The incredible shrinking margins! It’s sounds like the title for a Hollywood horror movie, but for many auto dealers it’s a reality when it comes to reconditioned cars. The cost to acquire a used vehicle, clean it, recondition it and get it on the lot is going up while well-informed consumers are pushing the sales prices down.

What’s a dealer to do?

Improve your speed and coordination through better scheduling.

Simply put: the faster you can get a vehicle reconditioned in a quality manner, the faster

It’s one of the most important rules in business - it’s a lot cheaper to keep and grow your existing customers than it is to find new ones. What’s one of the fastest ways to lose your existing customers? Keep them waiting. From the time a service customer first calls to the moment they leave with their vehicle, your business is given an opportunity. Will you surprise and delight your customer,

If you have a car dealership, believe it or not, you’re not just selling cars. You’re also not just selling merchandise, oil changes, and maintenance plans. No, you’re selling an experience and a relationship. If you fail to sell this experience and make your customers want to have a relationship with you, then you’re losing sales. Let’s talk about a few of the little things you can do that will have

Whether your sales have hit a plateau or you’ve seen them dip in the past couple of months, you’re probably looking for ways to improve your bottom line in the coming year. After all, who doesn’t want to sell more and make a better profit? You might have experienced a little slowdown, but you can still make a profit if

We've all heard the joke, "Floggings will continue until morale improves." The thing about it, though, is sometimes it's really not a joke. In tough economic times like these, it's easy to get stressed by your car dealership's low sales numbers. It’s even easier to take that stress out on your employees, who then take it out on each other and the customers. This can create a really hostile work environment very quickly.

Do you know what the people who drive by your car dealership think of you? Do you have a reputation for being honest and open with your customers? Do they know they’re always going to get the best price you can give them and that you have a great service department to keep their vehicle maintained as long as they own it? Can they rest assured that you’ll give them the best trade-in deal possible for their old car?

Winter is a hard time for car sales. People don’t want to stand out in the lot looking at vehicles when they could be inside by the fire with a cup of hot cocoa. However, you can use comfort and customer service to your advantage in these difficult months. Winter could be the perfect time to sell a few SUVs and

Car salespeople have a reputation for being pushy, under-handed, swindling, and a whole lot of less-printable words. In these unsteady economic times, no one has the disposable income to risk getting taken advantage of. So, understandably, a lot of people who want to and need to buy cars are very wary of car dealerships right now.