If your sales staff told you that they had a 50% closing ratio, would you take their word for it? I suspect not – you would probably track all of their opportunities to determine the true percentage. Most dealerships measure a vast number of items on a daily basis. After all, you can’t manage what you don’t measure, right?
How about the level of compliance and ethical behavior in your dealership? Is that something you measure or do you just take everyone’s word for it? Have you really thought about how your staff is conducting itself in these areas? Is it possible that some of these thoughts are floating around?
“We’ve always done it this way – haven’t been caught yet”
“Hey, if we get sued, that’s what insurance is for.”
“Compliance is not in my pay plan. I’ll do whatever it takes to make a decent paycheck.”
Sure, you can bury your head in the sand and hope for the best, but is it really worth finding out the hard way that you were mistaken, or that your customers are not being treated the way you expect?
Instead, why not follow a few simple steps?
1. Audit your operation to determine where you really stand.
2. Have your staff properly trained in all aspects of legal compliance.
3. Once trained, have them sign a code of ethics which will not only help protect the dealership, but let everyone know that the organization is serious about compliance and ethical behavior.
These steps are easy and far more affordable than the costs associated with lawsuits, regulatory actions and, most importantly, hits to your valuable reputation. Don’t find out the hard way that your operation isn’t as clean as you thought it was.
All is welol and good for the aforementioned non-prime lenders, but where does the person with VERY BAD CREDIT go? The dealers that service this community are generally BHPH but there is a lot of money to be made. It is definitely a niche market but seriously overlooked by lenders that dont look beyond the spreadsheet or trial balances. People in this category are known as ‘deadbeats’ but it is not always so. It simply takes an experienced eye to weed out the REAL deadbeats from those who will always pay for the car, despite them not paying their other debts. On a similar note, it should NOT be the actual auto dealer (BHPH) that does the lending because the greed monster always gets them in the end.