During the three hours of the “Building Versatility into Your Business Model,” Jennifer Swope found nuggets she could immediately take home to the Swope Family of Dealerships in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
“Luke Godwin’s breakout session on business best practices might have been the most impactful session I’ve ever attended at a conference,” Swope said. “His insights and best practices centered around AI were powerful, and gave me action items that can be immediately implemented at virtually no cost to the store and have a dramatic impact on productivity and the way we manage our business.”
Swope and other dealers took advantage of the opportunity to dive into building a business plan, managing inventory and sales and lead generation during the NIADA BHPH Dealer Forum in Nashville. The three interactive deep-dive sessions led off the education.
“The attendance was great and the interaction was fantastic,” said Doug Turner, Senior Director Vehicle Acquisitions and Remarketing for America’s CAR-MART, who led “The Heart of the Matter Inventory Management.”
During his session, Turner was joined by members of the NAAA Standards Committee to discuss tools and resources available at auction for the dealers. Jeremy Robb, Deputy Chief Economist at Cox Automotive, covered industry numbers on defaults, rates and wholesale inventory up to $12,000.
“They wanted to know how to find quality inventory and how to get vehicles through presale reconditioning,” Turner said. “There was a lot of discussion on identifying the proper workflow to get cars to the front line and using your data to drive those decisions.”
NIADA 20 Group Moderator John Dismukes led the “All the Moving Parts to Moving Metal” session, discussing sales, marketing and lead generation. Dealers asked question throughout and provided feedback.
“What impressed me most was how quickly everyone started connecting the dots between waste, workflow and profitability,” Dismukes said. “I loved seeing the lightbulbs go off in the room. Once dealers realized how much money was hiding in their processes, the whole energy shifted. This workshop wasn’t about theory — it was about showing dealers exactly where they’re losing time, money and customers, and giving them the tools to fix it. This workshop reminded me why I love this industry – dealers who lean into the process, their whole business changes. When a dealer comes up afterward and says, ‘This is exactly what we needed,’ that’s the reason I do this.”
Godwin, the owner of Godwin Motors in Columbia, South Carolina, presented the “Building Versatility into Your Business Model,” covering the use of AI in practical ways, along with going into the numbers that make a dealership successful. Dealers had the opportunity to build out their own pro forma.
“Especially new dealers are all about buying a car to sell and I make a profit, and that’s fine dandy for retail. If you’re a buy here, pay here dealer, it’s more complicated,” Godwin said. “I don’t really make that profit cause I have to collect that profit. How far can I make that cash go? How can I get back to cash flow positive? What are my other expenses that go into that formula to get me back to profitability?
“Pro formas and spreadsheets that encompass all those things are always enlightening. Because you don’t understand it, and if you have credit lines, they can put you out of business before you know what you’re doing. It is probably very eye-opening to a lot of dealers when they actually see what it takes to run a business.”
