What If You Lost Your Franchise?

You may remember when GM & Chrysler shut down a bunch of dealerships during the great auto depression in 2008 and 2009.

Odd as it may seem a lot of people have forgotten how difficult those years were. It’s amazing what a run of profitable years can do to one’s mind.

You might also remember back when GM shut down their Saturn operations.

As you may know or can imagine a lot of dealers tried to turn those empty showrooms into used car dealerships. With very few exceptions most of them failed.

Why did they fail? Because they didn’t know what they were doing.

It’s that simple. Many of them had spent their entire careers focusing on being great new car dealers with used cars being a necessary evil.

Clearly understand, the better you become in used, the more new you will sell. With the business being more competitive today than it has ever been it should be easy to understand the importance your used cars being a big part of your business model.

It should also be apparent to you that you can always survive and thrive if you know the used car business. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it, you can’t always survive and thrive with new. Just ask all those dealers that lost their franchises 10 years ago.

New car grosses continue to go south and it’s not going to get any better. If you’re not creating a massive focus on used, you’re making a big mistake.

Anybody can talk the talk. You need to start walking the walk. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs