After returning home form a speaking engagement in New York, I wanted to relax a little and flipped channels on the TV until I came to a movie called “Beyond the Sea.” My intention was to just watch and enjoy the movie and just release all the tensions of work and travel. It was time to veg-out and not think. Then – boom – it happened. A line from the movie hit me like a thunder bolt: “People hear what they see.”

“Beyond the Sea” is a movie about the life of Bobby Darin.…

"And Round And Round We Go"

There seems to be a great deal of commonality and consensus in the disconnect between the Sales Department and The BDC Department just to name two and…

There’s a case against Twitter and Pinterest that is being waged by some in the automotive industry. They’ll say that there simply isn’t a good return on investment, that they aren’t worth messing with because it’s just too hard to find a benefit from them. This is true until you look at one major factor: time.

Twitter and Pinterest require very little time to maintain and keep vibrant.…

Many people really don’t know exactly what a Public Relations firm does. The common answer is “write press releases,” but I can guarantee you public relations firms do not sit around all day and just write press releases (or at least good ones). So what, exactly, do we do?

As defined by the Public…

ALBANY, N.Y. – May 14^th, 2013 – Auto/Mate Dealership Systems (http://www.automate.com) announced today that its AMPS Dealership Management System (DMS) is fully integrated with Xtime ServiceCRM, the leading cloud-based customer retention management (CRM) and scheduling platform for the automotive service industry. Dealers using AMPS can now take advantage of seamless, bi-directional data exchange with Xtime Service CRM to improve…

Stressed about your Online Marketing Strategy? Don't know what you should be tracking and what benchmarks to measure? Then watch this week's Think Tank Tuesday Video, Leave Your Comments below the video and Share it Please.

Written by: Rebecca Chernek

EMBRACE CHANGE

The glass ceiling for women’s acceptance in the finance industry was shattered over a decade ago.

According to the 2012 Catalyst Census of Women Executive Officers and Top Earners, which counts the number of women in upper management in Fortune 500 companies, women comprise over 18% of all executive officers in the finance industry, and 19% of board directors in the finance and insurance industries in…

Everyone who plays in the Facebook page strategy game has their opinions about the types of content to post. Car dealers and vendors have tried different things over the years. Some have found success while others have let it fall off completely, dismissing it as unimportant or too time-consuming to mess with on a daily basis.

For those who are doing well or…

Driver Connect, a breakthrough mobile app for the auto industry, is recognized in Mobile On-Demand Software Application category

Daytona Beach, FL – May 14, 2013 – DMEautomotive’s Driver Connect has been named a finalist for “New Product or Service of the Year” in the Software - Mobile On-Demand Application category in The 2013 American Business Awards, and will ultimately be a Gold, Silver, or Bronze…

Cars, dealerships and sales people can be commodities. As a sales person, your job is to move everything you do and everything you have towards being a non-commoditized item or service. You must sell your difference.

When making a decision, customers look for deciding factors. Being able to know what the differences are and then helping the customer know what they look like, sound like and feel like is your job. Customers don’t spend an hour with you and say, “This is exactly…

Dealerships today spend most of their marketing budgets on acquiring new customers. Those ads in the newspapers aren’t really meant for current of past customers, they are meant to attract new customers. The cost of customer acquisition ranges from 6 to 10 times more than the cost…

Sometimes going behind the analytical data or numbers just is not enough! We tend to seek or want more answers! We try and find answers by trying to connect to allies , peers , friends or other dealers! We need to instead connect to Wisdom!  Seek it....and you shall find!

Mentors are those who brings wisdom into play! Their wisdom…

• Peter A. Salinas is a career journalist who has been covering the used-vehicle industry for more than 12 years. He is the managing editor of Dealer Business Journal.

In terms…

     American motorists have long worshiped big engines that generate high horsepower, but as we all know unstable gasoline prices have diminished the fervor for big V-8s in favor of smaller, more fuel efficient powerplants.

     Small engines have been in favor in Europe and Asia for decades as fuel economy has been a compelling factor. Now that gasoline costs a…

There’s a fine line between making social media useless by posting things that aren’t relevant for business and making it ineffective by having posts that are too promotional, thus killing the posts through “death by algorithm”. Done right, businesses have the ability to be interesting enough to make the algorithms like them while being relevant enough…

Branding is important. It’s something that most businesses want but few do well enough considering the tools that we all have at our disposal through the internet in general and social media in particular. However, too many are starting to use social media as a branding tool only. The reality for local businesses is that it can and should be used to drive…

Fix your sales problem in 5 easy steps – sounds great, doesn’t it? Formulaic approaches such as this are very tempting. Furthermore, they align with our fast food, quick fix mentality. Seem too good to be true? That’s because it is. Don’t get me wrong, I revel in an easy solution. Unfortunately, most quick fixes are band-aids as opposed to real solutions.

One…

Initially, I was totally against Cars.com sending emails to customers showing the competition's vehicles especially on the timetable they were using.  I didn't appreciate the fact that they "sneaked" it out without discussing it with their dealers or even their field reps. I was even less thrilled that they sending inventory feeds to TrueCar, Cargurus and God know where else.  

As far as the email program, with the proper timetable, I can see how dealerships, that know how to market…

Facebook has been a challenging venue for marketers and advertisers ever since it started really getting popular in 2009. At that time, it was clear that it was the social network to beat and the company started trying to cash in with different types of advertising options. Most of them failed miserably for the same reason that many marketers continue to fail today: people go to Facebook to be…