6 Reasons to Buy Used Car Training

"A man's mind, stretched by new ideas, may never return to its original dimensions."
-- Oliver Wendell Homles, Jr.

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself."
-- Chinese Proverb

New and Used Car Retail is completely different from Used Car, Buy Here Pay Here (BHPH) and Sub-Prime Dealers. I have identified 6 key areas of differentiation and will be exploring each of these in more depth in future posts.

1. Generic retail training that we've all been exposed to and some of you may actually be using right now, does not work properly. It does not address the key differences with our business compared to new and used retail training.
2. The Sub-Prime and BHPH customers have a completely different purchase process or sales process. It's all about defense and about underwriting the right customer to bring them into our portfolio, whether that's with a subprime bank or we're holding the receivable ourselves. This is not about being offensive in selling vehicles.
3. It is important to be marketing to the right customers in the right channels and what messages and how to handle those leads. Whether it's an incoming phone call, an internet lead, a chat, or in person, it's completely different scripts. It literally is as different as English to Spanish. And if you're trying to use retail Road to the Sale training for Sub-Prime and BHPH, you're not going to get the results you're looking for.
4. Collections: Obviously collections doesn't even exist in retail new and used stores, but it is the number one thing that will double your profits this year. It is not what I went through in the late eighties where they used to treat customers as transactions and it was all about hammering as many customers as you can to get them to pay. In the last five years, successful collections has completely changed in how you need to approach a customer, work with them, talk with them and be compliant while you're doing it.
5. The BHPH repair process is different in many ways that Retail Used Cars. The Reconditioning process is also different and requires different strategies. So whether you have a service department on site or you're outsourcing like a lot of my dealers, either way you have to recognize you have two different departments that are different than retail new and used. We have to have a process defined and have the right quality skilled and trained employees on how to handle it so you can reduce your repossessions, keep your customers in their car and get your cars reconditioned enough to last at least the term of their note. I will have a Service Advisor position that is just an extension of the Collections department who has been an effective Collector.  Their #1 job is to manage the customers emotions while the vehicle is being fixed while collecting as much of repair as possible.  Do not hire a technical Service Advisor from a new car dealership for this position or it will cost you Repo's.
6. The type of employees on your team requires different cultures, different attitudes, different personalities, and most important, different skills than a retail new and used store. I've run new car dealerships, used retail dealerships, and currently running multiple BHPH stores, and it is a completely different language, different processes than what I teach for those new retail and used retail stores. You have to have the right people and learn the key tips how to recruit them and where to recruit them. You have to know how to properly interview and filter out old school car guys. After hiring them you have to properly onboard and train them.

These are six critical components to being successful and why you need to buy specific used car, Buy Here Pay Here and Sub-Prime training instead of generic retail training. Please subscribe to our blog to be notified of future posts that will go into more detail on each of these 6 reasons and give you actionable items you can take to improve your used car dealership.