🚗 Used Car Dept – Fixed Operations Recon – Real Actionable Steps
💰 Whether you’re getting your Used Vehicles from auction, or as a trade-in, Fixed Ops stands to win along with the Sales Dept, but we in Fixed Ops have to play our part. If they win, we win in Fixed Ops.
I’ve put together a few thoughts on how we can help the drive costs down, and increase efficiency so the dealer isn’t caught up holding used cars, and losing money, at a loss for everyone in the dealership.
⚔️ For now, let’s focus on the biggest friction point when it comes to Recon’ing used vehicles. We have to solve that first.
📝 Sales and Service have some points that they never agree on. From tires, brakes, batteries, alignments, oil change needed or not, etc. For everything that both the Sales Dept hate about what Service calls for work, and everything that Service hates about Sales disagreeing about, list each point on paper.
⁉️ From there, I created a 7-page (it will be that much or more), and got rid of the grey areas. For me, I like the idea of making everything as Fail or Caution – there is no middle.
⛔ Fail is: Everything you’re legally responsible to do
⚠️ Caution is: Everything that you should do, that the tech recommends, or is company policy/process.
🚫 This is how we strip out opinions from either side. This gives clarity to sales dept on what actually has to be put into a unit, and they can decide which way to go from there.
🚧 You can decide how to handle items that are mandated as part of your Recon process, whether they are Fail or Caution items on the Recon Estimate. Whatever you decide – put it on paper.
🚨 For items that are determined as Fail, there would be a legal regulation published by the governing body (otherwise, it’s an opinion/optional).
🏛️ Since used vehicles are a massive part of the dealership’s business, we owe it to ourselves to do the homework, and find the legal regulation on every single item that is a sticking point between sales and service, when it comes to working out the grey areas. I know all the regulations exist – you just have to look them up.
🛞 From when alignments have to be done, to when weather-cracked tires need to be replaced legally, what the real legal limit of brake pad left is allowed.
🔧 In service, our job with the sales dept on used vehicles is just like a retail customer. We advise what we see, and let them decide where to go with it from there. The law then decides what is mandated to be done without exception. Everything else is either optional, an internal process (ie. every vehicle gets an oil change no matter what), or an opinion.
📒 What this process does, is strip out opinions, build trust, and adds more clarity on what’s being called, from tech to tech. It also reduces the noise that might show up from the Sales side on the disagreements of what is being called on the Recon quote.
More actionable steps in the next posts
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