It’s no secret dealerships can get hectic. On any given day, you’re juggling sales targets, service appointments, financing deals, and staffing challenges, all at lightning speed, and all under one roof. That’s not even factoring in tracking your inventory.
Let’s look at some real-world scenarios that showcase why maintaining the highest levels of organization and control for both your vehicles and their keys isn’t just a want — it’s a must.
Busy Business
You’ve been counting down the days to the biggest sales weekend of the year. You’re prepared and ready for the excited rush of people. With a day packed full of appointments, you know you’re going to be busy.
After your first few customers, Bill is next on the list. He’s stopped by before, and you’ve worked with him, but he’s never made a purchase. He scheduled a test drive for one of the featured trucks but is only interested in a very specific trim style. There’s one left in the color he requested. Your coworker just finished showing it to a prospective customer, but they ultimately chose something else. You were going to ask her for the keys, but then Bill walked in.
You greet him enthusiastically, excited to hopefully finally land the sale. You go get the truck keys because Bill wants to start with the test drive. But the keys aren’t in the cabinet, and your coworker has disappeared.
After several minutes of exchanging small talk and building value on the truck while you search for either the coworker or the key, Bill becomes increasingly impatient. After ten minutes, Bill thanks you for your time, and leaves. You find out later that he went to the dealership in the next town over. That’s not just a lost sale, it’s money out the door, a hit to your CSI score, and a loss of a loyal customer in service.
Process Problem
You’ve had a fleet of used vehicles rolling through the reconditioning process, and there’s only one left to go. You’re excited to have so many new-to-you vehicles filling your lot.
One of your techs, Doug, grabs the paperwork to start the process on the last vehicle, but the key isn’t there. He asks around to see if anyone grabbed it, but nobody’s seen it.
After fifteen minutes of searching through tool boxes, rechecking the cabinet, and crawling around the service drive, it seems like a lost cause. Doug only has this one car left before he can go home, but he’s wasted a lot of time already looking for the key and is getting a bit frustrated. Every minute he looks becomes real dollars lost in productivity and longer time-to-line.
Lost on the Lot
After a busy sales weekend, you’re moving inventory from the back lot to fill in gaps up front. You’re staging based on your list of available inventory, but you’re missing one of the cars. You check the sales records to make sure there wasn’t an error, but nothing’s there. The car should be on your lot.
You spot Robyn, your new lot attendant, and ask her about the missing unit. She’s still getting up to speed with all the different models, and she’s not sure. She remembers moving vehicles from the back fence earlier, juggling a few to get things staged, but can’t recall seeing the one you need.
Now you’re burning time retracing steps, pacing the back lot, and checking row-by-row just to find a car that should have never been misplaced in the first place. You’re diverted from high-value tasks, left wondering how one vehicle’s location became a guessing game. It’s nobody’s fault, but every minute spent searching is a minute lost in productivity, and it’s frustrating.
What Now
In each of these scenarios, either a key or a vehicle went missing. While tracking down a vehicle is somewhat easier, it’s still inconvenient to walk the entire lot searching. As for a misplaced key, finding it can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. But when one key fob can be upwards of $600 to replace, it’s better to keep looking.
What if, instead of chasing keys and hunting for cars, you had real-time visibility on every vehicle and every key across your entire operation? No more guesswork. No more lost time. No more missed sales.
Instantly pinpoint the key you needed for Bill’s test drive. It was still in your coworker’s pocket, and she was out on the lot with another customer.
Easily track the key’s exact location for the vehicle that needs to be reconditioned. It was accidentally kicked under a shelf.
Quickly locate the missing vehicle in your back lot to finish filling in the front. It was hidden in the corner behind a few other vehicles.
Investing in modern, real-time location technology helps you: close deals faster, without costly delays; boost your CSI scores with smooth, professional customer experiences; save hours (and dollars) previously wasted searching for keys and cars.
