A customer’s perception of a dealership is based on his entire experience, not just the initial major unit purchase. Every department in the dealership plays an important role in forming the customer’s opinion of the dealership.

If your salespeople are having trouble turning shoppers into buyers, find out if the salespeople are talking customers out of buying.

The best sales team selling out of a tent will run rings around an unskilled sales team at a beautiful dealership. But what about the facility? How much of a difference does a facility make to sales success?

Scenario - The call center discovers a service customer that is totally unhappy with his experience at a certain dealership.

Our company applies the term, ‘museum curator’ to describe salespeople who are friendly and knowledgeable and will happily answer any customer questions, but don’t actively try to turn shoppers into buyers.

There's nothing about pricing and promotions that creates loyalty. All it does is train customers to shop for the lowest price, and customers have become well trained to do so.

As gas prices continue to rise, we all prepare for what we hope will be a better sales year. Your dealership is looking great, and you feel confident that your customer service is going to generate new sales and repeat business for years to come.

Think for a second how often you see cell phones in your daily life. At the mall, teens are using them to text each other; at the airport, business people are perusing their e-mail, and in your dealership, customers are price checking and researching purchases.

Another season is coming and this year is going to go one of two ways: Really, really well or slightly better than last year.

A customer looking at one of your bikes is also peering into his cell phone. You can assume he’s texting, e-mailing or using Facebook, right? Not always.