Search

About 10 years ago, public-relations specialist Melinda Morgan was the first to get the call when an employee of a doughnut chain she represented was caught in the middle of [...]

Byline: JENNA TELESCA Effective displays that contrast colorful product, use playful themes, and highlight nutrition and cooking information can grab customer attention and boost fruit and vegetables sales. So, David [...]

Byline: Steve Finlay At car dealerships, there always is the element of time, and how much of it consumers want to devote to car buying, financing and hearing presentations on [...]

Byline: Ray Fenster Is 100% of your energy focused on scoring a touchdown? Or, when it comes to utilizing resources effectively, would you sometimes be satisfied to score a field [...]

Byline: David Kain If you manage an Internet operation for a dealership, you probably have a good handle on your month-end metrics. We have found a way to ensure that [...]

Byline: Richard Libin Last month, we discussed ways to draw from the Disney model to make people want to go to your dealership for a great experience. Let's look at [...]

Byline: ELLIOT ZWIEBACH LAS VEGAS - To encourage consumer confidence, retailers must adopt an air of optimism about their businesses, despite the issues they must wrestle with behind the scenes, [...]

Byline: JON SPRINGER As Richard Braddock sees it, customer loyalty is every bit as important on the Internet as it is in the real world - and is his case, [...]

Byline: Richard F. Libin Every person in the dealership is a salesperson. That means every employee, regardless of job description, represents the store and can make a difference when interacting [...]

AVOID PRICING EXTREMES The price for public sector CRM, including installation, can vary from a few hundred dollars for off-the-shelf software to more than $1 million. Be wary of the [...]

You know that age old mantra, garbage in garbage out? Well, it's true. Without the correct information, or no information at all, it's pretty darn hard to come up with [...]

Byline: Elsa DePalma To differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack, take a cue from other retailers (yes, you are a retailer, too). It might be stating the obvious, [...]

In today's Crackberry-real time-instant messaging world, it' is essential to stay up-to-date with educational advances, technology breakthroughs and cultural shifts. Gone are the days when a distributor could reach a [...]

A buddy of mine is really into LinkedIn, which is like Facebook for the business set. He spent hours tracking down old colleagues. He answers questions in the Q&A section. [...]

Congratulations! You just landed a new customer. For many electrical contractors, this is where the game ends - the culmination of an aggressive customer acquisition campaign. But stopping here could [...]

Byline: Lee Harkins A customer's first impressions of our stores is an area we can all improve upon and, in most cases, it doesn't cost any money to do that. [...]

AutoSoft Traffic COP is a new e-tool that enforces dealership control and accountability of customer-relationship management efforts at dealerships. That includes managing sales opportunities from the showroom floor, service drive, [...]

Byline: Cliff Banks Dealers complain about a near shutdown of showroom traffic. The uncertainty being played out on the airwaves is creating a paralysis among consumers and yes, even dealerships. [...]

Dealer Kevin Reilly offers nine 'takeaways' on selecting, launching and implementing a CRM system at an auto dealership: Shop and compare, especially at the National Automobile Dealers Assn. convention where [...]

Byline: Tim McElligott Like the volumes of books in the aisles of the Library of Congress that go unread, service providers have volumes upon volumes of data about their customers [...]

This month's cover story talks about hiring and training, the ways the market is changing and the types of skills that might be required going forward. We also address an [...]

If you want to use data to enhance product offerings, it's essential to know what you're working with. Consider the following practices: Cast a wide net You can't manage a [...]

Electrical Wholesaling's editors were delighted with the quality and quantity of responses we received to our invitation to submit the 100th sales tip (See '99 Can't-Miss Sales Tips from the [...]

ARE YOU ACTING JUST LIKE most other small businesses out there? Do you ignore or fail to communicate to your existing customers often enough? I'm not talking about saying 'Hello' [...]

Treat your best customers with care Top customers deserve special treatment. You can afford it, and they expect it - and thrive on it. So business marketers will shower their [...]

A NEW SUBSCRIBER OPTS IN to receive your newsletter. Great! So you respond with a simple thank-you, right? Not exactly. The right welcome message can - and should - do [...]

Multichannel success is all about breaking down barriers between channels and building cooperation. Every company that strives for multichannel success is trying to change from being company-centric or channel-centric to [...]

Isn't it comforting? The entire marketing superstructure - retailing, media advertising and online promotion - is shot through with customer elimination management. In the pages of this publication, over a [...]

WHAT'S THE best way to keep good customers coming back and to attract new ones? Fix annoying problems The first step is to focus on frustrations, says Danny Klinefelter, Texas [...]

The average parts and service department represents 40.7% of total dealership gross and 75.2% of total departmental net profit based on our clients' year-to-date performance. Obviously, customer-pay labor and parts [...]

Direct's columnists are a prolific lot. They not only write columns, they write books, including four that have just been published. New from Katie Muldoon is 'The Catalog Strategist's Toolkit [...]

The dynamic duo of one-to-one is back with another book. Just as Don Peppers and Martha Rogers invented a philosophy, now they've come up with a metric to go with [...]

One side effect of working within the customer relationship management industry is collecting business cards that feature cloying, cutesy titles. A quick flip through the business cards rubber-banded together in [...]

Just when you thought you'd mastered CRM, push/pull marketing, relationship marketing, dynamic selling, and whatnot, along comes another buzzword to wrap your arms around: advocacy. In a forthcoming book, MIT [...]

Ask any four marketers what customer relationship management means to them and you're likely to get four completely unique answers. We know - because we did just that. Direct talked [...]

Like their consumer counterparts, business-to-business marketers are finding they need a variety of tricks in their arsenal to run a successful campaign. They're developing new methods, introducing new tools and [...]

Smart dealerships use the service department to maintain relationships with their customers. The cost of acquiring a new customer is far greater than the cost of maintaining an existing one. [...]

Have you hugged your customer today? That's a question Stefan Schuett asks dealerships? But how does a business hug its customers? Should personnel get that up close and personal? Not [...]

What is a satisfied customer worth to you? Probably not as much as you think, states a recent Harvard Business Review article. According to author Frederick Reichheld, companies often don't [...]

It doesn't take a genius to figure out who a cataloger's best customers are: They're the ones who shop most frequently and spend the most, of course. But who are [...]

If you're like most catalogers, you do a great job of obtaining information about your customers - often down to the smallest detail of each order. But when it comes [...]

You wonder how a dealer can handle it all - sales, service, financing, parts, advertising, human resources and a rapidly growing information technology capability. Add to that the need to [...]

Most catalogers have used the term 'customer lifetime value' (LTV), but few have actually calculated it, let alone used it in determining their marketing strategy. And that's a shame. Without [...]

There are some factors of resort management that Intrawest Corp. just can't control. Take the weather, for example. Fresh powder can't be guaranteed for skiers at British Columbia's Whistler Blackcomb [...]

When baseball's Milwaukee Brewers opened a new stadium in 2001, the team drew more than 2.8 million attendees - a franchise record. Two losing seasons, however, trimmed the number of [...]

Consumer packaged goods manufacturers are becoming very adept at utilizing their Web sites as critical communications and information links to the consumer, a new SN/Experian study revealed. CPG companies' increased [...]

Before I even had a chance to ask her to sit, she helped herself to a chair. No telling what else she was capable of. 'Good morning, Mr. Morris,' she [...]

Understand relationships CRM is really about relationships, not technology. Involve top executives Their support is critical to set strategic direction for CRM. Know your business Before investing in CRM, define [...]

Customer relationship management issues frequently cause tension among marketers and data analysts. Analysts are sometimes concerned that the results of their efforts may not produce the intended outcome. Marketing professionals [...]

Is CRM dead? That was the first question on our minds when we contacted the participants in this year's DIRECT roundtable. For months, we had been hearing stories about multimillion-dollar [...]