Setting Action Rules for Units at 30 60 and 90 Days

Monday used-car meeting. The 58-day SUV comes up. Someone says the market is soft. Someone else says a customer looked at it Saturday. The manager says give it another week. The same script ran at day 31 and will run again at day 89, except by then the conversation is louder and the options are worse. Hope is not an operating system. Action rules for units at 30, 60, and 90 days are.

The point of a rule is not to punish the desk for a slow unit. It is to pre-decide the next step while the car still has a retail path, instead of inventing policy when the unit is already a monument. Independent lots and franchise stores both need this. The stores that skip it do not skip aging. They skip the decision, which is more expensive.

This guide is for general managers and used-car managers who already sort the pack by time and still leave the meeting with a list of feelings. It shows how to write rules that fit your segments, who is allowed to grant an exception, and how to connect each trigger to listing quality, price, and wholesale — not only to a markdown. Day counts here are an illustrative framework. Use your own aging buckets and lender calendar; this is operational guidance, not a promise that any specific day count is "the" industry standard.

Why You Need Written Action Rules at 30, 60, and 90 Days

Verbal standards die in the first busy week. Written rules survive a manager on vacation, a closer who hates taking a cut, and a GM who only sees aged units when they hit a floor-plan conversation.

What a good rule contains

Every trigger needs four parts:

1. When it fires (days on lot, plus any overlay such as a curtailment date).
2. What must be true (listing live, photos current, price checked against comps).
3. What the default action is (refresh, scheduled markdown, wholesale appointment).
4. Who may override, and for how long (named role, written reason, next review date).

A rule that says only "at 60 days, cut $500" will be ignored on the one truck everyone loves and applied blindly on the car that needed photos, not a cheaper number.

Tie rules to buckets, not to personalities

If you already sort inventory with aging buckets, the 30 / 60 / 90 triggers should map onto those buckets. Do not run a separate "aged list" that only the used-car manager sees. The meeting pack and the rules should be the same document.

The 30-Day Rule: Prove the Unit Had a Fair Retail Start

Day 30 is not "this car is old." Day 30 is "this car has used up its excuse for missing intake." If it is not live, not photographed, or not owned, you do not have a market problem yet.

Required checks at 30 days

Run this as a checklist, not as a discussion:

• VIN, year, make, model, trim, mileage, and price match across DMS export, inventory record, and live listing.
• The unit is in a real status: posted, or a documented reason it is still draft (title, recon, hold).
• A person owns it in a queue. "The floor" is not an owner.
• Lead photo is a clean exterior shot, not a cone, a banner, or a night shot unless that is truly all you have — and then a reshoot is the action.
• Description is unit-specific. Stock number dumps and cloned paragraphs fail this check.
• Comp set was looked at this week, not at purchase.

If any item fails, the 30-day action is to fix exposure and data, not to cut price. Cutting a listing nobody can find is how stores donate gross and still sit on the car.

Default 30-day actions

The 30-day rule is an audit of whether the store did its job. Save the hard exits for later triggers.

The 60-Day Rule: Choose Price, Path, or Proof

By 60 days the unit has had a window. The rule's job is to stop "one more week" from becoming the culture.

Decide among three paths

Write the paths into the policy so the meeting is picking one, not brainstorming:

• Retail with a planned markdown. The car is correctly listed, comps support a lower ask, and you will drop on a schedule rather than a panic. Pair this with your markdown schedule so the cut size and next date are already known.
• Retail with a content fix only. Conversations are happening, or photos and copy were the obvious problem. You reshoot or rewrite, and you set a short review date. You do not pretend a rewrite is an infinite extension.
• Wholesale path. Demand is thin, recon is still hanging, or the remaining gross after a real market price is worse than a wholesale bid. Book the exit. Do not "see if we get a bite this weekend" without a bid in hand.

What the 60-day meeting must produce

For each unit at this trigger:

1. A one-line reason it has not sold (price, product, process, or exposure).
2. A dated action.
3. A named owner.
4. A kill date if the action fails (often the 90-day rule, unless a curtailment comes first).

If the room cannot produce those four items in a few minutes, the unit is not being managed. It is being hosted.

Exceptions that are allowed — and ones that are not

Allowed, with a written note:

• A documented buyer with a real deposit under store policy.
• A title or recon delay with a vendor date, not a vibe.
• A segment the store has already decided turns slower, with GM sign-off on a longer middle bucket.

Not allowed:

• "I have a guy" with no appointment and no deposit.
• "It's a nice color" as a substitute for comps.
• Relisting the same VIN from a second account to reset the emotional clock.

The 90-Day Rule: Exit Unless the GM Puts Skin in the Game

Ninety days is a common conversation point in used-car operations. It is not a law of nature, and it is not a Meta or lender rule. Treat it as a store standard: past this point, indecision needs a senior signature.

Default at 90 days

• Wholesale, or retail at a price that would have been the wholesale-equivalent decision two weeks ago, with a short fuse.
• If you keep it, the GM (not the closer) initials a reason, a new ask, and a next review measured in days, not "until it sells."
• Floor-plan cash is part of the reason, not a footnote. If a curtailment is due, the 90-day rule yields to the cash calendar. See planning for floor plan curtailments.

Do not confuse 90 days with "we failed"

Some units should have exited at 40. Some should still retail at 90 because the store bought a thin segment on purpose. The rule is there so the second group is a choice and the first group is not a habit. A 90-day car with no live listing is not a strategy. It is neglect.

Writing Action Rules at 30, 60, and 90 Days So the Floor Will Follow Them

Rules that live in a GM's head will be "flexed" every time a loud salesperson speaks. Put them on one page.

One-page action-rule sheet

Include:

• Start date for days on lot.
• The three triggers and the default action at each.
• Who may grant an exception (role, not first name).
• How price changes get into every live listing the same day.
• How sold and wholesale units leave the pack the same day.

Read it in the sales meeting once. Then stop rereading it and start scoring whether this week's 60-day units received a dated action. Coaching is about exceptions and missed steps, not about restating the page.

Align posting work with the triggers

A 30-day unit that is still in someone's personal camera roll is a process miss. A 60-day unit with a failed post and no retry is a process miss. Action rules without queue ownership just create better-looking notes on a bad operation.

How PostToMarket Automates This

Action rules fail when nobody can see which VINs are at 30, 60, or 90 days, whether they are actually posted, and who is supposed to do the next step. PostToMarket does not set your day counts or your markdown amounts. It gives the desk inventory status, queues, and listing tools so the rule you wrote on paper can be executed on the lot.

Know whether the trigger is even valid

• Inventory statuses (draft, posting, posted, sold, failed) show whether a 30-day unit had a fair start or never left draft.
• Import history and row-level errors on CSV and Excel uploads catch blank prices and bad VINs before they become "aged" mysteries.
• Mark sold and archive so a 90-day rule does not fire on a car that already left.

Turn each trigger into assigned work

• Manager assignment of 60- and 90-day units onto associate queues; sales reps self-queue units they will actually work.
• Team queue view to see and release claims that sit through a trigger date.
• Mobile dashboard so the used-car manager can reorder the day's queue toward the units whose rules fire this week.

Execute the retail path without cloning junk

• AI titles and descriptions from specs, editable before posting, for the 30-day uniqueness check and the 60-day rewrite path.
• Facebook photo picker when the action is a lead-image change rather than a price cut.
• Leads inbox and posting analytics by rep and source so "no one wants this car" can be checked against whether anyone saw it and whether anyone answered.

PostToMarket is independent and not affiliated with Meta. No tool can guarantee distribution or a sale by day 60. What it removes is the operational excuse that the rule could not be followed because the list was wrong.

Stop Negotiating Day 58 Every Monday

Setting action rules for units at 30, 60, and 90 days is how a store replaces folklore with a default next step. Thirty days proves the unit was listed and owned. Sixty days chooses price, content, or wholesale. Ninety days exits unless a GM puts a date and a reason on the exception. Write the four parts of each rule, print them, and run the pack against them.

Give the desk a system that shows live status and owners instead of another spreadsheet tab. Starter is $59 monthly for one login on a solo or independent operation. Dealership is $299 monthly for up to 13 team logins.

Start your 10-day free trial through secure Stripe checkout. Import the pack, queue every unit that is at a trigger this week, and hold the next meeting against actions instead of stories. Cancel anytime.