By Jason March
In the buy-here pay-here dealership, it is easy to allow departments to operate independently of one another.
No one person has all the answers. It takes cooperation between sales, finance and operations staff to properly evaluate each customer and choose the right vehicles to offer.
We all need to work together to thoroughly understand the best cars to put on the front line. My dealership leverages years of historical loan performance data to guide vehicle selection. We know certain makes and models hold their value better through the loan term, making them better collateral if payments are missed.
Service techs and the service staff play a key role by thoroughly inspecting all purchased vehicles to ensure any vehicle we choose to put on the road will be reliable for the term of the loan.
The term of the loan shouldn’t exceed the usable life of the vehicle. This statement is so powerful, and I believe this is where some dealers have lost touch.
Checking the vehicle history minimizes risk with the mechanical aspect of the vehicle before the purchase. We do not expect a four-owner vehicle with accidents and no mechanical service history to be as high of quality as a two-owner vehicle with several documented trips to the service center and receiving thousands of dollars of repairs and maintenance.
We feel a key factor to our success is giving customers assurance their vehicle will remain roadworthy. We back our vehicles with our comprehensive 12-month, 12,000-mile limited warranty.
Jason March will be a speaker at the NIADA Convention and Expo. See his full article in the April issue of UCD.
