The Hidden Cost of Wholesale Growth
You're sitting in your parts manager's office on a Monday morning, and they're asking for budget to expand the wholesale operation. "We can grab another $40,000...
Your Accountant's Obsolescence Reserve Might Be Costing You More Than It's Saving
Your accountant brings it up every year like clockwork, and you probably hate that conversation. The obsolescence reserve—that accounting line item that sits th...
Why Parts Inventory Turns Are a Misleading Metric (And What to Optimize Instead)
According to NADA data, the average franchise parts department turns inventory about 4.2 times per year. That number has barely budged in a decade, even as inve...
The Benchmarking Trap Nobody Talks About
Most dealerships are pricing their service menus wrong, and it's costing them money they don't even realize they're leaving on the table. You've probably done w...
The Uncomfortable Truth About Your Fluid and Filter Menu (And Why You Should Unbundle It)
Sixty-three percent of dealership service departments are hemorrhaging front-end gross on fluid and filter maintenance packages. That number should make you un...
The Recall Campaign Myth: Why Your Service Department's Productivity Doesn't Have to Crash
Sixty-seven percent of dealership service directors say recall campaigns tank their shop productivity for weeks at a time. That's not a feature of recalls. That...
The CSI Feedback Loop Is Broken (And Here's Why)
Back in 1979, Toyota introduced the idea that you should measure customer satisfaction after a service visit. Before that, a car got fixed or it didn't, and tha...
Stop Obsessing Over Service Appointment Show Rate (Here's Why)
Your service department's show rate just hit 87% last month, and your general manager sent out a congratulatory email. But here's the thing: you might be celebr...
Stop Calling Them Back: Why Aggressive Decline Follow-Up Kills Your CSI (And What Works Instead)
Fifty-eight percent of service advisors spend more than 40 percent of their week chasing down customers who declined repair recommendations. That's not a typo. ...
The Dispatch Board Discipline Trap: Why Rigid Control Kills Shop Productivity
What if your dispatch board isn't actually the problem with your shop productivity? Most service directors will tell you that discipline on the dispatch board ...
The Loaner Lie: Why Most Dealership Transportation Programs Lose Money
According to the National Automobile Dealers Association, 58% of dealerships offer some form of complimentary customer transportation during service visits, yet...
The Loaner Fleet Myth: Why Most Dealerships Are Overspending on Service Loaners
Here's a question that probably hasn't kept you up at night: what if your service loaner program is actually costing you more money than it makes? Most dealer ...