From factory rebates to free upgrades to free car washes, new and used car dealerships use millions upon millions of incentives to boost sales each year. Some new car operations question why they should offer any other kind of incentive beyond the factory rebate. The answer is…

Social media provides us with a wonderful set of tools to connect and stay connected with people. In its early years, some businesses were a little slow to jump onto the social media bandwagon. However, as they recognized the potential it had to reach large audiences for little to no money, businesses embraced it.

The thing is that as use has grown, some…

Black Book announces its latest white paper from the company’s Lender Solutions division, titled “Strategies To Help Maintain Profitable Leases In Your Portfolio”. Available by clicking here, the white paper discusses the possible conflicting market pressures that may temper the increase in leasing activity for lenders, and shows how collateral data can help shift portfolio strategies to maintain robust and profitable…

Is the lowest monthly car payment always the best deal? Not lately. And not with $2 a gallon gas.

New analysis from Swapalease.com shows that many car shoppers would end up spending less on their lease if they opted for more miles when negotiating their deal in the showroom. Why? $2 a gallon gas is having a lot to do with that since more people today are spending for extra mileage at the end of their lease. In each case it would have been cheaper to take the more expensive deal in the…

Take your service department, auto body, used car, and new car sales to a whole new level. Want your best month ever? Read more: Making Your BEST Month EVER!…

Want to boost your sales 24% and add $106,000 per year to your bottom line? Well, here’s the deal: It’s all about the customer experience.

A lot has been written about how industry disrupters are currently threatening market share. These online auto buying sites provide consumers with an easier, friendlier way to buy a car. This isn’t,…

Deciding priorities when it comes to KPIs and ROI

It’s a conundrum auto dealers face in every aspect of the car business: go for ROI or most affordable?

Go with a factory-mandated…

Honesty is a winning strategy- "We are not going to sell you a dump truck when all you need is a pick up."

- James…

The latest craze to have hit automotive sales where customer engagement is concerned has been texting.  You can scarcely scan any industry blog/newsletter headlines or attend any best practices seminar without the writer or speaker reminding you that everyone is texting these days and therefore you must text your customers.…

When I look at advertising strategies in our industry, one of the most consistently missed opportunities I see is dealerships who are trying to save money by marketing to all their customers through email, and only sending mail to customers without an email address on file.

These dealers often ask me, “Now that I can email my customers, why do I have to send…

An experienced car salesperson knows the value that a good used car can bring to their paycheck. 

With car owners spending more time on the road and keeping their cars longer, used vehicles that are traded in today normally have more miles on the odometer than they used to.  At the same time, most cars made in the last 20 years can remain in…

Yesterday, my 80 year old mother, took her SUV to the local dealer for an oil change.  Even though it is a lease, she likes to treat it like she would if she owned it and have the oil changed every 3000 miles or so.  So, she pulled into the service lane of the store where she has bought a new vehicle every three years since I was 16 (over 35 years), and where she has had her car serviced every three months since then.  My mom believes that the dealer is the best…

For those of you who…

Recently an auto dealership experienced an all-too-common security breach. An employee in the accounting department received an email from someone who he thought was the dealer asking him to initiate a $30,000 transfer from the dealership's bank account to another bank account. The accounting employee complied with the request and it was discovered later that the email was a scam. Unfortunately, there was no way to retrieve the funds.

This dealership has a state-of-the-art…

Our industry does a lot with gimmicks. You’d be hard pressed to drive through an auto mall or other area dense with dealerships and not see balloons, giant inflatable gorillas or wavy tube men. On nice days, we attempt to lure shoppers in with hot dogs and sodas. We incentivize test drives. We offer televisions, iPads and Playstations with purchase. There’s always a gimmick…

Walmart sells a bag of M&M peanuts for $.50. If you’re at a service station the price of that same packet of peanuts jumps to one dollar. If you’re at a five-star hotel and that bag of peanuts is sitting in your room the price jumps dramatically higher to six dollars. Understand it’s the exact same product, yet the prices are distinctively different. Let’s use this information and consider what…

This week, hot-off-the press, we’ve got the 2016 U.S. Women’s Car Dealership Report, showing how progressive car dealerships make a difference in the experiences of women and families. This national report shows what is important to women when shopping, buying and servicing their vehicles.

The information in this report is drawn from over 4,000 women’s reviews and opt-in surveys. Using the reviews, Women-Drivers.com generates a Women Satisfaction Index® (WSI Score),…

Swapalease.com, the nation’s largest car lease marketplace, has new data that shows that Scion vehicles were performing adequately on Swapalease.com, and in some cases had better performance than certain Toyota models and other peers. The analysis was conducted following Toyota’s decision to wind down production of the Scion brand.

Toyota declared that Scion, a division of Toyota Motor Corporation, will be discontinued as of August 2016. The upstart brand was launched in 2002 in an…