Hello, 



I am in the market for a cup of coffee. If you are receiving this message, it is because your coffee shop has been selected for the bidding process. If you wish to be considered as the vendor for my next purchase, read the instructions below carefully. Only fully complete bids will be considered. Please note that I am soliciting bids from many coffee shops in and around VA, DC, and MD.…

I hit all of my closing ratio targets for all of my stores, which is how I get paid. Great month, so why am I nervous?

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I work in an area where TrueCar has a contract with every high-volume dealer for every franchise, and that TrueCar has been supplying more and more quality leads to our dealer group over the last several months. For April, they were nearly TIED with our own website for deals.

SEO, SEM, lead process, remarketing,…

A few weeks ago, I was training a ten-store team while facilitating some very ground-breaking and paradigm-shifting conversations about the phone. The Director of Operations preached to a team of new hires—some thoughts most dealers have become all too familiar with:

“We’ve been flying by the seat of our pants too long,” said the director to the newbies. 

“Pick up the phone, find out what they want and…

I read a whitepaper recently by The Training Associates comparing the cost of staff trainers to contract trainers. Because in the NCM Institute Manager Training Survey several respondents cited their use of staff trainers as to why they do not use outside training providers, I was eager…

Has anyone heard of Strong Automotive Merchandising?  My General Manager signed up with them for an e-mail campaign and they are claiming they sold 42 cars for us over the last two months--- that in mind, our monthly sales have stayed steady, not increased.  In addition, they have directed a whopping 3,000 new visitors to our website with 0 conversions.  It sounds like malarkey to me and I don't buy into it.  Just wanted to see if anyone else had experience with this company.  O, and one…

Nearly every week we spend training in a Dealership, we try to identify and help correct deficiencies in production, CSI and dealership employee performance. The rub is that every dealership has different issues and problems.

Sometimes it’s the training, sometimes it’s the employee and sometimes it’s the management.

And 100% of the time when there is little progress in performance…

With this Women’s Wednesday we will focus on the Service Drive at your store.

Women buy a car about once every 6-7 years, but they visit the service lane several times a year. The good news? This is where on-going loyalty is developed. The not-so-great news is that 42% of women report they no longer go to the service department where they purchased their vehicle. And, you will never know it is their LAST visit, because they may smile, pay the bill, and never say a word, even…

It’s just after 5 A.M. and I’m really questioning why I am doing what I am doing-now that I’m too far from home to turn back, I might as well swipe my gym membership card and pay my penance for last night’s meal consisting of crawfish etoufee and fried fish. As I walk through the front doors, I can tell immediately that spin class is in…

The 2013 calendar year came with many outcomes, surprises, and results. DealerELITE wants to ask you what you think 2014 will bring...

What is your PREDICTION and/or HOPE for 2014 in the automotive industry?

Write your comments below and we will share these thoughts with our members. Do you know what's in store?

To get things started, we predict Mitsubishi will pull…

A good social media advertising campaign (or any marketing campaign at all, for that matter) should be guided by science. Testing, monitoring, adjusting, and testing again are the cornerstones of a good marketing strategy.

Much of what we do in the car business comes with assumptions. We do things that we have known from past experience to be successful.…

Science rules in digital marketing.

Social media is a place of vanity. Those of us who use social media often get to see flattering images of just about everything - people, places, food, cars, whatever. Have you ever seen a picture of a friend posted as their new profile picture and thought, "Wow, that's a good picture of them."

One might believe that…

Rejection is part of the sales professional experience, but selling is a personal experience for both the salesperson and the buyer.

Long sales cycles, endless follow ups via email and phone and no-after-no cannot only be brutal on the morale of a salesperson; it is often not much fun for the buyer either.  Now when a salesperson is able to bring to the table a human…

Black Book, a division of Hearst Business Media Corporation that provides new- and used-vehicle valuation services, custom data licensing solutions, as well as lender origination and risk analysis, has partnered with Chicago-based Cars.com to become the company’s official vehicle valuation service.



“Cars.com is a leader in providing consumers with the resources they need during the buying and selling process,” said Black Book’s Jared Kalfus, vice president of data licensing. “We…

How I can prove Direct Mail is still the strongest advertising ROI there is in the Auto Business BAR NONE!

A short back story: 

I started in the car business back in 1987 as a young kid who wanted to learn all I could about this business. One thing I caught on to quickly was that whenever we had a “Mailer” sale going on, I wanted…

The National Do Not Call Rules (DNC) have been around for quite a while but I find that a surprising number of dealership employees think that the rules don’t apply to them. I often hear statements like “Hey, we’re not telemarketers, we’re just doing follow-up”. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. So I thought it was time for a refresher on the rules and some suggestions on…

Despite NADA’s landmark victory in getting most auto dealers exempted from direct oversight by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), it looks like the agency has found a back-door way to make life more difficult for dealerships. The Bureau recently announced that lenders that offer auto loans through dealerships will be held responsible for…

Apple’s recent announcement of CarPlay which will integrate the iPhone, Apple maps and Siri into the car dashboard, is a move meant to compete directly with Google’s Open Automotive Alliance (OAA), and Microsoft’s Sync platform. This means big changes are in store for how shoppers driving, commuting and traveling by car will find and learn about your business.

The fast moving map space plus local-search is attractive areas for innovation for software developers. One of the more…

Did you know that last year, women purchased an estimated 27 million vehicles? That is the equivalent of 75,000 cars a day at new and used car dealerships. Women are now the fastest growing segment of vehicle buyers and car dealerships are taking notice. To that end, there is much more flexibility when buying a car more than ever!

It seems that women are still more reluctant than men when it comes to the advantages of leasing a car. With the car industry back on its feet…

Facebook is about as crowded as any marketing venue on the internet. There might be hundreds of sites vying for keywords that pertain to you on search (and no, having millions of results does not mean that they're all going for that keyword) and dozens of dealers selling cars in your local area on the classified sites, but there are thousands of businesses…