The Unwritten Rules of Travel As a regular business traveler, I adhere to my sworn duty to do my best to train the leisure traveling masses on proper travel etiquette. Of course, the tools at my disposal are usually nothing more than a condemning glance, an outright scowl, an audible “harrumph,” or an offensive Tweet. […]
Delta Boarding Zones, Gate Crowding, and How the New, New, New Boarding Zones Might Be the Dumbest Alternative Yet Delta knew they had a problem. Their Delta Boarding Zone System (DBZS) was confusing and caused massive gate crowding. Inferior rivals, faced with the same issue (think United), didn’t wrack their brains solving it, they just […]
Gate Crowding: The Zombie Apocalypse – How Delta’s Passengers Are Blocking Even More Gates Since I first wrote about Delta’s Boarding Zones and the Ubiquitous Gate Crowders, I’ve left Delta for Southwest and returned. In my absence, Delta took an already confusing zone boarding system (one that caused most of the gate crowding) and made […]
Why “Wait & See” Wins with Shiny Objects Ten years ago, the consummate car-guy Charles Oglesby (then CEO of Asbury Automotive Group) told me, “In automotive retail, you cannot hold a creative competitive advantage for very long.” His point was clear: In the rare case that someone truly discovered some purchasable competitive advantage that actually […]
The Customer Experience: Southwest Airlines Didn’t Even Try For context, I gave up Delta Diamond Medallion status a few years ago because I was tired of being treated like a king when I was lucky enough to receive an upgrade, while being treated worse than baggage when I was not. This was (and likely is) […]
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 […]
‘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 […]
Carvana is Worth Every Bit of $2 Billion I have to admit it, Carvana (NYSE: CVNA) has captured the imagination of Wall Street investors, the likes of which I haven’t seen since the early days of Pets.com. They are, in my opinion, clearly a $2 billion company. Unfortunately for those who remain in the stock, […]
Power Off to Power On! It’s time to bring innovation and creative brilliance back to your company! (Yes, this article is long… and the fact that many will not be able to read it in its entirety in one sitting will precisely prove my point.) There was a time – before smartphones – when people […]
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 […]
How To Stop Your New Dell Laptop From Overheating & Shutting Down Yes, I know this isn’t a tech blog; I get it. However, in order to be able to function normally again, I recently had to solve a nagging issue with my new Dell Inspiron 13-5378 laptop running Windows 10. My laptop began […]
Pigs get Fed and Hogs get Slaughtered I’ve written a few times about the adage ‘pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered.’ The meaning (as it applies to business) is simply that it’s okay to make a profit, but when that profit is the result of price gouging and/or taking advantage of people, you’ll […]
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 […]
How to Solve 99% of Customer Service Issues: Empower your Front Lines If you’re in the service business, there’s a simple way to solve nearly every customer issue that you’ll ever create: Empower your front lines. Many of the issues, in fact, are created specifically because your front line is not (or does not feel) […]
Why Bosses are Proudly Serving Shit Sandwiches to Their Teams Recently, three different senior managers I respect asked me where they could buy extra copies of my book, Sh*t Sandwich: Quick & Practical Success Lessons for Practically Anyone. All three were looking for the same thing: a success book their respective teams would read, […]
The Coming Automotive Retail Disruption? It’ll be about Price and Convenience (and Nothing Else) (This is a follow-up to an article I posted on DealerRefresh a couple of weeks ago that focused on the myth that dealers are behind other industries in terms of tech, marketing and the customer experience.) Can we please stop talking […]
Digital Dealer – Why It Pays to Shop Around the Perimeter Most of us know that the healthiest way to shop in the supermarket is to stay around the perimeter (where the food is generally the freshest and most natural) and avoid the “Frankenfood” in the center. Can the same be true for vendor expos […]
Changing the Culture at the DMV A regular reader of my writing asked me the following question via email recently: “According to state workers, the Department of Motor Vehicles is trying to change their reputation of rude customer service. With long lines, rude customers, customers who don’t want to deal with bureaucracy, how could […]
There’s an SOS message being broadcast from parents and employers that seems to be getting louder every day: SAVE OUR SNOWFLAKES! Snowflakes, for the uninitiated, is a term thrown about by members of both major political parties in America to describe humans on the other side of the political extreme who seem easily offended. […]