LAS VEGAS — One of the most popular panels Wednesday consisted of five dealers who shared some of their best practices with the audience at the National Alliance of Buy-Here, Pay-Here Dealers conference.

The dealer panel included Blake Ingram, of Auto City in Dallas; Lawrence Meade, of Easton Motors in Wisconsin Dells, Wis.; Paul Scott, of Fiesta Motors in Lubbock, Texas; Stan Borkowski, of Credit Country Motors in Summerville, S.C.; and Rob Palmer, of a J.D. Byrider franchise in Carmel, Ind.

Kicking off the session, Ken Shilson, founder of the NABD, asked each panelist to share their best and worst decisions.

For Ingram, his best decision was two open two lower ACV brand stores. He did this with partners running the stores rather than managers, indicating that these stores have proved to be very successful.

And what was his worst decision? "I wish I would have done this 10 years ago," he related.

As for Meade, he told audience members that his best decision was to join a 20 group.

"If you're not in one, get in one," he stressed.

Meade explained that this worst decision was not having the best support staff, such as a good accountant and attorney, when he started up his business.

Continuing on, Scott said one of his top decisions was to attend NABD years ago. Doing this led him to eventually join a 20 group and Scott indicated that this was an excellent choice.

"It's good to get away from the day-to-day of the business and go to a meeting (20 group) where we can just dig into the numbers," he suggested.

Borkowski had an interesting decision that he calls his best. His staff interviews every potential customer before agreeing to a do a deal.

"My worst decision was not getting a handle on reconditioning (sooner)," he noted.

For Palmer, he highly recommends learning the BHPH business by the numbers. He said it worked well for him.

On the other side of the coin, he didn't find extending hours as successful, explaining that it placed too much stress on the staffing. Once he returned back to previous hours; however, he said the staff settled right back into their routine and sales maintained their levels.