Get Back to the Car Business

In the ever-changing economic landscape, many car dealers are looking for a quick, easy way to get back to the business they had just a few short years ago.

Many of the accountant types of dealer principals and general managers are finding today’s economy far more difficult to navigate than the car guys who actually started their careers as salespeople and worked their way up the dealership ladder based on talent and not the ability to dissect a financial statement.

You see, a lot of these accountant types have never even sold a car before and they’re trying to run car dealerships based on their business experiences instead of their dealership experiences. Would a professional sports franchise hire their bookkeeper to coach the team? I don’t think so!

Well, not long ago there was so much profit being made that the dealers were trained to think they needed a highly sophisticated businessman running the store instead of a car guy who really knew the business of selling and servicing cars. I’m pretty sure, now more than ever, these dealers really wish they had an actual car guy running their store; after all, this is still a people business and not a business based solely on the numbers printed on a statement.

Today, most dealerships really need a general manager or general sales manager who can wear multiple hats—sell a car, pencil a deal, find financing, close a deal and even buy the used car inventory. Can your accountant do that? I’m not saying that some of these accountant types haven’t learned along the way how to perform some or all of these tasks and might even be really good at them, but I would ask this question: Would these accountants be running dealerships if they started out as salespeople and had to climb the dealership ladder?

“An accountant is a practitioner of accountancy, which is the measurement, disclosure or provision of assurance about financial information that helps managers, investors, tax authorities and other decision makers make resource allocation decisions,” according to Wikipedia.

Does this sound like someone you want hiring, firing and training your dealership team? The sooner we get back to the roots of the car business the sooner we can get back to selling cars and making profits!

Keep pushing forward!