Dealers have been presented with a 50-strong list of ways to improve their profitability – and one MD has confirmed it’s already paying dividends for his firm.

The advice has come from software solutions firm WinWin World, and takes the form of an a motorsport analogy.

“We believe improving dealership performance is like a race driver improving his lap times. It’s 50 little improvements that add up to something quite big,” said MD Nigel Pates.

WinWin World sells a range of products to help dealers find more customers, keep them and boost profitability.

John Miskin is MD of the Sportif Group, which has Citroen and Suzuki franchises in the Home Counties.

He’s been involved in the development of the software.

“We were quite profitable before, and I didn’t think we could make much more money, but now we’re making £75-£100 more per unit.

"When you multiple that over, say, a thousand cars, that adds up to a lot of bottom line money.”

David Peel, MD of Robins & Day, isn’t a customer yet but is keen to find out more.

“We have ADP Autoline as our DMS, then at the front end a host of bolt-on tools that don’t talk to each other. Potentially with WinWin World we could do it all with one system.”

Number one on the list is to work the opportunities log harder.

“The reality is that nobody is searching for who they can sell a car to today.

"For example, look for the deal a customer might respond to if they didn’t like the one you first offered them,” said Pates.

He described that and number two – to do the same thing with renewals – as retailing’s low-hanging fruit.

“The one thing the salesman needs to know is at what point the existing customer can afford to change their car.”

The 50 tips

1 Work your OTDB log harder by logging more deals - Reappoint 9 more people per month from previous deal stacks with a better
deal to sell 3 more cars.

2 Work renewals harder – Appoint 9 ‘equity/parity qualified’ previous customers per month to gain 3 sales per month.

3 Pence and pound 10 finance deals per month to increase commission profit by £50 per deal.

4 Fund more extras by optimising techniques to ‘include’ 3 more GAP policies per month.

5 Run an efficient group stock list to match more cars to more customers more quickly. Sell 1 extra car per month.

6 Sell more used cars you don’t own. Sell one deal per month from third party stock systems.

7 Reduce trade losses by working PX offers harder. Recover 20% of average £500 PX over allowance on 5 deals per month by optimising offers.

8 Sell more finance by offering more finance lllustrations to cash customers using the offer sheets. Sell three more finance deals per month.

9 Renew more Service Only Customers – appoint 9 equity/parity checked service only customers to sell 3 cars per month

10 Sell more GAP and Supagard by offering it to more people. Sell three more policies per month.

11 Make more offers to more people each day. Use efficient offer sheet process to engage customer in negotiation more often. Sell one more unit per month

12 Recover more finance declines by using efficient secondary finance process. Save one deal per month.

13 Increase finance profits by using wider panel of lenders and selling your finance book. Increase commission and VB on 10 deals per month by £50 per unit.

14 Sell more amber work in service with a better CRM process. Sell 10 services per month to amber opportunities at £50 per unit.

15 Sell more service plans and retain more service work each month.

16 Run a comprehensive CSI process to retain bonus, upsell product and retain customers. Upsell three products per month.

17 Renew more expired GAP and Warranties. Sell 2 GAP and two extended warranty per month.

18 Retain more new car customers for first service by better year one CRM. Retain three extra customers per month.

19 Cut used stocking costs by stocking best ROI stock and using third party ‘free stocking’.

20 Improve stock turn.

21 Capture more leads to provide more people to sell to. Sell one more car.

22 Get more email addresses. Displace £500 marketing spend by using more email contact

23 Advertise yours and others stock on more web sites with less admin to update. Sell one more car on a distance sale.

24 Profile your DMS to have a CRM strategy on every new car customer. Sell more ‘cost of motoring’ items and renewals to more of your DMS new car customers. Find three new car customers per month to sell more to.

25 Profile your DMS to have a CRM strategy on every used car customer. Sell more ‘cost of motoring’ items and renewals to more of your DMS used car customers. Find three used car customers per month to sell more to.

26 Profile your DMS to have a CRM strategy on every ‘service only’ car customer. Sell more ‘cost of motoring’ items and renewals to more of your DMS used car customers. Find three ‘service only’ customers per month to sell more to.

27 Make better offers to your DMS database to appoint three more customers per month to make one sale.

28 Reduce time on sales controller administrative tasks and focus on showroom processes. Save 15% of controller admin time.

29 Recover more lapsed service customers by better CRM and contacting more people. Gain back three lapsed service customers per month.

30 Save management and administrative time on calculating sales commissions.

31 Save management and administrative time on updating manual DOCs and logs.

32 Get a bigger database by using third party data. Find three appointments to sell one car.

33 Make databases and IT provision more efficient.

34 Increase the numbers of prospects you talk to each month by better lead management. Gain one extra sale per month.

35 Make more efficient use of the internet and affinity markets.

36 Sell more hours in your workshop. Sell 10 hours per month from better CRM and better offers.

37 Reduce your discounting and VAT inefficiency on deals by better deal control. Reduce discounting and VAT losses on 10 deals per month by £50 per deal

38 Increase your market share of customer ‘Cost of Motoring’ items (tyres, insurance etc). Gain 10 new sales items per month at £50 each by better CRM planning.

39 Increase finance acceptance rate and reduce data entry costs by multi-propping to lenders. Save one deal per month.

40 Improve used Stock retail efficiency. Better management of stock records in your DMS and better used stock locating facilities.

41 Better PX efficiency in marketing, disposal and matching of PX’s.

42 Sell a £50 admin fee on each deal.

43 Improve general administrative efficiency by 1/3 of a head through process automation and rekeying reductions.

44 Incentivise staff to chase business harder. Leagues tables and more flexible automated commission structures. Gain one sale per month from incentivisation.

45 Use automation to bring management information closer to the customer to enhance management pressure on lost ‘profits’ and motivation.

46 Reduce free ‘product’ given away – mats and fuel – on 10 deals per month.

47 Capture more and better customer data to improve volume of opportunities – wants, PX, contact details. Find one customer per month.

48 Centralise finance office to save manpower, increase acceptances or increase site BM time spent on finding customers and supporting deals.

49 Use professional call centres efficiently to make additional contacts from your databases.

50 We’ll leave the last one to you. Please give us your suggestion on how you could improve. The best one selected will win a free days consultancy from WinWin World and a bottle of champagne.