For years we have been trying to dive in to doing our own videos for training, communicatin with employees and assisting local charities etc. 

We finally have secures all of the equipment (almost) that we need to start our own in house studio. Our plans are to use this for various purposes at the dealership. They are:

1. We are starting a new training program that every employee at the dealership will be required to participate in. We will be filming quite a few of training content in our new studio. It will mostly be cuts that we can share with everyone at the store.....such as our mission statement.safety videos and a bunch of other stuff. 

2. We are also planning to use this to interview employees. 

3. I can also see filming talks with local charities etc. 

The possibilities for this our endless. We are excite about this new venture at the dealrship. Please feel free to post any ideas for this project

 We currently have a Hyundai store in  Pensacola fl and a Chevrolet store in Crestview fl as well as a Pre owned store in pensacola. We have really outgrown the hyundai store. So the owner is buildind a new hyundai store from the ground up in pensacola. It will be about a half a mile from the the existing store. Its exciting to see the growth for sure!

We are planning to have as much new technology in the store as possible. We are also going to create a modern showroom which will be geared towards giving the customer a great experience. The old school desks with computers will be replaced with high tops and tablets. The salespeople will have a room designated for them to use to call customers etc. We will also have a state of the art bdc department as well

If any of you can provide feedback on any type of wishlist that i can create for the new store please chime in!

 How much training do you do in each department at your store? We definitely could do a better job on this at our Hyundai And Chevrolet store. I am the digital marketing and bUsiness development manager for both stores. In my bdc and in the sales department all of the employees are required to do the oem required training. In our bdc department we also train every new salesperson on the crm when they start. We dont however (I feel ) have a real consistent process for training. I feel we should have checklists that are signed off on and after that ongoing occasional evaluations and training. 

 Next week I will be attending leadership training for the new HCM training product that driving sales has come up with. I feel that this will be a huge help! 

 I am looking for input from the community on what other dealers dealers are using for training! 

 The driving sales Presidents club is coming up soon!  I strongly urge any of you that are able to go. I have been to it the last three years in a row! While it is geared towards dealer principals I have walked away from each of them with a ton of practical work knowledge. The conference always has the most cutting edge information. This last year I learned a ton about hiring and retaining employees. 

 In years past the marketing tips that I learned were great! They helped me to be a lot more effective In my job at the dealership that I was at. I have no doubt that we were able to sell more cars because of it. Here is the link to my blog about last years conference. https://www.drivingsales.com/mark-rask/manage/blog/post/edit/313832....Check it out and go learn a lot!

I see so many dealerships that do not put an emphasis on training in the store. This is so important! Training on both product and internal processes is lacking in so many places. There are lots of ways that dealers attempt to do this.....some successful some not. 

 At the dealership we were requiring sales agents to to spend time in our bdc department for crm training and a few other things. We mainly relied on the oem training for product. Sales process training was sketchy at best. They are currently working on a curriculum for all of this with the driving sales training group. 

 No matter which group that you use I cant stress enough the importance of developing something or bringing something in for this. This will help in so many ways......From turnover to customer satisfaction. 

 Take a look at this if you want see how much turnover alone can cost your dealership http://go.drivingsales.com/hubfs/HCM/HCM%20Whitepaper%20Final%20Final.pdf

I recently had a dealer ask me how they should allocate the marketing budget that they have. I think that the percentages of the budget spend are going to differ some what by region. At the dealership that I was at we were moving more and more of a pct to digital vs traditional.......we were prob 50/ 50 on the split with a goal of moving to 70/30 with 70 going to digital. 

 So that brings up the question of how do we split the digital budget up......Obviously the majority of it goes towards google for both seo and sem. I would also throw a healthy portion at social. Then I would put the rest on bing and you tube!

 Do you think that I have missed anything?

 I live in pensacola fl and as you can imagine we really panic when a storm/hurricane forms. I think that it is hugely important for dealers to have some type of written/documented plan for the dealership which would outline what to do if a disaster could be coming. As we have seen in Texas and in Florida these things can be devastating. So Recently I was able to share a few ideas with some dealers down south.....not only does this plan need to protect employees and the dealership but it should have some component of informing your customers of what your plans are. 

 So to go one step further I think that you need to have a plan for after the disaster/storm . There will be lots of your customers that need your help. So have a plan to effectively communicate with them about your store afterwards. Are you open? Is service open?  Do you work with insurance companies? etc

The dealers that get up and running first win!

I recently had a chance to go to my third DrivingSales Presidents Club meeting in New York. It was a great conference! We had a great day of networking with some of the brightest people in the industry! We had several great speakers as well. Most of the discussion revolved around what's coming in the future in the automotive industry. We also had quit e a bit of discussion about Human Capital Management. The breakout sessions were great as well. Any of you that went post on this blog, what was your favorite thing about the meeting?

At Allen Turner automotive we are very active in the community in a whole lot of ways. We actively are raising money for food groups and other various charities throughout the year. As a dealership we feel that this is very important. Last month we had a special needs teacher reach out  for some help with a group of kids that are about  to graduate. She wanted to take them out in to the business community to learn some of the skills needed to live. She asked if she could bring them to the dealership. We of course said yes. We rolled out the carpet for them. I was able to get them in to the conference room and talk to them about the car buying process. I also went over the importance of having and protecting credit. I was amazed at the interaction! I am hoping that this will help them in life. Please take a look at the link below to see more about it.

http://www.allenturnerhyundai.com/new-skills-program