What is the first thing hits your mind when someone says New Car Dealership? cons, crooks, liars? After having been in this particular business for a few years, the thing NOW I have to ask, would you ever lie to a car salesman? Have you ever lied to a car salesman? What business are you in? Is the company you work for, or own a really legit living? Really?……..Really? If you just got offended by my interrogation, then you’re probably the damn crook yourself! My experience was in sales, which as a shapely female, out sold the other salespersons and made great money, Look, I’m not speaking of the “fast eddie” car lots on side street USA, referring to Ford, GM, Chrysler, Nissan and any other dealership who sell new cars, (not tote your notes). Granted, there is a degree of under dealing from time to time, but as we speak that is all changing, you see the car business as we know it , ( and pretty much has already) changed due to Internet, Craigslist, Twitter, Emails, Ebay and whatever else online ways to do business. Now, being in the business from the “fixed ops”, in laymen terms, that means fixed operations, which includes the service and parts departments of the dealership. In any car dealerships light years ago, sales ruled and the fixed ops were the paymaster, that paid the utilities and the sales were strictly pure profit in the operation. DPs, Dealer Principals, (the Owner), did not put much emphasis on fixed operations, and relied heavily on the sales department, they actually considered the parts department an “evil necessity” or “whipping department” for the service department. Toward the turn of the century, around 1999, Ford, Chrysler and GM, not to mention the foreign models, began to look at numbers of parts wholesale numbers and service numbers, and decided with a little tweaking and a little advertising, Wow!, fixed ops was the new best kept secret around.
New cataloging companies popped up and the next thing you realized, parts had literally arrived. With the new fixed ops declaration came a few issues, Wholesale was the new cash cow for parts and fleet for service, because fleet business can keep you afloat during tough times, in service especially. wholesale for parts, as people in the south would say “whole ‘nother animal”, first you must have the money to stock the parts you need, ie…crash parts for body shops, mechanical parts for the Firestone, Goodyear and mom and pop shops, you get the idea. The good news, bad news is if you have a “shop”, which is better known as your service department, you should already have some mechanical parts in stock and ditto for your body shop. My experience with dealership body shops are limited, the Ford store I was employed for years never had a body shop, believe it or not! Here is the bad news, with no body shop we had to “sublet” or “refer” our body work to a local shop down the street. Now with Uber, Lyft and other rideshare car services, dealerships are positioning to become major fleet landings. Ford announced in 2016 the move to drop cars, (with the exception of the Mustang) from production. Now, the fixed-ops of the local dealer becomes more significant than ever. After already going over my word limit, and the love for this business, revisiting this will be for another blog session soon- Love Barb!
UnderCurrent 