Do you know your customers’ lifetime value (CLV)? CLV defines the monetary value of your customer relationship by how much gross profit they have generated for your dealership.

If you divide your customer database into quintiles, you’ll discover that the top 20 percent is responsible for 79 percent of your gross profits, while the bottom 20 percent are net…

Almost every dealership has some degree of training, from the manager telling the salesperson, “Here’s how to do a foursquare, now go get an up,” to a more structured and professional routine, perhaps from an outsourced vendor. The problem is, this training can be inconsistent. Or, due to high turnover, the managers simply give up.

And, far too often that…

It wasn’t too long ago that most dealers shunned recalled vehicle owners, describing the additional traffic as a nuisance, or they viewed them as consumers who occupied service bays that could be more profitable with other types of business. 

However, changes in OEM recall reimbursement policies, along with revenue data that indicates more than 50% of recall…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently tweeted that he wanted to take Tesla private, which has garnered a lot of attention. Hey, I realize that Tesla as a company can be a polarizing issue in our automotive industry. But this is something you may want to pay attention to.

Here’s…

If you’re a movie fan, at some point, you will almost certainly have witnessed a scene where a villain sabotages a vehicle. The unsuspecting character gets into their car, fires up the engine and it explodes, dramatically. Or, perhaps the villain messes with the brakes, causing the main character to have a horrible crash. While these are familiar scenes out of a movie, the…

Back in the early 1990s, the Internet was in its infancy. As a new phenomenon, not every business was sold on its benefits, or even why they should use it. This posed a problem for Cisco, a company whose main product at the time was routers. Cisco needed to prove that, not only would the Internet save companies money, but also Cisco products were the best choice to help them…

When automobiles were first introduced into society, people didn’t know what to think. For the most part, early automobiles were reserved for the wealthy, while everyone else continued their transportation needs with the use of horse and carriage.

However, people were very curious about this strange new phenomenon of transportation. So curious, in fact, that…

Most dealers know how many cars they sell on a weekly, monthly and annual basis. But if I asked you how many new customers you acquired this year, would you know the answer?

On the service side, you probably know how many ROs were closed last month and how much revenue was generated, but do you know how many new service customers you acquired? How many of…

The automotive industry is changing with self-driving cars, companies such as Uber entering the field and the decline of oil-dependent vehicles.  

To that point, I am sure many of you are familiar with the shocking stories and downfalls of three highly successful companies: Blockbuster, Kodak and Xerox.

So, what lessons can be learned from…

One of the staples for service department is tires, including sales, mounting, balancing and alignments. Tires are a price leader for your dealership and a great way to get customers in, providing you the opportunity for additional service work revenue.

Well, what if your customers no longer need to buy tires from your dealership? What if they could simply go…

To stay top-of-mind with your customers, you need to keep in touch. If you have lifecycle-based communications that launch automatically (triggers), you’re already taking advantage of a great tool for your dealership. This keeps your active customers engaged. However, to maximize your dealership’s reach and re-engage your inactive customers, consistent…

On average, dealers capture just half of the necessary service work that needs to be performed on vehicles that come into their service lanes. This is a big leakage point that has a direct impact on service revenue. It also offers tremendous untapped potential.

In addition to acquiring new service customers, it’s important to focus on maximizing service…

Almost half of a dealership’s sales customers never return for their first service appointment – that’s a hefty chunk of a dealer’s lifetime service potential! What causes this pattern in car buyers, and how can you channel more of them from your showroom to your service lane? AutoLoop surveyed our subscribed dealers and their customers, and we discovered vital insights that…

If you have been paying attention to industry trends I am sure you have noticed the ever-increasing gap between the size of smaller dealerships and large auto groups. Groups are swallowing up smaller dealers left and right as they continue to grow.

Of course, size matters when it comes to many things in the dealership world and the consolidation of the…

According to the 2017 JD Power CSI survey, only 13 percent of consumers scheduled their vehicle service online. The progress toward online scheduling has been glacially slow, rising only two percentage points over the past three years.

This is despite the fact that nearly all dealerships now have an online scheduler and most service reminders are digital.…

We are in a new era; one in which dealers make most of their money on the service side and not in new vehicle sales. Yet, as an industry we still spend far more money marketing the sales side of the business, and on conquest marketing, than we do on service marketing and customer retention.

Some dealers justify this by saying that sales drives service…

In my recent travels I went to Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan. A few things struck me: just how space efficient and clean everything was.

I visited the famous Tsukuji wholesale fish market. To my surprise, there was no smell of fish. The…

For today’s consumers, time is the ultimate commodity.  No matter how much money they have, consumers are always on the go with their busy lives. Whether that means shuttling the kids to soccer practice, or running a bunch of errands, when it comes to fitting vehicle service into their busy schedule it is often viewed as a large and inconvenient time sink.

To…

In the age of customer experience, successful salespeople have transitioned from an “always be closing” mindset to an “always be helping” mindset. In fact, the title of salesperson isn’t really an accurate reflection of what the job entails any more. A better title would perhaps be Trusted Advisor.

A Trusted Advisor earns their customers’ trust. The best way…

So much of the conversation in automotive marketing today is focused on how to leverage technology and data to precisely target consumers. While this is important, it’s just as important to remember that creative still matters.

After all, you can serve up the exact right message to the right person at the right time, but without a…