Mark Ragsdale, Speaker

Mark is available for everything from live speaking engagements to teleconferences and webinars. He has led employee meetings with up to 300 attendees, public media giveaway parties with up to 600 attendees, and he has presented at dealer marketing group and dealer 20-group sessions. Here is a brief listing of topics he can address for your audience:

Consumer Groups

Banking On It: The Ins, Outs, Dos, & Don’ts of Automobile Financing
In this presentation, Mark covers the gamut of financing pitfalls and penalties that often trip up unknowing consumers. He also lays out solid strategies and tactics consumers can employ to avoid being taken advantage of by the system.

To Lease or Not to Lease: The Differences Between Leasing and Buying Made Simple
What is truly behind vehicle leasing? Common consumer concerns range from the impression that, “Leasing serves only as a write-off for the rich,” to “I drive too many miles,” to the biggie, “I want to own my car at the end.” In this presentation, Mark separates the wheat from the chaff by helping your audience devise an effective financing strategy that eliminates debt, underwrites vehicle resale risk, and gets them into a new vehicle every few years less expensively.

Talking the (Dealership) Talk: How to Speak Dealership Language & Negotiate a Better Deal
“What price range are you looking to stay in? What monthly payments were you expecting? How much are you planning on putting down? How much do you owe on your trade-in? How much do you expect for your trade-in? How is your credit?” are all questions that aggravate and intimidate even the most saintly of consumer personalities. Mark explains why salespeople ask these questions, where they get them from, and how your audience can leverage the answers they give to get a better deal.

Trading Up: How to Maximize Your Trade-in Value
Consumers really have three prices to agree upon in most automobile purchase transactions: the price of the dealer’s car, the price of their own car being traded, and the difference between the two. Most buyers have no idea where to begin, much less where they need to end up on these numbers. In this presentation, Mark teaches your audience where to easily gather information and how to use that information as a weapon against the tricky language salespeople employ to confuse consumers.

Dealer Groups

Pinching Greenbacks: How Your Dealership Could Save Money and Increase Profits Without Hiring Consultants
Just turning a few screws on dealership operations can make a world of difference to bottom-line profits. In this presentation, Mark digs into hidden issues including: technician labor costs, parts margins, shop supplies recovery strategies, and vendor contract modifications. All require very little effort, but total big financial payoffs.

Dealing Out a Better Value: How Dealerships Can Bill More per Hour in the Service Shop Without Losing Customers
So much emphasis has been placed upon technician productivity and efficiency, stall utilization, and other metrics, the goal of maximizing service department profits has been virtually eclipsed. At the end of the day, dealers need to charge X, spend Y, and make a profit. In this presentation, Mark teaches field-tested strategies to raise “effective” labor rates, increasing profitability without compromising customers.

The Right Price: How to Fix Parts Pricing and Margins on RO Sales, Over-the-Counter Retail, and Wholesale Accounts
Every parts transaction costs the dealer something to execute. In fact, low dollar parts often go out the door at a loss. Mark offers tested strategies on how to give some items away free, charge more for others, and reorganize your overall parts pricing strategy for enhanced profitability.

Ending Miscommunication: Ditching the Bad Language and Attitudes Around the Dealership
Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said, “Language is the source of all misunderstandings.” The language used by dealership employees directly affects a company’s financials. It is the gatekeeper of behavior, attitudes, and profitability! In this presentation, Mark replaces negative language with words and phrases every dealer employee needs in order to build a new positive lexicon for their business­­­­. The terms “I won’t. I can’t. You can’t. We can’t. We don’t. You must…”—all expressions your customer dislikes—are replaced with an attitude of gratitude that helps your bottom line shine.

Achieving Employee Buy-in: How to Get Dealership Employees Behind the Dealer’s Initiatives
Because attitudes are easily shifted by influence leaders and gossipy mutterers, many organizations’ change initiatives are defeated before they start. In this presentation, Mark teaches how to build a groundswell of grassroots enthusiasm from your employees for any dealer initiative. A few principles he will address include: the boss isn’t always right, people will always work harder for themselves than they will for you—and a poor plan, which is superbly implemented, trumps a great plan that is poorly implemented.

Political Groups & Policy Makers

Living with Government: Effective Auto Industry Regulations vs. Trojan Horse Laws
All aspects of the automobile industry (Manufacturing, Retail, Advertising, Finance & Aftermarket Products) are convenient and politically popular targets for government intervention. In this presentation, Mark reviews those that work and those that don’t from a holistic perspective. He offers a quarter-century of experience with “nothing to lose” insight regarding economic impacts on the auto industry, related industries, and often-overlooked loopholes industry players employ to avoid them.

Auto Industry Stability: Capital Requirements & Banking Relationships
A dealership must have access to capital in order to stock inventory, maintain automaker contract covenants, arrange customer loans, and provide facilities in which to operate. However, the hidden mathematics behind factory holdback, dealer marketing group charges, TARP, TALF, the mark-to-market rule, and government rhetoric affect industry access to this capital. In this presentation, Mark ties it all together in an understandable, logical order.

Understanding the Freedom of Choice Act: The Impact of the “Card Check” Law on the Auto Industry
What happened to GM and Chrysler? Why did they fail? In this presentation, Mark compares the impact of the UAW on these companies to those automakers operating outside of Michigan. He outlines how new proposed legislation impacts the spread of a similar phenomenon throughout all sectors of the U.S. auto industry.