Car dealers are able to offer discounts on new models to help move them, which allows car buyers to experience these savings and experience significant financing deals. The sticker price may not be lower, but all other costs associated with owning the car is lower, which is where car buyers mu

st spend the bulk of their time looking at costs.

New car dealers in Stevenage L…

According to Rand Fishkin, Founder and CEO of SEOmoz.org, *there is an increase in blog readership as of late but a dramatic decrease in the amount of people blogging. This sets the stage for a powerful…

Get In Early and Now… the Market Won’t Wait for You!

November was the strongest November for CPO (Certified Pre-Owned) sales – ever! This continues a string of records in the CPO market, including the best October ever last month, according to Autodata.¹ And what we are seeing at SureSale reflects this surge, with the new category of certified vehicles that SureSale covers (the millions of vehicles that fall outside the…

SureSale Marketplace offers dealers free express listings of eligible to-be-certified inventory; turnkey process exposes dealership inventory to certified shoppers in minutes

Venice, CA – December 11, 2012 – SureSale, the certified pre-owned marketing program that is changing the way used vehicles are bought and sold, today launched the nation’s first dedicated certified…

NEWS FROM vAUTO:

The Provision Suite: We’re renaming Live Market Suite to the Provision Suite (Pricing, Appraising, Provisioning and…

Many times, many of your in store problems can be fixed by doing one simple thing. Change the culture of the store with the customers and with the employees,

I worked at a large Jeep stored that gave out a loaner car for every customer that came into service for anything including an oil change. Meanwhile we had a shuttle van that was used more as a parts van than a shuttle. I noticed many of the loaner invoices showed car being brought back with 10 miles or less on them. At the time,…

In the automotive sales industry, we sometimes get so wrapped up with adjusting/tweaking our own approach to the sales process (internal critiques) that we often forget to look at how our customers are approaching us with each potential sale.

The cliché, “…it takes two to tango...” comes to mind.

What kind of research or tips do they look for before coming to the car lot?…

Throughout my 40+ years in the automotive business, I always thought there would come a time when I would leave and take a 9am - 5pm job with holidays, multiple weeks of paid vacations and other normal job aspects. It never happened. No matter how bad of a day I might have had, I always found myself driving home thinking to myself ow much I loved this business. 

In my years as a mechanic, I love fixing cars. As I rose through management I loved fixing problems with customers,…

How many times have I asked a sales person, "Have they driven the car?" Do you have any idea how many times I hear, They drove it at the other dealer or they don't have time to drive it or my favorite. They already own one that is three years old.  Really?  You are going to waste all that time on a write up when your chances of closing a deal without a demo…

Fort Lauderdale, FL – July 31st, 2012 – AutoUSA Internet Sales Solutions (www.autousadealers.com) today introduced Payment Pro℠ powered by DriveItNow®, a payment-based conversion tool for auto dealer websites. Payment Pro is a service that provides online shoppers with instant, real car loan payments based on individual credit and inventory eligibility, generating pre-qualified, first-party leads from dealer websites.

With Payment…

Those words were actually said to me but I'll get to that in a little bit. 

Well the dog days of summer are upon us. The showrooms are filled to capacity and your next available service appointment is in two weeks! Every marketing piece you've done has been a home run. Your biggest problem is where to park all these customer cars and all the managers can think of is how sweet their commissions are going to be. Some are even thinking that, at this rate, I can retire in a couple of…

Recently, Chrysler announced that they reached their goal of having 80% of their stores opened on Saturday. In the pre-Fiat days, the number was closer to 60%! How exciting! What are the other 20% of their stores doing being closed? How can you NOT open your service department at all on Saturday? Even if they are there to support the sales department, they need to be open. Unless of course you have a CBA saying you must be closed which, in that case, the person who negotiated the contract,…

Following is the latest used-car weekly report from Ricky Beggs of Black Book USA. This data is for the week ending July 21, 2012.

Even though the overall market continues to move down at increasing dollar and percentage levels, the number of adjustments at 1,941 per day throughout the week was the 3^rd lowest amount over the past 11 weeks. The average price…

Becoming involved in your community, church or civic organization will bring rewards far beyond a pay check or a few more car sales.  Those that engage in these organizations for the betterment of their communities will receive great satisfaction for their efforts.

At a local services center, our car club was using money that we had raised to tile and carpet…

Back in the 1970's, I cut my teeth in the car business pumping gas and being a mechanics (yes we were called mechanics then) helper. I learned quite a bit and it set the foundation for a wonderful career in the automotive industry. 

One of my early lessons in customer service was provided by my old boss. Our oil change cost $9.95. A quart of oil cost about $1.10 back then. The store I worked at was an Exxon franchise. Now our customer could go into the chain supermarket right next…

So were you?  Many people I have discovered over the years come to the dealership, work their shift taking ups... and are upset at the end of the day if they have not sold a car... There really is no surprise is there?  Standing around all day and shooting the breeze with each other.... I mean, what sales person is going to buy from you?

There really is so…

Good morning Dealer Elite Members,

As i visit retailers of all stripes I find an interesting problem happens again and again. Simply put it prevents the sales, service and part department from creating happy customers and generating more sales service and parts sales as well.

Here are the details:

One: No customer really cares about why a request is not possible.…

At 10 a.m. CDT today, vAuto will be publicly announcing the acquisition of Auction Genius—a company that has developed a “heads-up display” technology to simplify how dealers evaluate and purchase used vehicles at online auctions. This is vAuto’s first acquisition.  

The acquisition…

 …