Today, the Big 3 automakers account for only 44% of the market – a 26% decline from 2 and a half decades ago. In this short amount of time, consumer loyalty is no longer within reach, as the average customer retention rate across the industry has sunk below 50%. This amounts to dealers losing more than half of their customers each year.

Why the sharp…

The customer experience at your dealership is more important than ever before. With start-ups aiming to take away sales by luring customers with promises of a hassle-free buying experience, customers are starting to realize that they no longer have to sit at a dealership for hours. In fact Amazon France just sold a car…

January 1, 2017 — The Mar-Kee Group announced that 10-time National Automotive Dealers Association speaker and President of the Mar-Kee Group, David Martin, will present a sales training workshop, “Marketing Opens the Door: Closing Seals the Deal” at the 2017 NADA Conference & Expo. 

"Yesterday's closing techniques will no longer work with the tech savvy buyers,…

The Emergence of the Digital Dealership

Over the years I’ve helped numerous sales and service departments evolve to meet the needs of today’s tech savvy digital shoppers. While none have been bold enough to launch a completely digital sales process, it’s certainly on their radar as most of them realize they will have to change in order to survive.

So why isn’t F&I evolving?

Want to make enemies in an F&I…

So many times we talk about using video to communicate your message to your customers. But what’s the right way to make a video? 

YouTube Director will walk you through exactly what you need to do to figure out what type of video will work for you.

This week on Hard Facts, Samantha will show you the steps you need to take after you’ve downloaded the app. Watch the video for more information.…

Most dealers have spent many years in the car business. They know what it takes to sell cars. They know when a customer walks onto the lot, the salesperson must give a professional presentation while being able to emotionally connect with and excite the customer into making that purchase.

To this end, most dealers are really great at merchandising their…

What would you do if a customer was injured at your dealership and you were at fault? I don’t mean serious injury or anything like that. Perhaps just a bump or scrape? Most businesses would apologize or, at the very least acknowledge the mishap to the customer. Perhaps send some flowers or a gift card. You certainly wouldn’t want to ignore it, right?

Well,…

I was on a trip to New York and met up with a friend of mine (full disclosure: also a happy customer) Richard Hesse, the Dealer Principal at Mercedes-Benz of Nanuet. He has a simple mantra: “It's not business; it’s personal” -- and he means it.  I borrowed a car…

There is a lot of talk going on about car dealership turnover. It seems that everyone has an opinion about it but not a whole lot of solutions. I am going to do some "REAL TALK" in this post because it is time that the sugar coating stops. I have spent a great deal of time between consulting dealers and working for dealers on a case by case basis over the…

Albany, N.Y. – December 19th, 2016 – Auto/Mate Dealership Systems announced today that its dealership management system (DMS) is fully integrated with the DealerOps Platform, expanding auto dealers' actionable insight into their enterprise-wide analytics. Dealerships that use both vendors' solutions will now receive automatic and seamless updates from their Automotive Management Productivity Suite (AMPS) software into their…

Have you ever heard of Google Tag Manager? If you haven’t, you’re losing customers! There is 1 huge disadvantage of not using Tag Manager - slow websites. 

On this week’s Hard Facts, Samantha explains how you can condense all of your tracking codes in order to get even more accurate results.

Watch this episode for more information.…

Your dealership undoubtedly sees a lot of customers each day. Let’s say that each customer who walks into your showroom wears a different color shirt. Over the course of time, you see a trend in that every single customer who purchased a vehicle wears a red shirt. You’d probably start getting excited when you see a customer come onto the lot wearing a red shirt. In fact, you…

Virtual Reality has been quite a craze recently with video gaming and other consumer electronics. However, the high cost of entry and expensive units limited its reach. Even Google’s cardboard VR glasses required smartphones that cost upwards of $700. The Oculus Rift Goggles were even more expensive and required high-end computers to work.

Now, however, Sony…

Potratz, an advertising agency in downtown Schenectady, has started a new apprenticeship program this December.

The program is a 6-month training program that gives insight into the inner workings of a full-service advertising agency.  Each apprentice will gain first-hand knowledge of digital marketing, content development, social media, traditional media, graphic design, video production, strategy building, website development and innovative product…

Customer feedback is important to any business’ growth. That’s why many send out customer satisfaction surveys and managers pay attention to that feedback.

However, sometimes the feedback system is faulty or gets misinterpreted to the point of being useless. Take the feedback system Uber used to have. At the end of each trip riders were prompted to leave…

In this episode of Hard Facts, Samantha was on Facebook Live from Google Headquarters in NYC. Were you able to catch it?

Aside from learning what it means to be a Google Partner, Samantha, Candace, and Philip will give you ideas and strategies for your marketing campaigns - straight from Google.

Watch this week’s episode for more information!…

In their new book, The Intuitive Customer, authors Colin Shaw and Ryan Hamilton contend that companies that try to fight declining customer satisfaction by lowering prices are going about customer satisfaction the wrong way. Instead, they state that the magic to winning customer loyalty is based on…

Not too long ago your service department could rely on seeing customers fairly frequently, but as vehicles have increased in quality, so have the OEM’s suggested service intervals – some are now as much as 15,000 miles between oil changes.

To put this into perspective, in the past, if a customer drove 15,000 miles annually they would visit the dealership on…

Albany, N.Y. – December 5th, 2016 – Auto/Mate Dealership Systems announced today that Patrick Reilly has joined its team as the new Head of Marketing. Reilly brings more than 25 years professional experience in marketing research, advertising, branding and strategy for technology companies and agencies.

In his new role Reilly will oversee the…