It is no secret that the service department tends to get the smallest part of the dealership’s marketing budget, despite bringing in the most revenue. Some dealers take this for granted with marketing dollars focused on sales. I get it – dealerships originally served as a critical, local arm of the OEM’s distribution of new models. However, due to the…

In this era of transparency, consumers can gather more information than ever before. In the past, they relied upon the dealer to provide it to them. Now, however, they can visit multiple websites in order to gain the information they need before even contacting a dealership. Once the consumer decides they are ready to buy (or close to it) and start to take…

What’s the real cost of training? What’s the real expense?

If you’re like most answering this question, the answer that rolled off your tongue instantaneously was “nothing” then you supported that answer with a statement along the lines of “we pay managers a salary, and they handle it.”

Stop for a second and think about the above statement; while it’s true, they receive a salary, how many managers, when asked to write out their job description, include “training” on…

Many people over time have gone on blind dates. Sometimes those dates were set-up by friends and scheduled for one person to meet the other with the two having no knowledge of each other. Sometimes the one being set-up by their friends has some information about who they will be meeting and sometimes both parties have some prior knowledge of each other. The…

Anyone in retail car sales learned early on that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Most everyone has at least one story in which they did and lost a sale. If you look, many of today’s millionaires don’t dress like millionaires. Just take a look at Mark Zuckerberg who sports a t-shirt and jeans daily. That being said, in today’s digital world, first…