Should You Buy a Car with a Rebuilt or Salvage Title? The short answer: It depends. The long answer is the reason for this post. First, let’s understand what it means when a vehicle has a salvage or rebuilt title. What is a Salvage Title and What is a Rebuilt Title? Primarily, a vehicle is […]
The SEM Thieves Aren’t Even Trying Anymore! A Google Analytics map hit my inbox today that can only be described as mind-numbingly incredible. Incredible, in that it is simply not credible. The map, displayed below, shows where this anonymous dealer’s website traffic originated from last month. No, this is not the board from the game […]
Car Dealer Slang Every Salesperson Should Know Quick note: This quick list of slang terms car dealers use and other terms common to dealerships is not meant to be a complete dictionary answering every “what does the word _____ mean?” when it comes to working in car sales. It’s the glossary included in the sales […]
‘Assumptive Selling’ Creates a Better Car-Buying Experience (and This Month, it May Help Create a Better Experience for a Worthy Couple) $10 from every copy of ‘Assumptive Selling’ sold on Amazon in August 2018 goes straight to help Bryan & Tamarra Armstrong Tamarra Armstrong, wife of the consummate Car Guy, Bryan, suffers from a very […]
Advice for Green Peas: How to be Successful at Selling Cars If you’ve recently started selling cars – and you’d like to be successful – I have some advice for you: Be all-in or all-out Love what you do Read Assumptive Selling As you’ll learn in this post, everything you need to go from Green […]
The Best Car Selling Book Ever! Whether you’re brand new to car sales or been around for a couple of decades, today’s prospects pose a unique challenge to those using traditional vehicle-selling methods. Specifically, the buyers have evolved… but, unfortunately, the average road-to-the-sale has not. Ten years ago, actual new car prices were near impossible […]
How to Sell Cars to Today’s Connected Customers (Edited excerpt from Assumptive Selling: The Complete Guide to Selling More Vehicles for More Money to Today’s Connected Customers – available for $49.99 on Amazon.com.) Either during the initial job interview or your first week in the car business, you were probably told (as I was) that […]
Dear Toyota: Here’s $108 Million to Spend in Your Fight for Share Against Ford As the Toyota brand works to replace Ford in the top spot for US vehicle sales in 2018 (as of this writing, the Ford brand holds roughly a 14% share of the US Market to Toyota’s 12.4%; source here), you have […]
Repeats, Referrals & Reviews – The Most Profitable Sales for Today’s Sellers Every automotive salesperson I’d ever met who averaged more than twenty-five vehicles a month had one thing in common: they each depended on their repeats and referrals to hit their numbers and make better than average commissions. They treated their customers right, which […]
Want More Real Test Drive Appointments? Finally, Someone Brought Some Technology to the Table! I’ve written many articles and produced more than a few videos showing car dealers how they can set more sales appointments that show and buy. From creating an Appointment Culture to detailing the four steps of The Perfect Appointment, everything I’ve […]
Do Your Carfax.com Leads Close at Relatively Low Rates? Let me level set right from the start: I like Carfax. I have friends who work at Carfax. I think Carfax has (ultimately) been good for the industry. Additionally, this post is not intended to encourage dealers to cancel their Carfax.com listing agreements, only to drive […]
Eight-Car Alan & Thirty-Car Theo: What Separates Top Sellers from the Rest While entire books have been (and continue to be) written on what it takes to be a top car salesperson, the fact is that nearly all the differences between your 8-Car Alans and your 30-Car Theos can be boiled down to two very […]
Stop Memorizing Word Tracks & Start Setting Real Appointments that Show and Buy If you’ve watched my free sales training videos, then you know my advice for you is to be very direct with today’s prospects – especially when it comes to setting appointments. The inspiration behind this approach rests solely with the realities […]
Offering Alternate Vehicles in your Email Responses – Should You or Shouldn’t You? There’s some debate today on whether to include alternate vehicle choices in your email responses to leads. Some OEMs demand it; and many internet trainers tout it. In fact, the default processes in the expensive CRMs include some random automation that […]
How to Spot and Stop SEO Fraud! Last week, we published some guidelines to help you uncover and stop the SEM theft we’re seeing in nearly every dealership visit. Today, I wanted to tackle the potential Search Engine Optimization (SEO) fraud that also appears to be fairly ubiquitous. SEO, as a quick reminder, refers […]
It’s Time to Stop SEM Theft If you’re an average car dealer – and I do mean just average – you’re likely wasting $50,000 or more every year on basically worthless Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (sometimes interchangeably referred to as SEM or PPC). For some of you, you’re actually the victims […]
What Not to Say in Your Automotive Lead Responses I understand teaching your team what not to do is considered negative coaching; and negative coaching, as most of you know, almost never works. For example, teach a young hockey player to “never shoot the puck at the goalie,” and they’ll hit the goalie square […]
It’s 2018 and Automotive Sales Leads Still Matter Way More Than Attribution I support those vendors and consultants who want to open dealers’ eyes to the concept of digital marketing attribution – it’s an important topic. However, when they do so by bashing sales leads (as if a website sales lead mattered less than […]
The Coming Automotive Retail Disruption Explained on a Cocktail Napkin As I’ve written previously, the real disruption to the automotive retail model in America will not come from the Carvana’s (NYSE: CVNA) of the world. That is, “a better customer experience” won’t matter if there’s no price and convenience advantage. (And, Carvana won’t be […]
Buckets and Your Internet Sales Processes For most automotive sales managers, the internet sales and other CRM follow-up processes their store employs can seem confusing on the surface. Some “computer guy” manages the whole “CRM thing” and creates these “complicated algorithms” that keep the processes firing as designed. Except that CRM processes – especially those […]