MEDFORD, Ore. -

Lithia Motors is well on its way to reaching 75 used sales per month per store, but it still has a bit of a ways to go from its current average of 53. That said, expanding used supply and its in-house inventory tools could provide the needed boost to reach Lithia’s used-sales goals.

During last week’s conference call discussing Lithia’s financial results for the fourth quarter and full-year 2013, company leadership highlighted just how they plan on reaching their 75 unit goal during the question and answer period of the call.

Bryan DeBoer, chief executive officer and president of Lithia, explained there are two major factors the company is looking at regarding its ability to reach its used-sales goal: “One is our people and our talent within the stores, which still have lots of opportunity.”

The second: supply.

“As these 14 million and 15 million SAARs start to become 3- to 7-year-old vehicles, it starts to loosen up the supply of those vehicles,” DeBoer said, according to the conference-call transcript from Seeking Alpha. “Right now, our 3- to 7-year-old vehicles have a blend of a 10.8 million SAAR to a 14 million SAAR, and it makes it difficult to get those cars.”

In other words, the future bodes well for used inventory.

DeBoer said the company expects an 8-percent increase in used sales in the coming year, saying the company expects this rate of increase to spike in the future, allowing it to reach its sales goal within a couple of years.

And used supply has already started expanding, as DeBoer noted inventory was up at the end of the year.

“Inventories in used have come back in the line over the last 45 days or so. So we're just a touch higher than we typically are in used,” he said, according to the Seeking Alpha transcript.

Execs were also asked about which used inventory software they utilize —  another tool company leadership says will help them reach their used-sales goal.

DeBoer explained, “We actually partner with a company called FirstLook in most of our stores. Now, we allow our stores to do different things with their used-car management software, but there's an underlying basis that is similar across our stores so we're able to transfer vehicles or do our internal auctions and prepare those things.”

DeBoer explained one of the biggest benefit to these outsourced inventory tools, such as FirstLook, is the big-picture used sales perspective they can provide, as well as tracking what cars have sold well in the past in specific Lithia stores.

“I think the biggest thing of what they do is they give you a history of what either you sold within your stores or what the market sold and try to help guide you as to what you should sell, if you take it in on trade and it's the wrong vehicle, but more importantly, what should you be looking at to go buy and where are the margins within those vehicles and how does that relate to consumer demand and pricing in terms of what's out there competitively on the Internet,” DeBoer concluded.