![]() It's good to see there are some outliers.Ĭool stuff coming soon for dealers who utilize Dealer Spike LLC and ARI for their websites. They believe they have all the answers, and it's just us dealers who are the problem. They are unwilling to reach out to talk to people like me because they think I am below them. Unfortunately, many of the large OEs (the vendors, not the business partners) are staffed up with smart people who have ivy-league degrees, but who have never actually worked in the industry (or worked at all). I wish more of the vendors in the powersports industry truly understood that the best path forward was to work with us dealers, not against us. But, I now also have a long list of people who I can go to who have the ability to implement change. I haven't been bought off, my posts and insights will still be honest, and sometimes cutting. I'm excited to see this work make it out to the field. We got to sketch out some really cool features that will have a big impact on the customer experience when they are interacting with dealer websites. I was given some insight into why things are the way they are, what is being done to address them now, and what the future development plans look like (signed an NDA, so can't say much more). Yesterday we spent 9 hours going through a long list of issues, challenges, and opportunities. What's a 6 hour flight? Challenge accepted. He made it clear that they weren't trying to buy me off, they just wanted the opportunity to have a frank and open conversation. A couple of weeks later the CEO of LeadVenture™, Tim MacDonald reached out and asked if I could fly out to Seattle to meet with the LV executive team. As with most vendors, I never expected to hear back from anyone at the company, but I was wrong. They weren't flattering, but they were accurate. I'll call out the egregious actions, but also post accolades when earned.Ī couple of months back I posted some comments critical of Dealer Spike LLC. ![]() If you want to know how I represent myself, I prefer to be looked at as pro business-partner. Some of the OE vendors just don't like that there is a player in the market who is willing to speak the truth, even when it hurts. ![]() On the OEM front, I'm often accused of being anti-OEM. Most of the vendors we work with send them out after every transaction, but it's obvious they only do it because they are going through the motions. I rarely waste my time filling out customer service surveys. In addition, it will mean your 20-group results are truly comparable if everyone is paying themselves market wages and rent. RESULT: For sure your business will be worth more when you sell it, but also, you will make better management decisions every day. SOLUTION: When you set up their system, create a monthly journal entry to offset the underpayment - label it "Allocation" or something similar, and then reverse the total at year end. there's nothing they can do because performance is evaluated over roughly the last 3 - 5 years. Over and over I meet Owners who are devastated when they find out their dealership is worth a million dollars less than they thought it was. When you want to borrow to expand, or you decide to sell your business, that bottom line gets NORMALIZED and the wages and rent get adjusted to market rates. One key thing that's life changing, and I know Spader agrees with Dealers need to pay themselves a minimum of Market wages for the work they do and pay themselves market rent for their facility if they own it.Įvery time I find a dealers under paying or under charging themselves, the outcome is the same-normalized bottom line is below benchmark. #Lightspeed #LightspeedEVO #DMS #Spader #Reporting #DMS #dealership #business #audit #data #powersports It's a lot of work, but you don't want to run a dealership on bad data. ![]() Starting in 2022, we'll have excellent data that we can use to make decisions for operating and improving the dealership. Tomorrow I'll work on mapping all those changes to the Spader Business Management monthly 20 Group reporting, that way comparisons in the group are apples to apples. We'll also be making some process changes so that the right data is going to the right places. Today, we are correcting those items and will also be auditing how the staff are using the system. On day 1 we identified about 300 settings that were incorrect. I'm spending 3 days up in Baltimore at a friends dealership and we are doing a top to bottom audit of their Lightspeed settings. While I'm definitely a proponent of Lightspeed DMS, getting it set up correctly can overwhelm many dealers who have lots of other things to focus on. Powerful systems aren't always the most intuitive. ![]()
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