Howard Polirer - Consumer shopping behavior has shifted in response to recent economic changes. Many consumers believe that the current economic issues are long-term and will have permanent effects on how they spend money.
Allen Dobbins - Choosing the right dealer management system (DMS) can keep an owner awake at night. Pick the wrong one, and it will affect employee morale, which could result in high employee turnover, drive productivity to the ground and lead to a negative impact on the bottom line.
Lon Leneve - Employee fraud is a recurrent problem in dealerships. The three factors that cause an employee to commit fraud are discussed, as is the importance of implementing a fraud policy.
Thomas B. Hudson - If you’re running a bait shop, life is pretty simple. You keep the frozen bait frozen, the fresh bait cold and the live bait alive. If you screw it up, you lose some bait.
David Keller - The computer software system used in your dealership should work for you. It should provide you information needed to operate your business, analyze your departments’ profitability and efficiency, and review your expenses and other account details.
Gene Daughtry - What business are you in? I think that is your first marketing question. I believe you need to decide what you are doing. Are you a BHPH operation that will sell some vehicles for cash, or are you a retail store that will carry the note on some cars? I know they are both “the car business,” but the marketing for each business model is very different.
Kimberly Long - In lean times, dealers must take measures to be certain they are maximizing each and every deal, and the F&I department is one of the main places to look for opportunities to increase profit. However, it also contains a potential landmine—compliance.
Don Reed - A significant number of dealers these days are becoming more and more aggressive in selling used vehicles. Some have even lost their new car franchises and now rely solely on used vehicle sales, along with parts and service sales to pay the overhead and hopefully provide them with a significant return on investment (ROI).
!["When it's all said and done and you do make a switch, it's a painful process, but because I let [the department managers] in on the decision-making process itself, they accepted that...](https://dealerimages.bobitstudios.com/upload/autodealermonthly/content/article/_migrated/BellM-compr-__-600x300-a.JPG)
Kimberly Long - If a dealership were a living organism, it’s safe to say the dealership management system (DMS) could be considered the creature’s central nervous system. There isn’t an area of the dealership the DMS does not touch; it holds huge amounts of the data necessary for the dealership to function—customer data, parts and vehicle inventory information, service history, financial data and much more.
Kimberly Long - Leasing is coming back in a big way. Just ask Ernie Boch, president of Boch Automotive, which has dealerships in Norwood and North Attleboro, Mass., covering Toyota, Scion, Honda, Ferrari and Maserati. “Leasing is really, really getting hot right now,” he declared.
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