Hidden profit opportunities exist throughout most dealerships. Whether those opportunities present themselves through service customers migrating to sales or sales customers that become service customers, all can lead to increased revenue and building relationships with your customers. Many dealers, however, don't incentivize those handoffs, so these episodes…

When your customers decide to trade in their current vehicle, you know exactly what to do first: make sure they get an appraisal as quickly as possible, since that’s the number one priority for most buyers. Right?

Not so fast.

AutoLoop recently surveyed 1,000 recent car buyers and analyzed over 100,000 leads from various…

The good news? To date, automotive sales have remained stronger than many analysts originally predicted, with customers of all ages continuing to buy both new and pre-owned vehicles. Considering some of the earlier ominous forecasts, it’s no wonder numerous retailers are breathing a collective sigh of relief.

The not-quite-so-good news, at least for those…

Get potential customers to be less combative and more receptive to their trade-in value with a planned trade walk prior to serving them the proposal.

It’s said that around 65% of potential automobile customers have a trade-in to discuss, and most all of them have a higher price in mind that they want to get for that trade-in.

As we get into the…

“The Leads Are Dead”

According to those who struggle to generate consumer sales leads for businesses, “Sales leads are dead.” Furthermore, these (interestingly, mostly digital) marketers claim that today’s connected consumers are simply unwilling to trade their personal information online in exchange for some promise of pricing or other product…

In a newly released report conducted by J.D. Power and commissioned by the National Automobile Association, trade-in value reduction due to proposed legislation could have significant financial impact on both dealers and consumers. The “Used Car Safety Recall Repair Act” will prevent…

Unless you’ve been in hibernation for the past few weeks, you’ve undoubtedly been barraged with news and opinions about the VW Recalls. Regardless of the intent of Volkswagen, it’s quite fascinating to observe the polarizing reactions by owners of the diesel engine carrying cars. No doubt the government regulators are going to compel Volkswagen to fix all of the…

If you’re in business, I’m sure you’ve been introduced to the concept of content marketing. Experts have advised businesses to produce content for quite some time now for search engine optimization, branding, lead generation and engagement, to name just a few of the many reasons.

Content marketing can be powerful, if done properly. It is more than simply…

No doubt, Tesla has become a highly successful car brand with a growing roster of fans. The company recently introduced a new, guaranteed "buy back" program that offers to buy back a Model S between 36 – 39 months at a guaranteed residual.



On the surface this is positioned as a lease program. But it's really not a lease because you have to finance and pay taxes on the full vehicle.



Why can't you just lease a Tesla? Government regulations mean the $7,500 Plug-In Electric…

Yes, there are car shoppers in 2014 that still look for a cassette deck in a vehicle. Swapalease.com analyzed more than 20,000 vehicle searches on its popular car lease marketplace to find items and features people still seek in a car or truck. Some items were popular decades ago, while others have traditionally been only for select tastes.



T-Tops: If you’re old enough to be a fan of “Smokey And The Bandit,” you’ll realize why T-Tops are still a fan favorite for some. These car…

Swapalease.com, the nation’s largest car lease marketplace, reports lease credit approvals during the month of March were at 69.6%, up from last month’s yearly low of 66.7%. The 69.6% approvals mark is also the level of the last three months, indicating a credit approvals landscape that continues to hover near the “healthy” mark of 70%.



The credit approvals rate over the last twelve months stands at 71.7%. Prior to March, the approvals rate had continuously dropped from early fall…

How much influence does ‘change’ have on today’s car shopper? In the past, financial motivations drove the behavior of car shoppers, but our desire to simply change is viewed as the main reason we shop for a car today, according to a new study from the car-leasing marketplace Swapalease.com.

 

According to results of an online survey presented to more than 1,000 drivers across…

ActivEngage’s good friend Jeff Kershner wrote a DealerRefresh post way back in 2008 called The ROI of an NADA Booth Model. Hilarious and creative, the blog is half mathematical formula for determining your “booth model conversion ratio” and half love note to a vAuto model named Andrea. We love Jeff’s style.

But with NADA right around the corner, it might…

When I was last on the "front lines" in automotive retail, I was fortunate to be a Sales Manager for a Dealer Group that was implementing radical changes to its sales process, marketing, merchandising and customer experience. We adopted VAuto as our merchandising and appraisal tool. We went to a "best price first" concept and we revised the Sales Person compensation plan to reward unit levels and CSI. I will outline the experience from the guest walking into the…

What do you do when you have a customer in the showroom, you’ve done the presentation and the test drive and got some degree of commitment from them, then they turn around and tell you that they “just need to go and see the Audi first, to put it out of my mind”?

It’s a tricky one – because…

Aussie ‘trust survey’ shows car sales ranked lower than the 'oldest profession'

The credibility of the Australian retail motor trade is at an all time low it seems. But why?

According to the findings of the annual ‘Trust Survey’ 2010 carried out by Reader’s Digest Australia, the car sales sector was rated less trustworthy than the oldest ‘profession’ in a poll that asked respondents to rank forty professions in order of perceived…