Gene Daughtry - What business are you in? I think that is your first marketing question. I believe you need to decide what you are doing. Are you a BHPH operation that will sell some vehicles for cash, or are you a retail store that will carry the note on some cars? I know they are both “the car business,” but the marketing for each business model is very different.
Kimberly Long - In lean times, dealers must take measures to be certain they are maximizing each and every deal, and the F&I department is one of the main places to look for opportunities to increase profit. However, it also contains a potential landmine—compliance.
Don Reed - A significant number of dealers these days are becoming more and more aggressive in selling used vehicles. Some have even lost their new car franchises and now rely solely on used vehicle sales, along with parts and service sales to pay the overhead and hopefully provide them with a significant return on investment (ROI).
Kimberly Long - If a dealership were a living organism, it’s safe to say the dealership management system (DMS) could be considered the creature’s central nervous system. There isn’t an area of the dealership the DMS does not touch; it holds huge amounts of the data necessary for the dealership to function—customer data, parts and vehicle inventory information, service history, financial data and much more.
Kimberly Long - Leasing is coming back in a big way. Just ask Ernie Boch, president of Boch Automotive, which has dealerships in Norwood and North Attleboro, Mass., covering Toyota, Scion, Honda, Ferrari and Maserati. “Leasing is really, really getting hot right now,” he declared.