Best-selling author and change agent Seth Godin keynotes; exclusive event focuses on helping dealership principals adapt to, lead, and be profitable in a constantly changing retail market; emphasizes strengthening Capital, Brand and People

Salt Lake City, Utah – January 9, 2013 – DrivingSales today announced that its inaugural Presidents Club event for dealership principals will take place at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City on Sunday, April 21^st through Monday, April 22^nd, 2013 and focus its content around the three foundational elements of successful dealership operations: Capital, Brand and People. An intimate and collaborative event, the DrivingSales Presidents Club is designed for an elite audience of dealership principals and General Managers to help them to build the strategies they need to adapt to a changing automotive retail market – and to lead it. DrivingSales also announced that entrepreneur and author Seth Godin, who was named one of the top 21 speakers for the 21^st century by Successful Meetings magazine, will keynote the event, drawing on his best-selling books and years of being a marketing pioneer, to motivate and inspire attendees.

“In this constantly changing retail market, dealership principals receive an avalanche of information, and it comes from all directions. Some of it good. Some of it not so good. The mission of the DrivingSales Presidents Club is to provide these leaders with the best, most progressive information available to help them more successfully lead their dealerships,” said DrivingSales CEO and Founder Jared Hamilton. “This is why we are thrilled to have Seth Godin keynote our first Presidents Club. As one of the premier change agents operating in the nexus of technology and business, his insights into leading (and leading change), as well as his unparalleled marketing wisdom and business expertise, will undoubtedly inspire the kind of remarkable thinking that can transform business ideas and practices.”
    

Godin has written 13 best-selling books that have been translated into more than 35 languages. Godin writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything. Godin’s second book, Unleashing the Ideavirus, is the most popular e-book ever published, and in 2003, his book Purple Cow was the #1 best-selling marketing book on Amazon. Godin is the creator of the trivia game GUTS, which became the most popular product in Prodigy’s history and founded the breakthrough Internet company Yoyodyne in 1995. By 1998 it was the #1 creator of direct mail and promotions on the Web. Godin and his company were featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Wired and Advertising Age. In 1998, Yoyodyne was sold to Yahoo!, with Godin taking over as Vice President of Direct Marketing for the Internet giant. Godin left Yahoo! in January 2000 to pursue his work as a change agent full time.

The DrivingSales Presidents Club offers dealer principals a place where they can access the right, relevant information to lead their dealerships – profit-building information filtered through those who understand it best: innovative leaders from inside and outside the industry who have built great business strategies; progressive dealerships who are making a difference on the ground, and the forward-thinking general managers and dealership principals who not only know what information matters, but how it matters. The event, which is dealer-designed to cover the topics most relevant to the challenges of dealership leadership today, also emphasizes peer interaction and idea-sharing forums. Discussions and presentations focus on the three foundational assets of successful dealership operations, Capital, Brand and People and might include:

• CAPITAL: Balancing your cash assets, determining your franchise value, and orienting your business in the current economic environment
• BRAND: Leveraging emerging trends in marketing, consumer insight, and thought leadership from outside the industry for competitive advantage
• PEOPLE: Leading your managers, motivating your team, and cultivating your culture based on insight from experts

Held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City from April 21 - 22, 2013, the DrivingSales Presidents Club is a concentrated and more intimate version of the DrivingSales Executive Summit, which is the most authoritative profit-building event for innovative dealers. The 2012 DSES sold out for the second consecutive year and more than doubled (to approximately 1,000) the number of attendees compared to the previous year. To ensure focused, peer-to-peer interaction between executives, attendance at the Presidents Club event is limited to just over 100 Dealership Principals. Visit www.drivingsalespresidentsclub.com for more information and to register for the event.

About DrivingSales

Founded in 2008 and dedicated to the dealer community, DrivingSales is a business intelligence and performance improvement company that delivers unbiased*, profit-building information to make automobile dealers more successful through three distinct channels: DrivingSales Data, DrivingSales University and DrivingSales Media. DrivingSales Data houses the largest database of cross-vendor, dealership performance data in the North American auto industry and provides dealerships with the most statistically accurate performance benchmarks and metrics for their marketing and technology investments. DrivingSales University is a fully interactive online university that offers advanced profit-building strategies to automotive professionals through hundreds of classes taught by world-leading experts. DrivingSales Media connects dealers to peers and information through its global media assets, including DrivingSales.com, the world’s largest automotive social network; The Dealership Innovation Guide, an industry leading quarterly publication; DrivingSales Executive Summit, the top automotive conference for progressive dealers, and DrivingSalesTV, Web TV covering everything car-dealer related. Approximately one in every three dealerships in the United States has a registered member in the DrivingSales community.

*Vendor Neutral Policy: Dedicated solely to making dealerships more profitable, while also providing benefit to automakers and the industry as a whole, DrivingSales adheres to a strict vendor neutral policy through each of its channels. This means the company only provides unbiased information, not ‘pay-to-play’ follow up services -- and never accepts payment in exchange for media coverage or lets potential advertisers dictate messaging or create bias in any of its channels.

DrivingSales Media Relations:

Melanie Webber (melanie@mwebbcom.com), mWEBB Communications, 424.603.4340

Angela Jacobson (angela@mwebbcom.com), mWEBB Communications, 714.454.8776