Leased the perfect location, found some great deals at the auction or on Craigslist and now you are in the car business. Who's fooling who this is way harder than it looks and now it's real! No customers or clients with no money coming in. How come those big stores are always busy but I have better deals, nicer cars and I can make the way easier to buy a car from me. Owning a small car dealership
is not as easy as it looks from the outside and boy do I know that. My name is Karl Jensvold, and I have been through the wringer when I started my store. I had a very successful career with one of those larger new car stores, but I believed I could do it better on my own. So after 15 years in the new car business, I found that old gas station with the cheap rent went to the auction found some great deals and I was ready to make some deals. The first thing I discovered was most of my previous customers were new car buyers so buying used deals from the auction they didn't trust them even though they were better cars at better prices. But the biggest thing I learned was when I did have some prospects come in the first thing they would ask is "How much down" and the selling price didn't matter. I just assumed everyone had good credit and could go to the bank or local credit union to get their financing. That may be true in the big stores but when you are one of the little guys everyone just assumes you will do a buy here pay here deal. I had to make some changes and fast since I was losing a lot of money. Long story short, over the next 11 years I learned about Buy Here Pay Here, using funding companies (Western Funding, Credit Acceptance, Westlake and others) how to use the internet to level the playing field with the big guys. I made all of the mistakes, but in the end, it had a happy ending. We became one of the larger independent dealers in our market, and I had a great long time employee who wanted to take over. Life is good! Now I get to spend my days working with car dealers both large and small with my job as a Market Area Manager with Credit Acceptance. My heart still loves the little guy who is getting started and hopefully I can share some ideas to make your store more successful. I invite everyone to share their successes and failures, so we can work together to have the life we want. It's not always about the money with the small dealer, but for most of us, it's working on our terms. I can tell you from experience it is more fun when you are making money at the same time.
