I recently received an email from a colleague asking about a pay plan for an automotive BDC that I describe as a “Hot Mess.” Why a Hot Mess, you ask? Plainly stated, a dealership’s sales structure and associated process flows should be simple and straightforward. When these flows have multiple forks upon multiple forks […]
Dear Car Dealer: Congratulations on a record 2015! Yippee! Now, get the slings, because you’ve likely broken your arm patting yourself on the back. If you’re an average dealership – whether privately-owned or publicly-held – you had a record year in 2015. Heck, if you’re a below average dealer you had a record 2015. […]
Let me start this post by stating unequivocally that I am big fan of online service scheduling applications for car dealers. When set up correctly, these little tools can save you and your customers the headaches and hassles of numerous service phone calls. When set up correctly. Without getting into the weeds, suffice it […]
The Great BDC Robbery: How Reconciliation Allows Your Business Development Center to Steal from You Do you have any idea what your BDC is doing right now? A few weeks ago a general manager I’ve known for some time was bragging about the performance of his group’s Centralized BDC. He was almost gushing about how […]
Previously, I wrote about how I Will Never Own a Self-Driving Car (and Neither will You). In that post, I discussed why self-driving cars would not only become a reality, but how the leaders in this industry (folks like Google and Apple) will likely capitalize on this revolution. At the end of that article, […]
Self-Driving Cars: Why you will NEVER buy one… There’s been a lot of talk and press lately about the coming revolution known as the autonomous drive vehicle (a.k.a. self-driving car). It’s coming. You cannot stop it. Despite your personal feelings, we will have more than a few self-driving cars on the road in the next […]
(Here’s another quick, helpful excerpt from the free 2015 Car Dealer Mystery Shop Study of more than 400 dealers.) What is the Goal of Your Team’s Lead Response? What should be your dealership’s goal when responding to e-leads? If the prospect is inquiring about a specific vehicle, should your goal be to have them reconsider […]
(This is an excerpt from the 2015 Automotive Dealer Mystery Shop Study completed by pladoogle.com; and the best practices shared below relate to the email and voicemail messages that car dealers should be using when responding to an internet sales lead.) Voicemail & Email Responses – Best Practices It’s important to remember the goal of this […]
I almost titled this post “Perfect Data Matters,” but because it is one of the most important blog posts I’ve made this year, and because that title is so stinking boring to you and your managers, it would guarantee the least amount of interaction. And that is sad. Perfect Data matters. As boring as […]
Six months ago I watched a service manager struggle with the amount of customer complaints he had to deal with on a daily basis. Most of the complaints were just silly, and almost all of them should have been solved at the advisor level. Unfortunately for this manager, he was really, really good at […]
In case you haven’t heard the news, there’s a current job opening in automotive that none of my peers will even consider: CEO of TrueCar (NASDAQ: TRUE). Most everyone I’ve spoken with about the role calls it a sure career-ender; a poisonous position that will turn even the most respected leader into an industry […]
[With the on-again/off-again debate about Third Party Providers currently on (again), it seems appropriate to present this excerpt from our 2015 Online Automotive Leads mystery shop study.] A high percentage of dealership desk managers still look at the Internet and their own internet sales teams as the enemy. For these shortsighted managers, the […]
NEWSFLASH: Consumers are tired of wasting 3-5 hours of their lives buying a car. The average prospect today has done more than 19 hours of research before they ever set foot on your lot; so they know what they want to buy, they just don’t want to spend an entire day buying it from […]
(Another helpful excerpt from the pladoogle.com free 2015 Car Dealer Mystery Shop Study of more than 400 automotive dealers.) Why Does Lead Response Matter? Lately, much has been written about the drop in the number of electronic sales leads dealers receive – not coincidentally, of course, most often by those wishing to sell more of their […]
Quick Quiz: If you’re part of an automotive dealer group comprised of anywhere between 2 and 290 stores and you do not run a centralized sales BDC, then you’re: A. Wasting Money B. Losing Sales C. At a Competitive Disadvantage D. Not Leveraging Your Economies of Scale E. All of the Above If you […]
While I tend to do a lot of phone training, it’s not my favorite skill to teach. This is not because my phone skills training lacks substance or robustness or even uniqueness – it provides all three (and you can even get most of it for free online) – it’s because that no matter […]
It’s All About the ROI Every now and then I find the automotive digital marketing controversies and handwringing on sites like LinkedIn, DealerElite.net and others to be both humorous and disturbing. Humorous, because it’s really not all that complicated (yet some people insist on adding drama to everything); and disturbing, because no matter what the […]
5 Simple Rules… for Eliminating Skating Forever If the only place you’ve ever worked is for one of America’s car dealerships, then you may not be aware that other industries don’t reward those who steal from their coworkers. Only dealership employees enjoy the added perk of being rewarded for cheating each other at will. We […]
“What’s the Average Closing Percentage for Automotive Leads 30, 60 and 90 Days Old?” I recently received a variation of this question from a visitor to my free video training website; and given that many automotive managers, salespeople and BDC agents likely have the same question, I thought I’d post my original answer here, […]
Before diving into this topic, I want the readers to understand why dealerships are so near and dear to my heart. While it’s true that I run a small company that provides technology and advertising services to lots of industries; I actually enjoy being in and working with car dealerships. You read that right: I […]