Do you always seem to run out of money before all of your bills are paid each month? Do you fluctuate buying cars from month to month based on cash flow on the day of the auction? Does payroll dictate what types of cars you buy each week? You are not alone. Many facilities face these exact issues every week, if not every day. The question becomes: What can you do to help mitigate these issues? These issues are symptoms of a larger issue: Cash Management. As cars become more expensive, customers become pickier (is that possible?), and competition from the internet forces us to turn a lower gross profit per car than ever before, we must become keenly aware of our cost of goods, gross sales, returns, fixed expenses, variable expenses, and profit in order to stay in the game. But, what is the secret sauce? What is the secret mixture of cars that produces the highest net yield? These questions have different answers based on which facility is answering them. However, we all should...

Service Creates Loyalty Is there a such thing as loyalty these days? Are the customers simply shopping for price? Does our level of service influence the chances that a customer will order another part from us? I believe it does! It takes years to build a reputation with a customer, yet it can be lost in a matter of a few interactions, if not sooner. We all know this statement is true, yet we don’t train our people to think this way. Let me explain how two interactions with a new car dealership service department caused us trade our car in for a car from a different manufacturer. In 2018, we bought a new Volvo XC60 for my wife to drive. We loved the car. It performed well, it had lots of cool technology. We actually decided that it was a better car than the 2017 Mercedes GLC300 that we traded in to buy it. After zero issues for the first 10,000 miles, it was time for a free oil change. My wife attempted to schedule the oil change only to learn that there were no technicians on du...