[Case Study] How We Helped A Client Make An Extra $80,000/mo

This client owned a few car dealerships in the Midwest.  They had one location that was severely under-performing for a couple years and we were hired to get it to the point where it was profitable again.

This location had been in business for close to 20 years and had a good amount of resources to work with.

While they were getting a fair number of leads, they weren’t converting them into sales.  So that’s what we set out to fix first.   While we’re always happy to develop shiny new advertising, we didn’t spend any additional money on advertising.

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The first thing we did was put together a written sales process.  We taught it to the staff and we had the managers practice with the staff… every. single. day!

We wanted to make sure we were maximizing every opportunity we already had.

Note: We use Lucid Chart for making pretty flowcharts and help make the sales process a visual learning experience… we think it’s a lot easier to train on a flowchart vs a checklist or a written process.

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Accountability – Daily – the sales staff was given expectations (which it seems many managers are reluctant to put in place, put in writing, and most importantly enforce) of what was expected of them on a daily basis.   For example, they were expected to make a certain number of calls, and a certain number of emails… all things they could control.For example, while they had a monthly goal of how many cars they were supposed to sell that month (12), the daily accountability really focuses on what you can do each day.

If during the course of a month you have 22 work days, that means you don’t need to sell a car every day… nor is that something you can necessarily fully control.  You could have a day where you sell 3 cars on the same day and go the rest of the week without selling a single car.  Such is the nature of car sales.  However, you can control how many phone calls you make.  You can control how many emails and text messages you send… so we focused on those activities and made sure we held everyone accountable for their daily activity.

It sounds like a simple and obvious thing but nobody at the store had been doing that – and it made a huge difference.

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Counterintuitively, we reduced the number of hours both the sales and management staff were working. They were open 12 hours a day but weren’t busy for most of it so it didn’t make sense to have everyone there for all 12 hours each day… which at that time they were.  It just leads to burnout especially if you’re not busy… you get bored… you spend your time doing non productive things.

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Staff Meetings 
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Meetings get a bad rap these days but when it comes to keeping everyone on the same page, we find them to be essential so every morning, we got the management team together and had a quick 10 minute standing meeting (no sitting allowed – the goal is to be quick and we didn’t want anyone getting settled in) to discuss the results of the past day and what was on the docket for the current day.

And twice a week (Monday and Friday) we got the entire sales staff together for a 30-45 minute meeting to let them know where we currently stood and how we were tracking towards our goals.

When we initially pitched the client, we figured we could be at break even within 60 days and at a nice monthly profit within 6 months.

What actually happened is that just 30 days later, we had turned the store around – it went from losing money each month to its first profitable month in over a year – an $80,000 per month swing!  As you can imagine, the client was pretty happy with that.

Want to see what we can do, get in touch and let’s talk.