Finance Income Per Retail Unit: What's Changed and What Hasn't in 2024
Are You Still Making F&I Money Like It's 2019? The finance office used to be where dealerships printed money. A solid finance manager could walk a customer to ...
How Top-Performing Dealers Handle Loaner and Demo Rotation Into Retail
Most dealers treat their loaner and demo fleet like an afterthought. A car comes off lease, rolls back into the lot with 40,000 miles, gets a quick wash and an ...
The Real Cost of Disconnected Recon Workflows
Most dealerships treat service reconditioning and used car reconditioning as completely separate operations, which is why they leave thousands of dollars on the...
How Top-Performing Dealers Handle VIN Decoding Accuracy in Inventory Systems
Most dealers treat VIN decoding like a checkbox task. Data comes in, someone runs it through a decoder tool, and if the basic specs match the sales tag, it's go...
How Top-Performing Dealers Run Curb Appeal Audits (And Benchmark Against Competition)
The Curb Appeal Audit Most Dealers Skip (And Why It's Costing Them) Most dealers treat lot presentation like they're just parking cars in the sun. A quick wash...
How Top-Performing Dealers Handle the Weekly Trade-Walk Cadence
You've probably got a trade-walk scheduled for Tuesday morning. You know the one—the moment when your general manager, used car manager, and maybe a finance guy...
How Top-Performing Dealers Handle Days-Supply by Vehicle Segment
The Days-Supply Trap Most Dealers Fall Into Most dealerships treat days-supply the same way. They build a target number—say, 45 days across the lot—and hope it...
How Top-Performing Dealers Benchmark Front-Line-Ready Days: A Practical Workflow Guide
Most dealers are tracking days to front-line inventory all wrong. They're watching the metric hit a KPI dashboard once a week, nodding when it looks acceptable,...
How Top-Performing Dealers Make Wholesale-to-Retail Decisions: A Benchmarking Framework
Seventy-eight percent of dealers make their wholesale-versus-retail decision on the same day they acquire a used vehicle. That's the operational equivalent of b...
How Top-Performing Dealers Handle Used Car Photo and Video Merchandising
When Henry Ford rolled out the Model T in 1908, he didn't need to worry much about how it looked in the showroom. There was one color (black), one body style, a...
How Top-Performing Dealers Handle Aged Inventory: A Benchmarking Playbook
Seventy percent of used vehicles sitting on a lot for more than 60 days are priced wrong. Not just a little off. Wrong in a way that kills your front-end gross ...
How Top-Performing Dealers Handle Used-Car Reconditioning Workflow
Most dealers treat reconditioning like a necessary evil instead of a competitive advantage. They shuffle vehicles through service, detailing, and photos in what...