Beating the odds
The CADA Laureate winners featured in this issue are truly deserving of the award, and now join the ranks of a group of dealers who are legends in our industry. It’s tough to become a CADA Laureate. Really tough. Only …
Category: Opinion
What your financial statement is telling you
A financial expert takes a look at dealership financial statements and offers insights into what dealers might be missing. My profession is an interesting one. It’s often misunderstood and commonly discounted in the automotive industry. In a world of exotic …
The devil in the post-pandemic details
As we contemplate a return to the office in the coming months, there’s lots of discussion around a hybrid model that blends remote work with office-based work. At first glance, that seems easy enough to implement, but on closer inspection …
The show must go on
We write a lot about succession in the pages of Canadian auto dealer — including this issue’s cover story. That’s because the core audience of our magazine consists of dealer principals, who think a lot about these issues. And other …
Help your team surf the third wave
We thought we’d be on the downside by now. Case loads dropping. Economies opening. Stress levels associated with the pandemic easing back. We thought that’s where we would be by mid-April, but it’s absolutely not where we are. Instead, for …
Fixing fixed ops
New and used vehicle sales in Canada will always fluctuate, and there’s not much dealers can do about it. Even the most agile dealership, with the best marketing outreach and customer retention strategies, will experience events that nip into the …
The show does go on
You have to give the auto industry a lot of credit for trying. For an industry that prides itself on big-scale events, dramatic new vehicle launches, massive trade shows and conferences like the NADA Show and SEMA, and more recently …
This is a big deal
We’re living in the combined contexts of the pandemic and its many impacts, and the dramatic transformation that is taking hold across the automotive industry. Amid all that, it’s easy to throw superlatives around. And as the line in the …
Overdue change is coming
Cars aren’t the only things with blind spots. We all have them. As we go about our daily lives, focused intently on the things demanding our immediate attention, many of us miss the most obvious things happening around us. Consider …
A higher standard than the rule of law
Man, do we live in interesting times. As I write this note, we are a week past the Capitol riots in Washington. A week away from former Vice President Joe Biden’s inauguration and the concerns surrounding that transition: from a …
Here we go again…
Just as people in the auto industry were starting to use the past tense to describe their experience with the pandemic, outbreaks of COVID-19 have sprung up across the country, and in some ways we are now back to where …
Silicon Valley, eh?
Amid the flood of information that comes through our inboxes, once in a while something really stands out. At a time when so much is expected to change in the automotive customer experience and the tools that support the retail …
