No one doubts the average age of vehicles on the road has gone up. The current average vehicle is 11 years old and trends in consumer purchases indicate this statistic isn’t going to change any time soon. In fact, indicators suggest average vehicle age might increase.

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FCA US CEO, Sergio Marchionne, recently announced plans to reduce the profit on new cars sold within the FCA brands by increasing the invoice prices, while keeping the MSRP the same. This will result in less potential profit for its dealers. The move, as reported by Automotive News, is FCA's attempt to increase its profitability. This, of course, will probably…

It wasn’t too long ago that we saw most dealers’ VDP pages contain only a couple of pictures of a vehicle. As technology improved and made it easier and more efficient for dealers to take and upload more images, best practices quickly raised the standard for image quantity to 40 or more pictures. Now, however, a recent article in…

Happy Friday, Auto Professionals! As usual, your friends at ActivEngage have compiled the latest, most interesting automotive news stories and blogs from around the Web!

In this edition of the Top Ten, learn why dealerships should welcome customer complaints, how to win over millennials for service, need-to-know trends found in a new study on dealer reviews, and much more!…

If you still aren’t sold on the importance of video marketing, it only takes a brief glimpse into recent news to illustrate just how important video is in marketing. There are many news stories relating to acquisitions, statistics and trends, which highlight the increasing importance – and value – that platforms of all kinds are placing on video content. The common thread…

When will I see you again? No, I am not talking about the 70’s pop song, although the lyrics just may fit the content here. I am talking about the continued trend in customer defections from our dealerships. 

Customer’s defect for many reasons and the longer an individual owns a car, the harder it can be to keep that customer. It’s not necessarily because the…

Automotive News recently carried a story about a lawsuit filed by Subaru of America against one of their franchisees. The lawsuit accuses a Southern California dealership of falsifying 224 CSI surveys in an effort to increase their CSI scores. This was after…

I’ve written many times about the value of training and professional development to employee retention.  Training, in combination with a company culture designed to create engaged employees, can help make a dealership a force to be reckoned with. Employee retention has always been a pain point in the automotive industry, because many employees feel there is no job security.…

Many auto dealerships have technology in place that allows sales managers to monitor what’s going on in their departments. CRMs and phone call recording services are used by sales managers to ensure that Internet leads are being followed up promptly and that salespeople follow up with shoppers that visited the dealership but did not buy. Many dealerships, however, don’t take…

Auto dealers know how important their service business is to the bottom line. There’s no doubt that service absorption is vital to the health and livelihood of many dealer’s financial statements at the end of the month. Automotive News recently reported that Honda has…

Geo-targeting and geo-fencing technology has been around for many years. Some social networks use it and provide businesses with ways to show customers offers and specials based on their current location. However, for the most part, these are application-specific. An individual would need to download an app, join a social network and opt-in for push notifications from the…

There’s no doubt that customer satisfaction is important to all car dealerships. Whether a dealership actually cares about making the customer happy, or merely wants to ensure that their CSI scores stay acceptable to the OEM, these scores play a major factor in the overall health of a dealership. Poor online reviews can sway a buyer to go somewhere else. Poor CSI scores can…

In May I wrote a blog article explaining how employee retention in service will become increasingly important due to many factors. Apparently, that’s becoming true faster than even I thought. Auto Remarketing published an…

As a PR professional, my primary goal is to assist my clients in achieving the most exposure possible and build top-of-mind brand awareness among their potential customers. To help better understand how to best position my clients for success, I did a little research on how dealers perceive vendors and their practices.

I reached out to…

Automotive News recently reported about a New Jersey dealership that has a VIP lounge for some of its customers – akin to the exclusive airline club lounges – in which customers can wait for their vehicles in service. The lounge offers fresh…

A recent Automotive News article covered the decrease in trained automotive service technicians graduating from vocational schools. Not only are the vocational schools producing fewer graduates in the automotive repair field, but the training they…

Last Thursday, Facebook launched Facebook Newswire. In partnership with Storyful, a social media content verifier and aggregator, Facebook has entered the business of delivering news to its community. This service is designed to identify hot news topics and articles. It does this…

As reported by Automotive News, Audi has begun integrating iPads into their franchise dealer’s sales force. With their iPad tablets, which they’ve named, Sales Assist, they believe that young consumers will feel more comfortable as they use technology which “lets…

Having just finished a morning plyometric workout (and still "huffing and puffing" like an old steam engine), I sat down at my console where an AUTOMOTIVE NEWS alert was waiting for me.  I clicked away and found an article titled, "The Sales Game Has Changed..."

This article has multiple…

In the October 2013 edition of Dealer magazine, I examined a phenomenon that occurred last Christmas. Partnering with luxury shopping site Gilt.com, Starbucks offered an ultra-exclusive steel metal loyalty card for sale on their site for $450. The loyalty cards came pre-loaded with $400 in Starbucks credit…