This article was written by Steven Banks and was originally published on the NCM Institute Up to Speed blog. 

Have you ever prepared extensively for a certain event only to be caught off guard by an unanticipated circumstance? Maybe you prepared for a recital, fully expecting a Tchaikovsky piece to come out of your fingers but mid-recital a contact lens popped out and you could no longer read the music; or, you trained all off-season for a sport and then ripped your ACL in your first real game putting you on the bench for the rest of the season. Or perhaps you practiced for hours rehearsing your greeting line for when you pick up your date only to slam her fingers in the door a few minutes afterwards – ruining everything. (By the way, if this happens to you, later in the date don’t offer to put her fingers in your ice cream cone to make them feel better. That just makes things awkward – trust me).

Thinking you are prepared for something and then getting blindsided by the unexpected is never fun. These kinds of things can destroy your morale, leave you feeling lost, and asking yourself “what the heck just happened?” But it doesn’t just happen on stage, on the field, or in the car of your ’91 Mazda 626.  It can happen anywhere, especially in the dealership.

Two questions you are probably asking yourself right now:

• What kind of things should I be expecting in my dealership that I am currently not?
• How do I make sure I’m prepared for when the unexpected does happen? (And it will.)

The answer to number one is: I have no idea! If we knew the answer to that, they no longer would be “unexpected circumstances,” right? It’s one thing to be cautious, but it’s another thing to sit around all day and dream up worse case scenarios; we don’t have time for speculation. Our main focus should be on point number two– expect the unexpected and be prepared at all times. I suppose now is the appropriate time for me to expand on this with a few actionable bullet points. So here are three ways you can ensure you are prepared when the worse-case scenario comes up:

Manage Your Data

Let’s say an unexpected situation comes up where you suddenly need to access every single car deal for the year; you need know how many and what percentage were cash deals and the details for each deal, and what percentage and how many were financed and who they were financed with. You have five minutes to get this, GO! How did you do?

That was the easy one; let’s try another. Now you need to be able to determine how many retail units you’ve sold MTD, know which have been booked and which haven’t even gone through accounting yet, what the gross is for both booked and unbooked, what your pace is for month end (from the perspective of units, gross, PVR, front end, and back end), get an aged receivable count and balance, get an aged inventory count (both new and used) with the vehicle details, know which of your salespersons haven’t sold a vehicle in over three days, and compare MTD pace to your forecast (if you even have a forecast).  Five minutes, GO!

Impossible? Not really, I can get all of that in two minutes and am happy to prove it anyone. There might be a select few of you out there who also could get that information on demand; however, I’m willing to bet that many of you would either panic or throw in the towel if you needed that information and needed itnow. The beauty is, all of that information is available, and it resides in your DMS. The real question is, can you easily and efficiently access it without it being time consuming? If not, find a way to get the data out of your DMS and into your hands in an uncomplicated fashion.

Keep Records

This is very different than the aforementioned point. Managing your data is one thing, but making sure you are keeping your data is a completely different thing. If don’t have data, you can’t manage it. Is your information protected in the instance of a system crash? Or what happens when you switch DMS systems, are you absolutely certain that 100% of your data and records will be transferred over?  Be on the safe side, make sure your information is warehoused. Many vendors can do this for a nominal fee.

Know the Right People

You are in a legal bind, you have unexpected personnel turnover, you are going through a buy/sell, you realize your service matrix is as outdated as The Matrix movie. If you run or manage a dealership, you’re pretty smart, but none of us knows everything. Make sure you have solid relationships with the right consultants. Getting unbiased input from knowledgeable and credible sources when you need them can work wonders.

It’s tough being prepared for the unknown. But by taking the appropriate precautions you can almost eliminate the worse-case scenario, which isn’t to stop the unexpected, but to be prepared for when the unexpected happens.  By ensuring you have a checkmark beside these three items, you are ensuring you have a great foundation for unanticipated circumstances. Oh, and honey, we’re having triplets!