Dealership Development, LLC Blog

Being a service manager for a car dealership can be both stressful and rewarding. But how often do you take a good look around? We want you to take a moment and help yourself. Here are some quick key things to watch out for to ensure your service drive is running smoothly.

1. How Does It Look?

Appearance is everything when it comes to your car dealership. If your customer sees that your dealership is dirty, disorganized, or just unappealing, they are unlikely to 

In order to make sure your sales team is serious about making your dealership successful they need to be armed with the right tools. The following are a few training tips that will get your team motivated to sell, retain customers, and upsell contracts while adding some value to your business.

A Listener Is a Closer

A sense of hearing is the most important sense a salesperson can cultivate. They need to listen to the customer and not just 

Making the Sale for Car Dealerships:

Little else is more important to a car dealership than training their employees to provide the customers the information they need when selling a vehicle. Car salesmen have a tough pitch to make considering a car is one asset people are buying that depreciates in value as soon as it is driven off the lot. People want to make their investments wisely, buy a car that is going to last well, is going to have few problems, and is going to hold as much value as possible if they ever want to resell their car in the future.

Any F&I department understands that a lot of pressure comes with the territory due to sales expectations, but are you helping your team succeed to the best of their ability? Are you offering the best F&I products available for your target market and are you taking the time to train your team for all the changing demands?

If your F&I department keeps missing the mark on the latest trends, it's time to get some help.

The world of sales is never easy, though it becomes a lot easier when a sales team knows what it's doing.

Have you observed your sales team's techniques lately? They could be missing some very important details in their sales approach and you don't even know it. As the owner or manager of an automotive dealership it is your job to make sure your sales team stays up to date, to be performing up to expectations. So are they?

It has often been said that any company's best asset is its employees. Successful companies have recognized and implemented that truth into their business models. Every staff and organization has individuals who can be utilized in particular roles with great success. There are also among those members, some special talent. A considerable portion of a company's growth and success can be attributed to finding that talent early. Grooming those people to lead and step into financial services and management roles benefits everyone.

Managing a team of automobile sales professionals is a complex pursuit with a simple objective: to meet or exceed the dealership's sales goals. Our 10 point checklist for the successful sales manager will help you stay on top of the most pressing issues you face.

Considering dealerships often differ only marginally from one another your employees are the biggest factor that determines whether you're ahead of the competition. This has become a major issue as it is estimated that inexperienced and untrained employees cost dealerships billions of dollars every year.

As stated in this recent article by Automotive News, hiring is one of the biggest struggles that all dealerships face, whether they are big or small. The article further indicates that this goes beyond simply finding a new candidate. Retention is an integral part of hiring that dealerships have traditionally overlooked and as a result a great deal of money is being lost annually on "wasted search and training expenses; inexperienced sales staff; lack of continuity with customers; and, ultimately, lost vehicle sales."