Too often salespeople are being taught to have a “power greeting”. Salespeople have been traditionally taught to walk directly up to people, stick out their hand, aggressively give a firm handshake, exchange names and welcome them to your dealership. Sounds good, however let’s review potential pitfalls to traditional meet and greet approaches and how you may improve them.

People in out society have 3 general comfort zones: home, work, and vehicle. Most of us spend about 90+%…

What exactly is a "lead" & why do you need a steady flow of targeted leads?



A Lead is any person interested in your product or service. As a consumer yourself, think about what you are in the market for throughout the year and how one purchase would lead to another. If you are in the market for a new home, then you will probably need a real estate agent and a mortgage professional. That is obvious. However, if you are moving to a new home, you will probably be in the need of an…

There is a startling way for most dealers to double their business – fire their advertising agencies. Dealerships spend an enormous amount of money on advertising for new customers. Unfortunately, often that money is wasted. The money is wasted because the agencies are strictly placing ad dollars in media and doing production. Often, the ad dollars are spent without any knowledge and use of direct response marketing, and the game plan that will be used towards keeping those…

The San Antonio Spurs played not to win and wound up losing. The Spurs gave the power and control of the game to the Miami Heat and Miami took the power and control of their destiny and won. The Spurs will forever regret the position they took. Business lessons learned: Play to win instead of not to lose. Never give away your power or control of your destiny to the competition. 

Unless you have been hiding in a cave somewhere, you have heard that the U.S. economy is doing poorly. Housing starts are down, the value of the dollar is down, car sales are down, real estate is down, retail is down, gas prices are up, food prices are up, bankruptcies are up and the sky is falling. What is a person to do?

1. Don't Drink the Cool Aid

The news is sensationalized and fear sells. Things are rarely as good as they seem and things are rarely as bad as they…

It’s Saturday! Blow up the Balloons, blow up the squiggly air man thingy, get your game faces on and get ready. Barely anyone will walk on to your lot today. Any ideas why?

Before you continue reading this article, do me a favor right now and go grab your local newspaper. Open it up to the first auto dealer…

This is less than ten minutes long, and will help you make sense out if our crazy world and even crazier business.  Enjoy!

This concept is so aligned with the the direction of our entire business culture.  Please comment!

As we all know over 90% of consumers are online when researching and deciding which vehicle that he/she want's to purchase which leads to the inevitable that we must fish where the fish are.  Research reveals that effective Internet advertising not only provides dealers with greater reach to car shoppers but can also successfully attract car buyers from outside the…

The managers in your dealership must have a written job description with clearly defined responsibilities and expectations.

Having specific goals for the department is required. Daily action plans for selling, training, appointments, one-on-one coaching, save-a deal meetings, deal structuring, follow-up, etc will increase sales by 20 percent without spending more for advertising.

If you read biographies of successful people or businesses, one common thread…

Are you a hunter or farmer For so many years, we have struggled as an industry when it comes to follow up. Then, companies like Clients for Life and came along and started sending our follow up letters for us. All we had to do was sign it and mail it. This gave us more time to focus on working with the customers who were on the lot and calling in.

Basically, it gave us the ability to focus more time on hunting for new business and the farming was something we were able to relax on,…

In my 30 years in the business, I have never seen such a lack of civility, leadership and professionalism in the automotive industry. You can find managers anywhere, but developing leaders is a much more challenging task. Managers are integral, but leaders are essential. It does not take character, guts or vision to manage things, but it takes all three to lead people.

Here are common characteristics I see quite often from managers in dealerships…

Traffic is better, sales are up, profits are high, dealers are buying at NADA and the whole world is rosy. Don’t drink the water. I am not saying you should not be optimistic, and I am certainly not an economic forecaster coming with claims of doom and gloom. However, I am saying that your fortunes in the future will have a whole lot less to do with the economy than what business practices you put into place.

There is an over exuberance in dealer-land right now,…

“Big doors swing on small hinges.” Small things can make a big difference in your sales process. There has been a lot written recently about what I term the “moment of truth” in the sales process. I don’t believe that a sale usually occurs because of one “big bang moment.” Usually, a sale occurs because of a series of very small and simple things that add up to being the difference maker.

If you are looking for 50 closes to take your sales to the next level, you are missing…

Often times when I chat with dealers I ask dealers what is keeping them, from getting to the next level of super success I hear responses like:



We need more quality leads.

Or... Cars are bringing brain damage at the sale.

Or... It's hard to find real salespeople anymore man, they just don't breed them like us, you know what I mean?



My answer to these issues are yes, yes and yes...so what. You have to control the…

I have learned a lot during the 25 years that I owned my own business. Shortly before I retired from the salon/day spa, Facebook was becoming mainstream and the discovery process of how it could benefit the business was evident.

 The opportunity to market on every level through client engagement…

We all have listened to the untrained sales professional or Internet Coordinator spend half an hour selling the car to a customer over the phone; and the worst part about it is once he/she gives away all the info the majority of the time you never see the customer show up that he/she was talking to.  The sales professional or Internet Coordinator of today must have a…

Facts tell and stories sell. If you want to become really good at sales, then you must know how to tell your story. People think in pictures and they can and will follow a story. People learn better from stories and become emotionally connected to stories. What is your story and can you tell your story and tell it well?

What makes you who you are? You are different from anyone else. Your life experiences, background and everything about you makes you unique. Unfortunately, if…

Many sales people tend to always be chasing the next customer and worrying about the next paycheck. The good news is that this is unnecessary and can be fixed forever in two years or less. Sales people can eliminate future sales and income anxiety once and for all.

What’s the key to creating freedom? It’s marketing. If you are a sales person who is waiting for your business to provide an endless funnel of prospects and buyers, you are living in a fantasy land. Even with a ton…

My name is Chuck Brumm, with Peak National Promotions. I have been in the automotive sales, training and management for many years and have a great understanding of all aspects of the business. 

Peak National Promotions is a full service High Impact Direct Mail company that WILL bring traffic through the door and maximize every sales opportunity to it's fullest capacity with or without an experienced staffed customer retention closer. Most importantly, providing…