I am really not sure who reads this. If you have a curiosity about the car business, it’s my hope that you find this insightful. If you are a car-business insider, you probably know more about this than I do (I still think I am blissfully unaware of the hard-core car business, after 20 years working in more-or-less progressive environments).
At the end of the month, you’re supposed to finish strong. All hands on deck. No deal refused. Call your customers back in. And, mainly, stay at work from open to close.
In my personal experience, this has a manner of backfiring, should you start the process too early in the month (for some odd reason, it’s also traditional to produce more than half the month’s business in its last seven to 10 days, which means a lot of late nights leading up to the last day of the month). Not to mention, if your dealership keeps the accounting month open until the 3rd or 4th of the following real calendar month.
So, here’s my deal.
I think I have worked almost every day we’ve been open this month, including the past 10 days in a row, February 18-27. And it’s been a good month. I hit my personal production target on the 26th, and so I took my regularly scheduled day off. Today. On February 28. While everyone exhorted everyone to “finish strong.”
In fact, while everyone called each other to finish strong in the car business universe, I was actually getting stronger. I sprayed menthol topical pain killer on my left instep and wrapped it in blue exo-skeletal stretchy tape, and I worked out with the Adrenaline class. It was awesome. I checked emails, set two client appointments for early March, called in one too-low offer just to make sure no deal was refused, and took a Paradise Point Tropical Smoothie to the daughter’s high school in time for lunch, watched an excellent Google Analytics webinar at my kitchen table, paid a few bills and cooked my dinner. Where did the time go?
Tomorrow is the first day of March. New incentives and lease deals. Web pages to update. Customers to call. All hands on deck.
Taking a mental-health day, on the last day of the month. Now that’s what I call finishing strong.