Every car salesperson knows that the sales process starts as soon as you meet the customer. 

A customer walks into your dealership and sits down at your desk. Building rapport is strategically interwoven with an assessment that lets the salesperson know what their customer wants and needs. When the needs assessment is appropriately thorough, the first walkaround comes easily. 

If you’ve ever struggled to sell a car (so basically…everyone), read on to see how three walkarounds per customer can improve your odds of delivering a vehicle your customer can’t turn down.

The internet sales department got the surprise of a lifetime in 2020, becoming center stage overnight. 

The automotive industry is changed forever, and so is the role of the internet sales manager. As car sales continually evolve, internet sales managers can focus on the basics to remain competitive: getting more leads and an excellent staff to pursue them. 

Here are five tips for running a successful department in 2022.

Brent Mason graduated from the University of Georgia during the 2007 recession and picked up a job selling cars. While his degree was in Business Management, he enjoyed the competitive environment more. By the time the recession lifted in 2009, Mason had worked his way up from salesperson to New Car Sales Manager. 

A few months into the job, Mason began to have problems. The peers he once worked alongside had become his employees, and the power dynamic was difficult to navigate. He found himself being walked all over by some and despised by others. The paperwork was mounting, the stress was incredible, and ultimately, he quit before his 90-day evaluation. 

What caused the rise and spectacular fall of this ambitious young man? He stumbled into several common pitfalls of sales managers and never recovered. Don’t let it happen to you. Avoid these mistakes to take your career from barely surviving to thriving!

For the first time in automotive history, buying a car online is normal. From start to finish, customers can browse, accessorize, and checkout from the couch. 

While low inventory isn’t a new issue and the residual effects are going to be around for a few more years, it’s always good to share tips that have real results! Our consultants have been working through the chip shortage, in the trenches, with dealerships for the last year. Whether your dealership had lots of volume and didn’t start to see a shortage until August 2021 or your dealership felt the shortage almost immediately, we’ve been working with everyone to find the right strategies to keep revenue up where possible.

Read the full report here.

The rapid adoption of automotive digital retailing kept the doors open for many stores in 2020. Raking in over $230 billion, experts predict explosive growth in automotive digital retailing throughout the decade. Today, it's more important than ever to outfit your website with advanced digital retailing capabilities to cater to the masses online. Digital retailing is more than pictures of a car and a contact form; it's the ability to buy a car from start to finish online. 

Dealerships can no longer avoid digital retailing if they want to compete in today’s market. As the industry adapts, dealerships can avoid common mistakes that will affect their online sales.

Dealer fixed operations are the hidden powerhouse in every store. Fixed ops, an industry term for the parts and service departments, made up at least49% of a dealer's gross profit in years past, and that number is expected to rise in 2021. 

As a result, many dealerships would struggle to keep the doors open without fixed operations, cementing that the back of the house is a foundation on which dealerships are built.

If COVID-19 hasn’t convinced car dealers of the necessity of a vibrant online retail presence, maybe Cyber Monday 2020 will. Even before the pandemic, Cyber Monday was growing as the virtual twin (literally!) of Black Friday. Cyber Monday emerged as shoppers logged online the Monday after Thanksgiving to check store websites for any missed deals from Black Friday. 

Adobe Analytics, a marketing data software company, is predicting—in spite of or due to the pandemic—that Cyber Monday 2020 (Nov. 30) will garner $12.7 billion in online sales, up from the $9.4 billion in e-commerce in 2019.