Lightspeed has a long legacy of innovating and supporting dealers in the outdoor recreation industries. While so many have contributed to this legacy, we can trace some of Lightspeed’s earliest innovations and visions back to Hal Ethington, one of Lightspeed’s earliest and most influential contributors, who was a dealer himself.
He was also a visionary in how he saw the future of the industry, connected with dealers, and understood their needs and challenges. In this “Then and Now” series, we’re revisiting the most impactful articles that Hal wrote from the 2000s and pairing them with fresh insights from our Chief Sales Officer, Brian Bodine. To learn more about how Hal created Lightspeed, check out the introduction to this series here.
In this installment, they’re addressing how to spend your time wisely in a slow season and how to get everything in peak condition for when the busy times come.
From Hal:
“Sales down? Everywhere? Wrong. My research of over 500 dealers shows that in October, for service, 1 in 3 is up. In parts, 1 in 4 is up. And in the sales department, again, 1 in 4 is up. Yes. Up. Over last year. And by a good percentage. So roughly from one-fourth to one-third of dealers are up, better than last year. We don’t hear too much from these folks, but it is clear that they have figured out how to make this economy work for them—which means, of course, that you could do the same.
Now, if you are down, take a look around. It’s the off-season in a down time—a natural breather, a ‘time out’. We find ourselves with a short time to take stock, look around, and fix a few things.”
To summarize, Hal goes on to share some tips on taking time to make some improvements:
- “There is never a better time to get the fixtures, equipment, building and grounds back in shape.”
- “We know that the average dealership has about $200,000 in parts inventory that is either obsolete (has not sold), or overstocked (too much on hand). Find it, report on it, and get it out.”
- “You have good people with not enough to do. This is the time to train. Call your major parts vendors. Get their field reps into your store for product training. Hold the classes and test to see just who paid attention. The person with the best score gets dinner and a night at the Marriott. Watch them soak it up.”
- “Set up pre-paid maintenance as an F&I product. You have said for years that you “were working on it”. Do it now, while you have the time to put it together. Not selling GAP? LoJack? Extended Warranty? Credit Life? A&H? Find suppliers and get signed up. These things all bring in dollars, and you don’t have to buy one stick of inventory.”
Brian Bodine reflected on Hal’s tips and had some more to share when it comes to the mindset of a dealership heading into a busy season.
“When I think of some of the more successful dealerships I’ve worked with, they actually committed time to training and making sure that they’re leveraging all of the tools that they have, Lightspeed Learning being one of them. One of the biggest ways you can make a difference heading into the season is simply to make sure that every employee is trained and up to speed and leveraging your tools appropriately. Specifically, an area of improvement we see the most is dealerships not using or being familiar with all the OEM integrations available to them that increase productivity.
Practically speaking, there are a lot of things you can dial in with your system and business practices before the busy season. Do you have the current data in the system? Current price books, bulletins, flat rates and OEM promotions? Have you evaluated your pricing model of how you’re pricing your parts? Are they all current? Are you rounding up? Are you taking advantage of some of the automations that the DMS does for you? For example, do you have the system set up to where it’ll automatically text or email or basically notify your customers that their special order parts are in or that their RO has been completed?
As Hal references having stagnant inventory, our parts and unit locator is an excellent solution to help identify and move parts. Anything you have in your dealerships that isn’t making you money is just taking up space, so now is the time to take stock of it. And Lightspeed can help!
There are also a lot of automated follow-ups that you can set up in the system. Not only follow-ups when somebody initially contacts you, but you can program them to happen a long time down the road. For instance, if it’s been a year since they bought their vehicle, you can send them an anniversary note and a coupon to come in for service or accessories. You can even send to multiple customers via Lightspeed TextMarketing.
Also, Lightspeed has OEM integrations where you can automatically import your units rather than having to type in model numbers dozens of times. Coordinating that in the system ahead of time will save you precious time when your dealership is full of customers.
Ultimately, it’s about ‘slowing down to speed up.’ You can treat a slower pre-season as a vital opportunity to get your operation in order to be most efficient when more customers are coming in.”
For more information on Lightspeed, contact your sales representative. And stay tuned for more installments of our “Then and Now” series with valuable insights from Hal and Brian.
Meet the Authors
Brian Bodine
