Recently, I read about a study commissioned by True Car that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. The study asked car buyers what they believed a fair profit margin for a car dealer would be on a $30,000 new car sale, and how much they actually believed a dealer profited on the same sale.

On average, consumers thought dealers made about 20 percent on the sale of a new vehicle. Not surprisingly, they thought in a “fair” transaction a dealer would make less — more like 10 percent.

Ten percent?

After I picked myself off the floor, I went ahead and checked what kind of gross we were earning from our sales in 2014. Safe to say, we are in range with what the National Auto Dealers Association reports was the average in 2013 — 3.8 percent.

It’s no surprise that even though most car buyers really like their own car dealer, they are generally less than enthusiastic about shopping for a car.  Manufacturers don’t make it any easier when they charge dealers more than we charge the customer, and we wait for the incentive money to make us whole.  An upside down marketplace gives companies like TrueCar, and others, plenty of ammunition to work with when selling their services to anxious car shoppers.

With dealers earning approximately one fifth of what buyers believe we make on sales, we’ve had to turn to other revenue sources to keep our lights on and our doors open. Today, servicing and financing departments are essential to any successful dealership. That’s why AIADA is working tirelessly on the dealers’ behalf in Washington, D.C., to protect us from onerous, unfair financing issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — an unelected, too often unaccountable, government agency.

There are times when working in automotive retail feels like being in a vice; squeezed on one side by government regulation and on another by ever-shrinking margins. I believe that our best weapons to counteract these dual pressures are our membership with AIADA and our relationships with our customers.

Many of us have been selling cars to the same families for 30+ years. When working with them, we need to do our best to explain the dealers’ important role in the auto sale process. If customers can be confident they’re getting a good deal, everyone will sleep better at night.

And maybe one day I’ll be able to close my eyes without visions of 10 percent margins dancing in my head.

Larry Kull is the current chairman of the American International Automobile Dealers Association.