CHICAGO – Author, former new-car dealer, and high-tech entrepreneur Dale Pollak has launched a blog (www.dalepollak.com) to discuss used-car sales trends.
An extension of Pollak’s best-selling book on the used-car industry, the blog features daily insights and anecdotes on used-car business operations. In Velocity: From the Front Line to the Bottom Line, Pollak discusses the Internet’s impact on used-car sales. A “must read” for auto dealers and their used-vehicle sales personnel, the book recently broke into Amazon.com’s top-10 list of reference books.
Pollak noted that today's Internet-savvy shoppers compare prices and options on a wide variety of vehicles before their first visit to a dealership used-car lot. To succeed, he believes that used-car dealers will need to change their traditional business models and adopt a more sophisticated approach to inventory management.
The nation’s more than 70,000 independent and franchised used-car dealers are challenged not only by a new generation of Internet-shopping consumers, but by a growing number of used-car superstores, according to Pollak.
“I hope my new blog will be helpful to dealers and their new- and used-vehicle sales departments as well,” he said. “The blog is interactive and will be as informative as possible. We plan to have fun with it too.”
Pollak has more than 25 years of retail dealership experience, including 13 years as the owner of Pollak Cadillac GMC Truck in Elmhurst, Illinois. Among other distinctions, his store consistently ranked among the top-five Cadillac dealerships for customer satisfaction nationally. As a successful dealer, Pollak placed a high priority on his store’s pre-owned vehicle operations. He continues to believe that used-car sales departments are the key to successful dealership operations and are important new-vehicle sales drivers as well. In today’s technology-driven market, he points out that pre-owned vehicle operations need to be managed from a financial and data-driven perspective.
Pollak also is the chairman and founder of vAuto, a Chicago-based company that provides retail automotive dealerships with a better way to price, appraise, and stock pre-owned vehicles. Prior to founding vAuto, Pollak served as vice president of sales and business strategy at Digital Motorworks, a market leader in data integration and application development for OEMs, mega dealers, and third-party providers. He helped build the company from inception to its acquisition by ADP in 2002.
