• Implementable Goals for Your Dealership to Get Your Cash Flowing with Force
By Bernie DeGraw, MRAA Senior Education Developer
Isn’t it amazing how obstacles rarely stop water? Water finds a way, around, over, sometimes under and sometimes right straight through. Obstacles usually don’t stop water. Flatness — a plateau — does. When water reaches a big flat area, a plateau, it spreads out, it stops flowing, sometimes it stagnates and just slowly drains away and eventually evaporates. Sometimes that OK with water, but it’s not OK when your cash flow hit a plateau!
It occurred to me how cash behaves similarly to water in a healthy business. Your money, your cash flow, runs into obstacles like lower margins, inventory, nervous customers and big interest rates. Typically, one way or another your cash runs around them, often through pricing or volume or product mix.
And yet, just as water reaches a plateau and loses its urgency, so can your cash flow. When there’s no pressure pulling it, no gravity to move it onward it loses momentum and stagnates. We all know stagnant water becomes murky, smelly, and turns green. It becomes unhealthy. An unhealthy cash flow is just that and the reason why you must maintain its flow rather than allow it to reach the dreaded cash flow plateau.
Seeping Away
The cash flow plateau can happen for a number of reasons It isn’t usually just one big problem or obstacle. Instead, we find ourselves doing what we’ve always done. Sales are OK, expenses are nerve racking but manageable, inventory is mostly under control with a few challenges and processes in the dealership are good enough. That plateau doesn’t feel wonderful, but it feels safe. However, safe is probably more dangerous than it seems.
Just like the water, your cash flow begins to seep away.
Your Intentional Goals Create Flow
At Dealer Week and now in Dealer Week Online Dave Newell talks about “7 Levers to Boost Efficiency and Margins”. Within his discussion he gave us an enlightening and dramatic way to consider setting the goals that can get cash flowing again with force. He gave us a way to consider where cash might come from and where it can move to by changing the way we think about and set our goals for success in the dealership.
For those in attendance we were forced to consider the need to change how we think about our goal setting, to think much, much bigger about what we would need to do to truly make our cash flow like water over Niagara Falls. At first, I’m sure most of us thought “we can’t do it” but by the end we recognized that unless we think big, force ourselves to view goals differently and then take action we are likely to see our cash flow… and indeed our cash begin to seep away.
Start the Trickle Today
If you want to find ways to impact your cash flow, to get it flowing vigorously, you need watch Dave Newell’s “7 Levers to Boost Efficiency and Margins” course on MRAATraining.com, currently available within the Dealer Week Online package. Also, be prepared to set some goals you won’t believe you can achieve! And, in a sense, that’s the point when your cash flow will move from shrinking plateau to a tight stream.
Have questions or want access to this course and others from Dealer Week 2025? Contact Sherri Cuvala, MRAA Director of Membership.
About the Author
Bernie DeGraw, MRAA Senior Education Developer, is a lifelong educator and natural leader with a distinguished career spanning education, business and industry development.
He has cultivated deep expertise in coaching, leadership and front-line operations. His career includes experience as a guidance counselor, director of guidance and dealership co-owner, where he seamlessly filled roles such as salesperson, service manager and service advisor.
Throughout his career, Bernie has directed multiple college programs at prestigious institutions, including the University of Connecticut, the University of Vermont, the University of Michigan, the University of California San Diego and the University of Texas at Austin. His ability to develop and implement impactful educational initiatives has helped shape countless students and professionals.
An influential voice in the boating industry, Bernie serves as the past president and remains a dedicated board member of the Boating Industry Association of Central New York.
