Leaders are Mercedes, Acura, Honda, BMW and Lexus

Women account for about two-thirds of all dealership service visits, and many of these women have spoken. Women-Drivers.com captures reviews about their dealership experiences – and the company has just announced the 2011 top car brands as rated by women.

On the site, dealerships’ scores range from 1.0…

Ok, let’s get ominous…

True Car – is going to eat us all. Oh, they are coming alright, they look nice enough but they are already RICH with profits that dealers refused to earn  themselves. I intercepted some emails from TrueCar (*not true) and these…

Mercedes, Dodge, Lexus, Lincoln and Chrysler are Top Leaders with Women Buyers

Women-Drivers.com has released its 2011 report showing the top car brands as rated by women. Each year, Women-Drivers.com tracks thousands of consumer reviews with regards to women’s…

An AskPatty Christmas Tale...



'Twas the night before Christmas, and at the North Pole

Old Santa was pacing a path through the snow

On his rosy cheeks he now wore a frown;

His new fancy sleigh had just broken…

Five days ago on dealerelite.net I posted this Blog titled True Car Pricing. I reviewed the snap shot of Seven vehicles SOLD in a regional area. Today I went back to TrueCar.com and reviewed "My Vehicles". Check out the difference when four cars got added to the metrics from 7 to 11 Regional Sold.

According to TrueCar, if I would have purchased this vehicle…

So I was searching on True Car for a model in my area and look at the pricing data.

So correct me if I am wrong.

True Car grabs pricing data based on transactions. These transaction prices are based on SOLD vehicles. After I added the Seven Cars in the example for the highs and lows, the "Good Price" does average out close to $37,794. …

Women-Drivers.com announced new features to its no-cost brand reputation management tools available to car dealerships. The site connects women buyers and browsers with Certified Women-Drivers Friendly™ Dealers, and allows users to locate…

The NCM Institute just posted this article on the Up To Speed blog.  Written by NCM Institute Director and retail operations specialist, Garry House, you'll find a good, basic plan for how to start a personalization program in your store... 

Since the 2011 Specialty Equipment Market…

What if every person who shopped your vehicles on Craigslist were directed to view the same vehicle listing on your Facebook fan page with video?

Cargigi recently released a new Social Media package add-on to their Automated Classified Posting service for $299/mo. that enables dealerships…

For as many dealers that are gung-ho about Automotive Live Chat and having dealer chat software on their website, there are just as many dealers who are reluctant to add this feature. The reasons range from price, to doubting its effectiveness, to just plain not wanting to accept that we live in an internet based world. Are some of their reasons legitimate?…

We hade a situation at our dealership yesterday and I thought I would share it with everyone in hopes of getting some opinions. One of my salesman took a deposit for a dealer trade. It was a modest deal about $1200 front to back on a lease. He took the deposit on Tuesday found the car and was able to get it on Wednesday. The delivery was set up for Friday. The customer called yesterday and said the dealer he originally went to called him back. The customer told them about the deal he had…

No matter your dealership location, franchise, size, or overall rating, you probably will agree that the success of any dealership is measured in the number of sales. In order to obtain sales, you depend on a combination of repeat business, referral business, and of course, automotive lead generation.

With repeat and referral business, there really is no secret to it – other than having a good amount of follow up, and capitalizing on the things that make you different…