My youngest sister was born premature and as a result had pulmonary problems as a child.  Because she suffered from chronic asthma, there was little expectation for her to be a strong and healthy child.  One of the therapies she was subjected to in an effort to strengthen her lungs, was swimming underwater.  I am sure this started out as a…

Mobile phones are everywhere, be it a regular phone or a smart phone. It's almost like people have them attached to them. Based on this fact it's no surprise that your team should be collecting multiple numbers from customers and potential customers.

We have found in most dealerships that we work with that in most cases only one maybe two numbers at best are in your database or CRM. Now if you staff has asked correctly one of these numbers should be a cell phone. This information is…

The Ride

It was the big hills that scared me.  That and the killer outfits some of them were wearing. Not to mention the bikes that weighed about as much as my shoe.  I didn’t want to be the domino that caused the whole group to end up being scraped off the pavement into ambulances.

It was late spring last year. I was at the Village Bike shop, getting my gear out of the car and getting myself into possible pain and humiliation on my first group ride billed as “Ride with the…

Who is facilitating your Coaching?

There are literally thousands of coaches out there…with their own slant or insight… on what is the correct way of doing things…

My question is this…

Does their coaching align exactly with what your core values and culture are all…

The Value of the Imbedded Sales Process

Ask yourself this question:  “Do you want to run a loose ship and still make money or a tight ship and make lots of money?”  Look, I know that money isn’t everything, but it’s a great way to keep score.  Where am I going with this?  Well, in my opinion every dealership should have an embedded sales process.  For this and many other reasons, structure at the sales desk is imperative.  It leads to consistency and…

Years ago in dealerships all over the world, the dealers were to only way to get pricing. Customers did not have access to invoice pricing, shipping cost, etc. The simple fact is that today this is just not the case any more. I hear dealers all the time talk about the "good old" days when customers did not know so it was easy to make money.

I also hear a great deal of blame as well being tossed around. It's the manufacturers fault, it's my competitions fault, it's the salespeople etc.…

Rolling!  Lights, camera, terror.

My first automotive sales manager videoed me doing vehicle presentations and it took me from a knock kneed novice to a top presenter in record time.  For the first time I knew what I looked like when I was presenting.  It turned out that when I was nervous I tended to not only smooth my clothes but grab them and hold the edge of my shirt in a bunch.  Hilarious. Unless it’s you.

Here’s the key.  I only had to see myself do that once.  I fixed it…

At The Dealer Resource Group our goal is to provide the highest level of service to our dealer clients.  Our 21st Century Selling System(c) teaches ethical sales skills for the curent market.  Our goal is to lead by example, practice what we preach, and really walk the walk.  Doing so often attracts the best of the best.  This announcement is just that.

Here are our newest additions to the DRG Team:

Gene Diehm

Gene Diehm has been…

Training.  It's an important element to any successful department.  While it's my livelihood now, when I was managing dealerships, I think I missed a lot of opportunities to be a better trainer.  Standing in front of a room for an hour or less delivering a technique or other instruction, just didn't create the improvement I was looking for.  Later in my career, many managers confirmed that belief with their own experience.  While multi-day training programs, with notebooks and class…

Published On: July 25, 2011

"The Sales Manager’s Laws of CRM Use" presented by Greg Wells at the 10th Digital Dealer Conference.

We’re living in the age of information, and a CRM is an effective hub car dealers can use to record, analyze and implement information. That’s the message Greg Wells presented at the 2011 Digital…

You can have wonderful gross profit margins and even show wonderful net profits on paper however without great processes on accounts receivable you will just have paper with no real value to celebrate with. For those of you with a large amount of aged receivables and the desire to take action start by calling your customers with old balances and offer a discount to pay using a credit card.…

One of the SEO sites that I frequently read (www.searchengineland.com) has a VERY interesting post by a  reader, LebSEO Design's Wissam Dandan.  He has found examples of Google Adwords ads appearing at the bottom of the page for some searches.

No one on our search team at…

You Are You

You are strong. . .

when you take your

grief and teach it to smile.

You are brave. . .

when you overcome your…

Everyone has worked with Negative Nellie and Cantankerous Craig and seen how they can poison the waters of progress with their hater-aide.  Their less than inspiring attitude spread like a cancer through what was once an optimistic and forward moving team.  To managers and fellow peers, it is easy to identify the Nellies and Craigs and see the impact they have on team success.

There is…

My Grandfather Benedict was a United Methodist circuit preacher in Wyoming during the Great Depression He had 4 different churches. They were quite distant from each other so he would do 2 one week and two the second week. He always kept a suitcase in the car, and books and other what not because in Wyoming a storm can come out of nowhere. It could blow for days, and a traveler would simply knock on a door and be taken in until everything cleared up. It is not good to be caught out in a…

After reading numerous blogs I decided to write about a story I once heard,,

The story begins in a small logging town. There happens to be two lumberjacks one extremely large and burly man, and the second lumberjack is extremely small and skinny. For some reason or another the two of them decide that they are going to have a contest to see who can chop the most wood specified time slot.

The judge of the contest ring's the bell and they are off,, the large man is…

As a leader…do you know what motivates every individual in your organization??

Do you know why each individual comes to work each day…and earns a living working with you??

What are the driving forces behind each individual…that makes them get up every morning…fight the traffic…and come to work for your organization??

I can tell you…if you don’t take the time to see what motivates every individual in your organization…you will not…

As a automotive industry professional with lots of years under my belt, I must say I have heard a lot of tactics, techniques and the spin of course. I have been hearing Sales Managers, trainers and others for years talk about taking control of the customer.

Talk is cheap and just saying “take control” of your customers does not make it happen.

Here are a few tactics that not only make logical sense they actually help you “take control” and sell more cars….

 …

 Find a process that will make you better than the competition to start and stick with it. Know the difference between a requirement and just a request. In other words this must be done.                                                                                  If you did your best to train and help the person and it isn't working, eliminate the problem so everyone knows this is what is required to work here. Have everything [ the process] written down with no grey areas. Train and…