Dealer Groups

ProfitFocus Dealer Groups

Whether part of a comprehensive Dealer Performance Program, or as a performance tuning tool in their own right, ProfitFocus Dealer Groups are facilitated workshops aimed at helping like-minded dealers to improve the performance of their businesses by sharing operational best practice.

Drawing on the information already reported via the eProfitFocus benchmarking platform, ProfitFocus Dealer Groups are aimed at reviewing and analysing all aspects of dealer operations. While data will always be an important starting point to ensure the group is dealing in facts, the focus of the sessions is to promote strategic thinking at a total dealership level and find operational solutions at a departmental level.

The key to this is that ProfitFocus Dealer Groups are not a lecture or classroom session, but a forum for dealers to discuss best practice solutions and ideas that make a difference to their dealerships' bottom lines.

There are three broad streams of ProfitFocus Dealer Groups. One stream is the groups which are part of the dealer performance programs of manufacturers, the second stream consists of independent groups for dealers who wish to participate in a group that is not manufacturer specific and finally department focused performance groups which isolate a particular department and assess its performance with department managers.

Manufacturer Programmes

ProfitFocus teams up with many manufacturers to deliver ProfitFocus Dealer Groups as a part of their comprehensive dealer performance programs. Combined with eProfitFocus reporting, and the highly flexible range of ProfitFocus consulting and talent development options, ProfitFocus Dealer Groups are a valuable tool in helping address issues - and grab hold of opportunities - within a particular franchise.

For each program, ProfitFocus works closely with the manufacturer to understand their strategy and objectives. This is then combined with a review of the eProfitFocus data to get an objective understanding the issues and opportunities facing their networks (and the industry).

From there, we lay out a plan for the dealer group - and often for several dealer groups in advance - which is designed to explore the issues that have been uncovered.

The Dealer Groups themselves then become collaborative sessions involving Dealer Principal, Franchise representatives and Deloitte Motor Industry Services experts aimed at helping dealers to develop operational solutions to improve the profitability of their businesses.

These solutions are captured as Action Plans for each dealership which are recorded and followed up by the ProfitFocus team and revisited in subsequent Dealer Groups. 

Independent Dealer Groups

Independent Dealer Groups are forums for like-minded Dealer Principals who have the common goal of always ensuring they have the highest levels of operational excellence in their business.

The memberships of these groups are carefully constructed to ensure there is a healthy exchange of ideas and relevant experiences within the group. The key is creating a group with enough similarities that the group members can relate to each other, but also enough differences that they can bring fresh perspectives to the group.

The members of these groups have a high level of input into their own Dealer Group program to ensure it is always relevant for them. This stretches across everything, from input into the agenda for individual meetings, through the frequency and timing of the sessions (typically two or three times a year) right down to choosing the venues for their meetings.

Many members of these groups are very successful dealers who have belonged to one ProfitFocus Independent Dealer Group for many years and have come to consider the other members of their group as vital business partners. 

Department Focused Performance Groups

Using a similar format to the manufacturer program, the Department Focused Performance Groups involve departmental managers. In addition to drawing on their eProfitFocus reporting, members submit specific operational performance data prior to the meeting. This information is collated, reviewed and analysed by the ProfitFocus facilitator and linked back to each dealerships financial performance in preparation for the Group.

The meeting then examines the performance of each dealership's department against the market, benchmarks and action plans arising from previous sessions. While the data is an important starting point to ensure the group is dealing in facts, the focus of the session is challenging strategic thinking and finding operational solutions that are relevant to the specific department.