Recently, I’ve been busy out in the field doing what I love most—rolling up my sleeves and working on-site with client-dealers, which is something I don’t have much time for in my position as director of the NCM® Institute. Recently, though, I’ve had the opportunity to work with two exceptional dealership groups who are committed to going “from good to great.”   

I know I’ve been remarkably fortunate, over my 25+ years in training and…

Find 67 auto industry resources to get info, digital publications and social networks.

I’m often getting request from clients to take a look at specific area of their website, where for some reason they may not be getting as much traffic as they would like. There are many great search engine optimization strategies you can use for single pages or sections…

The Holiday season is just right around the corner, are your video promos up to par with your competition? The number of people who watch online video at least once per month is greater than those who watch TV at least once per month, according to a recent Nielsen study. www.autoblog.com/media/2010/12/pomplamoosehyundai.jpg" alt=""…

Constellation Automotive Software is part of a larger group of companies, Constellation Dealership Software. Together we provide software solutions in the BHPH, Retail Automotive, RV, Marine, Outdoor Power Equipment and Powersports industries.

One of the issues facing dealers in all of these industries is managing risk and staying compliant with a growing number of laws and regulations. Resources for educating and training dealers and their employees on these issues are…

According to a new survey by Career Builder, 51% of employers have hired an applicant with a criminal history. Since more than 92 million individuals have a criminal history on file in state databases, according to the Justice Department?s Bureau of Justice Statistics, employers will have applicants that have a criminal past. The key for employers is to run a background check so that they know about any criminal past activities and can make an informed hiring decision. Having a past…

Not riding along on the demo is without a doubt the most damaging part of the sales process. If you read my article titled “Trade In, The Secret to the Sale” and you are following those guidelines I give you props!! If you have not read it I would suggest that you read it and make it a part of your process for it tends to help with…

Most businesses understand the benefits of search engine optimization, but many miss out on easy opportunities. Building backlinks is common, but social link building is often overlooked. Social link building enables you to build links that will spread…

As I write this article, I am in literally sitting at an Internet Sales 20 Group where my colleagues and I are sharing best practices with over 50 dealers.  It seems that auto dealers are concerned more about their online reputation now than ever before.  While it is great to see dealers place a focus on it there still needs to be a structure in place that will create a strong reputation for the dealership.  Once a structure is in place, managing an online reputation is actually a very…

Seeing is believing. Customers are much more likely to trust and say "yes" to a repair recommendation that they can visually see and understand. http://bit.ly/TRpVUu. Traditional means of verbally conveying a repair recommendation and or providing your customer with a multi-point inspection form continues to yield very low acceptance rates amongst consumers. ClearMechanic ensures that every customer is treated like a service waiter.  

CBS Sunday Morning aired a news package over the weekend that highlights the prevalence of plagiarism in the digital world. With just a few quick mouse clicks, we can highlight, copy, and paste another’s work and claim it as our own. While it may be completely innocuous – or even unintentional –…

In October of 2011 a class-action lawsuit against Yelp claiming that they were removing negative reviews in exchange for “advertising” was dismissed with prejudice (meaning they cannot be sued again for the same reason). It’s now two months from 2013 and already it seems the complaints of extortion are not going away; instead they appear to be growing more frequent in numbers as awareness has risen that something fishy could be going on at Yelp.

So far, courts have allowed Yelp to…

Most of the articles I write are directed toward dealership senior managers or toward managers within specific departments. My content today is directed at all dealership department managers…or, rather, to those department managers who have a major sales responsibility. And guess what? Once again I’m going to talk about what’s not happening that should be happening in your department.

I am surprised by how few dealership departments have developed…

There are a million ways to market your business thanks to the internet and it's pretty hard to sort through all of the advertising messages and find the right medium for your business.

Often times, we use the 'trial and error' method to figure out what type of advertising is really going to be beneficial but let's face it, years of trial and error means a ton of money being spent on things that don't work and it begins to feel like just when we find our perfect…

Free webinar on October 30^th, 2012, at 2 p.m. teaches dealers best practices for compliant marketing

Daytona Beach, FL–October 23, 2012 – DMEautomotive (DMEa), the science-inspired, results-based automotive marketing leader, announces the fourth in a series of webinars the company is hosting with Automotive News. This webinar addresses the critical issues of compliance, including…

For more information contact:

Adriana DiFranco

3 Birds Marketing

(919) 627-8784

adriana.difranco@3birdsmarketing.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

3 Birds’ Own Chad Smith Wins Triangle CIO of the Year Award

Smith Recognized As A Leading CIO in Innovation &…

Google has been taking a lot of heat lately for some alleged shady business practices. We told you last week about the FTC's plan to file an anti-trust case against them, now it seems the non-profit organization SEMPO is trying to get their licks in as…

If you put 50 salespeople in a room, we could go on for hours sharing stories of the worst customers we’ve ever encountered. These stories range from the cheapskate multi-millionaire, you know, the guy who owns half the town, yet blew out because he had to pay the Doc Fee, to the customer who brought his 3rd cousin-twice removed…