idea what you are talking about.” That was the response of the dealer who currently signs my paycheck. This was in a board meeting of approximately…

Often I find myself having a recurring conversation with my dealers. The topic? Website Chat. Chat is essential to a dealership if they want to capitalize on all potential leads. Many argue, “It’s a waste of money…it’s a waste of time… and it requires too much attention.” This is where I beg to differ. The average chat provider charges about $250 a month. Even if your dealership only sells three cars in a month directly from chat leads, wouldn’t you say that it’s worth it? As far as managing…

The Potratz team along with Cory Mosley will be at NADA 2014 holding workshops and demos at booth #6813 and answering your questions about digital marketing within automotive advertising.



Join us at the New Orleans Earnest N. Morial Convention Center January 24-27, 2014 in New Orleans, Louisiana.…

We will not have a Fixed Operations call until Tuesday,

January the 7th at 10:00am. And no Sales call until Thursday, January the 2nd at 11:00am.

We hope you and your family have an enjoyable Christmas.

We wish you a very Happy New Year.

Best Wishes,

Fixed Performance Inc.

Our mission is simple; To help as many dealerships as possible

Also if you have not yet signed up for either call, you may find the links below:

1) Fixed…

I was going through the profiles of some businesses that I follow on social media when I noticed something that was highly discouraging. Some had statements on their Twitter pages that read something to the effect of “a retweet does not mean we endorse it.” On Facebook, there were disclaimers added to the about section that read “liked, commented on, or shared content does…

Here is the latest Used Car Market Report from Ricky Beggs and Black Book. There were definitely some interesting results from the market study and detail analysis. The initial chart I looked at shows the level of change in…

ALBANY, N.Y. – December 16th, 2013 – Auto/Mate Dealership Systems (http://www.automate.com) announced today that its dealership management system (DMS) is integrated with two of the five modules in MOC1 Solutions' Fixed Ops SDS^TM (Service Drive Suite) technology platform. Auto/Mate has completed full integration with MOC1 Solutions' Track and Schedule products and is in the process of integrating with their three remaining modules…

Many people wonder how they can effectively use SMS (text messaging) in the dealership without putting themselves at risk of:

A. Offending the customer with too many messages

B. Being sued for inappropriate use of SMS messaging

In this week's episode of my Automotive Sales & Marketing HOA I shared 3 ways to use SMS at your dealership.

This week's video is below. Tune in EVERY Monday morning at 9AM Eastern to …

I’m not a big fan of redundancy, especially on social media. Under normal circumstances, if you have good plugins and widgets properly placed on your blog, there’s no reason to have others. If you want to annoy me with a blog post, put an inline plugin, a floating plugin, and another one at the bottom. Oh, and throw in a “Share It” widget just in case three ways to…

While marketers and business owners continue to wait on investing in online video marketing content (and developing their strategy), their prospective customers aren't.

We have quickly become a nation of viewers, not readers. 75 million viewers watch online video per day (YES, that is PER DAY) and 40 billion videos are streamed per month (YES,…