These articles describe actual situations I have encountered as a business consultant. I hope you will discover new ideas (or remember old ones) that can be implemented in your stores. My goal is to help you improve your business – to become more organized, more profitable and provide better service for your customers.

In my inaugural article I described a powersports dealership I had recently visited. I’ll begin with a short recap of the situation.

Recently, I was hired to assess a dealership that had been purchased by a real estate developer/enthusiast. He thought he could make some money and have lots of “big boy” toys to play with on the weekends. The absentee owner left the original crew in place to run it. In a few short months, they had helped him make a small fortune out of a large one. He was desperate to find out what was wrong and fix it.

I began working with them to get the preliminary data necessary to begin my assessment. My first discovery was the dealership had no computer system and no departmentalized tracking of financial data. Their accounting consisted of taking the cash register tapes to a local accountant every night. There was no parts inventory control. There were no written processes or job descriptions for any department. What they did have was all new staff as the “originals” had either quit or been fired by the time I arrived.

So there I was, standing in a dealership with no Data Management System (DMS), no performance measurements, no processes, a brand new (mostly inexperienced) staff and an owner who had just undergone an expensive reality check.

By this point the owner reluctantly agreed with my recommendations:

A. He couldn’t afford to be an absentee owner until this dealership was functioning properly.

B. He would have to make a costly investment in computers and software. Once that discussion was out of the way, we rolled up our sleeves and went to work on structure, people, processes, policies and training.