What’s the Rush at Car Dealerships?

I’m astonished by a new “hot trend” in auto retail: thinking a car deal should be done in an hour. 

It takes almost that long for the car dealership to tell customers how the infotainment system works. 

How long does it take to go over all of the forms demanded by government regulation, or do we just have the customer sign them without reading them in the F&I office? We want our customers to be happy, right?

There are other forms associated with the sale of aftermarket products and services. Or perhaps we should give up selling those, because the most important thing is speed? 

Even if the customer doesn’t buy F&I stuff, you’d better get decline forms signed or could find yourself in all sorts of hot water. And those take time too. 

No doubt on a busy day we might not be staffed to handle buyers expeditiously if those darn people decide to come in groups instead of evenly spacing themselves out.

It is possible to do most of the deal with some customers before they come to the showroom, if the deal has no complications or hair on it. The operative word is “some.”

If time is the most important element we could send all of the tough deals down the road to competitors to keep our average elapsed time low. 

We could limit our transactions to customers with credit scores of say 680 and above, and send the others packing. Those low credit scores take much too long and would ruin our average.

And what about those people with negative equity, who have no cash, hold a false vision of what their trade-in vehicle is worth and want to buy way more than any lender would advance. What do we do with them?

Dealing with those types takes us over our 1-hour goal. So out they go. There! Problem solved.

Of course we want the highest customer satisfaction possible.  We also want and need repeat business, referrals and a healthy gross profit.

So let’s take a deep breath, slow down and stop the silliness.

David Ruggles is an automotive consultant and former dealership general manager. He can be reached at [email protected].