The real driver of vehicle sales isn’t your closing questions, or that new online buying web-app, it’s access to credit. So, if your dealerships only goal for 2017 is to “sell more cars,” you might as well just tell your marketing company your goal is to “spend more money on digital ads.”

With so many things out of dealers control, even if you do sell more cars you’re not guaranteed to make more money. Just for fun, how about 3 things dealers have no control over that impact sales:

1. Interest Rates – Until we understand the impact the end of QE and the Fed's December rate hike will have on auto loans, there is no way of knowing if we’ll continue to see 0.9% interest rates. Rates have been low for so long, at this point even 3.9% seems high.
2. Consumer Confidence – I had a Honda dealer tell me the #1 predictor of Honda sales YOY is Consumer Confidence. It might be solid now (up 4.3 points in December 2016), but we all know confidence levels rise and fall with the tide. We’re only starting to understand Millennial consumers, although one thins clear, they're not going to spend more than they have to.
3. Whatever Stunt the OE’s have for 2017 – Emissions, ignition switches, Trump Tweets. You get the idea.

If selling more cars is a terrible goal, what are good goals? Let’s stick with the theme and pick 3:

1. Take One Less Loser Deal Per-Month – Think about the impact to your bottom line if you took 1 less loser deal of -$1,000 or more per month. It’s not just the $12,000, it’s the $200 in commission per-deal you pay your sales people for losing you money, and the loss of income from selling the car at a profit! If one less deal a month keeps you from your OE bonus, you need a new GSM.
2. Make More Money – This is a no-brainer. Do you care if you sell 1,000 new cars, or 500 new cars if you could make more money doing it? The OE’s might not be too happy about it, but it’s not like they asked dealers when they started investing in all that Ride-Sharing technology.
3. Eliminate Waste – I’ll give you a place to start: ask your controller how many LAW forms you purchased in 2016, then subtract your total vehicle sales, and see how many extra forms you paid for. At $2.50+ per form, it adds up quick with all the miss-aligned documents, re-prints, and re-signs, and that’s just one document. How many FEET of documents do your customers sign again?

The point is, having a goal that you can’t fully control is only going to get you as far as you would have gotten anyway. Your sales team should be selling as many cars as they can, it’s the whole reason they exist.

A goal should be something to strive for, something to achieve above and beyond your normal day-to-day. Not what you’re supposed to do anyway.

And who knows what could happen? Maybe interest rates will remain low, Consumer Confidence will sky rocket, and Trump will send enough Tweets to create 2 million new jobs and the SAAR will hit 25 Million. Then when everyone is trumpeting their achievement of “selling more cars,” it won’t matter because everyone sold more cars. You’ll have made more money while doing it.