The problem with used cars is there are no absolutes. I frequently get questions starting with “What if…”

As in, “What if you have a one-year-old truck with 15,000 miles on it and you over-appraised it and have $42,000 in it?”

Accountability: “The quality or state of being accountable; an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions.”

Accountability starts with you, vibrates to those around you and ends up back in your lap. If you believe a leader sets the culture of an organization then you must believe you cannot create an organization of accountability if you’re lacking in your daily disciplines.

If you’re not willing to hold yourself accountable then for sure you can’t hold others accountable.

Why should those around you do what has been deemed important, if you as their leader aren’t willing to do the same? There are a million ways to describe this, but since I’m a common sense guy, how about “monkey see, monkey do?”

A good leader makes sure those around them know what’s important. And a good leader makes things important by checking to make sure those around them are doing what’s important.

Building an organization of accountability isn’t a one-time thing. It’s an everyday thing led by you.

Accountability plays no favorites. If you let one person off the hook, eventually the entire organization falls off the hook.

Besides your personal accountability, there are three parts to holding people accountable.

1. Your personal street savvy. For many, this is based on time and experience and there are a few that are born with it.

2. Getting your head out of the sand. Get out of your office. Pay attention by using your peripheral vision and hearing.

3. Data. Look at the data and look at it some more. Data can be overwhelming. Figure out what’s important and what’s not by applying common sense to everything you’re looking at.

Sometimes data is misleading. Sometimes it smacks you upside your head.

Are you building an organization of accountability? That’s all I’m gonna ask, Tommy Gibbs

If you’re a consistent reader of my newsletters you may have noticed more than half of them involve the disciplines necessary to run your used car operation. There’s no denying that the stronger you are in used cars the better you are in New, Service, and Parts. It’s a given. It’s a fact. It is. It just is. You can deny it all you want. You will be wrong

There’s an old saying, “Do the things you don’t want to do, so you can do the things you want to do.” That’s a great life lesson to understand, live and grow by. Never has there been a more powerful truism than for the automobile business.

There’s no department that requires more specific strategic disciplines to be successful than your used car department.

The most common discipline that dealers struggle with is turning their inventory in 60 days. Let me state it a different way; no unit can become 60 days old. Some of the more disciplined operations are starting to put that number at 45 days old.

Most dealers would say they want to make more money. In order to make more money, you have to do some things you don’t want to do. One of those things is the pain of discipline. Doing a lot of little things each day to ensure you can do what you want to do.

If you’re not already on a 60-day turn it’s going to be painful and costly to get there. Either you or your staff will have all kinds of excuses as to why you can’t do it. It’s going to cost you some money to get it done. (Do the things you don’t want to do.)

When you finally get it done, your dealership runs smoothly, you make more money, life is simpler and you smile a lot. Now you’re doing the things you want to do, as in making more money.

“The pain of discipline or the pain of regret.” If you would use my lifecycle management process you’d have a lot less pain. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs