Professor Carol Dweck of Stanford University believes humans have essentially two mindsets, growth or fixed, and through her research with employees of Fortune 500 companies, she found that managers with a growth mindset are more innovative.

Why is this important? According to the…

Yesterday Google revealed “Android Auto ” its latest play in the connected car game. The new android-based screen-casting feature connects your smartphone directly to your in-car infotainment system…

Sometimes the difference between making a deal, and missing a deal, is knowing one more thing to say. As a matter of fact, that’s the difference a lot of the time. If you know what to say to the customer, you sell them. If you don’t, your competitor is going to get their chance.

In 1989 or 1990, I was on the road selling workshops. I was visiting a big dealer in Northern California, trying to get him to send his people to an upcoming workshop and making absolutely no…

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Beggs on the Used Car Market. I’m Ricky Beggs, Editorial Director at Black Book. There have been so many events happening within the auto industry this past week that have a direct influence on the used car market. A few weeks ago a tremendous group of storms consisting of tornados and tremendously large hail passed right by the Denver airport. Fortunately the track of the…

Looking for some of our elite here on this site to give me some guidance or suggestions.  I'm looking to hire anywhere from 4-6 official bird-dog reps for me to get some extra business in my name.  My question to everyone is are there "Ad" templates that you guys may have to share, and do you have an example pay structure for me to look at?  I am hoping to have my first 2 reps signed up by next week, just need to know what a fair pay scale may be.  Thanks for all your help everyone!  Keep…

Blue sky pricing remains very high as pricing floor forms; more sellers enter market; privates dominate, while public spend rises 9% year-over-year, according to The Kerrigan Quarterly Blue Sky Report

Irvine, CA, June 23, 2014 – U.S. dealership buy/sell activity dramatically increased in the first quarter of 2014, according to The Kerrigan Quarterly Blue Sky Report for Q1 2014, which was…

This article was written by NCM Institute instructor, Steve Hall and originally published on the Up to Speed blog.

Do you have 60 seconds to gain a service customer? Let me restate that: Do you have a structured 60 seconds to gain this customer? Why the emphasis on…

ARE GM RECALLS STARTING TO HURT SALES FOR GM DEALERS?*****************************************************************************

Initially the answer was NO it really didn't have any noticeable effect. BUT recently I've had a lot of dealers starting to tell me that the customers are beginning to defect because of the repeated bad news and new recalls almost daily. Personally, I think Mary Barra is doing a remarkably credible job…

Note: Thanks to AutoSuccess Magazine for allowing me to be their guest blogger this week.

I've taken some criticism over the last week for selecting CarChat24 as the dealer website chat provider that I like the most. Angry calls. Angrier emails. Nobody wants to hear that their product was not selected and I understand the vast majority of the criticism from other chat providers in the industry.

One piece of criticism that I do not understand comes…

One of the things that I think became readily apparent when the economy hit the skids in 2008 was the fact that a lot of the people that we call managers, really aren’t. When the economy is humming along and customers are pouring into showrooms, a lot of our deficiencies as an industry are masked. As a manager, as long as we’ve got plenty of customers on the showroom floor, everyone’s happy. Unfortunately that’s not a reality in today’s environment. What sales managers are doing when they…

With Big Data and analytics having been the hot topic over the past couple of years, many dealers are recognizing that they can increase the effectiveness of their marketing. Many dealers, however, outsource much of their digital marketing to vendors that sell them on the use of their data to achieve this. The problem is that most vendors don’t really use it as they say they…

For years, marketing agencies have used many methods to track consumers in order to increase the likelihood of reaching them. From the very basic – yet still in existence – use of postal change-of-address records, to appending marketing lists for increased deliverability, to today’s use of big data to track consumers, technology is better enabling marketers to deliver more…

If there's one thing that gets me riled up when talking to dealers, it's finding out that there are two completely different strategies being applied to their traditional and digital marketing. It made sense a decade ago when the digital age was first coming into existence in automotive marketing. It made a little sense a few years ago when the digital spend was much…

The more people that are shopping for a car that you can get in front of your inventory, the more cars you're going to sell. Some would say it's a bold statement. Others would say that it's pretty obvious. Depending on which side of the coin you're on, you'll either need to be convinced or you're already doing it.

Let's start with the disclaimer. Everything…

The Banks Report is making its analysis of the deal available today at: http://www.thebanksreport.com/quarterly-report.html.

it's the biggest deal since 2002 when Sonic bought the Massey Group, and is the second monster deal in the last couple of weeks -- David Wilson Automotive acquired Fletcher Jones' Las Vegas Toyota store for $75 million two weeks ago. 

YOU CAN READ THE ARTICLE NOW... CLICK HERE

CAN THE LINCOLN FRANCHISE SURVIVE?

uh-oh! This promo video I cut today accidently got released all over the Twitterverse before the article actually came out. I never dreamed when I put it on YouTube that people would pick it up and re-broadcast it on Social Media. it wasn't until the phone calls started coming in…