Two of the biggest mistakes I’ve observed over the years is dealers hire salespeople when they “need” them and they buy used cars when they “need” them.

Huh?

If you wait until you “need” salespeople, you are likely to hire in a rush and hire the wrong salespeople. Advertising for “salespeople” isn’t generally going to bring the best candidates to the table.

In larger dealerships you would be wise to have a regularly scheduled new hire salesperson’s training class on a specific week of each month.

If you are in a position to do so, you should require every manager on the front side of the dealership to personal recruit someone for that class. If it floats your boat, pay the manager a decent bonus if the recruit survives the first 90 days. You could even tie volume or gross to each salesperson as a qualifier for the manager to be paid the bonus.

Even if you’re a smaller store, your source of salespeople should come from personally recruiting by all your staff members.

This may sound a little harsh, but there’s always 10% of your people that need “to go.” Thus, if you care about growing, continuous recruiting, hiring, and training is a necessity not a luxury.

When it comes to used cars the worst time to buy used cars is when you “need” them. If you wake up one day and you need two truckloads of used cars and if you go to the auction and buy two truckloads of used cars you end up with the “wrong” used cars.

Never forget some of the best days you have at the auctions is when you come back with zero used cars.

Stop buying and hiring when you “need” to. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs