Year-End and Tax-Season Programs for Dealerships
The last quarter and the refund season that follows it, in the order a store has to plan them.
Most of the year, planning an event starts with the offer. In the fourth quarter it starts with the calendar. There are roughly nine usable weeks between the start of November and the end of the year, every dealership in your market is working the same nine weeks, and event crews are booked out across the country. A store that decides in mid-October to run something before Christmas is not choosing a date; it is taking whatever is left. That is the case our year-end events guide makes in full.
Then the year turns and tax time arrives, a sales boom that lands about a month after the holidays. Tax-time buyers bring a refund to put down and want a store that can finance the deal, so the process work for it is best done in December, before the season is in full swing.
Each card below is one piece of that stretch, in calendar order, with a link to the page where we cover it properly. “Plan this” drops you at the form with the matching service already selected.
In calendar order
- 01Fall
Model-year closeout mail
Fall is when the current model year has to clear before the new models flood the lot, and manufacturers usually put heavy incentives behind it. The seasonal campaign guide walks the whole year, fall and winter included.
- 02October
Floor training before the busy weeks
Run refresher floor training in October, when there is time for it to stick. A store that has hired since summer goes into its busiest weeks with people who have never worked an event.
- 03Three-day intensive
PDS Boot Camp
Three days of hands-on training across sales, BDC and leadership, and participants leave with a 90-day action plan to sustain the improvements back at the dealership. The next session's date and location are on the Boot Camp page.
- 04November to December
Year-end sales events
Q4 has three usable windows: early November, Thanksgiving to mid-December, and the last days of the year. Each behaves differently. Event crews are booked nationally, so the date and the crew get locked first.
- 05Early November to December 31
Holiday and year-end mailers
An early-bird drop in early November, the Black Friday push landing a few days before the holiday, and the year-end closeout mailer landing December 26. Holiday mail needs about four to six weeks of lead time.
- 06Event run-up and event weekends
Phone coverage for the rush
The phones are the role that quietly collapses first, right when the mail is generating calls. BDC On Demand handles inbound and outbound sales and service calls, and it is a decision to make before the event, not on the second morning.
- 07January into spring
Tax-refund season
The tax-time buyer has waited months for a refund to use as a down payment, wants to upgrade quickly, and is looking for a dealership that can finance the deal with a range of payment options.
What to lock down first
Working backwards from an event date, several things have to be true, and they have different lead times. The order matters: the crew and the date cannot be manufactured, and everything else can be adjusted around them.
- The crew and the date. Confirm these first; event crews are booked nationally.
- Manufacturer money. Confirmed, not assumed. Programs change quarter to quarter, and co-op mailers are one way the manufacturer pays for a share of the mail.
- The inventory. In position before it is promoted. An event promoting units you do not have is worse than no event.
- Your own team. Publish the event dates before holiday requests are approved, and know who has actually worked a staffed sale before.
- The phones. Plan BDC coverage for the run-up and the event itself, because mail generates calls, not sales.
For the longer reading, the events library and the direct mail library hold the rest.
Talk Through Your Year-End and Tax Season
Tell us about your dealership and what you are considering. That conversation is a shorter one in September than in November.