There’s a book out by Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton that has the perfect title for the automobile business, “It’s Not the Big that Eat the Small…It’s the Fast that Eat The Slow.”

Some new car dealers believe the definition of Velocity is:

“Velocity-a method of giving your cars away so as to impact your gross to a point of a substandard amount that will make you want to throw up your hands, beat yourself over the head, and barf.”

I have a new definition for the word velocity; the whipping boy of the auto industry that can be blamed when we use software pricing tools as the Bible, don’t use our brains and don’t use the tool as it was intended in the first place.

You can make one of two choices:

1. Hold high gross profit per unit.
2. Do lots of volume at a little lower gross.

Which way do you think is going to pile up the most gross to pay the bills at the end of the month?

Dealers have been known to complain that when they went on the velocity method of pricing their used cars to market, their grosses went south. Well duh, of course they did.

What actually happened is those dealers had let their inventories age on them and when they finally priced them to market they got crushed.

Software won’t save you. Having discipline and using your brain will save you. There will be pain unless you use your brain. I like that, “Pain, if you don’t use your brain.”

That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs