It is almost hard to comprehend how fast mobile Internet usage is growing.  According to Google, more smartphones were sold last year than PCs.  It's predicted that 50% of Americans will have a smartphone by the end of the year and that there will be 10 billion mobile Internet devices in 2012, up from the 2 billion that are activated today.  A child is more likely to own a cell phone than a book!

How is that going to impact the car buying experience and your online strategy? …

MPi Releases EDGE Mobile for Service Advisors, Helps Auto Dealer Service Departments Maximize Customer Upsell and Profitability

Las Vegas, NV, August 1, 2011, MPi (www.mpi-edge.com) the leading provider of vehicle inspection tools, processes, and consulting for auto dealer service departments, today announced the release of…

Las Vegas, NV, August 1, 2011, MPi (www.mpi-edge.com) the leading provider of vehicle inspection tools, processes, and consulting for auto dealer service departments, today announced the release of EDGE Mobile for Service Advisors. 

EDGE Mobile is an effective sales tool developed for auto dealership service advisors to…

How do you develop leaders in your business??

First of all, I think it is important to get EVERYONE to understand….that they are ALL leaders.

This is a tough concept for some people. Maybe they feel like the average employee out there, just doing what they are told and moving forward in life…..

But the fact…

There are 3 overlooked things:

1. No putdowns!

2. Don't criticize, but shift postive energy somewhere else when someone makes a mistake.

3. If you criticize too much, you are creating a culture of failure.

Extracted comments from the post Dealers in California… by Arnold Tijerina.

Levi Arevalo commented, “Commissions are an archaic form of compensation that need to be eliminated.  Salaried workers with reasonable quotas would be more adequate.”

Jim Kristoff commented, “I believe the “NEW” model of automotive sales professionals need to be compensated in this way.

1. Salary – (majority of their pay)
2. Small volume…

This question is huge, because simply dialing the phone can dramatically change the outcome of your dealership’s Internet Sales. Your Dealership’s Internet Department and BDC are, after all, a numbers game. Let me break it down for you:

• The more people you dial, the more people you get on the phone.
• The more people you get on the…

Price cutting is a self-inflicted wound. Nobody holds a gun to your head and makes you cut your price. I know that many of you are thinking right now: "There is so much competition today that you can't maintain profits," "Everybody is giving everything away," "The salespeople can't negotiate," and "Everybody knows our pricing from the Internet..." Blah, Blah, Blah. Stop whining about price!

Only about ten percent of buyers buy on price alone. For that ten percent, you can…

AdAgencyOnline.Net is an automotive advertising resource / networking portal known for their in-depth reviews of cutting edge automotive advertising vendors on their hosted blog talk radio station – WAAOL, All Automotive Advertising News All The Time.  This week’s Automotive Advertising Experts show will feature a review of an iconic vendor, EVOX IMAGES ®, known by automotive advertising agencies as the best…

Selling twenty or 30 cars a month.  Holding gross.  Prospecting through the…

Hey DealerElite members,

The 11th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition is having a sweepstakes for a FREE registration to the conference. Anyone is eligible to win so I encourage all dE members to enter! CLICK HERE TO ENTER!

 …

In the movie classic, “The Wizard of Oz”, the character Dorothy, upon seeing the impending storm yells out…..”Auntie Em, Auntie Em…it’s a twister…it’s a twister!”

This is how most Automotive Dealers and General Managers feel about social media marketing. The social media storm is coming on fast, and spinning in directions that no one can predict where the future will go!

I have personally been in the retail automotive industry for 30 years,…

Who can you trust?  That’s a hard question.  In business, we all want the answer to be ME.  As we were forming AutoNetTV, one of the issues that kept coming up in our market research was trust.  Trust, or some variant, was among the top 3 concerns of every service center owner, service department manager or service advisor we interviewed. …

Everyone has wishes albeit winning the mega million dollar lottery, tossing a penny in the wishing well, even rubbing on Aladdin’s Lamp and making 3 wishes. We have seen wishes come true when people from all walks of life become instant millionaires. In today’s social world we watched the modern day rags-to-riches story of YouTube sensation Ted Williams go…

How to leave Messages that generate business for your dealership?

We have found that most dealerships get one phone number when speaking to customers. In addition to this fact they usually have only the home number. Due to this fact our BDC’s need to make a large volume of calls in order to speak to a small volume of customers.

What this means is we need to leave a large volume of messages for customers. Due to this fact we have also developed a number of tactics to improve…

The sport that so many predicted I would excel at due to my size was actually the sport where I floundered.  When it came to the hardwood, the only skill I had was shooting free throws.  My coaches could have just given up on me and focused their attention on the superstars on the team, but instead they invested time and energy into the one thing I could do well.  In place of teaching me to drive down…

When salespeople get to work in the morning, what's their goal for the day?  As managers plan the week or the month, what outcome are they focusing on?  When dealers set their sites on year end, what do they see? Usually, in each case, whatever it is, it's not enough.  Sales people want a sale, or a commission.  Managers focus on total volume or gross.  And dealers see that they ended up above water. 

Unfortunately, with visions like that, even if you accomplish what you set…