So we still advertise our inventory on a few third party websites . Mainly car gurus and auto trader. We put a ton of effort in to our online merchandising. We try to make sure that our pictures good and we also put a lot of effort in to our descriptions as well . We use vauto for all of this. We noticed a few month ago that the search algorithm  on auto trader had changed.....what we were told us that we needed to make sure that the options were checked properly in v auto. We have put that in place and it works well......However my dilemma is that the different sites are giving relevancy to different things. So are we going to have to g in to the backend tool of each 3rd party site to fix this?

 As you probably know I have been doing a series of blogs on the construction and launch of our new Hyundai store. It is really coming along now! We are looking at opening at either the end of the first quarter or the beginning of the 2nd quarter. This is a store that is being built from the ground up.

 We are now at a point where we are really starting to have some fun with it. We actually met this month with people to order furniture for the entire store. We are also going to a desk free sales environment on the sales floor at that store so we have started transitioning a few of our salespeople to tablets as well. That alone has been a challenge. We do however feel that it is important to go ahead and get used to those.

 As I stated in the last blog we are also starting to use videos that have been done at the new site as a recruiting tool. People in the community are staring to get very excited about the project.

Here is a link to our latest video on the project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaVl_syXZnY

 So as I talked about last month we are building a new location for our Hyundai store. We outgrew the old location several years ago. It will be a much larger building as well as state of the art. We are very excited about this. We have also been sharing this with our existing customers via our social media channels. Each month we are shooting video of the owner and showing the progress at the construction site. It has created quite a buzz within our customer base. 

 So we have also started talking about the fact that we are going to have to staff it as well. So going forward each month not only are we going to shoot a video for our customers .....we are also going to start shooting some that we can use as a recruiting tool. (new building, climate controlled service bays etc.) 

 This has become quite the fun project!

 I have been a bdc manger for quite some time. I did leave my store for a while and am recently back. As i have returned to the store I have been just trying to  observe for while in the dept before making huge changes. 

 I have noticed that the team has gotten completely away from the basics. On a new phone up they are basically getting a name and number and saying that a salesman will call you back.  

 So we are starting a new regime of training next week with the goal of "getting back to basics" Any input from you guys will be a great help

So for a few months now I have been blogging about us building a new dealership. I am trying to discuss the things that all of us as dealers have to deal with as we get  more modern. 

 So this past week I took a tour of the site with my owner. Its really coming a long. We are at the spot where we are starting to have to make a lot of detail decisions. We are even starting to discuss things such as what will play on the tvs in the showroom. PLease click here to see the latest video from Allen Turner. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRvcXcZ4hno

Both of our Our dealerships have always been somewhat active in our local community. We do lots of things at the stores that raise money for local charities. At one of our stores we do a yearly drive that raises money for a local food pantry. Each employee has the chance to put money in to an account and the owner will match it at the end of the year. At the other store we use the same concept but the funds are give to a local toys for tots program.  We have given them several large checks throughout the years.

 We also participate in a lot of community events that are away from the dealerships. We participate in a lot of charity 5ks , Cancer awareness events and a world of other types. We do make sure that anything that we sponsor we are able to have someone at the event.

 We feel that our efforts have been a success. This is however extremely hard to measure! Our Facebook audience has grown a lot and I can tell you of several people that we have sold cars too that we met at an event.

 This a link to a landing page that we created to hilite some of the  events that our Hyundai store has been involved with.

http://www.allenturnerhyundai.com/Community-Involvement

This is one to the chevy page

https://www.allenturnerchevrolet.com/Community-Involvement

Allen Turner started building a brand new state of the art Hyundai store from the ground up a few months ago. So the construction of the dealership is moving along nicely now. It is actually starting to take shape! You can actually tell where the service department will be as well as the showroom and a few other areas as well.

 We are now also starting to discuss the layout of the show room and the technology that will be in it......Things such as hightops instead of esksand types tv's. we even had the discussion of what will play on the showroom tv's. We will be planning what will go in our bdc department soon. This is becoming an exciting project!

We have also started posting the progress on our facebook page and we are getting a positive response from our customers about it. Click https://youtu.be/dKuAJmFT4Fs for the latest update from Allen Turner.

We have had a hyundai store in pensacola for many years now. We decided a year or two ago that we needed to expand our existing location or go with another one. We had truly outgrown our existing location. We began building a brand new hyundai store from the ground up about a year ago. In the next few months I will be posting video of our progress and asking the community for help on ideas for the new store. We are going to have a few challenges going forward of course. One of the main ones is that the new store will be about a mile from our existing locations in Pensacola.  We have started a campaign centered around creating excitement for the new building. We are going to do a series of videos from the owner. Here is the first one....click on the following link to view it: New construction

I am looking forward to sharing this exciting new journey with all of you

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 have a hyundai store in Pensacola fl.We also have a preowned dealership  about a block down the road. We have always had our service department located at the hyundai store. Within the last year or so we have opened up a service department at the pre owned building. At first we were mainly doing internal work at that store. We are now at a point where we need to start putting more customer pay work in to that store. So we are attempting to get everyone that buys a car out of that sore to come back to that store for the first oil change that we give them . We are also calling people from the bdc department that havent been in in a while. Do you guys have any ideas on anything else that i can do to help this struggling department?