When It’s Pumping, Get To The Beach

Technology has made surfing a lot more predictable.  Back in the day, a surfer had 2 choices at his disposal of knowing if there were waves or not.  Take a trip to the beach and look at the waves.  Or call the local surf shop who had a telephone number specifically for the daily surf report.

Today, we just pull out our smart phone and open up one of the many surf report apps.  Surfline, Swell Info and Magic Seaweed are a few of the more popular.  These apps track and show wind, wave height, tide, water temp, air temp and other indicators.  

What most of us look for is what color it shows.  And just like a traffic signal, green means go.

And when the report shows green, it’s not the time to figure out your plan of where, when and what gear to bring.  You need to just go.  It might be a small window of opportunity to catch some really nice waves.

So how does this apply to automotive marketing?  

When the market gets hot, you need to be ready.  

Now isn’t the time for you to go to work on your plan.   You needed to have that decided before the market spiked.

I’m often perplexed at the dealers who waste a lot of time when it’s slow doing nothing of real significance.  They seem to want to discuss how bad things are but can’t find time to work on their business, employees or the backend of the dealership.  Lots of FaceBook groups seem to specialize in griping and complaining.  But that’s a different subject.

When it’s slow (and there will be windows when it’s slow), that’s the time to focus and get the backend, your employee manual, inventory systems, marketing plan, pay plans, floor plans, etc. all figured out.  

Then, when the market gets hot (or goes green like Surfline), you’ll be ready to focus on what you want to do – sell.