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Recent Press - Page 14
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Automotive News
Lexus, Subaru rank high for responding to internet leads
March 2014
March 2014 LOS ANGELES -- Automakers whose dealers respond quickly to Internet leads with a personalized contact have tended to gain market share over those who treat those leads more casually with auto-response emails or salesman form letters. The 2014 Pied Piper's Internet Lead Effectiveness Benchmarking Study, found that although the industry-average performance was unchanged over last year, 21 of 33 brands improved their responsiveness. But ... Read More >
Wards Auto
What Do Customers Know?
August 2013
Ask car shoppers how a dealership salesperson should act, and they'll tell you this and that. Trouble is, they might not really know what makes for good salesmanship. Henry Ford said if he had asked his original customers what they wanted, they would have requested a faster horse. “The same could be said of asking people about their car-buying experience,” says Fran O'Hagan, CEO of Pied Piper Management. His consultancy recently completed its ... Read More >
Washington Post
Study: Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti Dealerships Treat Shoppers Best
July 2013
Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti, and Lexus dealerships treat car shoppers the best, while at least some Scion and Mitsubishi dealerships have a lot to work on. These results are some of the top-level findings of the new 2013 Prospect Satisfaction Index (PSI), from the California sales and service consulting firm Pied Piper. This is the seventh consecutive year that Pied Piper has conducted the PSI studies, and for 2013 it's reset the industry-average ... Read More >
Automotive News First Shift
Mystery Win for Benz
July 2013
For the fifth straight year, Mercedes-Benz dealerships ranked first in Pied Piper's annual survey which rates how car dealers treat car-shoppers in person. Pied Piper's annual study sends thousands of mystery shoppers to dealerships nationwide to see how effectively salespeople sell. Read More >
The Car Connection
Study: Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti Dealerships Treat Shoppers Best
July 2013
Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti, and Lexus dealerships treat car shoppers the best, while at least some Scion and Mitsubishi dealerships have a lot to work on. These results are some of the top-level findings of the new 2013 Prospect Satisfaction Index (PSI), from the California sales and service consulting firm Pied Piper. This is the seventh consecutive year that Pied Piper has conducted the PSI studies, and for 2013 it's reset the industry-average ... Read More >
The Detroit Bureau
Mercedes-Benz Tops New Car Shopper Satisfaction Survey
July 2013
Showroom policies likely to close – or lose – deals. When she began looking for a new car, Chris Anderson had her heart set on a midsize Ford sedan. But in the end, she wound up buying from the Detroit maker's cross-town rival General Motors. It wasn't that she liked her new car better. It was the dealer she liked – or more precisely, the Ford dealer she didn't want to buy from. And the Detroit saleswoman is not alone. What happens when a ... Read More >
Automotive News
Survey: Mercedes stores have the most effective salespeople
July 2013
LOS ANGELES -- A study of car dealership sales techniques shows that luxury brands often are the most effective deal-closers and also are best at making customers happy. Among mass-market brands, Hyundai, Kia, Ford and Toyota were the leaders. Among all brands, Mercedes-Benz dealers finished atop the 11-month mystery shopping study by Pied Piper Management Co. of Monterey, Calif. Infiniti finished second, while last year's winner, Lexus, finished ... Read More >
TIME: Business & Money
Whodathunkit? Auto Dealerships Realize Responding to Customer E-mails Helps to Sell Cars
March 2013
For a while, some car dealerships have seemed somewhat ambivalent about e-mail inquiries from consumers. Sure, they represented potential sales leads. But it was assumed that online shoppers were even less serious about buying than on-site looky-loos. How commissions are usually doled out to dealership staffers further complicates matters. Nonetheless, because modern-day consumers demand info via the Web—and more importantly, because answering ... Read More >
Automotive News First Shift
Secret shoppers pick Porsche
March 2013
Porsche and dealerships ranked highest in a study that looked how auto dealers handle internet leads. Pied Piper's annual study used internet mystery shopping to contact 11,000+ dealerships to see how the U.S. dealer networks for all car brands compare. Read More >
WardsAuto
Study Says Dealers Handling Internet Customers Better
March 2013
Dealerships are getting better at responding to online customers, and the reason seems clear to Fran O'Hagan. “Dealers who handle Internet leads effectively sell a lot more vehicles than dealers who do not,” says the president of consultancy Pied Piper Management. “That is why manufacturers and individual dealers are so interested in this.” Dealer behavior can change slowly in some respects, he says. “It is like changing the direction of a ship ... Read More >
