Starting a business is a daunting task, but it is one that can pay off if you are careful. There is no one way to go about opening a dealership, and no matter how it is run you will not be in for a job that always provides simple problems that can be answered easily. There is almost no end to useful business advice to follow, but here are a few things to keep in mind if you are looking for advice for your new dealership.
Before you spend any money on running a business, you absolutely need to come up with a plan for that business. Whether you want to provide new boats for sale or you want to run a popsicle stand, you will need to know what needs to happen to keep your business from tanking and how you plan on profiting. While this does include things like where your business will be located, you will also need to make sure you have all of the proper licenses, that your buildings are up to code, opening inventory, and other startup costs.
Next, you need to do some research into the details of how a dealership of the sort you want to open deals with customers and how those customers might translate into a sold product. One of the easiest ways to get your customers to help your business is to let them write reviews. Indeed, word-of-mouth marketing is one of the best ways to garner publicity among your consumer base. It may be worthwhile to invest time and money into customer service as well to make sure that customer recovery is viable even if they had a bad experience. It is impossible to run a business that sells products without customers, so it makes sense to invest in your customers.
A common mistake many businesses have made is thinking that once they have their initial success that there is no reason to improve after a certain point and this is simply not true. Many car dealerships deal exclusively in new or used cars, but if you want to rethink the sourcing of your inventory you could also go in another direction by finding bank repo cars online and selling a product that is potentially in very good condition for more than your average used car.
While the age-old idiom “if you build it, they will come” certainly applies, putting some money into advertising is helpful as well so long as you don’t spend too much. Social media and website building can be great places to start with your marketing since they help you build what is called “Search Engine Optimization.” While this topic is a large one by itself, it can be explained relatively simply; you are more likely to show up in a Google search if you have a strong internet presence. This means that you can only gain from getting other people to talk about you, making sure your website is as functional as it is pretty to look at and interacting with other people and businesses online.
Keeping a business going is an uphill battle and it should be treated as such the entire time that business is in operation. You will always need to know what to do next, and this is not a prospect that everyone can deal with in the long term. This, combined with the market knowledge and proclivity toward industriousness required of a small business owner, it is easy to see why only between 45.4% and 51% of small businesses last for five years. Its a tough challenge, so be prepared for anything.
