Auto dealerships are constantly focused on team building to reduce employee turnover and increase sales. But, it can be daunting to find good salespeople and service associates who will drive revenue and have good customer service skills to improve your Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) Scores.

That’s why auto dealers need tools to ask the right interview questions to…

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Newcomers to the sales team may often be steered off course by negative salespeople who perhaps are jaded from their many unsuccessful attempts in the field or…

Understanding the advantages of consumer leasing for your dealerships, sales team, and your customers if crucial for a successful and profitable increase in gross sales. While leasing is not for every customer, knowing when to confidently and professionally present consumer leasing as an option to customers will certainly maximize your selling potential.…

As published in Fixed Ops Magazine~

Have you ever put a price tag on each of your service advisor’s chairs?  Well, you should! It’s probably worth much more than you realize. This chair has the potential to be the most valuable seat in your dealership. Just think about it. The person in this chair gets more selling…

Hey Car Dealer: Stop Letting Carvana (and Everyone Else) Define You! 

If you believe the corporate manifestos and marketing pitches of every automotive retail-related startup for the last twenty years, then you’d think America’s car dealerships are staffed by a bunch of puppy-kicking thieves providing zero value as they work overtime to deliver the absolute…

Good ideas always start with a bad one. Come to a meeting with an overflow of ideas and you're bound to find a good one out of the batch!

Watch this week's #ThinkTankTuesday to learn how you can improve your brainstorming meetings, marketing strategy ideas, and teamwork. Plus, Dan brought his dog.…

After a quarter of a century, auto dealerships have finally started realizing that technology works for them, not vice versa. As 2017 has opened the door for innovation, such as virtual reality, but in order to reach this level, the entire car industry needs to pull the brake and realize the benefits of a proven technology. And the key is in text…

If everyday you woke up and weren’t tired….

If you were never sick…

If you never suffered the death of someone close to you…

If you never hit life’s walls- the sudden loss of a job you gave nearly half of your life to, the forced bankruptcy because the economy tanked, the 15 year ride or die marriage ending in divorce, watching your car get repo’d while you hold on to your 5 year old son for comfort, and/or the foreclosure of the only home your children…

5:30 AM and The #AlphaDawg is on the Point

SO YOU WANT TO BE A MANAGER... do you have what it takes?

First time in a long time I've been able to time stamp my Good-Morning Message at 5:30 AM. .... My visit to the Back Surgeon yesterday as an outpatient has me up and…

Cars Performed Better than Light Trucks Last Week

Welcome to this week's edition of Black Book Market Insights, with in-depth analysis of used car and truck valuation trends and insights straight from the auction lanes.…

Black Book, a division of Hearst Business Media that provides industry-leading used vehicle valuation and residual value forecast solutions, announced today the Black Book Used Vehcile Retention Index, designed to offer an unbiased, accurate view of the strength of today’s used wholesale market values. Click here to obtain a copy of the latest Index.

The Black Book Used Vehicle Retention Index is calculated…

Someone's always coming by the dealership selling "plate lunches." Good ole', waist-busting southern cooking such as Smothered Chicken with rice and gravy or Fried Fish and Crawfish Etoufee-these plates are so loaded down with food, you can literally hear the Styrofoam cracking when they hand it to you. 

Most vendors sell their dinners the same…

In today’s hyper-competitive industry, women buyers are crucial for dealer’s success. Almost 8 million new cars are being purchased by women alone. And, Certified Trusted Dealers are expanding their business to this powerful buying segment. In fact, these Certified Trusted Dealers have a cumulative 97.1% satisfaction score vs non-certified trusted dealers 85.5% satisfaction score. What a difference!

Women-Drivers has just compiled our annual comprehensive report on…

If you are a Facebook user – just like roughly one-third of the planet – then you have probably noticed that Facebook sends birthday alerts via text messages. If you google the words “Facebook birthday alert texts” you will get a ton of results from websites where people asked how to disable or turn them off. Annoyed by this or not, this issue has risen a lot of…

 According to Black Book® data, the average price of a used vehicle for model years 2011-2015 depreciated by -0.8% in February. Cars overall saw depreciation of –0.8% versus trucks, which saw –0.7% depreciation. All vehicles are averaging a 12-month depreciation change of –17.9%.

In February, Small Pickups preformed the best, increasing their value by 0.2%. Vehicles in the Small Pickups segment include the Toyota Tacoma, Chevrolet Colorado, Nissan Frontier and Honda Ridgeline.…

Your Turn To Drive discusses How has technology changed car buying online? Jim Dykstra, founder of www.vinadvisor.net, has teamed up with Joe Webb of DealerKnows Consulting and Shawn Ryder of D2C Mediato discuss the…