How to prepare for growth – step 1 The common excuse for dealership complacency is: “Well, this is the car business.” If you break this slogan down, what you get is: “Yes, we are a corporation with a P&L statement, balance sheet, HR depar

Not all new employees are promoted from within. Rarely have all of the sales managers at your store once been the salespeople on your floor. In other words, dealers often look outside of their own four walls and bring in a candidate from another deal

For many years, domestic franchises were a challenge to sell. Buyers were unwilling to pay up for blue sky and were rightly concerned about declining market share and potential OEM bankruptcies. As a result, the prices offered for these franchises we

For the past few months, I’ve been monitoring dealer used vehicle inventories through vAuto’s new Provision inventory management engine, which assigns letter grades to prospective vehicles a dealer might acquire. An eye-opening finding: It’s ve

Ask every dealer you know if they’d prefer a phone up or an email lead and 99% will say “phone up hands down.” This makes sense, since a phone up is usually lower in the purchase funnel and (when handled properly) delivers a much higher closing

It seems that nearly every dealer I talk to, when discussing the health of their business, brings up the subject of tight vehicle supply. Depending on the manufacturer, new vehicle supply has been a challenge with recent earthquakes in Japan and floo

What is spend management? Spend management is a strategy that innovative companies employ to control and optimize the money they spend. Spend management includes a number of familiar disciplines that are designed to reduce costs, improve efficiencies

Looking back over my 30 years in the training business it never ceases to amaze me how our industry changes so rapidly, yet stays the same.  Basic fundamentals that have made each one of your dealerships what they are today have survived the years.

Mercedes-Benz (MBUSA) sent its dealers a proposed new Passenger Car Dealer Agreement, Light Duty Truck Dealer Agreement and Commercial Vehicle Dealer Agreement to be effective January 1, 2012. It is very important that dealers understand the changes