We’ve all been there. The month is going slow, and the showroom is a ghost town. You get on a vendor meeting and ask them what they’re doing to fix it, and they feed you a line about how it’s the market and everyone is down right now. They deflect the blame and offer nothing useful to actually help you fix it.
True or not, excuses don’t pay the bills, and they don’t sell cars. If they really had your best interests in mind, they would offer a plan to correct the problem and get things back on track. They would dig deeper into their bag of tricks or take one for the team and offer an added enhancement to get things moving.
Your frustration is well placed. Excuses do not sell cars. Vendor partners — if they’re actually acting as partners — definitely should be part of the solution rather than a messenger that tells you about the problem. It’s at about this point that you’re probably wondering if they’re the right vendor for you, and you’re starting to explore your options. So, let’s look a little deeper at both sides of the dealer-vendor-partnership coin to see how this should shake out if you want to turn things around in tough times.
Vendor Excuses
There is no shortage of vendors who will show up to a performance call with bad numbers and blame the market, your inventory, your process… Anything but their own lack of performance. Once in a while there is truth to their claims, but if they’re going to point those things out they damn well better have a solution to recommend or implement to make things better. After all, you’re not the marketing expert. That’s what you hired them for, and if all they’re doing is telling you what’s wrong in your world, you don’t need them at all.
Indeed, vendors like this are coming up short, and as a leader of a boutique marketing agency myself, I train my people not to show up with a problem without showing up with a solution. Your vendor can’t always wave a magic wand and make tariffs or an inventory problem go away, but they can offer strategies to work around these problems and gain market share.
Dealer Excuses
You hate excuses. I know because I’ve been in this business for the better part of two decades, and I’ve never met a dealer principal or good GM who doesn’t hate excuses. You fire vendors who make one too many and go shopping for their replacement. But here’s the thing… Many of the operators I’ve met mean well, but it’s at this moment that I see them making excuses of their own without realizing it.
Having rightly fired the cookie-cutter vendor who didn’t get it done and made excuses about it, they talk to a good vendor who has the chops, but they decide to wait… Wait for what? For the market to improve, for inventory to improve, for clarity on tariffs, for the weather to be better, etc. Excuses! Think hard about whether this might be you. I know great operators who run great stores, who are prone to making excuses when they have to make the risky calls themselves.
Stagnation Breeds Stagnation
I offer free marketing audits. It’s part of how we start conversations with dealers who need help with their marketing, and I have a passion for helping dealers understand their problems so they can fix them. The audits are pitch-free, and I don’t refuse repeats, so I’ve had the pleasure of re-auditing a number of stores over the years. A small group in Oregon comes to mind, as does a three-store group in the Norfolk, VA market. Each has now engaged me for an audit and then a demo four times in four years. Each knows I can help, and each one has held off on pulling the trigger.
Worse, the similarities continue here… Each of these dealers has had identical problems and a stagnant market share situation every time I’ve audited them. No progress in four years! Why? Excuses. The market isn’t right. We don’t have enough cars. We’re fixing our processes… Both are stagnating because they keep finding excuses why it’s not the right time to put a real solution in place. That, by the way, is not meant to be a plug for Wikimotive. We’re great at what we do, but many vendors are. This is a point about excuses preventing bold decision-making.
Fortune Favors The Bold
There are valid reasons to wait sometimes, but consider whether you have reasons or excuses. The marketing we do at Wikimotive often takes time since automotive SEO is what we’ve made our name being great at. That means our solution isn’t a quick fix, yet the dealers I’ve seen sign up with us or any other quality, qualified vendor, in tough times haven’t had to weather tough times in last place again. If you’re sick of vendor excuses for why your showroom is empty, make sure you’re not making excuses when it comes to changing your fate. Stagnation only EVER breeds more stagnation, and bold moves can be mistakes, but fortune rarely favors operators who don’t make bold moves.