One of the key benefits of owning a group of dealerships is capitalizing on the efficiencies that can come from good centralized purchasing and planning activities. The math just works, and dealer groups are the fastest growing ownership structure in the Canadian automotive industry.

If you’re a single-store owner operator, don’t fret: you can make advantages for your business under just one rooftop, to get car-by-car efficiency that is scalable from a 40-store corporation to a family-owned small-town dealership.

Here is a look at three areas of opportunity, to control expense, maximize time and increase gross profit.

Reconditioning: Easily the biggest expense on used units retailed, after the actual cost of the car. Keep control with set guidelines that state exactly what degree of wear or what condition specific safety and aesthetic items should be in.

Don’t replace parts that can be repaired, or which have a decent amount of use left on them; instead, balance the cost of machining or simply leave the component as it is — so long as doing so leaves the vehicle fit for its intended use for a reasonable amount of drive time. Brakes and tires, especially, should be monitored. When you do need to replace parts, consider quality line aftermarket parts, in many cases these will have warranty on them just like OE parts, and most customers don’t really care as long as the component does the job just as well.

Getting your Vehicles Online: I always tell my dealers, it’s not for sale until it’s online! Whether you are a market value pricing dealer or not, and regardless of how your price position to market is, one thing is for certain, no one will ever look at your car if it doesn’t show up in their search results.

Have a detailed process for getting inventory, both new and used, online. Set strict timelines for work to be completed and for vehicle information captured into a custom listing, being clear about whose job it is to chase cars through this system. Simply setting a firm three day rule, for example, from a status quo of seven days, can shave 7-10 percent off of the turn time of a unit (assuming the car is otherwise desirable) at a dealership operating on an average 50- to 60-day turn. That means you could get an extra half-turn in each year, just by making sure you do the same things you are doing now but without lag time.

Plan for 50-50 Front and Back-End Gross: Don’t accept “Our customers don’t buy that stuff,” as an answer! If you put your warranty, chemical protection and insurance options on an iPad and showed them to people on their way out of the grocery store, I bet many of them would say they didn’t even know they could buy such things!

Change the mindset in your store if your staff think it’s okay to only offer some products to certain customers, and make sure that all of your customer facing staff understand that products sold to protect the car and car buyer have value not just on their bottom line, but also on the long term satisfaction of their own customers.

The digital fragmentation of car listings means that there is a definite cap on what a car or truck is worth, but the complicated nature of Canadian families’ finances means that there is no limit to the value that security and protection can bring. Rely on quality F&I products to increase your average deal gross profit, unless you can find some downside to making money and offering customers protection from breakdowns of their car or their cash flow.

There are definite advantages to leveraging assets ranging from inventory to computer systems, tocontracts to human capital, between multiple rooftops in a dealer group. But don’t let’s get so focused on the big picture that we forget, at the end of the day, that the story simply goes like this: Desirable products, bought and brought to market at the right price point and in the shortest span of time, shown to the highest number of people, with the most logical accessory and aftermarket options offered equals a win. And you are never too big or too small to understand the logic of that.