Many new car dealers know that something is not right with their service departments or for that matter with their dealership business model as a whole. Customer loss rates are at all time high, "Right To Repair" legislation is seemingly hanging over like a "sword of Damocles" and profits margins are shrinking across the board. I bet in almost every franchised new car dealership, management meetings are being held to discuss how to tackle these challenges and I can imagine the nature of some…

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Remember that girlfriend or boyfriend that was just too clingy for you? Insecure, always seeking approval, or going overboard in trying to make you happy? Or worse yet, one date, and the person treats the relationship as if you're married.

Apparently, Toyota has the same problem -- only it's the one in the relationship being overly clingy, according to Stanley Bing, columnist for Fortune magazine.

He recounts in his latest column,…

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In real estate it is location, location, location.  In the retail sales world, it is perception, perception, perception.  Every one of your consumers wants to have a individualize experience when doing business with your organization.  I like to call it the “Disney” experience since Disney has set the benchmark in customer service.  It might be a…

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I am thankful to have had the opportunity to work at my past location for five years. That opportunity allowed me creative freedom to make a substantial difference in the betterment of the automotive industry. 

Although I finished 2010 with an 87.8% retention rate; which happened to be the highest first year retention in the entire Nation for the Nissan Corporation, I realized several months ago that I had taken the store as far as I was able to take it.

In those 5…

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Last week I discovered some very interesting responses to a survey I had asked about 60 automotive employees to fill out regarding their dealership’s online… Continue

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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…

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How Your Dealership Can Start Using QR Codes to Drive Traffic

There are countless ways to integrate QR Codes into your Dealerships Automotive Marketing Campaigns. QR stands for Quick Response and they are essentially a two dimensional…

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Car-Mercial has developed a way to squeeze others off of the first page of search results. The results made my chin drop! They do this by producing a large amount of custom professional videos for each of their clients. These videos are matched with an extensive key word list (unique to each brand/vehicle/location) and uploaded to numerous video search engines. From there the videos get picked up by thousands of additional sites and displayed all over…

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I have the privilege to work with the service department of a mid-sized dealership. The Service Director, whom I will call Bill, has a very aggressive plan for fixed operations. Bill wants to raise the bar on recruitment and selection, training, leadership, processes and sales. His ales initiative is the focus of this article.



Bill shared with his management team all operational date. The Service, Parts and Body Shop Managers pored over inventory costs, gross profits, process maps and… Continue