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Conference & Expo: October 14 -15, 2025
DealerPoint: April 22-24, 2026

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Is a Financial Partnership in your Future? Some Considerations for Dealers in Growth Mode

In our industry today, partnering with professional capital is a significant discussion thread. Namely, selling less than 100% of the business and joining forces with outside capital for the purposes of accelerated growth and dealership acquisitions
Nov 2, 2017

Organize for 2018 – Expect Greater Efficiencies and Profitability, Fewer Surprises

Management is a challenging endeavor in any business, but especially so in an auto dealership. Dealers need to manage a large staff, facilities, new and used car sales, service business, a parts business, the supplier base, the I.T. support structure
Nov 2, 2017

Four Tech Tools That Decrease Employee Turnover

Employee turnover continues to be a problem in many dealerships, and especially in fixed ops. The ability to attract and retain service technicians, for example, is a problem so prevalent that in a recent Carlisle Dealer Principal Survey, more than 4
Nov 2, 2017

You Can’t Take a Train 500 Miles on 400 Miles of Track

Build Your Store’s Direction Towards a Success Destination Recently I took a road trip and visited with several dealerships. Many of these stores were suffering from attrition anxiety and couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Why would empl
Nov 2, 2017

Fallacy

Dr. Merlot and I met up during a layover in Charlotte in route to a family business operating three semi metro dealerships in the Midwest. In our previous visit, we had been dealing with a daughter with a drug issue. Now we were focusing on preparing
Nov 2, 2017

Attempting a No-Huddle Offense? How’s that Working for You?

How many football teams can you name that have successfully executed a no-huddle offense throughout an entire game? How about half a game? Or, a quarter? Not many, if any, I suspect. Rather, a typical team huddles approximately 70 times in a single t
Nov 2, 2017

Don’t be a “Management Jerk” and Steps for Handling Them!

A “jerk” is defined as a contemptibly obnoxious person. Sadly, there are too many jerks in management who seem to believe their position gives them permission to abuse, micromanage, continually criticize, demean, complain about, disrespect or int
Nov 2, 2017

Service Absorption is a Dangerous Number

Service absorption is one of the most frequently cited Fixed Ops metrics at 20-group meetings. While asking the service department to carry store profitability has never been more important, focusing on service absorption as a metric is not only limi
Nov 2, 2017

Taking Ten with Cary Greenberg of Digital Media Nation: Reputation Marketing

We caught up with Cary Greenberg at the Digital Dealer Conference & Expo and sat down with him for ten minutes to capture his views on the state of our industry from the perspective of a company who focuses on reputation marketing to an industry
Nov 1, 2017