Have you ever had a colonoscopy? If you have you know the preparation is the worst part. The actual procedure just isn’t much to it. They knock you out, you wake up and hopefully you have a nice hinny to show for it. But let’s go back to the prep part. It’s a living hell ain’t it? If you’re not over the age of 50, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about. Well, it’s about drinking some nasty stuff and sitting on the toilet about every 15 minutes.

If you had a great month in July, good for you. But, better yet, good job on being prepared. The sad part of this is that some of you were not prepared at all and still had a good month in spite of yourself.  I keep telling you, “You are never as smart as you think you are and you are never as dumb as you appear.” It’s the good set or bad set of circumstances we sometimes find ourselves in. So now you’re feeling kind of smug, like you’re all that and box of rocks.

Without some real painful preparation this surge you are now getting just isn’t going to last. You are running out of new cars, so now whatta you gonna do? Over the years you’ve gotten used to giving away new cars so your grosses still are not what they need to be for the new car department to make money.  The problem is we’re still selling from fear. Fear the customer will run away; fear we will lose a deal to the competitor. Fear of fear. Did you ever notice how hard it is to sell when you operate in fear?

As hard as it is to do, there are some customers that you just need to let walk. Yep, let ‘em go. Have you ever said to a customer “you know, we just don’t think this is going to work out and we don’t want to sell you the car even if you paid full sticker.” Man, that’s a hoot and oh what a feeling! More often than not it really gets their attention. They become darn right humble when you tell them you don’t want their business.

Ok, so it’s a drastic step, and not one you can use very often. The bottom line is your staff really has to do a better job of not dropping their pants and running away so fast. Work a little harder, sell a little smarter and most important prepare a lot better. Just because it’s summer and business has picked up does not mean the preparation is over. Baseball players take batting practice before every game. That’s done to improve what they already know how to do. Just because your guys know how to sell cars doesn’t mean they don’t need to practice how to do it better. More and better preparation means a much more productive hiney. That’s all I’m gonna say. Tommy Gibbs