audispecialistlondon

Good Afternoon, Ive just had gemini in and they look pretty good. It actually looks pretty similar to dragon but with a marketing module for automated email marketing which is where dragon falls down. Does anyone have experience between the 2? The Gemeni rep was of course telling me it is a step up and to be honest it looked like they are. The only thing that threw me is that they are half the price which just seems too good to be true. Has anyone used both? Thanks

Sounds like I'm the only one not very busy. We're not dead but just not in line with what we normally expect for January. Feels flat, feels like going to be a very average month. January is usually our best of the year. Saying that December was better than usual so it has balanced off i suppose. Still disappointed though as Jan is usually mad busy. Good luck yo you all!

I see what you mean re stealing exactly what you want but i still think surely stealing from a gated/locked compound which is highly likely to have CCTV carries a much higher risk? Clearly these scumbags don't think like we would and risk isn't too much of an issue for them. haha we actually looked at guard/ guard dogs but it is now illegal to have a guard dog in there without a handler. If a kid jumps the fence and the dog kills them it is a manslaughter charge. Outrageous really Glad to hear he got the car back !!

That is really interesting - i think a second site somehow feels less risky as if worse comes to worse you can shut site B and you know what you have with A. Something about moving entirely somehow feels a much bigger risk as your leaving behind something that (hopefully) is working for something that may not without the option to reverse your decision. I agree re the missed sales bit completely; that is one of my main worries! It would complicate stock checks & i would just feel much more exposed responsible for 2 sites vs 1. Thanks for your advice & i am pleased your new site is doing well - out of interest did you have any period where you closed on the switchover or did you get your new site setup first? Thanks

Thank you very much for that advice. That confirms a lot of what i thought. So why do people go for more than one site vs a bigger one ?? Is it purely vanity so that they can tell their mates they own 3 or 4 sites? We are seriously struggling to find the larger perfect site & the second site feels more appealing by the day but i think as you've mentioned from previous experience, it could well turn out a disaster.

I would say get a finance rep on board and say that they'll be getting your business if they help you with the setup - they will guide you right through it. Although i don't use them CBMF meant to be very helpful in that respect

Lawgistics for me as well - they are very 'onside' and tend to fight your corner with customers which is nice. We bank a certain amount for each car sold, so say £100 per car and then £200 per car above a certain value, then we pay warranty claims directly from that account. been doing that for just over 2 years now and the warranty account is running well ahead of the claims and we don't get any more calls than we used to anyway with customers phoning us direct rather than using the warranty company.

It seems unbelievable that they would bother to go to all that length when there is surely one parked unsecured somewhere on someones driveway? Without CCTV or gates? We've had a similar issue in the past and have dropped bollards in the floor all over the site to make it particularly hard work to get a car out overnight. I dont understand why they would steal from a dealership. Surely this is so much riskier than stealing from a private individual?

Any advice for billy no mates?

Customer are surprisingly ok with unit stocking showing on a HPI report. Occasionally we have to write a guarantee it'll be settled within 24 hours of the sale but customers are definitely becoming more aware of what it is and definitely less worried. Sometimes funders want it cleared they'll pay you out - that is only Close Motor Fins though all the others will let you style it once your paid out

Hi, We have outgrown our site and need additional space. I really don't like the thought of a second site as i feel it would be incredibly difficult to manage. has anon got experience of a second site and was it difficult to manage? In an ideal world i would prefer to move to one larger site - has anybody done both that can compare the experience of each? Thanks in advance for any advice.

Let's hope the last 10 days deliver. Someone once said to me you do as much in the final 10 as the first 20. We will see! Fingers crossed and good luck oh and I had a customer today refuse a Nissan Navarro (pickup) because although it was immaculate he suspected it may of been used by a builder. Complete lunatic

Hi, To offer finance you will need to find a finance company that wants to work with you eg close brothers, Santander, Motonovo etc. All of those will want you to tick a range of boxes, mainly be authorised by the FCA as well as have a website etc. I think they also require you to be vat registered if you want to deal directly. I would advise working with a broker to begin with although you need to do all of the above in time anyway as finance is too Good a source of income to miss out. Card payments won't be an issue for you Start by setting up a business account to work with one of the bigger companies eg global payments. If not there are other less known payment facility providers but they'll charge a higher % It's all a bit catch 22 as the finance companies, payment facilities etc want to see some history but it's going to be difficult to run things properly until they give you a chance !

I get charged 2% to pay cash in! They've got us cornered haha

We too are moving to .3% for debit cards. We have always been 80p isn even for 50k transactions. I've kicked off with Global Payments and also had a quote put together by Barclays where I bank but apparently the rules are changing bank to bank. Where as banks didn't used to charge the card processing companies to receive deb card payments, they're charging around .25% so you won't get them below that. Those still on pence per transaction this will change imminently as the processors will be losing money on your accounts come October. I think 1% charge for debit cards & free for bank transfer but i think people are going to get pretty annoyed with it to start with. The big winners in this are the companies selling low value items e.g. McDonalds who were previously on a set pence amount now on .3% so much cheaper for them. The big ticket sellers are getting hit hard. They repriced my last 3 months card terminal statements and they were £2500 higher on new rates (£400>£2900)

I wonder if anyone is able to offer me some advice on stock checks/ stock management. I often wonder how long it would take me to realise if a car got stolen. Im not really involved in each and every deal anymore so if for example a px came in and was stolen that night could it go under the radar? Obviously we would realise eventually! Clearly if a Rolls Royce goes missing off of the front row I'm going to notice... Im also about to start using an overflow site which is around 15 mins away so there will be a fair amount of swapping cars around. I wondered if anyone had a good way/ software of keeping track of exactly where everything is ? Currently stocking around 100.

Touche

We wouldn't do a windscreen chip unless it was going to stop a deal and were selling 20k+ only. I like the idea re covering the excess that is clever

We use Dragon2000 as our DMS system but also use sage totally separately. Dragon is supposed to integrate with Sage but we stopped using this function a couple of years ago as it just didn't work. This means we enter lots of invoices onto both dragon & then sage but this is still less work that realising after months that the feed between the 2 systems hasn't worked properly and your figures are completely wrong. Dragon is great other than it doesn't have functionality to add on non vehicle specific purchase invoices for example an Auto-trader invoice or an electricity bill. If it did we would have no need for Sage...

Its really difficult. We've always allowed customers to test drive anything but I'm beginning to think we should be a bit harsher. Saying that I was moments away from saying somebody couldn't test drive our tesla for the third time, but the sales guy took him out and he bought it! It is so incredibly difficult to work out who the messers are. I would say take a chance on the time wasters worst case you lose 20mins, but do not take a chance on the youngsters. I had a 21 year old took out a 911 and I genuinely feared for my life. A few stern words and we swiftly returned to the dealership. My fault for being greedy and believing his story as the car had a decent margin - in hindsight he was just a kid wanting to drive a 911! Thats not a bad idea at all actually!

Stay right on their case. Even once they agree the refund they take weeks/months to actually refund the money. Ive found they really don't like paying out no matter how little. Also generally we don't realise until after the 24hour / 48 hour expiry. Generally I think by the time you mess about better to get it repaired yourself and get it shifted unless its a big big problem. Depends what value f car/margins we're talking about I suppose!

32 up to Brexit, 3 since, really slow finish!!!

We have had an awful 5 days since the vote. I can't believe the impact it has had. 3 sales (all had deposits on) were cancelled on Friday (all 50-70k cars) due to peoples accountants suggesting they hold fire. We managed to recover 2 of the 3 by throwing in shedloads of products but the other guy simply refusing to proceed until outlook is clearer. Usually get 8-10 leads per day. Been getting 1-3 per day since Friday. Very bizarre. I would of thought the bread & butter would be ok but our market certainly is not. These cars are a luxury and until our usual customer (city based/proffesionals) have a clearer outlook on their job security/ the new value of the european holiday home etc, they will not be spending big money on a car. That probably looks like a nice problem to have (for them) but believe me it is a disaster for us. We can't afford a slow few months!! Good Luck all.

Thank you TD, I appreciate your information. Ive taken on a third guy who will start shortly.

Evening All, After some advice re salesman and the correct ratio of salesman to cars. We now have 90 retail vehicles (all used) and have just moved from one to 2 salesman. Clearly 1 salesman was not enough but getting one more has made me think would we be better with 3? Or is that too many and will upset the apple cart & give everybody the hump? Is there a rule of thumb? Thanks in advance