Thank you for writing your book

I received this email from a reader… 

I thought I would drop you a note to thank you for writing your book.  I received it from Barnes and Noble and I am on my second read through.  I found the book very engaging especially the chapters on desking deals and the Perfect Storm.  As a long time desk man I can attest to the times decisions were made to take a deal based not on the best interests of the store but because of the flat or spiff that would be paid.  Oddly enough I truly believe that the ownership is unaware of this epidemic when they do not think of their used car inventory from an investment minded point of view.  In the chapter, “How Investment-Minded Management Improves Desking,” the hypothetical 2005 Trailblazer scenario noted the many indicators that were taken into consideration when deciding between taking the deal and passing: the R.O.I. on the vehicle; a review of whether the offer’s competitive; the store’s past history selling blazers; the effect on holding costs on investment return.  In this analysis I failed to note the impact of adding that specific customer to the dealerships owner base and the future impact on additional sales to that customer, their family members and referrals.  When the break even point on whether or not to take a deal gets within a level that seems too low I believe dealers are short sighted if they do not factor in the future value of that customer relationship.  The employer I most recently worked for never gave us any heat for taking a deal but if one should decide to pass on a deal look out.  Bottom line is that without taking advantage of the technology that is available in today’s market dealers are failing to be good stewards of their business, their customers, and their employees.

On a final note, in the course of doing my homework on vAuto and some of its competitors, “First look”, “JM Solutions AAX” and ADP’s “Pre-Owned Vehicle Analyzer (PVA),” I discovered an interesting article in the September 2008 issue of Digital Dealer.  In reading this article it makes me think they may also be a raving fan of your book since you wrote it long before this article was published.  Notice the continued references to the “Perfect Storm” and “Core” inventory.