Best Practices

Why Dealers Need a Vendor Management System and How They Can Benefit

Auto dealers are faced with tremendous operational challenges today. The pressure to always be increasing sales volume, service and retain customers, train employees, etc., and do it all profitably, is no small feat. It also cannot be done alone, which is why dealers depend on strong partnerships with many different providers. While there is a multitude of …
Best PracticesDealership Operations & Processes

Removing Sales People and Utilizing Product Specialists at Your Dealership

Before pricing information websites, salespeople were the gatekeepers. When it came to vehicle features, availability and negotiating, it was a dealer’s market. However, today the playing field has changed immensely. Many prospective car shoppers walk into a showroom already armed with all the information they possibly need, including the car’s invoice price, dealer inventory listings, …
Best PracticesDealership Marketing

Some Website “Expert” Adjusted Your Buttons, And It’s Costing You Sales!

Website Buttons… and why in the world are you letting self-appointed “experts” screw everything up? There are two quotes from baseball’s late, great Rocky Bridges that I just love: “Albuquerque: You can’t spell it, but you can smell it.” and “There are three things the average man thinks he can do better than anybody else: …
Best PracticesDealership Marketing

5 Tips for Maximizing the Shopper’s Website Experience

We’ve all been watching the automotive industry’s dramatic change as more and more services move online. Dealerships have turned their websites into digital showrooms, seamless extensions of their brick-and-mortar dealership floors. New online platforms abound to help shoppers with everything from browsing to price comparing to financing. For example, Chase has rolled out a new …
Best PracticesDealership Marketing

How to Attract In-Market Buyers at Every Stage of the Journey

As digital marketers, it’s your job to attract buyers that are shopping online, and as GMs, you have seen the impact that online media has on sales and the bottom line. However, with new players coming into the fold and existing dealers upping their investments, it will be increasingly difficult to reach car buyers with …
Best PracticesDealership Marketing

The Absolute Best Places you can Trim your Advertising Dollars

“There is no bad press!” has been attributed to a multitude of famous, and pseudo-famous, people that were usually getting bad press at the time but none-the-less were still profiting from the exposure. Is the same true in automotive advertising? Can you effectively throw money at any form of advertising and still sell cars? Yes, you …
Dealership MarketingOpinions & Advice

Are You Demanding Accountability From Your Social Media Agency?

Last month, I participated in a panel discussion about social and digital marketing at the Digital Dealer 21 convention in Las Vegas. In attendance were hundreds of automotive dealers ready to learn best practices in digital and social media. As the panel discussion unfolded, one issue kept coming up again and again: accountability. Dealers wanted …
Best PracticesDealership Communication ToolsDealership Marketing

How Managed Chat is Helping this One-Man BDC Drive Sales – Q&A

Customers love the freedom and accessibility of live chat. And why shouldn’t they? Online shoppers can chat directly from a webpage, from the comfort of their own home, and with no wait time. Aside from customer satisfaction, live chat is an essential tool for converting online leads. And when chat leads are combined with efficient …
Dealership Communication ToolsDealership Operations & Processes

Text Sells: Improve Your CSI and Repeat Business with SMS

Are you looking for ways to improve your Customer Survey scores? Do your service advisors wish they had a clone to do all the follow-up for them? Would you like to see more first-time customers return to your service department repeatedly? Naturally these are things all dealers desire and there are many ways to achieve …