In the movie Moneyball the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics was faced with a dilemma: His star players were leaving, going to other richer organizations that could pay them more money. Using the old ways of doing business his team was bound to lose--they couldn't compete dollar for dollar with the richer clubs. The old way wasn't going to work for a team with a lesser amount of money.

Even those teams with money were paying millions of dollars per win--as much as 3 million--an…

Sales Training:

Traditionally we train our salesmen to act on rather than act with the customer. Say the right lines, the the right word track, and the customer will buy. If the customer doesn't buy then we didn't say the

right thing. Right words, right outcome. I have been to numerous sales trainings over the years and usually it starts with loud music and a man yelling at the attendees trying to pump them up. Nothing wrong with building excitement and confidence, but the focus is…

Your dealership has been in business since the '60s and has always gotten a fair  amount of repeat business. Mostly customers who want to get out of lease because they are over miles or customers whose miles on the car makes getting a new car a good idea--that a new car payment would be less than they paid previously. The dealer estimates that if he could identify these customers and contact them through telemarketers or mailers that could produce up to ten new deals per…

SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is how websites alter their content to improve ranking on search engines; e.g., Google, Yahoo, Bing. The higher a website ranks on a search--ideally within the first five results--the more website traffic. This is often the difference between commercial success and failure. SEO alters a website's webpages by modifying HTML, Hyper Text Mark-up Language, external and internal links, and content to improve the website's search rank.

Crawlers:

To…

What is your reputation worth? What is your reputation? This is the essence of branding: What do people think when they think of your dealership. Branding is not etched in stone. It has to be maintained and enhanced or its value is lost.

Let's take a few mintues to understand Brand and how it can boost sales and visibility in your marketplace. Take for example a dealership that went out of business but is re-opening under new management. The old dealer was noted for high prices and…

One of the biggest challenges facing any Internet Sales Manager is the Low Ball Quote. Because there is no guaranteed answer to the Low-Ball. no turn-key, no magic bullet. Joe Girard, one of the great car salesmen of all time, said that the battle is not customer vs. salesman; the battle, as Mr. Girard states, is getting on the customer's side. The Low-Ball is what stands between you and a winning relationship with the customer. It is a big mountain to climb. 

Some…