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 and doing some things you don’t want to do 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.) The reality is it’s going to cost you money one way or the other.
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 life cycle management process you’d have a lot less regret. That’s all I’m gonna say. Tommy Gibbs