In my last article, we discussed the importance of having the right collectors for your DCF dealership. Once the sale or lease is completed, no one will have more contact with your customers than your collectors. If you fail to hire, manage and train the right collectors, it will be very difficult for you to actually realize the profits you generated during the sale or lease of the vehicle. Without
Effective collections is the lifeblood for any dealer engaged in dealer controlled financing. You’ve sold or leased the vehicles but you won’t realize the profits you made or produce the cash necessary to replenish the inventory or pay the bills until you collect on what is owed you. Your sales people will talk with the customer regularly for a couple of days or maybe even weeks until the sale is
We’ve often heard the phrases “Don’t expect what you can’t inspect”, and “Knowledge is power.” These could not be more true than they are today in the Dealer Controlled Financing industry (Buy Here-Pay Here, Lease Here-Pay Here and Rent-to-Own). Knowing how well your dealership and portfolio are performing compared to industry standards and compared to your own historical performance is invaluable. If you don’t inspect it, you can’t track it.
Managing a Buy Here – Pay Here dealership can be like walking a tightrope. A manager needs to balance creating a friendly atmosphere against the need to maintain a business relationship. Potential customers should feel welcome when they come in to purchase a new vehicle and current customers should feel like the dealership cares out about them and what is going on in their lives as they make their payments.
“In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way.” Many BHPH dealers find themselves in a dark place. Any tax season rush is over, sales are down and delinquency is up. Now is the time to take a good, hard look at your dealership and determine where it can be improved. There are numerous industry magazines, websites and other sources where you can find
In the most basic terms, there is nothing in the world so completely useless and so utterly frustrating as a computer or software system that doesn’t work. Computer or software downtime leads to increased overhead costs, lost productivity, lost customer satisfaction and sometimes even lost revenues. The quality of the technical support provided by your software companies can minimize the frustration and lost productivity when you do have problems, and you
The Buy Here – Pay Here industry has had an image problem for years. Too many people remember the trailer sitting on a gravel lot with a few beat-up cars around selling barely running cars at astronomical interest rates to people who couldn’t get a loan anywhere else. Unfortunately, there are still a few of those dealers around and several attacks have been launched at the industry as a whole
I just got off the telephone with a dealer who was complaining he hadn’t been able to buy a single unit at the auction today. He claimed every car he wanted went for over $3500 and, with a cash in deal policy of $2500, average reconditioning expenses of just about $700 and average customer down of just under $800, he just couldn’t make $3500 cost vehicles fit his business model.
