I must share with you that the days of what I refer to as “Rain Ex Sales Reps” are gone! “Rain Ex,” front lobe “yes, yes, yes,” rebuttals, scripts or habits are weak.  They immediately, from first contact, either lump us into the stereot

In June of 2010, I wrote a column that ran in Dealer magazine, “The Calm Before the Storm.” In it I suggested that despite the economic upswing we were enjoying at the time, a debt-induced financial crisis loomed and could cause more challenging

Recently my firm worked with a dealership on an issue involving a title for a used car. Our client had purchased from a private seller. Our client was contacted by an attorney who represented a repairman that claimed to have a lien related to repairs

I have always enjoyed training salespeople, in particular car salespeople and financial advisors. Both industries have a common thread. They are both male dominated businesses. Both industries have a poor recruitment record when it comes to hiring an

If you haven’t started blogging yet, you are not alone. Many dealers know they “should” be blogging, but don’t know where to start. Others are not sure they can commit to the time it takes or are not convinced of the benefits. All are valid c

The number one obligation of a leader is to grow. Grow himself, grow his or her team and along with the team grow their organization. Years ago, I read a bestselling leadership book where the author declared that the first responsibility of a leader

Third quarter is almost over and only four months left to go in 2011 before we close the books. Hopefully sales are up over last year and growing. How is your profitability year to date? Are you meeting your profitability targets for 2011? If you are

I used to wrongly believe that all urgency was good urgency, and was certainly better than no urgency at all. Not quite. Without question, a healthy sense of urgency is an essential ingredient in a high performance culture. But contrary to popular be

It’s been a long hot summer. Especially for Japanese-branded dealers with earthquake-driven inventory constraints that have stunted sales opportunity during some of the most critical months of the year. And all dealers have weathered the effects of