Let’s face it. The car business can be brutal. Many in auto retail find themselves working long hours, under stressful conditions, with hardly any free time to see their families or enjoy other activities. In our industry, many managers are under a lot of stress. The stress of production can wear a person out– whether that’s sales goals to be met, or service revenue targets. As a[…]
Customer retention is typically much less expensive than customer acquisition. However, with the advent of the internet, consumers are changing. Now, I’m not saying that your dealership should ditch retention and loyalty strategies – not by a longshot. You need both retention and acquisition to grow. But what if I told you there is a customer acquisition strategy that costs ZERO dollars? Interested? I thought[…]
In many businesses, it is typically frowned upon when an employee goes over the head of their immediate supervisor, or directly to another department, to get questions answered or problems solved. This easily creates animosity between the employee and their direct supervisor and is frowned upon as it is a failure to follow chain of command. This system of following a hierarchy has been in[…]
If you haven’t already noticed, human’s attention spans, in general, are decreasing. A deluge of short soundbites, marketing messages and social media has created a society that simply won’t listen… if you talk too long. Do you have a friend who, when they want to tell you a story, you immediately ask them how long it is? If so, I’m sure you understand. According to[…]
Texting is by far the most popular form of communication for consumers – especially with younger generations. However, because of the many compliance rules and laws that have to be followed, many dealers are hesitant to adopt text messaging — they simply don’t want to risk it. Consumers prefer to communicate via text because it’s short, to the point and non-intrusive. Have you ever[…]
Let’s face it, for every ten businesses that exist, eight or nine have some sort of owner retention or loyalty rewards program. While they used to be novel and exciting to a degree, customers are now used to them. They may well sign up. But, far too often, customers do so not because they re[…]
Almost every salesperson or manager that’s been in the business for a while has a story to tell where someone – perhaps even themselves – prejudged a customer and lost a sale. Perhaps that sale was lost to another salesperson at the dealership, or perhaps the dealership lost the sale altogether. But it has happened and still continues. Here are a few examples: According[…]
Colloquy just came out with its Annual Loyalty Census Report which informs retailers about top loyalty trends. The data in this report (which you can download free at the link above) is important for retailers to view and understand as it reflects the changing attitudes, desires and effectiveness of loyalty marketing, incentives and programs. In fact, this year had some pretty interesting results. While loyalty program membership increased to[…]
Businesses large and small use data to learn and then make decisions about their customer’s behavior. However, be warned, as decisions based solely on data alone can sometimes not be the best… as was the case with a Denver Broncos season ticket holder. In a LinkedIn article penned by the fan, he told the story of how[…]
When it comes to community service, car dealers are often the very foundation of their communities. A great example is what the Jim Ellis Automotive Group did in May of this year. The Atlanta-based group successfully raised $65,000 for first-responder organizations that serve various dealership locations around Atlanta, including the police and fire departments. The money was raised by donating a portion of every new or pre-owned[…]