I hear dealers often complaining that Dale Pollak’s "Velocity" concept has killed their grosses. I beg to differ with that thinking. The reason your grosses have gone south is because of George W. Bush. He messed them up when he was President; Obama didn’t realize how big the problem was and thus hasn’t been able to fix it. Really?
Have you ever noticed in life we always want to blame someone or something else for our woes?
Could It Be:
1. Could it be that the consumer is using the Internet for the majority of their purchases and therefore is pushing you into a pricing war you would rather not be in?
2. Could it be that you are not managing your pricing correctly? Are you coming out of the gate based on a bucket concept and pricing everything at X amount under market? Are you failing to shoot the moon on a few select units for x number of days before you drop your pants?
3. Could it be that because you wait so long in the life cycle to reduce your pricing that when you get to about 50 days you have to give all the gross away rather than giving a little away over a period of time?
4. Could it be the inventory you have is not the inventory that people are willing to pay the price for? If there are 300 Nissan Altimas in the market and you stock lots of Altimas, do you really think you’re gonna make any money when the market is over saturated?
5. Could it be the stuff you are buying is like an impossible dream? Are you buying 2011’s with 25,000 to 35,000 miles on them? Really? The only way you’re gonna sell them is to give them away, eroding more average gross profit.
6. Could it be that you and/or your team really don’t understand "Life Cycle Management," and the powerful impact it has on gross and volume?
7. Could it be that the team doesn’t get "Return on Investment" and what it does to the bottom line?
8. Could it be that you are stocking cars that are way too expensive, so you end up competing with your new car business and selling them at little or no gross just to make them go away?
9. Could it be you are not tracking "GAP," which stands for "Give Away Profit." GAP is the difference between the Internet asking price and the transaction price? If you aren’t tracking GAP then how are you to know who’s selling your cars and trucks for less than what you have them priced on the Internet.
10. Could it be you’ve done a lousy job of teaching the sales team to sell the value of your product and your store?
11. Could it be your used cars spend the best days of their shelf life tied up in service and recon?
12. Could it be your presence on Auto Trader and your website is just so, so? Very few pictures, lousy pictures or no pictures.
13. Could it be your management team is living in the past and waiting for the good old days to return?
14. Could it be your management team isn’t really a team?
15. Could it be you haven’t done a "lot walk" since Hector was a pup?
16. Could it be you have gotten too smart to do a "save-a deal" meeting every morning and gross is impacted negatively because F&I takes the easy route of cutting the deal?
17. Could it be your purchase strategy is called "buy that late model stuff cause it’s easy?"
18. Could it be you let a lot of nice trades get away from you because either (A.) your managers won’t step up or (B) they wholesale them because they feel the service department is ripping them off?
19. Could it be you have aged units and when you dump them they kill your overall gross?
20. Could it be the deal is screwed up before it ever gets a chance to be turned over to a manager and/or the managers just aren’t taking TOs?
21. Could it be you need to get your mind in a place to think about what it could really be?
22. Could it be you need to go look in the mirror? Nah, it’s George W. Bush’s fault. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs