It’s never easy to keep your wits about you on a stressful work day, but as a car dealer, it’s something you have to do. Your job involves talking to people, which means you can’t get overwhelmed and brain fogged, and you definitely can’t get in a bad mood. At the same time, you’re only human. Stress has an effect on the strongest among us, and that means you need relaxation techniques to help ensure you’re balanced and energetic while talking to customers at work.

1. Calming Exercises

Pretty much any form of physical activity is going to have a stress-relieving effect. However, certain things, such as yoga and qigong, can really help you relax and get focused on the positive. When you’re overwhelmed with stress, energy blockages begin to form in the body. These practices have been done for thousands of years for a reason. They really work!

If you’re not up for learning an ancient art, taking a walk is another simple activity that can make you feel better. A study from Princeton University found that simple physical activities like going for a walk can help the brain respond better to stress. The treadmill is an option, but if the weather allows, try going for a walk outside. Being in the fresh air and sunlight can really turn a bad mood around.

2. Meditation and Deep Breathing

This likely isn’t the first time you’ve heard about the benefits of meditation. If you’re facing a stressful time at work, this is a good opportunity to test it out. You don’t need to be perfect, and it’s okay if your mind wanders during the meditation. The point is to focus on your breathing and relax yourself. If it helps, you can find a guided meditation online.

3. Set Reasonable Expectations

Most people in America are trying to do too much. It’s important to realize that attempting to cram as much work into the day as possible will often limit your productivity. If you’re facing a difficult time at work, try not to schedule too many other activities and errands within that time frame. Allow yourself time to rest and relax and home, and handle the other stuff later.

4. Decide on Your Goals the Night Before

If you do have things you need to handle outside of work, list them out at night before you begin to wind down for bed. No one likes to figure things out while groggy in the morning, and having your plan for the day decided in advance will help you feel less stressed out.

5. Eat and Drink Healthy

Some people tend to overeat when stressed, which leads to feeling bloated and sluggish. If you know you have an important day at work, start the day with a healthy breakfast and plan a nutritious lunch as well. Avoid the temptation to overload yourself with coffee or drink too much alcohol in the evenings, tempting as it might be. Too much coffee can make you jittery, and too much alcohol will leave you dehydrated and unable to be at your best with your customers.

The most important thing to remember is that you are capable. If you need to sell a certain number of cars to meet an expectation or financial requirement at work, you can do it! You just have to believe in yourself and know that it’s possible. You chose this line of work for a reason. The skills that are needed already belong to you. If you take care of yourself and practice an anti-stress lifestyle, you’ll be sure to do your absolute best.

When you lose a customer, it can cost you big time. Some business insiders suggest that it costs five to ten times as much to gain a new client or customer as it does just to keep the ones you already have happy. Any kind of customer service mishap has the potential to lose you that customer.

If you’re facing a situation, where you’re about to lose an important client or customer, you’ll want to try the following steps to see if you can retain him/ her. In doing so, you’ll save yourself a ton of money and you might even have a more loyal customer to boot.

1. Keep It Simple

Groove HQ recommends that managers follow the Disney model for customer retention. It’s a simple acronym: H.E.A.R.D. It stands for hear, empathize, apologize, resolve, and diagnose. Any apology that doesn’t include these elements will ring hollow to an angry client.

When you’re dealing with a customer who is angry, it’s important that you listen to him or her and feel a measure of empathy for his/ her plight. It’s additionally important that when you apologize that you resolve the customer’s issue. The resolution may include giving the person his/ her money back or offering some sort of discount on products or services.

Finally, you need to diagnose the problem. Be sure to understand what contributed to it happening so that you can take steps so that it doesn’t happen again.

2. Take a Cue From Top Brands

But Disney isn’t the only company doing customer satisfaction the right way. According to USA Today, despite being a mass market car producer, Toyota company, maker of vehicles like Toyota Tundra and Toyota Prius, outranked Lexus and Mercedes-Benz in customer satisfaction.

Toyota accomplished this, in part, due to its attention to dependability and customer satisfaction.

Don’t be deceived into thinking that the dependability factor only applies to cars in this instance. An article on Mashable suggests that dependability is the most important aspect of customer service.

When it comes to pleasing a dissatisfied customer, your company needs to have a reputation of being dependable in this respect. People want to know that you’re going right the wrong so to speak, because you’ve made yourself accountable to them.

In this case, it’s not as if Toyota has never screwed up. The company has had its far share of mishaps and voluntary recalls. But that’s the point. The company has been dependable in it commitment to making safe cars, which in turn, helps it find favor among consumers.

If you’re looking for companies to emulate, Toyota and Disney (and other companies with similar customer satisfaction levels) are a good place to start.

3. Be Sure to Follow Up

After a bad customer encounter, you should follow up in the months following the incident. As the Groove HQ article points out, often a nearly lost customer who has been won over becomes more loyal than he/ she was to begin with.

To do this, Entrepreneur recommends that you keep post-issue follow up low key. Your initial attempts to make things right with your customer may not result in the ending you had hope for. That is to say, you may not get a big project from this client right away. However, you may be able to win some smaller projects.

It’s okay in the aftermath of an issue to send postcards or coupons to keep yourself on your client’s radar, without becoming overbearing. This lets the client know that you are making the attempt at making things right, without actually asking him/ her for anything.

Conclusion

Losing a big customer can be devastating to a business. Most business owners understand that it costs more to get a new customer than to retain the ones it already has.

Unfortunately, an angry customer can be a lost customer, unless the situation is handled correctly. Start with a simple apology and attempts to resolve the situation. If you’re not sure how to approach this aspect of customer service, look to companies that are doing it right.

Finally, in the months following the incident, use some low-key follow-up measures to get your customer back in your good graces, without being overbearing.

As a business owner, there is a lot you have to worry about. This includes creating a high quality product that keeps customers satisfied. It can include working with suppliers, vendors and other business partners. It also means managing your employees. Businesses invest a lot into employees. Companies with less than 500 employees spend $1,888 on average to train and develop a single employee.

However, sometimes all this money and effort spent on employees is flushed right down the toilet. This occurs when an employee unexpectedly quits their job. Turnover is a huge problem for almost every industry. It forces companies to spend much more on recruitment and training than they would otherwise. Thankfully, there are strategies for lowering turnover that you can implement in your company. Below are a few.

Get Better at Hiring

One way to lower turnover is to stop hiring people who will quit or eventually be fired from their jobs. Recruitment can itself be expensive. Recruitment costs for a single employee can total $4,000. However, being more selective with your choices doesn’t mean you have to spend more money. Conducting interviews on your own can help you to only select people that are credible, competent and won’t flake out on you. Overall, hiring is a skill that must be refined overtime. Try to get better at it.

Offer Paths for Advancement

One reason many employees leave a job is because they believe there is no path for advancement. You can’t really blame people for doing so either. Everyone wants to better their selves through a long term career. 70 percent of employees at risk of not being retained say they would quit a job to advance their career.

If you want to slash turnover, you need to supply employees with clear paths for advancement up the company ladder. You won’t be able to run all aspects of your business forever. Don’t be afraid to delegate responsibility to managers and middle managers. Developing your employees in this fashion is also important if you ever plan to expand your business in the future. Current employees could be the mangers of new locations in the future.

Incentivize Employees

Another strategy for retaining your talent for the long term is to create an employee incentive program. There are many different things that can be included in such a program. It can include vacation time and paid time off. It can include a car pool program to help employees save money on commuting to work.

For employees that want to further their education for the benefit of the company, you could reimburse a portion of their tuition. You could even use a points system similar to those available from airlines or fast food companies that awards points for good work that can later be redeemed for things like gift cards. There are almost limitless options. Overall, these kinds of programs provide perks and benefits that may make employees think twice about leaving the company.

Provide Encouragement and Recognition

Another reason why employees eventually leave a company can be as simple as not receiving the recognition they think they deserve. You need to make sure employees receive direct feedback on their efforts. This can include criticism, but it should also include positive feedback as well.

Make sure employees receive recognition for work well done. Even taking the step of choosing an employee of the month can help employees receive the recognition they need to stick with your company. No one likes to be ignored. This includes being ignored by your employer for all the effort you put into your work every day.

Employee retention is something all employers must strive for. It is required to keep costs under control and to ensure that you retain the talent you need for your company to succeed for the long term. Make sure you’re doing what you can to lower turnover in your company.

Sales coaching and ongoing sales training are a key to a successful business. The ultimate tool for your sales team to familiarize themselves with all the marketing details is a sale training program. Sales managers often turn to sales training programs when they want to shape up their teams. The objective of continuous training is to improve employee skills and experience and streamline sales processes. Either way, the ultimate goal of sales training programs is to improve the bottom line. Below are four ways you can improve your company's bottom line with sales coaching.

Accurate Forecasts

The success of a sales team depends on their ability to forecast future trends. The ability of a sales team to execute its strategies sustainably and predictably is the key to achieving sales targets. Establishing a coaching cadence can be the best way for sales managers to generate accurate predictions. According to a report by CSO, 94% of sales representatives who receive sales training hit their quota. The key to achieving a predictable and sustainable success is to combine an ongoing coaching session with sales team motivation and goal tracking. According to recent studies, there was a 3% increase in the ability to hit the quota in companies whose sales coaching sessions exceeded the expectations of the sales representatives. There was no a significant increase in the performance of the sales representatives in the companies that only met the expectations of their sales team. Similarly, there was also an 8% increase in the ability to hit the quota in the companies with well-trained sales representatives as compared to those that coaching programs needed improvement.

Reduced Turnover

Harvard business review has indicated that coaching sessions can help improve employee retention. In fact, sales representatives have agreed that job-related training and continuous learning impact their decision to work in a company. Sales representatives feel enthusiastically and optimistically engaged when they receive ongoing sales training and development opportunities. Investing in sales coaching leadership activities can help a company to reduce the rate of workforce turnover significantly. Given the time that a company takes to hone its sales team skills and knowledge, high turnover can be detrimental to productivity. Companies that have invested in sales training programs experience lower annual sales turnover compared to those that overlook sales training programs. Furthermore, there is a higher turnover rate in companies whose training programs need to be revised.

Outstanding Performance

The best way for a company to outperform its competitors is to train its employees and provide them with development opportunities. Your company's most valuable competitive advantage is a well-coached sales team. Recent studies have revealed that a team of well-coached sales representatives have a competitive advantage and top-notch sales performance. Sales coaching ensure that your sales team spends much of its time on strategic planning. Sales training can enable the performance of your sales team to increase by up to 19%. In fact, sales representatives can realize up to 15% increase in win rates after receiving sufficient coaching and training. Companies with established training programs realize higher win rates compared to those whose training programs need improvement.

High Profitability

The overall revenue of companies with sales training programs that go beyond the expectations of the sales team tends to be much higher than those that only meet their expectations. Ongoing coaching sessions ensure that marketing strategies and concepts are at the disposal of the sales representatives. Concepts such as value proposition, mentor advice, and marketing techniques remain on top of their minds. One of the fundamental sales skills that are highly correlated to high profitability is the identification of customer needs and alignment of solutions to address them. Sales representatives who receive continuous sales training will outperform their counterparts who rarely advance their sales knowledge.

Sales training programs can have a significant positive impact on your company's bottom line. These programs help a company to reduce its sales team turnover rate and increase revenue generation. Furthermore, well-trained sales teams tend to outperform their competitors for lack of sufficient sales training. It is worth investing in sales training programs given the benefits that they bring to your company.

Understanding the Process of High Volume Hiring

Hiring can be costly and time-consuming especially when it involves recruitment of a large number of employees. High volume hiring is inevitable in any growing company seeking to expand their services, introduce a new project, or change the requirements of workers. High volume recruitment requires the employers to use different approaches and tools other than the traditional ones to hire hundreds or thousands of employees within the shortest time possible. Additionally, the companies also require paying attention to the productivity of the candidates and their ability to deliver good results. Sometimes, looking for the right employees can be a daunting task to the employer.

The Planning Process

High volume hiring requires the involvement of all the stakeholders and various departments in the planning process. The recruitment team should settle on the type of candidates they want, their desirable qualities, and the methodology to use in getting workers. They should decide on the amount of money they intend to use in the hiring, the ideal location to carry out the recruitment, and the timing. Companies should also base their hiring schedule depending on the number of people they intend to hire and the skill set that the candidates should possess.

Hiring a Small Number of Candidates

High volume hiring may involve a small or a big number of candidates ranging from less than 100 applicants to a value greater than 500. In cases where the company does not require a large number of people, the company officials may go for methods that are cheaper to use rather than mainstream media advertising. This may include advertising for the open position internally and allowing workers to apply for executive slots leaving the lower positions open. This may reduce the hiring costs since the candidates for lower ranks are easy to acquire and do not require many resources to recruit. Employers can also use referrals from other company employees or recruitment officials.

The Recruitment Process

After the exhaustion of the chances to get new workers, the company may then opt to look from employees from external sources. During high volume hiring, companies should raise awareness about their large number of openings in their region. They may do this through the business leaders, the local chamber of commerce, business leaders, and websites. Advertising on the sites and other listings such as Google or Bing is also essential. Recruitment process outsourcing is complex, and companies should ensure that the applicants understand the company's operations before inviting them to apply.

The recruitment team should also consider the minimum criteria that they want in relation to education or work experience to avoid having an exceedingly large number of applicants than they require. Companies should also encourage candidates to apply on their website or in person especially if applying for a key position. Remember to make a job offer that would be exciting to the final applicants to increase their chances of accepting the slot.

Factors to Consider while Hiring

High volume hiring is essential in every company that has just begun or looking to expand their services. Paying more attention to the productivity, skills, and the education level of the applicants is essential in obtaining the right candidates for the job. Company managers can track their hiring process to identify the areas that need improvements and minimize future chances of losing candidates.

Conclusion

High volume recruitment is essential for a company at one point or another. Hiring highly qualified teams helps in the growth of businesses and in simplifying the manager's work. The process of getting the right people for the job out of the thousands of applicants may be cumbersome, but appropriate tools and strategies will help speed up the process.

Smart business is about knowing which of your potential customers are worth pursuing. Many enterprises don’t select who they pitch to, and that can lead to bouts of discouragement when prospectives don’t respond positively. Your sales team can waste significant resources dealing with people who have no intention of spending money on your brand.

The secret to separating the chaff, so you only have the right kind of customer left is asking the right questions. Learning more about your target market can tell you who is worthy of your company’s time and energy. Qualifying questions can narrow down this list, giving you a viable pool to work with. Businesses must, however, recognize the appropriate questions to ask so that customers don’t feel pressured or like you are getting too intimate.

What Do You Need?

A majority of companies assume that they know what is best for the consumer. Although this may be true to a point, your market may not have the same line of thinking. Customers are sometimes wrong about what they need, but as the service provider, you have to comply. Learn what a consumer expects when he/she picks up your brand off a shelf. If an individual is looking to hire a plumbing service, ask why? What triggered this decision? Understanding this will determine the suitability of your service. It also makes it less complicated to customize services when you are aware of a consumer’s needs.

What are the Problems that Need Solving?

Every product/service out there is meant to offer a solution to particular challenges that customers are facing. The specific issue will dictate a customer’s priority, and that is what the sales team has to be clear on. Ask about the obstacles the customer has encountered while trying to overcome the existing challenges. This question will shed light on a consumer’s previous experience and stop you from repeating the mistakes of past providers. Also, it will help you learn about opportunities that your enterprise can exploit. Take time on this step and pay attention to every response because it’s a clue as to how you can add value to customer experience.

What is Your Budget?

Before pushing a certain product or service to a prospective customer, know if he/she has the purchasing power. Discern how many resources a potential client is willing to dedicate to deal with the current challenge. When you have a range of products and services that cater to different budgetary needs, this qualifying question is fundamental. It allows you to pinpoint the right products to sell to a customer. Some companies get this information through metrics such as business insurance quotes, moving estimates, and price ranges among others.

What Does Success Mean to You?

Be aware of a customer’s expectations when using your brand. Even though a product or service may be designed to solve a specific challenge, the rate of success may depend on various factors. Consumers must understand the risks and discuss them with the provider. A business should know the outcome if the customer gets it wrong. If the moving service a client is hiring fails, what are the potential repercussions? These questions keep both parties honest and let consumers anticipate risks.

How Do We Proceed?

Customers should feel they have a say in the kind of service/product they receive. Asking them about the next step achieves that. Know if a prospective customer is ready to move forward. If they are holding back, find out why. Understand the purchasing process of your consumers and find out how to get them across the finish line without being pushy. A question like “what else can I do?” gives consumers a chance to remember anything else that may help improve the experience.

The line between an interested customer and a worthy conversion can get blurry at times. Businesses should have a process to eliminate consumers who are not worthy of pushing to and that helps save resources. Qualifying questions are essential in choosing the right consumers.

When a person decides to start a car dealership, insurance needs to be part of their planning. It is a requirement for a dealership to have vehicle insurance. It is to their benefit to have an insurance product designed to cover each of their vehicles as well as the business. A dealership having protection for their vehicles against potential accidents, theft as well as vandalism and more is essential.

Dealership Physical Damage Coverage

This is designed to provide a car dealership protection for trailers and any type of vehicle a dealership has in its possession to sell. It's possible to have such coverage extended to protect other types of land motor vehicles. This could include scooters, golf carts as well as construction equipment and more. Vehicles on a dealership lot that may be there for consignment as well as a floor plan may also be covered. The declaration section of the insurance policy will identify the classes of vehicles that will be provided coverage.

Garage Liability Insurance

This is insurance designed to cover the legal liability for car dealerships with claims of bodily injury. It can also provide protection against property damage that occurs during business operations. There are two parts to this type of insurance. A dealership must list in the policy who is insured. They must also choose a limit for the insurance. This will involve a provision in the policy to protect against any and all legal issues involving garage operations. It should include the maintenance, ownership as well as operation of the vehicles when in a dealership's garage and more.

False Pretense Coverage

The cheapest car insurance product can provide effective protection for a car dealership who loses a vehicle because of a scheme, trick or false pretense. This coverage is important because when a car dealership voluntary parts with a vehicle in this way; it is not considered a form of theft. In this situation, the dealership has voluntarily given a vehicle to a person for a false reason. This coverage often protects a car dealership when a person takes a vehicle for a test drive and does not return the vehicle. False Pretense Coverage can protect a car dealership in various scenarios.

Dealers Open Lot Coverage

This is often referred to as auto physical damage coverage. It is designed to provide coverage for any physical damage that occurs to vehicles owned by a car dealership. This type of insurance product acknowledges that car dealerships are a unique business. It is designed to cover the risks involved with a dealership having vehicles on an open lot. This coverage can be for passenger vehicles, RV units and more. It will cover used, new service as well as demonstrator vehicles. Most insurance companies will require a dealership to insure the entire value of their inventory.

Reporting Form

This requires an insured dealership to file a report with the insurance company showing their inventory values on a regular basis. Most insurance companies require it to be done within 15 days from the end of a reporting period. This can be once a month or once a quarter. A dealership could be penalized if it neglects to submit reports as required. A penalty could be payment of only 75 percent paid for a loss. It won't matter the limit shown on a policy's declaration page.

Non-Reporting Form

This requires a dealership to submit to the insurance company the maximum value of all vehicles located on their property at any one time during the term of the policy. If a dealership gives an insurance company a lower value than what is actually of their premises: they could be penalized.

A car dealership needs to purchase insurance specifically designed to provide protection for the risks associated with having a car lot. This is essential because these insurance policies are created to meet the unique needs of those in the auto dealership industry.

Employee turnover can cost a dealership approximately $400,000 per year through lost sales, service offerings, new hire search, and training expenses even if the dealership only has 55 employees. As a result, dealerships must hire the best talent from the start and retain that talent for as long as possible. There are many avenues you can take in order to recruit the best talent for your dealership while keeping costs low.

Plan the Process

Many dealership managers only contact people they know for leads or put an ad in local classifieds and wait passively for job seekers to find them. It doesn't matter if you need to hire one new staff member or a dozen, the only way you can recruit the best talent is with a well-thought-out strategy for finding, engaging, interviewing and picking candidates. Beyond casting a wider search net, you should be as specific as possible when listing skills and qualifications to weed out unqualified job seekers. You should also consider how you plan to reduce a talent pool of potentially 50 applicants down to a handful and then to only one. For example, you might pay the last two candidates to work on-site for a day as a test to see who does best under the pressure.

Engage Talent Everywhere

The best talent uses online technologies more than ever before to find jobs. A successful recruitment campaign must involve multiple points of engagement. There's nothing wrong with posting job listings offline locally, but many businesses fail to utilize enough online strategies to attract the types of candidates that they need. For example, some employers don't use social media and online communities to find job seekers or develop talent pools or offer remote application options.

Promote Your Dealership

Top job seekers don't usually respond to job listings without researching first. Once tech-savvy job seekers find your offline or online listing, they're going to check out your dealership through at least your website and social media sites before reaching out to you with an inquiry, resume or application. Make certain that these platforms outline important business details beyond your dealership's location and history, including your goals, work culture and even non-profit contributions. Additionally, make certain that you maintain a positive reputation on dealership review and industry websites.

Offer Fantastic Incentives

Excellent workers choose employers who offer them the best incentives because they know their worth. Although many job seekers consider local discounts and gift cards as incentives, professionals who know their worth expect a lot more. For example, consider offering an hourly or salary income rather than a commission-based one. Instead of scheduling 60-hour work weeks, offer 40-hour weeks or longer shifts and four-day weeks. Additional options: Give employees extra paid time off, set up a wellness reimbursement program or pay for career development courses.

Hire Recruitment Help

If you're struggling to create a plan or your recruitment process still fails to find the best talent, invest in recruitment process outsourcing through a firm that can evaluate your existing process and offer guidance, tools and services to improve it. You will be able to find better candidates, handle your initial application screening calls and interview scheduling and/or train your hiring managers to recognize top talent easier during interviews. Also be sure to provide yourself with valuable tracking data that can clearly show your recruitment failures and successes.

As you can see, you must treat your recruitment process with the same serious consideration that you use for your marketing and sales efforts. By expanding on traditional talent search methods and replacing hiring shortcuts with proven strategies, you're guaranteed that your recruitment process will always find the best talent available.

As someone who owns a car dealership, you might always be looking for ways to help it grow and become more successful. Nowadays, in the digital age, it's important to look at things from a different perspective. These are some of the things that can help you grow your dealership in today's day and age.

Build the Perfect Website

In today's world, with so many people spend a lot of their time searching for information about cars online when they're in the market to buy a vehicle, having a great website for your dealership is critical. These are some of the things that you might want to add to your website:

• Information about your dealership, such as where it's located and how customers can get in contact with you

• An inventory of the vehicles that you have in stock, along with pricing information, so that potential buyers can start their shopping online

• A live chat feature so that customers can get answers to questions quickly

• Financing information, including a financing application

Use Social Media

If you aren't currently using social media as a means of promoting your dealership, you are really missing out. Nowadays, with so many people using Twitter, Facebook and other similar sites on a daily basis, this is a great way to connect with local individuals and get them excited about your cars. Build up your profiles, add plenty of pictures of your dealership and the cars that you have for sale and otherwise use social media to promote your dealership. If you do, you might be surprised by the results that you will see. Additionally, you can even try paid advertising on social media if you'd like to bring in even better results.

Focus on Tech Features in Vehicles

Sure, things like gas mileage and the look of a vehicle are very important to many consumers. However, now more than ever, many customers are looking for other things when buying cars, such as the newest and greatest tech features. Someone might want a car that has a rearview backup camera, Bluetooth connectivity or some other tech feature, so making sure that you are familiar with these features and that you advertise them properly can help you boost sales and encourage interest in the vehicles that you have on the lot.

Provide Internet Access for Customers

Right now, you probably have internet access in your dealership for yourself and your employees. However, you might have never focused on providing access for your customers. This might not have been important in the past, but it's pretty important in today's world. These are just some of the reasons why your customers might want to access the internet while at your dealership:

• While customers are waiting, such as while their car is being detailed or while they are waiting for someone in finance to work out a deal for financing, they might want to be able to keep themselves entertained. Ensuring that there is WiFi service available throughout the dealership can allow them to hook up with their devices and keep themselves entertained, which can help you avoid complaints about wait times and can increase customer satisfaction.

• Some customers might feel more confident if they are able to do a bit of research or comparison shopping from your dealership. For example, they might want to use their phones to pull up pricing or feature information about models that they might be looking at.

• In some cases, customers might be able to log on to their insurance companies' websites to secure auto insurance coverage for a car when buying it, ensuring that they are complying with lender requirements and local laws so that the sale can be made.

As you can see, there are a few steps that you can take that will help you grow your dealership in today's digital age. If you implement these tips, you might be surprised by what they can do for your business.

There are a lot of things that go into having a successful car dealership. Many owners and managers are so focused on what has worked in the past; they may be overlooking what could be done to make things better in the present and future. There are many things that can be done to improve how a car dealership approaches customer acquisition, online presence, customer engagement and more. There are at least three areas of operating a car dealership that can always improve.

1. Customer Acquisition

It's possible to increase the flow of customers without focusing so much on the price of a vehicle. It is very common for dealerships to emphasize their low prices, special incentives, rebates and more. It's also too common for car dealerships to not recoup the costs of advertising this to customers. The problem is that most car dealers advertise the same things. When this happens, customers can't tell if there is a difference between car dealerships. It may be time to focus on what a person or family needs and how a particular vehicle can meet these needs. The size, safety features as well as durability and more can attract more customers. A salesperson may not want to focus on the price until a customer realizes how much they need a particular vehicle. The focus should be in finding the needs of a customer and then finding a vehicle that will accommodate those particular needs. This also involves knowing the demographics of the customers who will visit the dealership. If the largest segment of customers in an area are parents who have children on their own, a plan can be created to attract these parents. This could involve letting these customers know how they could benefit from a smaller vehicle. The dealership should provide a special deal with large vehicle trade-ins as part of the plan.

2. Online Auctions And Websites

It's possible with many car dealerships that they don't realize the full potential for online auctions and how these auctions could benefit the dealership. When this is done correctly, a car dealership's customer base will quickly expand into other counties, states and sometimes other countries. A car dealership needs to develop an effective method of shipping or promptly delivering the vehicles that are purchased in this way. A car dealership will soon learn the costs involved with selling vehicles with an online auction or through a website is much less than using traditional advertising methods. When a vehicle is listed on a website or an online auction, it will be seen by much larger numbers of potential buyers. Once a car dealership learns the best keyword searches, they will be much easier for customers to find. Studies have shown that selling vehicles online in much less stressful for the buyer and the seller. A virtual bookkeeping company can also be a benefit in this situation. Dedicating resources to online selling will not require a lot of energy or effort to succeed. It is estimated the automotive industry in the United States will spend an average of over $7 billion for digital advertising. That is expected to increase to over $12 billion by 2019.

3. Engagement

It's important a car dealership attempt to discover new and different ways to stay engaged with customers. This could involve everything being able to project an image of a customer driving a car that has their interest onto their phone or provide a reward for a test drive and more. It's now possible for a salesperson from to have a face to face meeting with a potential customer using the internet. The customer could be in their home, office or a coffee shop and more. With smartphone technology, a salesperson can actually show a customer desired features of a vehicle without them being in the showroom. This is successful when the salesperson understands what events are impacting a customer's life. It's important to know if they're single, have a family are self-employed or work long hours. This information can be used to accommodate what a customer needs to happen for them to purchase a vehicle.