….ZERO of course. Nada. Nothing. Zilch.
On most of our dealership visits, we will ask for the AR. Bringing incentives in, in a timely manner is not just important, but critical. We typically will look for anything that has aged past 60 days. With the manufacturer paying weekly, if a retail incentive has aged over 60 days, there is a problem.
Occasionally, an Office Manager will state, “We don’t want/need any help with those aged incentives—we know about them.” Yes, you knew about them. You set them up. And while they are sitting on your schedule, it just means that you are out that money and the commissions you have already paid on them (so an uncollected $1000 is really costing the dealer around $1500). When some of these rebates have aged 100, 200, or even 300 days—you indeed know about them, but you need assistance in converting a receivable into actual cash. But, Dealerships define their scope, so if they don’t want help, we won’t help out.
We recently completed an annual review for a dealer. We were there a year ago, two years ago, and……. Their AR had items that were over 600 days old. These were the incentives that had been on the AR two years ago, then again last year, but “they had it under control, they knew about them, and they didn’t want help in collecting them.”
It reminds me of an episode of a sitcom entitled, “Spit-Covered Cobbler”. A young man was explaining that at school, a certain kid would rather spit on his lunch cobbler that he didn’t want to eat, rather than to let someone else have it.
Please don’t let your incentives age off. The manufacturer takes back enough of your money already—don’t voluntarily allow them to keep even more monies that you failed to get in the door.
And remember, any % of any amount is better than 0% of uncollected incentives.
Signed as always,
True Friend of the Dealer