Dateline Early 2018…..I received a call from a dealer who had been referred to us by fellow dealer ( yes, we LOVE REFERRALS!). This dealer shared that he had gotten our information from a 20 Group presentation but he just didn’t think he needed an extra set of eyes to look at his deals. He had gone through the infamous “Self Audit” about a year ago and was PERFECT. My simple response was that it is difficult to proofread your own paper–if the same team who makes the mistake, who didn’t get the latest rule update, who didn’t completely understand the documentation requirements–if that same team looks at their own work, they probably wouldn’t discover the oversight that they mistakenly originally made. Unfortunately, this dealer put his confidence in his team and we didn’t do a review.
Dateline May 2018…..This same dealer called and his first words were, “I DON’T UNDERSTAND–I WAS PERFECT”. The manufacturer had come back, done an onsite, full audit, and he was receiving a major chargeback. His confidence had been in his team’s proofreading of their own paper. He was baffled at how they could have deteriorated in the course of a year. My explanation was simple and straightforward–they never were perfect–his team simply didn’t know, or didn’t confess, to any issues on the Self Audit, but the same problems that he had today I would “bet the farm” that he had a year ago–his people just didn’t hold the deals to the manufacturer’s standards.
Dealers–that is what we do. We knew when SRE was updated earlier this month. We knew the changes primarily centered on FCTP changes. We see the daily tweaks that the manufacturer puts out on their myriad of incentives. That is our job. We don’t sell cars–we specialize in compliance and incentives. We don’t do dealer radio, tv, or print advertising–we specialize in compliance and incentives. We don’t help you host big sales events and promotions–we specialize in compliance and incentives. **Editorial Footnote–by helping your team do a better job in utilizing incentives, we will help them sell more cars and make more gross–and that doesn’t require any additional advertising dollars from you either!
Please don’t risk the second set of eyes reviewing your deals for compliance–if they are the same, first set of eyes who originally looked at your deals. Please, please, get an independent, professional, and fully experienced set of eyes to make sure that you are as audit proof as possible. My promise is this–by catching and helping fix your deficiencies before your next audit–we will cost you a lot less than the GAO’s team of auditors.