1. Q) Kathi, you always do such a great job of advising companies on the importance of social media, what would be a suggestion for clients that have no social media presence?  A) First let me say thanks for setting up this interview. It’s fun to talk Social Media, especially with car peeps just like [...]

There is a story of a new salesperson that on their first call was told to go across the street and speak with the local store owner to sell his product. The manager told him that the owner was a “tough old bird,” but that he is their best customer. The manager also stated that [...]

Is your pricing sending the message that you intend? Probably not… And the reason it’s not is because we’ve gotten into the “race to bottom” with the aftermarkets. “If so and so does oil changes for $12.95, why are we doing them for $39.95?” So, instead of building value in yours, you remove services and [...]

There is nothing more frustrating than instructing someone to do something and having it not get done. When you have a team that you can’t count on, it makes the day seem never-ending. We begin to second guess everything we say and spend most of the day checking on things that we think should already [...]

I was fortunate enough to be able to perform my civic duty the other day by being on jury duty. A mixed group of the citizenry gathered at 8:30 a.m. on a Monday morning at the local court house and we waited. And waited……. As some of the people shared stories about their lives and [...]

Well here you are again, at work. Here is the time for you to decide what you’re going to do with the next 10 hours. You can just count the minutes until it is time for you to leave and start the whole thing all over again tomorrow. Or you can try to get the [...]

We’ve all heard these terms hundreds of times. As a matter fact, we’ve heard these terms so long that what was “new school” is already “old school.” There are numerous words that come to mind with these terms. Sadly though, there seems to be some negative with some of the terms and some positive with [...]

We had an experience with an employee recently that his performance was sub-par in comparison to his team. When doing an open share with all the team members, it was mentioned on more than one occasion about the performance of this employee. I had the pleasure of speaking with the underperformer and shared our expectations. [...]

Didn’t cars need tires 5 years ago? How about 25 years ago? Low and behold, they sure did!! We just use to think that sending your clients down the street to the local tire guy was not a problem. Did you just realize that if you sent your customers somewhere else, they may not come [...]

If your response to that question is the models you service, you’re missing out. I’m fortunate to be at a Hyundai, Acura and Honda store, but my brand is The Vinart Dealerships. Now you may ask what the difference is and the answer is huge. If your only brand identification is the models you sell [...]

The past was that marketers and salespeople sold to us. Now with the use of social media, clients research the web and consult media sources and review sites like Yelp or others like it and then are sold to by their peers. We check trends on Twitter or get comments on our Facebook page. The [...]

In George Orwell‘s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the fictional language called Newspeak attempts to influence thought by influencing the expressiveness of the English language. In the car business, we have “Carspeak.” “So we have you down for an LOF and SI and IM” “We noticed during your inspection that your CV joint is noisy” “We hooked up [...]