Measuring the 20 club impact: A 155% rise in profits!
Measuring retail results vs. national averages key to rise in profitability
For Anthony Lockwood, general manager of MOMS Manchester powersports dealership, seeing was believing.
Lockwood is part of a Polaris Motorcycles 20 club, a group of noncompeting dealers that meet three times a year to identify ways to become more profitable.
For Lockwood, becoming more profitable started with taking part in a monthly comparison of his retail results vs. other Polaris Motorcycles dealerships. The comparison includes data that shows how much stores are grossing per unit sale in different vehicle segments.
“We saw what one of the members were holding per unit sale in the sales department and I said, ‘We can do that,’” Lockwood said.
They have. Thanks to several changes in their sales department, the Manchester, N.H. store has increased its profit by more than 150 percent over a year-ago period.
Lockwood credits much of that profit boost to the simple step of comparing his results to the other dealerships in his peer group, which is led by Garage Composites, the industry’s leader of 20 club services.
“It exposes the real issues,” Lockwood said of the dealership data comparison, which chronicles revenue, expenses and unique business ratios for the sales, service, F&I and parts departments. “The data allows you to make educated decisions vs. just pulling your hair out.”
The data comparison is one part of the 20 club process, which also includes meetings between the peers to determine the best strategies to drive further profitability. But it all starts with the data comparison that Lockwood credits with his store’s significant profit increase.
“It’s understanding what we should be doing – what numbers we need to be hitting on the sales floor,” he said. “And now our per unit sale is up. It’s up tremendously.”