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Are you subscribing to Sandi's Newsletter? It's only $195 a year and mailed monthly. Many issues include a free spreadsheet. Each issue saves you thousands of dollars and has at least five ways to improve your dealership using technology or best practices. Buy Now! or browse below to see previous issues. Email me today to request a free copy. If you'd rather get a copy of Sandi's free Excel tips emailed to you, just click on Free Downloads and enter your email address. Past Issues of Sandi's Newsletter June 08 Used Vehicle Policy and Reconditioning – Is it for Real? - The number one reason for chargebacks in the new and used departments is an internal repair order that were missed when the deal was worked. Since I’ve never seen Buy the Back Issues Now! Saving Money – Paying with a Credit Card - It is fun to pile up all those frequent flyer miles and many of your vendors allow you to pay with a credit card. The only problem is how do you get the credit out of their Accounts Payable account Buy the Back Issues Now! Time Saver – Excel Range Names List - Anyone who taken my one of seminars knows that I’m a fan of naming a range to use in printing sections of the spreadsheet or using in complicated formulas Buy the Back Issues Now! Techno Tip - Divide and Conquer - When your Excel formula results turn out to be that ugly divide by zero error #DIV/0!, customize the way Buy the Back Issues Now! BDC Best Idea – Let’s Get Together - One of the first steps to developing a BDC is to unify your marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter if you’re a single dealership or group Buy the Back Issues Now! May 08 Do you need the Part Today? - Daily stock orders and FedEx have made a mess in the parts department. The key to having the most efficient repair order parts fulfillment is to have the part waiting on the shelf for the technician. But most parts managers ask, “Why should I stock a part when I can get it tomorrow?” The answer is Buy the Back Issues Now! Saving Money – Freight Audit - How much did you really pay for freight last month? Freight is one of those hard to measure accounts. Sometimes we get credits that offset the charges and other times we charge freight to the cost of the item Buy the Back Issues Now! BDC Best Idea – Greeting Card Thank You! - Are you looking for a low cost thank you gift for your customers? Email them a thank you picture of them with their new vehicle. Just grab the Buy the Back Issues Now! Techno Tip – Two Monitors for the Price of One! - Have you seen all those cool people with two monitors on their desk? I would love to have two monitors, but I have a rather small desk Buy the Back Issues Now! April 08 Parts are Special - As I look over the table of contents for the past four years, I’m first amazed that my newsletter is almost four years old (I started it in November 2004) and that I’ve written so few articles about the department that I started in – the parts department. Of course the parts department Buy the Back Issues Now! BDC Best Idea – Would you like an Email? - Collecting email addresses is one of the biggest challenges to having a successful email marketing program. Most people would prefer an email to a phone call if it is for a simple Buy the Back Issues Now! Saving Money – Free employment advertisements - Whenever my advertising budget vs. actual was off, I found the little things were often the culprit. It is easy to spend thousands of dollars each month on employment advertisements. Why not find some free Buy the Back Issues Now! Techno Tip - Advanced Tab naming in Excel - Last month I showed you how to name a tab the information in a particular cell but it was not very automated, nor did it contain error checking. This macro Buy the Back Issues Now! Timesaver – A Reason to Upgrade - If you’re looking for a good reason to upgrade to Office 2007, the new version of Excel isn’t limited by 65,536 rows; you now have 1,048,576 rows and Buy the Back Issues Now! March 08 My Next Five Tips – If I were a Dealer! - In my last issue, I told you about my best friend who is soon to be a dealer. I’m busy creating checklists and ideas for him since it was always our dream to be dealers (I went off course and wrote a DMS system instead.) Even if you’re not buying a dealership Buy the Back Issues Now! Saving Money – Printer Self Maintenance - Want to save $14,000 on your printer maintenance? I recently found a company that has a nice estimating spreadsheet that shows you how to have a self maintenance plan for your printers instead of paying Buy the Back Issues Now! Techno Tip - Naming your Tabs in Excel - In my emailed Excel tips this month I told you how to put the name of your worksheet tab in your spreadsheet but I got many emails requesting how to go the other direction and to name a tab the information Buy the Back Issues Now! Best Idea – Count down email - We recently wrote a check for the last payment on our minivan. We only financed for 36 months to get the zero percent interest (I can’t resist a good deal!) I can’t help but think that Buy the Back Issues Now! Time Saver – Unclaimed Property - According to group of controllers that I recently spoke to, unclaimed property audits are on the rise as the states have found a new source of income. This audit can be expensive. The auditors will normally Buy the Back Issues Now! February 08 My Dealer’s Top 10 List - One of my best friends is realizing his dream this year – he’s becoming a dealer! I can remember all our lunches and dinners where we plotted out what we’d do if we owned a dealership and now it is time Buy the Back Issues Now! Best Idea – e-Newsletters made Easy - Many of your customers are spending more time in front of their computer than in front of the television, listening to the radio, or reading the newspaper. An e-newsletter Buy the Back Issues Now! Saving Money – Print on One Page - A typical power Excel user ends up wasting a lot of paper by not staying in the margins and having a few rows or columns print on the next page. What I do Buy the Back Issues Now! Techno Tip – Faster Websites - Do you get frustrated with how long it takes to bring up your favorite website? Want a way to get your information from the web faster?Buy the Back Issues Now! Time Saver – Tell them what you Want! - If you don’t have the time to write a lot of instructions or train your employees, consider using Excel’sBuy the Back Issues Now! January 08 When is a Deal a Deal? - The biggest key to a quick close is having all the deals in the office. I have freely admitted over the years that I used to spend more time thinking about closing the booksBuy the Back Issues Now! Techno Tip – Have a great Outlook - Did you know that when you enter a portion of name in the “To” box of Outlook, you can pressBuy the Back Issues Now! Saving Money – Price Increases - It is that time of the year when we start to look back at our expenses and one of the one that creeps up the most is your computer billing. It’s not a hard process to make sureBuy the Back Issues Now! BDC Best Idea – Here they come! - Vehicle shipping notices can be one of the most valuable things for a good Internet or BDCBuy the Back Issues Now! Time Saver – Go the Right Way! - If you are entering data and press enter, by default the cursor goes to the next cell down. But it doesn't haveBuy the Back Issues Now! Excel Tip – Taking Control – Your control key and the function key can quickly move you fromBuy the Back Issues Now! December 07 Office Bonuses for Profit - After my issue on expenses and the 10% savings bonus, a lot of you emailed me for some other suggestions for office personnel bonuses. First of all, why give anyBuy the Back Issues Now! BDC/Internet Best Idea – Free Inspection - Nothing can be more frustrating than when a customer decides to buy a used car from a private party or on ebay insteadBuy the Back Issues Now! Techno Tip – Password Protect your Files - Do you have a folder that you must allow access to others, but you have files that need to be protected, like payroll reports?Buy the Back Issues Now! Time Saver – Concatenate - Concatenate means to “join together” and although I’m all for learning a new word each day, I wouldn’t recommend using this one in daily conversation – but it is great for creatingBuy the Back Issues Now! Saving Money – Free Storage Boxes - It’s almost the end of the year and I’m sure you’re already running out of room for next year’s files. How long do you need to keep records? An easy way to rememberBuy the Back Issues Now! November 07 How Many People do you need in Your Office? - I recently walked through anaccounting office of a new client to greet the controller. After the normal pleasantries, I turned around and looked again at her accounting office.Buy the Back Issues Now! Techno Tip – Using Windows Screensaver Password - A reader sent me an email last week that said that the newest version of one of the major DMS system no longer auto logs offBuy the Back Issues Now! BDC Best Idea – Making time for Santa - If you’ve ever stood in line at the mall to get that annual Santa visit and picture taken, you’ll appreciate what a good idea this is. Why not make your dealershipBuy the Back Issues Now! Saving Money – Receipts Books are Trouble times Two! - A few issues ago I discussed purchase order books and how you can save money by getting rid of them, but receipt books are still hiding outBuy the Back Issues Now! Time Saver - Make Excel Yours with Defaults - If you like to save your Excel files to a certain folder and prefer a different font -it is easy to set up your defaults. Select, Tools,Buy the Back Issues Now! October 07 Job Descriptions that Increase Profit –One of the first questions I ask when a manager or dealer is disappointed in the performance of one of their employees is Buy the Back Issues Now! Best Idea – Body Shop Referrals - What happens when your body shop – or the local body shop determines that a vehicle is totaled? Make sure they Buy the Back Issues Now! Time Saver– Daily Bank Reconciliation -I find in my seminars that about half of the attendees have switch to a daily bank reconciliation. If you’re trying Buy the Back Issues Now! Techno Tip – Using Excel’s Formula Audit and the “AND” functions - I find the creating an aging report one of the most difficult formulas, but Excel has a function that might make it easier Buy the Back Issues Now! Saving Money – Rising Credit Bureau costs -I was shocked to find the recent rate increase for running credit bureaus from $3.00 to $4.00 on a client’s DMS billing.Buy the Back Issues Now! September 07 Item Expenses – Getting down to the Facts! -I’m taking a break from my “Keys to Retaining Employees” series to focus on what seems to be the hottest topic Buy the Back Issues Now! BDC Best Idea – Labor Op Code Reporting - The best campaign that you can create involves your service department. Your objective is to get Buy the Back Issues Now! Time Saver – Let the Mouse do it! Are you tired of having to remembering passwords? Do you worry about someone stealing your laptop or desktop computer? Buy the Back Issues Now! Techno Tip – Find and Replace in only one Column - Normally the things that I’m looking for in Excel are in just one column – like a name or expense description.Buy the Back Issues Now! Saving Money– Don’t Throw away those Brochures! - It is almost the end of the model year and if you’ve been doing your fall cleaning, you might find boxes of the old model year brochures Buy the Back Issues Now! August 07 Five Keys to Retaining your Employees Part 3 - Training your Office Employees for Profit. We all know the benefits of training and many companies provide sales, F&I, and service training Buy the Back Issues Now! BDC Best Idea – Back to School - The summer is a perfect time for a back to school campaign. Not only do you have lots of used vehicles from the busy summer trade-ins, but also there Buy the Back Issues Now! Techno Tip – Should you upgrade to Office 2007? It is hard to resist all those new Office 2007 boxes (especially the new size) in the stores, but is it time to upgrade? Many of you are still using Buy the Back Issues Now! Time Saver – Using the Import Wizard to Clean your Data - When you bring data into Excel you might get unexpected results like the minus sign on the wrong side Buy the Back Issues Now! Saving Money – Free Backup Software - If you need an off site location to store your Outlook, Excel, and Word files (or anything else you find valuable) Buy the Back Issues Now! July 07 Five Keys to Retaining your Employees Part 2- Reviews that Increase Profits. With the forecasted labor shortage in 2010, it is important to retain the employees that you have. – Free spreadsheet! Buy the Back Issues Now! BDC Best Idea – Fuel Savings - Why not send out an email to your SUV and pickup owners from two years ago with a Buy the Back Issues Now! Saving Money – Reducing your gas expense -With the rising price of gas, not only do your customers complain of the high cost of fuel, but your delivery and company vehicle costs Buy the Back Issues Now! Techno Tip – Free Software to Restrict Internet Access -It is frustrating to find your office employees or salespeople surfing various websites instead of doing their job. Buy the Back Issues Now! Timesaver – Payroll Debit Cards - If your DMS system doesn’t do direct deposit, why not look into a Payroll Buy the Back Issues Now! June 07 Five Keys to Retaining your Employees, Part 1- Hiring Super controllers, office managers, or office staff. When I give seminar, I ask the audience “what is your most important asset?” Buy the Back Issues Now! BDC Best Idea – I can’t afford that now! Most customers decline service because they can’t afford it – right now. Find out how your DMS system tracks Buy the Back Issues Now! Techno Tip – Paint it Pretty - Do you see that little paint brush on your toolbar in Excel? Buy the Back Issues Now! Timesaver - Cashiering Faster -I often visit the cashier counter in the late afternoon and I’m dismayed to find a long line of customers trying to pay their bill. Buy the Back Issues Now! Saving Money – No more Purchase Order books -Manual purchase order books are a thing of the past. Most DMS systems Buy the Back Issues Now! May 07 WIP it Good-Reconciling Work in Process - Work in Process is a closed loop. It has to balance each month. What does “closed loop” mean? Buy Now! Charts made Easy – Expense Example -Adding a chart to your report can help the manager quickly make a decision. It is a lot easier than you think Buy Now! Techno Tip - Did I put the CAPs lock on? - I find it annoying to try and figure out if I hit the CAPs lock or not before getting on a DMS system Buy Now! Saving Money – Pull F&I Contracts - The best way get your money quicker is to have the F&I managers Buy Now! BDC Best Idea – Slow Shop Day - Every dealership has a slow day in the shop. If you find yourself in this situation Buy Now! April 07 Quick to Reconcile Bank Procedure with a Pivot Table - The Quick to Reconcile bank procedure concept is that you reconcile your bank before you start – email me for your free sample spreadsheet! (Subscribers only)...Buy Now! Techno Tip – Speed up your computers - If your computer is taking a long time to start up or load programs, you might need to...Buy Now! Wholesale Collection Made Easy -Putting your wholesales on the heat sheet is not an effective way to collect...Buy Now! Saving money – Remote Check Deposit - See if your bank offers remote check deposit – 11 banks currently do. All you do is run...Buy Now! BDC – Best Idea – Your Employees’ Best Ideas! Looking for a great campaign for next month? Why not ask...Buy Now! Free books - 101 Tips on Search Engines and Keyboard Shortcuts -Did you know that you can read thousands of books for free on your computer...Buy Now! March 07 What is the ROI for your BDC? - If you tell me the facts of your dealership; the number of technicians, stalls, vehicle inventory levels, etc. – I can measure the profit potential and breakeven of your various operating departments; new, used, service, body, or parts. How do you measure the profitability of a BDC – or CRM department? Email me for your free sample spreadsheet! (Subscribers only)...Buy Now! Saving Money – Who Needs the Factory? I just reviewed a client’s monthly support bill and they are paying for...Buy Now! Excel Tips – Erase, Erase There are two easy ways to erase a mistake in Excel. The first one...Buy Now! Speed up the Start Menu - Has your Start Menu slowed down? We all need more start up speed! To speed it up...Buy Now! Time Saver – Making the Heat Sheet Easier Are you using Excel for your Heat Sheet? Are you entering the data manually? With a few modifications...Buy Now! February 07 How to Create a Service Flash Report. I don’t a dealer in this country that doesn’t ask this question every morning, “How many did we get out yesterday?” On the flip side, I only know a handful of dealers that know how many hours the shop did yesterday. It is not a metric...Buy Now! Email me for your free sample spreadsheet! (Subscribers only BDC Best Idea – Free Menu spreadsheet. Everybody likes choices – that is why there is a menu when you go to a restaurant. Why not use a menu every time you give a proposal to a customer? If you’re making a service appointment...Buy Now! Techno Tip – Can we go back? Recently I downloaded some software that brought my PC to a crawl. I regretted the action and uninstalled it – but my computer didn’t recover. Did you know that you can restore your PC back...Buy Now! Saving Money – Lose some pounds If you still using hard copies for your repair orders, the typical paper is 32#. This premium paper costs four times what...Buy Now! Time Saver – Creating a Fill in Form with Word. Sometimes you have a form that you need to type – but can’t find or use a typewriter. I only do a few 1099s each year, so this is a perfect form for me to scan into Word and then create a template...Buy Now! January 07 Expense Budgeting Made Easy. Expenses are difficult to budget. We have a bad month and sell fewer vehicles causing floor plan and advertising per unit to go up. Gross profit is low (Email me for your free sample spreadsheet! Subscribers only) ...Buy Now! Windows Vista – Time to Upgrade? The new PCs that you buy today will come with a coupon to get a free copy of Windows Vista – good until March 15th. Should you just let that coupon expire?...Buy Now! Saving Money – Check it out! Efficiency experts estimate that each check that you type costs between $2.00 and $8.00. This includes...Buy Now! BDC Best Idea-Two for One Customers - The most valuable thing that you own is your customer database and as more privacy laws get enacted – the data you collect from your customers will become even more valuable. Why not start..Buy Now! Time Saver – Time to Choose. I often pull chart of account information and the account type (Assets, Liabilities, etc.) but the account type field displays ..Buy Now! December 06 Budgeting and Forecasting for Profit. Our industry isn’t very good at creating budgets and forecasts. Other industries use forecasts to reach there goals...Buy Now! Saving Money – A Free Backup of your DMS System. A client of mine found a great way to have a fireproof backup of her computer data – and it’s free!…Buy Now! Time Saver - Budgeting with an Advanced Filter. I have a free spreadsheet this month to help you create a budget for your dealership.…Buy Now! BDC Idea - Can you use your DMS System for CRM? I recently visited a dealership and we were working on the heat sheet and Contracts in Transit. A customer was over 60 days past due. When the office contacted her…Buy Now! Techno Tip – Stop the Start Programs. To prevent programs that start on their own…Buy Now! November 06 Are you aiming for Profit? I find that there are about seventeen profit points in a dealership that involve over sixty processes. If you are looking for more profit…Buy Now! Saving Money – Putting your Books on CD Printing your month end books wastes paper, ribbon, and binder. In addition, you’re taking up storage area…Buy Now! Techno Tip – Copy Picture in Excel If you like to cut and paste your Excel report into Word or Emails, but don’t like how…Buy Now! Time Saver – Finding Cashier Shortages Are your cashiers coming up short each day? Does it take hours for your staff to reconcile cash sales? …Buy Now! BDC Idea -After the Aftermarket Why not put the “after” back in Aftermarket sales? With BDC or Internet departments needing more and more ways to earn income, why not…Buy Now! October 06 How to use your DOC or MIS Report to Increase Profit I recently visited a dealership group that had one of the most detailed and extensive DOCs that I had ever seen. Many of us ignore the DOC or MIS report. It can be ugly…Buy Now! Saving Money – Get Rid of your Inventory Jackets - I can still remember being trained on matching the inventory jackets to the schedules as part of the month end process. I was always a “Why” kind of person, “why do we do that?... Buy Now! Techno Tip – Quick Calendar - To quickly view a calendar without loading Outlook, double click on the…Buy Now! BDC Idea - How to Survey your Customers – and Start Email Campaigns - My husband recently had service work done at a dealership and when he went to pick up his vehicle the cashier handed him a survey to complete. The woman beside him who was also picking up her car asked, “do I have to complete this to get my car?...Buy Now! Time Saver – Free Vacation Accrual Spreadsheet - The best features is that it creates a year to date summary page and I’ve added a few columns to create the amount you need to accrue for each employee. To get your free copy, just send me an email to…Buy Now!
Sept 06 Lost Customers – How does it happen? My aunt recently asked me, “Should I get an extended warranty?” Of course, being a former F&I manager, I’m all for extended warranties, but I had just walked past her vehicle and it did seem like an older vehicle, so I answered with a bunch of questions.… Buy Now! Saving Money - Do you need a copy of the Invoice? Does your accounting office make a copy of each vehicle invoice and distribute them to the sales and management staff? Who else is getting a copy of the invoice?… Buy Now! Techno Tip - Messy Desktop? If your desktop is cluttered with icons right click on the Desktop, choose Properties, Desktop tab… Buy Now! UCS and R+R Merger – What does it mean? For most of us, the merger of UCS and R+R is a shock. For those of you are UCS or R+R customers - or considering renewing a contract or purchasing a new system from one of these companies… Buy Now! Timesaver – Nested “OR” in an IF Statement Many of your database pulls have both “N” and “NEW” in the data. Yes, you can do a quick search and replace, but this exercise teaches you how to do nested… Buy Now! Aug 06 Your Profit Numbers Making a profit in this complicated business relies upon a few key profit -making numbers. In this issue, I’m going to discuss which ones are the most important … Buy Now! Techno Tip – Are you Lost? Press the flying Windows key and “F”… Buy Now! Saving Money – Kill the Typewriter and Stapler One of my favorite consulting chores is to go through a car deal and look for ways to save money. Yes, believe it or not … Buy Now! BDC/CRM Best Idea – Sticker Sale I just received a great piece of marketing from my favorite book seller. It was a… Buy Now! Microsoft’s DMS System The article in Automotive News might be confusing regarding Microsoft’s actual involvement in this new DMS system. The developer is… Buy Now! July 06 Increasing Profits with Sales Commissions A complicated commission voucher system of paying commissions hurts your profits. The voucher forms cost money, the commission summary sheets cost… Buy Now! Time Saver – Two Alternative Ways The ALT key in Windows can be a great time saver. My favorite ALT key is ALT and ESC that quickly switches between your open programs. I’ll often be cutting… Buy Now! BDC/CRM Best Idea – Joint Marketing -I just got a postcard from my real estate agent that offered me a free car wash at my local dealership. I don’t know how these two got together… Buy Now! Techno Tip Excel - Find the Best! Would you like to highlight the best salesperson in a list of total gross profit? How about highlight the lowest salesperson? Do you have a list of expenses that… Buy Now! Saving Money on your Technology – PDF Files Are you frustrated with the PDF files you are getting from you bank, computer system, floor plan lender? Want an easy way to convert them into Excel? I have… Buy Now! June 06 Let’s Meet! Do you have weekly manager’s meetings? Manager’s meeting rank high on my list of the top time wasters for controllers and managers. Why? Most managers’ … Buy Now! Techno Tip - Quick Zoom I found this little time and eye saver by mistake after resting my little finger on the Ctrl key. If you have a scroll wheel mouse… Buy Now! Add Tooltips to Cells in Excel Use Data, Validation is to set up input messages for a cell while leaving the other tabs of the data validation dialog blank. This way, the program will accept any … Buy Now! Saving Money on Your Computer System – Special Order Parts with Outlook Did you know that you can use Outlook and create a paperless SPO system? Here’s the quick steps; 1) Create the special order part request. 2) Highlight and...Buy Now! May 06 Five Spring Cleaning Ideas for your Databases With summer and your busy time around the corner it’s a good time to do some spring cleaning of your various databases. Not only will your reports and inquiries run faster, but you’ll… Buy Now! BDC Best Idea – High Mile Customers Do you have a plan to market to the ever increasing over fifty segment? Do you know what make and models appeal to the over fifty buyers? First of all why should you be concerned? The influential over-50 segment has $2 trillion… Buy Now! Free Calendar Looking for a simple way to enter service appointments, the office vacation schedule or salesperson floor schedule? The free… Buy Now! Techno Tip – Show me the Money! Want to quickly format an area to currency? First highlight the column… Buy Now! Drop Down Lists with Excel Let’s say that you’ve created a simple spreadsheet for the receptionist to enter the phone “ups” for the day. To make it easier for her to enter the salesperson’s name, why not make… Buy Now! April 06 Who are your Best Customers (and what do you do with them?)…This tells you that although you might have the best product on the market with the best features and the lowest price; your customers come back to you for other reason. How can you create the type of loyalty… Buy Now! Time Saver – Excel #N/A When I sent out my last email Excel Tip – Hide your Errors, I got so many thank you emails from those people who had been going down the sheet..Buy Now! Techno Tip - Getting Organized – Folders and Icons If your “My Documents” folder is getting full, why not create a folder for similar documents and then put a link on your desktop? First, create a folder called service department reports. ..Buy Now! Saving Money on your Computer System Nobody is a bigger promoter of Microsoft Office products than me; I live in the Pacific Northwest where our schools and various organizations have benefited from the contributions of Bill Gates – but for many dealerships, trying to keep a copy of Word or Excel on every PC gives dealers two choices – take out a small loan or commit software piracy. You have a third choice… Buy Now! BDC Ideas – Don’t get Tired! Selling tires are one of the best ways to get your customers back into the service department – or find out if they want to buy a new vehicle. If you call a customer and tell them that based on your database records their…Buy Now! March 06 Making a Plan for Collections Your office staff should not call customers – ever! I probably got the most questions from my last NADA workshop about this statement than any other idea that I threw out there. Who should call customers…Buy Now! Techno Tip - Another Way to Use VLookup to be True Normally we use VLookup to look up an exact amount, but let’s say that you pay a special bonus for customer service scores…Buy Now! Reports get Results – Collection Example This will probably be my topic for next NADA’s workshop. Reports are what gets results in a dealership. The key to effective reporting for collections like vehicle receivables, contracts in transit, missing title work, short payoffs…Buy Now! Timesaver in Excel – Where is the End? If you have pulled a lot of data, you often want to see how many rows of customers, vehicles, transactions that you have…Buy Now! Your Top Ten Lists For those of you who attended my NADA seminar, you heard how I recommend that you create top ten lists and find the “why” to each of these items. Many have asked about these top ten and here’s a list of my favorite three and what they could mean. I’ll do more in future newsletters. Top Ten Vendors - Run this from your name or customer file. Normally the payments YTD or prior YTD will give you the information that you need. If not, find your check…Buy Now! February 06 Creating a Customer Campaign Export File What if you needed to tell all your customers about a rebate that was expiring in two weeks and there were too many to call? Does the thought of doing a mail merge make you sweat – since the last time it took hours..Buy Now! Mail Merge made Easy with Microsoft Word The first step to sending out a customer campaign letter – like the one in the previous article is to create your Merge letter master. Open a new document in Microsoft Word (I’m using (2003 - also called Office XP.) Buy Now! Saving Money on Your Computer – Payroll checks See if you can use your main bank account for payroll. If you can and if your DMS system will print…Buy Now! Time Saver in Excel – Viewing Multiple Sheets Do you need to see the information on two worksheets at the same time? The first thing that needs to be done is to create another instance of the workbook you wish to compare. To do this, first open the workbook you wish to compare..Buy Now! Techo Tip – Quick Sum - In Excel, just hold down the Alt key…Buy Now! January 06 Super Numbers - the DOC for the Office "Super Numbers” is what I call a DOC for the Controller, Office Manager, or CFO. It's a set of key indicators of the health of the dealership operations. Before you can create your Super Numbers, you need…Buy Now! Free Windows XP Tools There are about a dozen separate utilities that are part of PowerToys, but four of them really help to extend the …Buy Now! BDC Idea - Getting an Email address with your Digital Camera It’s tough to get an email address from your customers, but the advantages are incredible. With an email address you can send a customer a service reminder, a survey request. How do you get that email address? …Buy Now! Time Saver – Excel Text to Columns After extracting from your DMS system, suppose you have the full in column A (Smith, John) but you want to do a mail merge, and address people as Mr. Smith? How do you get Smith to be separated …Buy Now! Your Computer System -- Database Retention – What data should you store? As a New Year starts, we’re all busy putting together file boxes to send off old records to storage. What about your computer records? How much should you save and how much should you retain on the system?…Buy Now! December 05 Top 5 New Years Marketing Resolutions #1. Clean up your database. Start simple and delete the blank records or those with garbage in them. Put someone in charge of this task – like your receptionist and give her guidelines on how to merge customers…Buy Now! Techno Tip - AutoText Tired of typing the same old stuff? Word has lots of ready-made phrases that you can insert with a mouse click instead of requiring you to manually type them. To access…Buy Now! Saving Money on Technology – Use your Mileage Credit Card to Buy PCs and Pay Accounts Payable Statements Remember to use your mileage credit card to buy those new PCs, printers, and office supplies. Most major retailers like Dell, Gateway…Buy Now! Time Saver – Getting Rid of the Big 10 Time Wasters As you create your New Years Resolutions, look at these top 10 time wasters for managers (especially controllers, office manager, and general managers.) If these wasters are taking up your time and preventing you from focusing on ways to retain more profit, then consider my solutions…Buy Now! CRM/BDC Best Idea – Calling Body Shop Estimates An average body shop does 5 estimates a day – of which only 30% actually have the work done. What about those other 70 customers who didn’t come in for the work? Some took the insurance check and decided to live with the damage while others had the work done elsewhere. These are perfect customers…Buy Now! November 05 Marketing and your Phone System I recently had the pleasure of seeing the next generation of phone systems from ADP – their new network IP phones. IP phone systems are nothing new – many phone system providers have been offering network phones for the past few years, but ADP has gone a step further and integrated the phone system with... Buy Now! Saving Money on Your Computer System – Do not Print Are you printing your purchase orders, internals and receipts? These are three big paper wasters. All three of these items are normally printed for internal use and are an unnecessary expense. Let’s start with purchase orders. Most vendors want a purchase order number – not the actual purchase order. I... Buy Now! BDC/CRM Best Idea – Aftermarket Products Why are you calling customers today? If it’s to make an ordinary service appointment, why not add some excitement to your calls and give your BDC or service advisor a chance to make a spiff? Selling aftermarket items over the... Buy Now! Techno Tip – Inserting a Page Break I hate to waste paper and I often print a worksheet only to find a few stray columns or rows orphaned on a separate page. To avoid this problem, preview where the page breaks are set to fall. Select View, Page Break Preview. The first ... Buy Now! Time Saver – Clusty your Search How much time have you wasted searching the Internet for one piece of information? Try using www.clusty.com for your next search. Clusty is the search site that aims to change the way people search online. It uses a “Clustering Engine” to organize search results into folders grouping similar items... Buy Now! October 05 CRM – Protecting your Customer Database With the last two hurricanes and my recent hard drive crash – I’ve been thinking a lot of my clients’ customer database. Your month end back up tape or archiving system makes a backup of journals, schedules, general ledger detail, repair orders, and parts tickets – but what about your most valuable data... Buy Now! BDC/CRM Best Idea – Taking the headache out of Due Bills How do you handle due bills? At a dealership I recently visited, they had an odd process. First they waited for the customer to drop in without an appointment, couldn’t start the work because they didn’t now what was promised or where it charge it to. The poor service advisor then tried to look up it up in the car deal... Buy Now! Saving Money on your Computer System - It’s time to Stretch! How can stretching save you money? If you’ve had an employee with RSI (also know as cumulative trauma disorder,) then you’ve seen some very high medical bills. RSI is a soft-tissue injury in which muscles, nerves, or tendons become irritated or inflamed. RSI is caused by repetitive motions, excessive force, and... Buy Now! Time Saver – Match and Index in Automated Bank Reconciliation If you’re having problems getting your deposits to match up in your automated bank statement – consider using INDEX() and MATCH() instead of VLOOKUP. First of all, let’s look have a little review of VLOOKUP in the automated bank reconciliation. ... Buy Now! Techno Tip – Use Excel to AutoFill your Dates or Numbers Are you creating your budget or comparative expense analysis for the year? Did you know that you don’t need to type January, February, March, etc.? Just use your AutoFill tool in Excel.... Buy Now! September 05 Hybrid Centralized Marketing -- Over the years I’ve discovered something about centralized accounting; it doesn’t work. Before a lot of you send me emails about how much money and time centralized accounting is saving you – ask your managers. Not having the ... Buy Now! Techno Tip – Learn your Short Cuts -- For those of us who spent years on DMS systems, using the keyboard is faster than the mouse – but how do you learn all the shortcuts? Easy -- turn on the keyboard shortcut ..Buy Now! Saving Money on Your Computer System – Throw away that Paper! --Although I live in a paper producing state – I cringe when I see the wasted and expensive paper that litters your dealership. The biggest criminal is your 32 pound paper in the service department. If you’re ordering that expensive paper ..Buy Now! Time Saver – Fixing Deposits for an Automated Bank Statement -- I’m working on getting the Index and Match functions in Excel to do a better job of clearing deposits in my goal towards a totally automated bank statement – but until you fix your credit cards problem – it’s never going to work ..Buy Now! BDC/CRM Best Idea – License Plates are Here -- I find that the office staff or receptionists are probably the worse person to call a customer to let them know their plates are in. Why? There is no value to the call and this person is often untrained in people skills. Why not give this call to your Buy Now! August 05 Campaigns for your Parts Department - It’s hard to think of CRM and Parts in the same sentence, but this is a greatly untouched market for your dealership. The key to customer retention... Buy Now! CRM/BDC Best Idea – Finding those Hidden UPs! -If you don’t get the sales people to enter the UPs on a card, log, or the computer system – how are you going to do successful non-buyer follow up? I think my favorite general manager question...Buy Now! Saving Money on your Computer System – Technology Inventory Time -I’m often surprised to find how much unused technology is out there in the dealerships. Taking a technology inventory is the best way....Buy Now! Techno Tip – Excel Copy Cats! -There a many ways to copy data in Excel to make your spreadsheet creation go faster... Buy Now! Time Saver – Downloading your Floorplan Statement -I was delighted this month to discover that you can now download your GMAC floorplan outstanding. They have added a nice Download button to the Search Vehicle Inventory screen. If you cannot find a way to download your outstanding...Buy Now! July 05 Campaigns – it’s Garage Sale Time! - With the great weather, it’s a perfect time for a garage sale. I know you’re thinking, how can a garage sale be a campaign? If we use the normal guidelines for building a campaign, we might just find a great way to clean up the dealership, free up some frozen assets, bring lots of customers…Buy Now! Time Saver - Print an Envelope from Outlook - Need to print an envelope from Outlook? If you’ve tried the instructions using the Mail Merge from Outlook and got lost- here’s an easier way. First, put the envelope into your printer. Next, click…Buy Now! CRM/BDC Best Idea – SPO Parts - Looking for a great reason to contact customers? Why not help out your very busy parts department? Since most parts obsolescence comes from special order parts that were not picked up before the time ran out to return the part – you can do a triple benefit…Buy Now! Saving Money on your Computer System – Five Billing Items - Take a look at you billing this month and see if these five items apply to you! PC support. Many dealers are paying close to $500 a month to support their PCs. You can buy a nice PC for $299 - so every month you could buy a backup PC and backup one of your older PCs to the new PC and keep it around in case the old PC dies. Be sure and get some… Techno Tip – Web Blocking - Is your Internet slowing down? Are you concerned that your employees are downloading pornography – or spending too much time on gaming or video sites? There are five companies that provide web blocking software; DynaComm, i:filter,iPrism… Buy Now! June 2005 Campaigns – Prospecting to your Service Customers One of your most valuable customers is your service department customers. Let’s ask this question – who is coming into the shop and why? I ran a simple report of a client’s database for those customers with an appointment for tomorrow. Of course, if you run this report...Buy Now! BDC/CRM Best Idea - Easy Postcard Mailings Looking for a quick way to reach your customers? For as low as 89 cents for each postcard including postage -- you can send out postcards to your customers via the Internet. All you have to do is point and click. First you select...Buy Now! Saving Money on Technology - Using Thin Clients Is it time to put your technology on a diet? A thin client is a network computer without a hard disk drive, which, in client/server applications, is designed to be especially small so that the bulk of the data processing occurs on the server. Thin clients cost less than a PC and they are easier...Buy Now! Techno Tip – Download Web Pages to Excel Would you like to reconcile your online inventory to your DMS inventory? How about downloading your online bank transactions? With Excel, you can Query a web page and bring the data in to your spreadsheet. First, open...Buy Now! Time Saver – Using Tabs in Excel for your Month End Spreadsheet Let’s say that you have ten spreadsheets in various workbooks that you do for month end. Why not move them into one workbook file? In addition, you can color code the tab on each worksheet to show if it’s done or not. Right click on the tab and...Buy Now! May 2005 Campaigns Using your Own Demographics Last month we analyzed our database to see what type of customers you have in your database based on the year, make, and model. The 2nd part of the puzzle is to determine who do you sell to? You can buy all kinds of expensive demographic reports, but your database holds the most valuable information. Can you answer...Buy Now! BDC/CRM Best Idea - Car Seat Inspections Did you know that in most areas you can have a volunteer Certified Child Passenger Safety Technician come to your dealership for a special event? Even better...Buy Now! Techno Tip =Backing up your important files with Windows When was the last time you did a backup? This is the question you get asked AFTER you have a hardware problem. Fortunately, backing up your essential files is neither difficult...Buy Now! Saving Money on your Computer System - Can you go to Paperless Schedules? One of the biggest paper wasters is the printing of schedules for reconciliation and storage. Could you go paperless? First of all, let’s look at the printing...Buy Now! Time Saver Super Sum it! There is a special key in Excel on your tool bar that is a Greek sigma symbol that looks like a backwards E. Go to end of a long column of numbers...Buy Now! April 2005 Campaigns – Starting from your Database -Up until now in our campaign lessons, we’ve talked about finding a certain customer in your database and doing some target marketing to that type of customer. What about your whole database...Buy Now! Saving Money on your Computer System – Do you need Branch
Accounts? Techno Tip – Adding a User in Windows -Do allow others to use your PC? Does some of your office staff share a PC but you’d like to limit each one’s access to various files...Buy Now! Time Saver – Free Excel Viewer 2003 - If you want to go truly paperless, you’re going to have to consider sending Excel files via email instead of printing and handing out items. For example instead of printing commission sheets for your salespeople, email them...Buy Now! BDC/CRM Best Idea – Free Reverse Directory - Are you tired of names and addresses that you can’t read from up cards and the up log? Try the Reverse Phone Directory at...Buy Now! March 2005 Campaigns - What is your Failure Rate? A dealer recently told me that he doesn’t have a 30% closing ratio for his Prospects – he has a 70% failure rate. What type of campaign can you create to reduce your failure rate? First of all you need to analyze what is the cause of your “failures.” Your Prospect database is one of the most valuable marketing tools for determining...Buy Now! BDC/CRM Best Idea – Prospect Emails Do you collect email addresses for your prospects? I have a dealer client that gets email addresses for over 60% of his prospects. He is provided a report everyday on how many emails were collected by salesperson. Then his BDC goes a step further...Buy Now! Saving Money on Your Computer System – Credit Bureau Fees Are you running your credit bureaus on your DMS system? Did you know that there are online credit bureau providers like...Buy Now! Techno Tip-Automatically Start Outlook Do you like to have a certain program start up automatically when you “boot” your computer? If you’re like me, I like to check my email first, so Outlook is the first think I select. I know other people that like ERALink or Reflection...Buy Now! Time Saver – Free Internet Browser One of my clients came up to me at NADA and told me about a new browser that makes Internet Explorer look flat. Since my client is on the NADA technology committee and always one step ahead of me, I decided to download...Buy Now! February 2005 Creating a CRM Plan for Your Dealership -Of all the technology in a dealership, CRM is the most difficult to measure the success of the expense that you incur. Let’s compare CRM to service invoicing. When we computerized service invoicing in the late 80’s, we knew what service invoicing should do; take labor rate times labor hours, add parts, shop supplies...Buy Now! Saving Money on your Computer System – Watch the Fine Print! I know you’re exhausted by the time the computer salesperson comes by with the big thick contract for you to sign – but the new contracts from the computer vendors contain all kind of fine print that is making us worry. Take a moment to look at these big three key items. Term: I just reviewed a computer...Buy Now! Techno Tip - Print Macro -Do you have a spreadsheet that you need to print two or more reports from? Let’s say it’s a comparison report and each manager gets their department printed. If you record a print macro, you’ll save time defining the range each...Buy Now! Time Saver – Free Desktop Software - Do you spend too much time looking for files or emails? Let’s say you’re buying a new dealership called “ABC Motors.” You know that you’ve written and received a few emails about the project and you do have a folder called ABC Motors with some documents in it – but is it everything? Download from...Buy Now! BDC/CRM Best Idea – Working the Recall List - Letting a customer know about open recalls is a great “reason” to call the customer. Not only do you provide them with fantastic customer relations, you also generate more business for the service department. What do you need to...Buy Now! January 2005 Creating a Campaign – Off Line Used Vehicles - How do you control your used vehicle inventory? I know of a dealer that has a policy that if a vehicle is in inventory over 45 days – it is written down to zero and the proceeds from the sale goes to other income. Ouch! I know others that set a 45-day supply and don’t allow the used department to go over that number...Buy Now! 5 Ways to Save Money on Your Computer System - Training You might think that training is going to cost you money, but after doing a lot of analysis of dealership technology costs, I found they are paying a lot for outside services that they could be doing themselves. Let’s look at my five areas of concern; Forms Building: If you train someone how to create and modify your own forms...Buy Now! Techno Tip - Change the CASE in Word - With the event of email protocol, having anything in all capitals letters is not only unprofessional – but could be mistaken for anger. If you are using Word for your mailings, it’s easy to change capital letters to case letters (first letter capitalized.)...Buy Now! Time-Saver – Have Excel Read Back The Numbers - One of my first jobs in the car business was to be available for the controller whenever he wanted to read some numbers to me to find some mistake that he made. Did you know that Excel can do that for you? Click on a column that you’d like Excel to read to you. Next from the pull down menu, select...Buy Now! BDC-CRM Best Ideas – What to do with Orphans - I don’t like to call them orphans, but since it is the most common term for customers whose sales person is no longer with the dealership – I’ll use the term. Now that its winter and for many – a slower time, this might be the right time to clean up your database and do something with your unassigned customers. First of all, find those...Buy Now! December 2004 Step by Step - Winterizing Service Campaign - It’s winter again and the perfect time to get your shop and dealership filled with service customers. Almost every service customer is a sales customer. Even if they bought just a few months ago – someone that they know has admired their new car and is considering a vehicle purchase. Let’s go step-by-step in creating the perfect winter campaign to jump start your service department and add a few extra sales during these lean months...Buy Now! Techno Tip - The Windows Key - Use your Windows key in XP to safely lock your computer. Have you ever wondered what that little flying Windows key between the CRTL and ALT keys on your keyboard does? Buy Now! Five of the Most Common Billing Errors - When was the last time you checked your monthly DMS billing? Here are the five most common billing errors: 1. Annual increase is higher than agreed to. Look at your contract and see how much they can increase your monthly support. I have found individual items that increased as much as 30% instead of the 2% that was agreed to in the contract. I’ve also seen increases mid-term, even two price increases in one year.Buy Now! BDC-CRM Best Idea - Breath Life Into Dead Deals Breath life into the dead deals! Why do deals become “dead deals?” The most common reasons are “financing” and “bought elsewhere”. For those deals that couldn’t be made due to financing – it’s normally not a permanent situation. If they were “buried in their trade” – maybe after a year they have some equity....Buy Now! Time Saver - Reduce your Email and Phone Calls -Instant messaging can be a great time saver if you use it right. Let’s look at the phone calls you had in the last hour – your kids called to say they were home, your spouse needed to know where you put the checkbook, the F&I manager called to ask if you had the Brady deal, and one of your office employees wanted to...Buy Now! November 2004 Step by Step - Creating a Campaign - A key to customer retention is regular contact with your customers – but sometimes your business needs a shot in the arm, or you have a problem like excess inventory that requires a special campaign. Here are the steps to creating a campaign...Buy Now! Determine the best product for the campaign - There is no easy answer for this one – it all depends on the dealership and their current inventory. You have two major inventories to sell – vehicles and service labor. Your parts inventory is more of an “as needed” inventory and hard to sell with a campaign. Let’s start with vehicle inventory. The first step is to create a vehicle mix report. That report summarizes each model and should tell you how many your have in stock versus how many you have sold.Buy Now! Techno Tip - From Email to your Database Do you need to copy and paste multiple fields from one source to another? In Office XP/2003, the new clipboard is perfect for you. First open Outlook, then click on Edit/Office Clipboard (or CTRL-C,C) , click on Options at the bottom of the clipboard, click the first two options of your Office clipboard setup to “show automatically” and “collect without showing.” Buy Now! BDC-CRM Best Idea - Up Sell Details - Do you detail cars? How about using that as an “up sell” for your BDC or service receptionist that is making service appointment calls? Buy Now! Five Ways to Reduce your Computer Expense – Printing = Drop the maintenance on all printers except the big line printer. A small printer can cost $17 a month in support (or $1020 over 5 years) and I just found one that sold on Ebay for $15. You might also want to use Ebay to get rid of all those old printers from your old DMS system that are taking up space upstairs! Buy Now! Time Saver - Free Time Clock Software - Are you spending hours totaling and proofing time cards? There is inexpensive software for PCs that let’s your employees enter their employee number and click in and out...Buy Now!
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