~by Sally Whitesell for Auto Success Magazine

These days you cannot walk into a supermarket or fast food restaurant without getting asked to fill out a survey. “You might even win a prize!” However, most of us do not take the time to fill out surveys unless we have had a bad experience or someone has really “wowed” us with excellent service; which brings me to my…

Advanced Dealer Systems (ADS) encourages Dealers to fight back and take their rightful position in the search engine results page! Dealers should stop being held hostage by huge dealer groups and Third Party Lead providers. What many dealerships don't realize or understand is they can now generate and harvest their own leads by taking control of their web presence and creating lead generation opportunities that align with…

All of us have individuals in our lives that for better or worse impact who we are as a person forever. One of those individuals for me was a technician I worked with while being a fixed ops director for a car dealership. He came up to me one morning asking me to read a brochure then have a meeting with him. The brochure was…

Oh, my goodness can anything else be wrong in this repair order?

I guess I never will see a dealer who follows all the warranty policies, but I always expect that at least they try to follow the correct processes. Well, I guess I never cease to be surprised by my dealer visits. How in the world do we get so mixed up on getting the process…

Diesel engines are at the top when it comes to representing state-of-the-art technology in high power density, good fuel economy, and excellent drivability. It is now possible for diesel enthusiasts to easily upgrade for an additional performance booster as the aftermarket is full with numerous high-performance requirements. Being the most important air system component, turbo plays an essential role in performance equation. So,…

Starting a new career in automobile sales can be both exciting and nerve-wracking, especially if you’ve never done it before. If you are new to the automobile industry, you may be thinking about the best way to interact with the customers that come to the dealership. There are many things you can do to be the best sales associate you can be.

It is not a secret…

Swapalease.com, the nation’s largest online car lease marketplace, today unveiled results of its latest survey on incentives, with dealers saying they’re offering roughly the same incentives on financed vehicles in 2017 compared to last year, but are offering 3X as much incentives on lease deals today versus a year ago.

Incentives Jump for…

When it comes to understanding auto insurance rates, many drivers may believe that the only matter of importance is how clean their driving record is. Although a driver’s accident record and any history of traffic violations certainly are extremely important factors that insurers use when calculating auto insurance rates, they’re far from the only factors. Even a driver with a spotless record may have higher insurance rates than another driver with one or two speeding tickets on his or her…

Swapalease.com, the nation’s largest car lease marketplace, reports car lease credit applicants registered a 55.6% approval rate for October. The lease credit approval rate improved over last month’s rate of just 47.6%, marking the lowest percentage of approval so far in 2017.

Consumer confidence is likely playing a role in the improvement in automotive lease credit approval numbers. During the month of October, consumer…

According to Black Book® data, the average price of a used vehicle for model years 2012-2016 depreciated in value by -1.4% during October. Cars overall dropped -1.8% and trucks decreased -1.1% in value during October. All vehicles are averaging a 12-month depreciation of -13.2%.

For the month of October, Full-Size Pickups saw the best value retention, only depreciating by -0.1%. Vehicles in this segment include the Chevrolet Silverado 1500, Ram 1500, GMC Sierra 1500 and the Ford…

If I asked you a simple question such as are you willing to be your best, how would you respond? Before you answer that question consider a few things. Doing your best often requires addressing things that aren’t comfortable. It might be a long-term employee that hasn’t had a positive thought in the last 15 years. They talk…