7th February 25 Drop off and day off (Working from home 😶)

Having arrived home obviously too late to deliver the Fiat 500 to my customer. Today was a day working from home. So a quick drive the four miles from home to drop it off.

Filling out my digital appraisal. Which, has revolutionised this part of the job. When I first started in the automotive retail sector, there were no computers, AT ALL!.

We had the following cutting edge technology.

Calculator. Pen, Paper. One, or two, A4 ruled note books for hand written entries to take care of the following.

Deal structure and finance deal management

WOC (Weekly operative control),

CRM (Customer record management). And all stock control. New and used, were entered in this book. For example, A car comes into stock, you write in the details. Car sold, strike a line through it . This had to match the card index system in the admin office.

Prospecting? We either looked at previous years books as above. Or, the salesmen. Yes men. In those days women simply didn't do this job. Were given a phone book and told to call everyone and ask if they were happy with their current car and we're they interested in a new one. Much simpler but equally difficult times.

The first real computerised thing we saw was called a Square Zone. Which calculated the finance deal for the car. Once done you transferred all the finance figures, car and customer details to paper docs. Got the customer to sign . Always getting that extra signature in the Credit protection box which covered customer's payments in the event of losing their jobs. Whether they knew what they signed, was up to the salesman. Business managers didn't really exist back then. The salesman, was paid extra for this signature. So everyone signed it Most didn't have a clue what that extra box was for. Hence we have the FCA and billions of pounds worth of claims against the finance companies today. Yep blame us

. 😅

More on the inner secrets of the motor industry to follow.

Travelling back home these short 4 miles is always a trip into the unknown as dependent on a flaky bus service into Aylesbury. You can wait a few minutes to an hour to catch the X5 or X61 the former being discontinued soon and the latter depends on the driver actually stopping at my stop. Instead of waving as he drives on smiling and waving back. Seriously.