Generally when I begin with a client, I have a casual conversation with the manager of every fixed operations department to determine what they know and how I can best serve them to get to the next level. The most common training they have received is where their desk and the coffee pot are going they are released to get to work. I have met service managers with over 30 years of experience that didn’t even know what their effective labor rate was or how to improve the result. Now I…

I would like to share some feedback from Internet Sales Managers at a number of very successful dealerships that have seen their sales numbers grow with the implementation of 360-degree spins/panoramas on their sites.

“360’s do a great job of giving our customers the ability to explore any vehicle. They give them that virtual opportunity to see the details if they are not actually here at the dealership. We are confident 360’s make them feel more comfortable and raises…

The following is a great article from women-drivers.com, speaking to dealerships about the power of being women-friendly.

What are you and your team doing to target the female consumer?

Top 10 Certified Women-Drivers Friendly™ Dealers in the US

 

The female consumer has spoken and out of 1300 dealerships in the United States receiving reviews, the Top 10 Certified Women-Drivers Friendly™ Dealers are in for 2011. The Certificate…

Insignia Group congratulates the Top Dealers by Women Certified

Insignia was a proud sponsor of the “Voice of the Female Consumer”, as Women Certified announced their Top Dealerships for…

I have been asked multiple times in my life how do I make every dealership I go to head in the right direction?  I think the answer is really simple and always hope it comes across as humble as possible.  Here it goes.

There are three key elements…

by Tamara Lischer

The world is full of commodities.  Everything from cell phones to toothpaste.  It is the glue that binds all of us together.  We can’t live without them.  Nearly everything we use today is manufactured and produced this way.  In fact, we would collapse as a species if it was not. 

In the past 150 years we have morphed from a “handcrafted” industrial base to “mass…

This new Generation of buyers 80 million strong are rapidly becoming the largest driving force in the market place. They require different selling interaction than previous Generations. 

NADA has a workshop and Booth at Digital Dealer that will talk to these points for anyone attending. We have compiled a great deal of data and done consumer research to help dealers better understand these buyers and their habits. 

Here are a few thought starters:

1. 1 in 4…

The FTC recently singled out 5 dealerships for something that I suspect hundreds, if not thousands of dealerships has done. Essentially offer to  “pay off the trade no matter what you owe”

If we were to say in response to the FTC’s actions that we never meant to mislead anybody or mislead any consumer, that’s not who we are….. I say, that is exactly who we are.  If there was no validity to the claims of the FTC then why would we back down? In the instant case, who ultimately…

Teaching the “7 Habits” to a 4th grader? Yep, you bet! It’s not only about the progression of knowledge, but rather the integration and formation of a belief system.

It’s not just your ordinary curriculum and not just an ordinary school. Instead of sitting down for a typical parent-teachers conference, we were led on a student…

It is spring time in the North East.   Beautiful weather and time to really enjoy the selling season.  I enjoy this time because it give us a renewed energy and fire to market and brand our cars.   A dealership I consult for has a nice used inventory.  We put some signs on the sides of the cars and as I walked the lot I noticed that we had a 4x4 pick up truck quad cab and a nice one, a little older but really nice.  It had a huge 24X48 graphic on it that said $269.00 a month.   I thought…

Innovative Dealer Summit invites Sean Stapleton, CSO and Kendall Billman, VP of Interactive Marketing to speak at the event hosted by the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association Event

Overland Park, KS – March 14, 2012- VinSolutions, an industry-leading developer of automotive Internet-based Customer Relations Management (CRM) and Internet Lead Management (ILM) software, is a sponsor at the Innovative Dealer Summit, organized…

Definition: Ambition is the desire for personal achievement.

As dealer principals, general managers, sales managers, parts and service managers. do we truly understand  the meaning of this on a daily basis? Are we on the same page, with every employee’s, personal achievement? We are driven…

As some of you may know, I served as the director of ecommerce for the Asbury Automotive Group (NYSE: ABG) a few years ago. One of the most rewarding things about working for a publicly-traded MegaDealer Group was the ability to not only negotiate from a position of strength (we had over 120 franchises back then), but also the luxury of relying on a team of experts to help us always select the best of the best providers of any product or service.

While our process was exhaustive (we…

It is a well-known fact that abbreviations and emoticons are often used in every day conversations. From texting to emailing, this lingo has become popular across all generations and forms of media – dating all the way back to…

The Seven Habits of Internet Buffoons

How to avoid the common mistakes that spell disaster for your 2012 e-commerce efforts

What can you learn from a pizza parlor, the Mercury-Gemini program, and a cat that will make you great at e-commerce? You will learn how in this entertaining and educational session that will show you that it is often not what you do that makes you great in your online efforts, but what you don’t do. Real-life examples,…

Should we be concerned that GM, Cobalt, and Google decided it best to create Google Places pages for all GM dealers?



Has anyone seen effects in organic search?



Is it all a little "Big Brother-ish" ?



Do these broad sweeping activities border on collusion when considered in the context of organic search and Pay-Per-Click advertising.



When vendors get that close to "Google" what are the unintended or intended consequences to the invisible hand of free…

     I know what most people are thinking. What in the world is attergy. I assure you I have somewhere I am going with this. The other morning in the sales meating, my manager was trying to tell us to greet every customer with enthusiasm and energy. What he said cought my ears. "Work every day with attergy"

     Of course he quikly redirected his statement to what he had orriginally intended to say, but I wrote the word down and have even come up with a…

Professional Service Advisors are Action oriented. They don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what is The Right Thing To Do because they already know what the Right Thing To Do is.

These Advisors have a sense of Empowerment and that leads to Empowered Action.

Empowered Action by definition is when one has the ability to do something with the Customers Best…