The Contrarian Case Against Buying That Struggling Single-Point Store
It's 2 p.m. on a Thursday, and your M&A advisor is pitching you on a struggling Ford franchise in the Central Valley. Three locations away from the nearest free...
Local Brand vs. Group Branding: Why Most Dealer Groups Get This Wrong
Why do most dealer groups spend millions standardizing their brand across twenty rooftops when the data suggests their customers don't actually care? That's no...
The BDC Consolidation Trap: Why Group-Level Business Development Doesn't Work
Imagine it's 8 a.m. on a Monday morning at your dealer group's shared Business Development Center. Twenty phones are ringing. Ten BDC reps—each one supposedly s...
Why Your Dealer Group's Inventory Transfer System Is Probably Costing You Money
Why Your Dealer Group's Inventory Transfer System Is Probably Costing You Money It's 8 a.m. on a Tuesday, and your service director at the Chevy store is texti...
Why Specialty Inventory Auctions Are a Trap (And What Works Instead)
Back in 1927, when the first-ever automobile auction fired up in Pasadena, California, dealers showed up expecting chaos. Instead, they found order. A gavel. Cl...
Why Your Powersports Service Department Is Actually a Separate Business (And Why You're Treating It Wrong)
Back in 1975, the Honda Gold Wing changed the motorcycle world by bringing car-like comfort to the highway. Dealers who sold them didn't just pump gas and sell ...
The Recon Spending Trap: When You're Overcapitalizing on Trade-In Restoration
It's Monday morning at your dealership, and a 2019 Mercedes E-Class just rolled into the lot with 89,000 miles, a salvage title cleanup in progress, and what yo...
The Contrarian Case Against Off-Lease Inventory Dependency
Seventy percent of dealers say off-lease inventory is their most reliable acquisition channel. And yet, the stores crushing it in used-car gross profit are doin...
Why Your Dealer Principal Shouldn't Chase Exotic Cars and Specialty Inventory (Yet)
Picture this: it's Tuesday morning, your service bay is running at 78% capacity, CSI is hovering around 82, and your parts director just flagged three technicia...
Why Most Classic-Car Consignment Programs Fail (And What to Do Instead)
Eighty-three percent of dealerships that launch a classic-car consignment program abandon it within eighteen months. That's not an industry stat I pulled from a...
The Powersports Cross-Sell Trap: Why Most Dealerships Get Specialty Inventory Wrong
Most dealership groups are dead wrong about powersports and RV cross-sell, and it's costing them six figures a year in missed margin and worse CSI scores. Here...
Why Your Motorcycle Department Is Losing Money (And What To Do About It)
Why does every dealer group with a motorcycle department lose money on it? That's not a rhetorical question. It's the question that separates the dealers makin...