As dealers, you now are facing the greatest threat to your business that you have ever seen the increasing unavailability of floor plan financing. It is a world in which your finance firm might be your worst enemy. Forget about the state-franchise...
Parts in inventory are purchased with dealership working capital derived from a financial arrangement such as loans and lines of credit. Although the cost of money may account for a significant portion of the holding expenses, it is only one...
Parts in your inventory with a non-stock status (coded NS within the inventory control system) exist in two ways. One is with zero on-hand quantity. This type resides strictly within the dealership-management system for the purpose of demand...
Don't laugh when you read what Brian Benstock did a couple of years ago because most of you have been burned making similar moves. The question is, did you learn from them? Benstock, vice president and part owner of Paragon Honda and Acura in...
For the last 20 years, April through September represents top sales months for used vehicles. So let's do some simple analysis and look at a few basic processes that will put us in a position to capitalize on the pre-owned selling season. We first...
Bob Lutz, General Motors Corp. vice chairman-global product development, isn't willing to characterize the American Axle Mfg. & Holdings Inc. strike, which as of late March had forced GM to idle more than 20 plants, as But he did say on the...
Sitting at the airport in snowy Kansas City waiting to board an airplane, I thought of what I would talk about with dealers at the National Automobile Dealers Assn. convention in San Francisco. The convention is always one of my most anticipated...
Used-vehicle sales were once looked at as the step child to the new-vehicle department. How times change. What was once considered additional or gross profit is now, for many dealers, the life jacket for the overall profitability of a store...
Used-vehicle inventories are the most elusive and volatile that a dealership own, yet often we spend less time and fewer resources managing them. The very essence of inventory management is identifying the fastest turning, highest grossing...
If people buy on emotion, why do so many online vehicle listings read like a window sticker's staid list of features? One reason is that many Internet managers are not aware of technology that allows them to add marketing messages to their online...