A new report released by Maritz Research recently claims that four in 10 customers are not even test driving their cars before purchasing. This is an astounding number of consumers, even if half of them didn’t tell the truth.

This phenomenon of customers bypassing the test drive can actually cause a backlash of issues…

Here at Wikimotive, we love educated customers. Thatʼs why we put together this list, laying out the top five questions a business should ask any prospective SEO Company before hiring them. It doesnʼt cover everything, but with these five questions, you should be able to get a good overall feel and narrow down your prospective…

Starving for Attention

I’m sitting in the manager’s office. He’s got the blinds up and is pointing to the showroom floor.

“That’s him – third desk. Ed. When he started, I thought the guy would be a natural. Young, good-looking, knows the cars, knows finance, friendly, great recommendation… I think I must have spent $10K on getting him trained. But I don’t understand him. He’s making me look bad, like I can’t pick ‘em anymore. The other guys are starting to crack jokes.…

AutoTrader.com and vAuto announce the integration of AutoTrader.com’s Trade-In Marketplace (TIM) into vAuto’s suite of inventory management tools.

Integrating TIM with vAuto enables dealers to efficiently acquire more trade-ins and deliver a more market-transparent and customer-satisfying appraisal and purchasing process.

“This integration advances our goal to build greater synergies between AutoTrader Group companies and provide more value for dealers,” says Jim Menard, vice…

The team at PCG Consulting, Inc. has always been one to share relevant information regarding issues that affect dealerships. We have been writing and teaching about the importance of your online reputation and ways to not only grow your presence but to market it as well over the past few years.

Due to the many changes with…

Good morning Dealer Elite members and friends,

In my travels I visit hundreds of dealerships as a consultant and sometime as an observer or even as a consumer. Some of the things I see amaze me, some in a good way and some in a bad way. For example I was touring a series of dealership locations over the weekend and I must say that each dealership had a different customer experience.

It was saturday and it was quite warm so I was dressed casually and I visited…

AutoCon Coupon Book Worth Over $10,000

All dealership attendees will receive their Exhibitor Cash coupon book with over $10,000 in discounts when they check-in on September 5th.  There will be over 50 companies in the Exhibit Hall and the Exhibitor Cash book will allow attendees to identify the right solutions for their dealership and lock in instant savings.

The coupons range from $200 - $2,500 off world class products and services.  The…

Eric and Apple Honda are a proud Dealer eTraining client.

https://www.facebook.com/dealeretraining

Eric Nichols, Internet Sales Manager for Apple…

Great article recently published in The Car Connection: "Car Customers Hate Haggling More Than Anything." It might seem obvious, but sometimes dealerships can get caught up in the sales game, and forget that customers are so disinclined to participate. Getting a great price for the customer while also turning a profit for the company is a high priority (and rightly so) but a new survey found that the one thing customers hate above all else is negotiating the price of their new…

Part of our marketing is to monitor help wanted ads for sales people.  I've seen some that should be very effective, but far too many are less than acceptable.  The only way to describe them is pure laziness.  The only other possibility is that the dealer is still running the sales department on "The Warm Body Theory."  That's where dealers who are stuck in the 1980's still believe that if they keep hiring warm bodies, eventually they'll end up with some "natural" sales talent.…

 ActivEngage, the most trusted name in live chat brings the top ten blogs and auto news stories right to you! We monitor industry trends, current events and the auto dealer community every week to bring you the top ten blogs and automotive stories from around the globe. In this weekly edition – portraits made out of beef jerky, alternate…

Facebook is undeniably one of the most influential companies on the internet; they dominate the social media landscape and cause web-wide rage with even the most minor of updates. Could they do more, though? They certainly seem to think so.

The social media…

It seems as though Google continues to be more transparent than in the past, which is great for webmasters. At the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Francisco last week, I had the chance to take part in a Q&A with the famous Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team.  One of the attendees asked Matt about the Penguin update and what it meant going forward.  I’m paraphrasing Matt here, but he said that webmasters should expect Penguin updates to continue and to be "jarring" for a…

After reading many blogs about the topic of fake followers, I decided to do some investigating on the topic for myself. I found that the business of buying and selling fake Twitter followers is booming, according to a study by Barracuda Labs: Among the top 100 Google search results for the term "buy Twitter followers" are…

Google announced this week that they would be making further adjustments to their algorithms, specifically with the Penguin and Panda parts of it. If you’ve been reading our blog and following our advice you should have nothing to worry about because you will already be creating good content. If not you might want to pay attention because the adjustments to the algorithm are…

VinSolutions has been named the 51stth fastest growing software company and is ranked the 616th fastest growing company in America overall for 2012. 

Every successful business wins because it has at least these dimensions:  The Paper, The Plan—and The People.

Pop-up advertising has gotten a pretty negative rap over the years. Maybe that’s due in part to the 90s, when pop-ups would frequently flood your browser window, unfettered by blockers or anti-virus software. Perhaps pop-up ads deserve their negative connotation; they’re intrusive, gaudy, and difficult to escape from. But…

Fusion of Best-in-Class Video and Lead to Show Incentive Solutions to Drive More Showroom Visits and Conversions

New York, NY – August 21, 2012 – HookLogic, the leading provider of ecommerce media solutions and services, today announced a strategic integration with Authntk, a video marketing platform enabling auto dealers to use mobile devices to quickly and easily create an engaging, personalized video email for each lead. As a result of this powerful new…

http://automotivebdctraining.com/

https://www.facebook.com/dealeretraining

As I travel and work with dealerships all over the country I am constantly amazed at how often I find that the CRM in dealerships is not…