Are sales in your dealership starting to fizzle after the boom that we just had? Well, here’s four things that you can do in your store to remain profitable as sales decline.
In the automotive business, we are always talking about how to maximize the profit, and how to keep more of the money that we’re generating in our dealerships. This is how we make the most of the opportunity that we’re getting.
We’re going to talk about four things that you can do to impact your bottom line today.
1. Reduce Customer Wait Time
Customers wait is the biggest loss of profit that you have in your store. And there’s a couple of things that you can be doing right now to help improve that.
One of those is to digitize your processes, and that starts with your sales process. When the customers first walk in, or even inquires online. To your F&I process where you utilize tools like online credit applications, or iPad and other tools that you can use in the showroom to help speed along the process.
One of the best ways that we find that dealerships are able to reduce customer wait times is to push the data once the deal is consummated from the CRM to the DMS. This way we can speed along the process by eliminating double entry. It is a detriment to our customers, and why customers wait in our dealership while we enter their information two, three, even four times. You can actually introduce technology to help eliminate some of this back and forth.
Customer wait, leads me right into my next point. And that is to utilize the time that your customers do have to wait, because I understand that we aren’t always able to eliminate it completely, but utilize it wisely to make more profit.
2. Introduce Accessories in your sales process 100% of the time
Customers are getting aftermarket parts. They’re finding ways to make their car their own, and you could be capitalizing on that while your customers wait. Accessories are a multi-billion dollar industry, and all of your customers are either customizing the car in your showroom or outside of it.
So instead of having dead space where you’ll be losing money because customers are looking at their clock, or wanting to speed everything along; you can make that time part of your sales process to help gain more traction, and better yet: more profits.
3. High Quality F&I Turn Over
And what do I mean by quality? Well, not only are they getting presenting the products a hundred percent of the time in a compliant way, in a way that is also compelling for them to purchase, but that you have a standard process in your store, that business managers can utilize, that they can always refer to.
One of the things that that does is that it allows you to hold your team accountable to that process. And you can know where they are in the process. Also gives them a way for them to refer back and see how they’re doing within the process that you’ve laid out for them and how they can get better.
One thing that would highly recommend is for you to have your transactions recorded in your dealership for a few different reasons. A is compliance. You make sure that you’re always compliant. B it helps protect you protect your dealership. If you ever have litigation or any issues that come up in your store, you know, that you have the records to go back to. And three is training. You can utilize that footage. And the fact that you’re monitoring this transaction to be able to see what’s happening in your store and show the bank, your managers, or future managers that come in your store what you’re expecting, what’s are the best practices in your store, and what you’re willing to tolerate or not tolerate whatsoever in your store.
4. Hold Your Team Accountable for Results
In order to do that, you have to have set goals and set goals with a deadline. One of my mentors has always told me that if you set a goal without a deadline, well, that’s just a pipe dream. Goals are dreams with deadlines. So you need to set up these deadlines and hold your team accountable.
One of the tools that we like to use in my company F&I Direct is 50 by the 15th. It’s simple, we focus on 50% of our goal by the 15th of the month, and constantly push towards that goal of the month with a focus on the first two weeks. What we find in this industry, if we do that, we naturally are going to push them to finish strong, be able to have those month end sales, and also that month in profitability.
So, if you push yourself at the beginning of the month, you’ll make yourself that much more successful, and you’ll be able to set yourself up for success as the month goes through. You can get through that third week or fourth week of the month, and you’re finalizing your month. You already more on your side, and a lot of times you can even get beyond that 50%, but you have to constantly be pushing. So pushing them towards the beginning and they’ll push themselves towards the end.
I know that you’re committed to maximizing the profits in your dealership and getting the most out of the opportunities that you’re getting. That’s why I like to invite you to check out guaranteeddealerprofits.com, where I show you exactly how one of our dealer partners generated an extra $661 per car he sold on average for this year. Not only that, he did it without investing in extra dime in his business and having zero risk.
Head on over to guaranteeddealerprofits.com where you can see for yourself and learn how you can make more money without investing more into your business, how you can gain the flexibility to crush your competitors, and most importantly, how you can build wealth on autopilot from your dealership. Thanks for reading. Talk soon!
