A number of months ago, I wrote an article comparing constipation to aged inventory, or to be more clear, those units over 60 days old.

When you’re constipated, it’s virtually impossible to be as productive as you might otherwise be. Having units over 60 days is the same as being constipated.

Exercise, drinking lots of water and in some really bad cases taking a strong laxative can often relieve the problem and get you back on your “A Game.” You can never perform your best when you’re all stopped up.

Until you get the water out of your used car inventory you will never be but so good. You will have a few good months, but unless you commit to a good diet of solid processes you will always struggle.

One of the best ways to fix the problem is to reappraise the entire inventory, extract the water, give each unit a new birthday and put in my “Life Cycle Management Process.”

As long as you have aged units aging, then you’re going to have a lot of water. When you have lots of water, the more the sales people will walk around the aged units.

They don’t want to sell a unit they can’t make any money on. Believe it or not, the managers don’t want to sell them either. They would much rather sell something that they can make some gross on. This isn’t rocket science.

Here’s the tip of the day. If you ever decide to write your inventory down, you have to change your overall strategy of how you’re going to manage your used car department moving forward. It does little or no good to write down your inventory and go back to your stinky old ways.

Constipation is fixable. Aged inventory is fixable. When you fix it, you feel better. When you feel better, you make more money. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs