Best PracticesDealership Communication ToolsDealership Operations & ProcessesOpinions & Advice

Stop Overthinking Your Emails!

Overthinking Your Emails and Email Templates? Between prepping for 20-Group presentations to serving our regular clients, we mystery shop scores of dealers each month – reading their emails (mostly templates) and texts, and listening to their voicemails – and while we’ve seen definite overall improvement over the years, one aspect of the internet sales process …
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, …
Dealership Communication ToolsDealership MarketingDealership Operations & ProcessesIndustry News & Trends

Millennials, Cereal, and The Billion Dollar Implications on the Auto Industry

Nearly 40 percent of millennials don’t eat cereal because it’s too much work to clean up. That was the claim of the article that caught my eye earlier this week. The article was based on a study done by The New York Times. Stunned, I asked the token millennial on our team if he eats cereal. …
Best PracticesDealership Communication ToolsDealership Operations & Processes

Email Templates can be Personal AND Automated

Internet sales are easy! There, I said it (or rather, wrote it.) Let me be clear: internet sales are about as black and white as anything we do in the car business – they really are. The problem is we tend to overcomplicate things we don’t understand; and traditional automotive sales managers have (for the …
Best PracticesDealership MarketingDealership Operations & Processes

Treat EVERY Lead and Call Like an Order

When I first started working closely with dealership internet teams in 2003, I was surprised whenever a traditional sales manager took any interest at all in their activities. Back then there were two primary types of managers heading up a store’s internet efforts: There was the “guy who was good with computers” and there was …
Best PracticesDealership Operations & Processes

Internet Teams and BDCs Must be Managed Like Call Centers

Because so many dealers and traditional sales managers continue to look at their internet department as this mysterious group of ex-Dungeons and Dragons players who too closely resemble the graduating class at Hogwarts, it’s important to break down the simplest of strategies that truly drive successful internet sales efforts today. There’s no need to overthink …
Best PracticesDealership Operations & Processes

Pay for the Performance You Want and Stop Overthinking “Internet Sales”

The perception of internet sales for many dealers and traditional sales managers is that it’s still a confusing area best left to those who are more technologically proficient. Moreover, industry vendors, other so-called experts and even some trainers continue to profit in keeping internet sales a befuddling mystery for the average dealer’s management team. The …