One of the most talked about issue of the day is the lack of affordability in the new car sector. There are no new cars priced under $20,000. Heck, finding something under $25,000 is no easy task. And very soon $30,000 will be a cheap car.

As bad as that sounds, there’s some real opportunity here for a savvy, well discipline dealer to capture more “used car market share.”

Look at your average cost per unit sold over the last 30 days and see how that compares to your average cost per unit in stock today.

The odds are that you are upside down with those two numbers. Even if you have a decent sales rate, the reality might be that you’re selling the fresher, lower priced units and the higher dollar stuff is sitting and costing you lots of money and a lousy ROI.

Staying focused on your average cost per used in stock will help you with the affordability game.

Your mission every day should be what can you do to press the average cost down. There is no magic number. Just know what the number is and do what you can to press it down.

One of the best ways to help control it is to make sure you most expensive units are turning fast and of course trying to keep some of those cheaper cars that you have been wholesaling.

There is no set of circumstances you can lay out that negates this concept. So, if you were to say any of the following, you would be wrong:

We do a great job with highline cars. (Irrelevant.)

We do a great job with high dollar pick-up trucks (Irrelevant.)

We do a great job with high dollar SUVs (Irrelevant.)

We don’t have software that can separate our inventory by Cars, Trucks, SUVs and Wholesale Pieces (Irrelevant.)

There is no question that if you just pay closer attention to what you are buying and what you are keeping for retail that your average cost will go down.

As you monitor your average cost it is going to bump up from time to time. There are two reasons for this. First, it’s because you traded in some high dollar stuff, which you will naturally have to do and second, it’s because you got goofy and went to the auction and bought some high dollar cars. In both cases it’s a matter of paying attention to it daily and getting back on track.

I’m often asked two questions:

1. What should my target goal be? There is no target, just try to get it lower than the day before.

2. Can I press my average cost too low. The answer is no. Don’t be concerned with that. If you do a good job with $30,000 SUVs, you will still sell $30,000 SUVs, but by pressing your average cost down it just makes you that much better.

Control what you can control. Do your part to solve the affordability problem. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs