THINKING? Wait a minute. Don’t click off this just yet. Ok, so really, how big is your thinking? How many used cars can you really sell?

 When I’m in dealerships one of the first things I ask a dealer and the members of his/her management team is how many used cars are they currently selling each month. Then I ask them based on the "market" and based on what they know about their organization what do they think their real potential might be?

 For instance it’s not unusual for a dealership selling 75 used a month to tell me they think their potential is 90 to 100. In my little brain I’m going wow, that is so amazing that you think you can jump up 25 units. Uh, not really! What I’m really thinking is you’ve got to be kidding me. You have a dealer sitting up the road from you doing 200 plus units and you think in a good month you might hit 100?

 That same dealer would tell me that I don’t understand his/her market. Really? What makes your market so different is your thinking, not your market. You’ve heard the saying that "If you think you can, you can and if you think you can’t, you can’t." You are right regardless of which way you think. Your market is so much bigger than you can ever imagine.

 When I further press the questions about the dealer up the street selling 200 units a month these are some of the comments I frequently get:

1. The dealer up the street has a lot of Inventory. Answer: Go get more Inventory.

2. The dealer up the street focuses on Auto Trader. Answer: Focus more on Auto Trader.

3. The dealer up the street has the right inventory. Answer: buy the right inventory.

4. The dealer up the street pays more money for his/her cars. Answer: start paying more for your cars.

5. The dealer up the street has better trained sales people. Answer: Do a better job of training your sales people.

6. The dealer up the street has better processes and gets his/her cars through service faster than we do. Answer: Fix the issues in your service department.

7. The dealer up the street has an awesome website. Answer: Get a better website.

Making a commitment to finding the units you need is critical to hitting the bigger numbers. It does no real good to buy into "turn baby turn" concept if you haven’t committed to finding replacement inventory. Finding that inventory means a commitment to attending auctions, buying online, and buying cars in the local market. You cannot achieve big numbers without doing all three.

If you think your market is a 25 mile radius, you are right. If you think it’s nationwide, you are right. Isn’t it time you adjusted your thinking and realized your market is so much bigger than you ever thought?

I think I’m going to help every dealer in the country improve their used car business. That’s all I’m gonna say.