Hi Everyone!

We'd like to congratulate Kyle Reyes! Kyle had the most viewed exclusive blog in June: This Study About Millennials And Booze Will Help You Sell More Cars. Thanks for sharing your blog with the Community, Kyle.

Here's an interview with Kyle discussing his blog in more depth and shares insight about Millennials' buying decisions with DrivingSales' Senior Marketing Director, Adam Shiflett. Check it out!

Greetings DrivingSales community members!

It's hard to believe this October we will be hosting the 8th annual DrivingSales Executive Summit at the Bellagio, Las Vegas. Last year we had more dealer executives attend than ever before and we're well on our way to creating an better event this year. DSES 2016 will provide dealership executives with actionable items and information to prepare for a successful 2017 by hearing from the most progressive keynote and breakout speakers. 

As always, a panel of very successful and progressive dealers design the DSES agenda from a large pool of speaker applications. There never has been, and never will be, any sales pitches or "pay to play" presentations. 

We've very fortunate to have Jim Parker, former CEO of Southwest Airlines, as one of our keynotes at DSES 2016. Parker achieved tremendous success while leading Southwest and navigated the uncertainy of the aftereffects of 9/11.

Jim Parker will share how a culture can benefit an organization in good economic times and become absolutely essential in bad economic times. Parker stresses the “round earth” principle where “what goes ‘round comes ‘round”… if you develop a respect and appreciation for your employees, they will do the same with your customers. 

And when times are tough, that respect and appreciation transcend a purchasing consumer’s decision to save money…to one where they will spend money on that product or service from a company that they have an emotional attachment to. Hear Parker tell of his experience of customers who did not ask for refunds after 9/11…instead they told Southwest employees “that the airline needed the money more than they did”… and more customers who actually sent money to Southwest in the days and weeks following 9/11 for the same reasons.

We invite you to join us Oct. 23-25 at the Bellagio, Las Vegas for the most progressive dealer event in the industry and hear Jim's insights.

About Jim Parker

Jim Parker is a lawyer by trade, having received both his undergraduate and law degrees from The University of Texas. After serving as law clerk to a federal judge and as an Assistant Attorney General of Texas, Jim joined the San Antonio law firm of Oppenheimer, Rosenberg, Kelleher, and Wheatley. As luck would have it, one of the co-founders of that law firm, Herb Kelleher, also co-founded a small Texas airline called Southwest, and Jim soon stumbled into the airline industry. After serving as outside counsel for Southwest for seven years, Jim became General Counsel for 15 years, and ultimately served as Southwest’s CEO for three years.

During Jim’s tenure as CEO, Southwest was named as the most admired airline, and one of the three most admired companies in America by Fortune magazine; Airline of the Year by Air Transport World magazine; and one of the World’s Most Socially Responsible Companies by Global Finance magazine. Jim was also named co-CEO of the Year in 2001 by Morningstar.com, and was named to Institutional Investor’s list of Best CEO’s in America in 2004. Jim’s proudest accomplishment, however, comes from the fact that Southwest Airlines was able to protect the jobs of all of its employees, with no furloughs or pay cuts in the aftermath of 9/11, while also remaining profitable every year and, in fact, every quarter during his tenure as CEO. Jim is presently retired from the airline industry, and serves on the Board of Directors of the successful Texas Roadhouse restaurant company, and also serves on the Advisory Council for the MIT Sloan Business School Leadership Center.

Jim is also the author of the book "Do the Right Thing – How Dedicated Employees Produce Loyal Customers and Large Profits," published by Wharton School Publishing.

Congratulations to Mark Dubis! He had the most viewed exclusive blog post in May: Things No Customer Said, Ever! Thanks for sharing your insight with the Community, Mark.

Here's an interview with Mark discussing his blog post in more depth. 

The Language of Closers: Communication that Wins," presented by CDK Global, named 2016’s Most Valuable Insight at third annual DrivingSales Presidents Club.

Salt Lake City, UT– June 13, 2016 – DrivingSales today announced that "The Language of Closers: Communication that Wins," presented by CDK Global, has been named the 2016 DrivingSales Most Valuable Insight.  CDK Global received the award from DrivingSales CEO Jared Hamilton at the third annual Presidents Club event in Miami.

The Most Valuable Insight competition, which was judged exclusively by dealer executives, was created by DrivingSales to foster the spirit of progress and thought leadership in the auto industry.  It was also announced that The Presidents’s Club, which expanded to include six new interactive workshops and sold out for the third year in a row, returns to New York City in 2017. 

“Each year the presentations in our Presidents Club Most Valuable Insight competition raise the ‘insight bar’ for our industry and this year was no exception. From a focus on innovative recruiting to ‘transaction-transparent’ pricing, to the winning insight from CDK Global, which analyzed key email words and phrases that help boost closing ratios, these high level presentations offered our attendees actionable learnings that they can take home and implement in the dealership,” said DrivingSales Founder & CEO Jared Hamilton. 

CDK Global’s winning insight used sentiment analysis to analyze the language found in the first email responses of the top 10% of closers of a set of 1,000 dealerships and then compared that language to the responses of the bottom 10% of email closers to discover the words and phrases that have a higher likelihood of motivating the shopper to act, as well as words that keep shoppers from moving forward in their decision to acquire a vehicle from the responding store.

“We offer our congratulations to CDK Global for their winning insight and our thanks to all the MVI finalists for sharing these terrific ideas with their dealer peers. We look forward to seeing an expanded presentation of the CDK Global findings at the Eighth annual DSES in Las Vegas in October,” continued Hamilton.

The Most Valuable Insight runners-up are (alphabetically by company) Hireology for "Effective Employment Branding Drives Better Hiring and Accelerated Business Growth," and vAuto for "A Pathway To Improved New Vehicle Performance, Profitability." 

For the DrivingSales Most Valuable Insight competition, industry professionals are asked to provide an insight, founded on original research, which can provide significant value to dealership executives.  A panel of top Dealer Principals/Owners and General Managers from innovative dealerships across the US chose three finalists from online applications.  The submissions were evaluated entirely on their merits, without identifying the submitter. The finalists presented their insights onstage, in nine minute presentations, at the Presidents Club event, with the winner selected by a dealer panel.

The Most Valuable Insight Competition was part of a high-level line-up at the DrivingSales Presidents Club that included best-selling author and consultant Dan Waldschmidt, Managing Partner of Underwood & Roberts PLLC Jeff Roberts, and DrivingSales Founder and CEO Jared Hamilton.

For more information about the DrivingSales Most Valuable Insight Competition, go to http://drivingsalespresidentsclub.com/#mvi.

Check out DrivingSales News for more coverage of the event at: http://www.drivingsales.com/news/day-1-recap-4th-annual-drivingsales-presidents-club/

About The DrivingSales Presidents Club

Held annually on the east coast, The DrivingSales Presidents Club offers dealer principals a place where they can access the right, relevant information to lead their dealerships – profit-building information filtered through those who understand it best: innovative leaders from inside and outside the industry who have built great business strategies; progressive dealerships who are making a difference on the ground, and the forward-thinking general managers and dealership principals who not only know what information matters, but how it matters. The event, which is dealer-designed to cover the topics most relevant to the challenges of dealership leadership today, also emphasizes peer interaction and idea-sharing forums. Discussions and presentations focus on the three foundational assets of successful dealership operations, Capital, Brand and People and the event includes The Most Valuable Insight competition.

About DrivingSales   

DrivingSales serves automotive retailers with an integrated suite of technology, knowledge, community and performance insight designed to advance the success of retail professionals and their dealerships. Founded by a third-generation car dealer in 2008, today DrivingSales is utilized by two-thirds of franchised dealerships in North America as a resource to improve their business performance. 

To learn more about the DrivingSales community, news, dealer education or performance analytics visit DrivingSales.com.

DrivingSales Media Relations:
Melanie Webber (melanie@mwebbcom.com), mWEBB Communications, 424.603.4340

Crystal Hartwell (crystal@mwebbcom.com), mWEBB Communications, 714.987.1016

Greetings DrivingSales community. We'd like to introduce a new element to the community and thank those who are contributing great content. Russ Chandler's exclusive blog What Are the Elements of the Great Automotive Shift? received the most views in April and we wanted to follow up with Russ and give him the opportunity to go into more depth and discuss his blog.

Look for more video interviews on a monthly basis with community member who's exclusive blogs are receiving the most views.

Congratulations, Russ! Thanks for sharing your insight!

In case you missed it in the Q1 issue of the DrivingSales DealerExec magazine, Maryann Keller-principal of the automotive consultancy Maryann Keller & Associates, shared her experience at an FTC panel discussion on direct vehicle sales and the franchise law system late last year. She shares her experience and how the FTC is skewing the facts by looking at incomplete and insufficient data. Check it out:

Exposing FTC Biases Against Dealership Franchise Laws by Maryann Keller

In November the Federal Trade Commission invited me to participate in a panel discussion on direct sales of vehicles. This would be one session in an all day event exploring state franchise laws. Before the event, I was assured both sides would be equally represented and have the same opportunity to express their opinions on RMAs and terminations, warranty reimbursement and direct sales. But the Jan. 19 event was anything but fair, with participants opposed to franchise laws (including all of the panel moderators and academics) outnumbering those in favor, by about 3 to 1.

The situation confronting dealers is challenging because of the parties aligned against franchise laws. The FTC’s opposition to franchise laws has dominated the public debate. The agency relies upon the “research” of their chosen academics that delight in uttering inflammatory phrases like “dealer lobby,” “crony capitalism” and “monopoly pricing power.” It doesn’t matter that these economists demonstrate total ignorance of the operation of the automobile and vehicle distribution industries. Nevertheless, this agency and its academic cohorts influence decision makers and the general public. As a society, we automatically assign credibility to university professors and assume neutrality in scholarly research. By contrast, advocates in favor of franchise laws are fewer and often linked to dealers through their associations or legal representatives and therefore are seen as protecting the status quo for their own benefit. The media also hold an antidealer bias and repeat the claims of the pseudo research.

The second keynote speaker of the morning, Francine Lafontaine, the former FTC Director of the Bureau of Economics, provided us with examples of her academic sloppiness. In 2010, Ms. Lafontaine published her report “State Franchise Laws, Dealer Terminations, and the Auto Crisis.” She concluded in that report that having too many dealers caused market share losses, which contributed to the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler. Apparently Ms. Lafontaine reached her conclusions without reading any of the many books or the business press that chronicled decades of inferior products, failed acquisitions and investments, expensive labor contracts, stock buy backs, etc.

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