Roles and Responsibilities for a Ten-Person Used Car Team

A ten-person used car team looks fully staffed on a payroll report and still misses photo day because "the porter was helping a closer pull a car." Ten is an awkward size. It is too big for the owner to do every job, and too small for a BDC, a dedicated internet director, a recon manager, and a full F&I bench. Roles and responsibilities have to be explicit or the same three people will absorb the work that does not have a name.

This article maps a ten-person used department into seats that cover buying, recon, photography, posting, floor selling, desk, F&I, and office without pretending you have a forty-person franchise org chart. It is written for dealer principals and GMs who just hired their eighth, ninth, and tenth person and can feel the informal system cracking.

The goal is not pretty titles. The goal is that on a Saturday, everyone can answer three questions: what is my job, what is not my job, and who covers me when I am on a test drive.

Roles and Responsibilities on a Ten-Person Used Car Team

Start with seats, then attach names. If you start with the people you like, you will invent titles to match personalities and leave holes.

A seating chart that actually covers the work

Consider a lot that carries 60 to 120 retail units. One workable ten-person shape:

That is ten. Notice what is missing: a dedicated internet director, a dedicated photographer, a dedicated BDC. Those jobs still exist. They are folded into the used-car manager, the associates, and the porter, which is why the written split matters.

Folded jobs need a primary and a backup

• Internet process: used-car manager is Accountable; associates and reps are Responsible for posting and first reply.
• Photography: porter is Responsible; one associate is backup on photo day.
• After-hours messages: a published rotation, not "whoever has the Facebook app."

If you later hire an internet director, you un-fold that job instead of leaving two people who both think they own it. What Does a Dealership Internet Director Actually Do is the job description to use when that hire is real.

Writing Roles and Responsibilities That Survive a Busy Saturday

Job descriptions fail because they list tasks. Saturday fails because two tasks collide. Write collision rules into each seat.

Used-car manager

Does: buy execution against a written criteria list, recon aging, price changes on aged units, assignment of associate queues, weekly exposure review.

Does not: sit on every deal at the desk unless the sales manager is out.

Collision rule: if a unit is in recon, the manager owns the vendor chase; floor reps do not independently promise completion dates.

Sales manager / desk

Does: live deals, grid discounts, who takes the next up, split calls when two reps touched a buyer.

Does not: post inventory or rewrite listings during a packed desk, except to kill a sold unit that is still live.

Collision rule: internet appointments already on the board beat a walk-up when both arrive at once, unless the appointment is more than fifteen minutes late and the walk-up is live. Write the actual minutes your store will honor.

Floor sales reps

Does: self-queue units they will work, run appointments, follow the lead-ownership rules, keep CRM notes.

Does not: post a unit another rep has claimed, or quote a price outside the grid.

Collision rule: a Marketplace thread they own beats a random up only if a backup is available for the up. If they are the only closer on the lot, the live customer in front of them wins and the thread gets a two-line holding reply.

Sales associates

Does: post the assigned queue, keep photos and copy accurate, escalate price and trade questions, help the porter on photo day.

Does not: desk a deal or promise a discount.

Collision rule: if a buyer shows up on an associate-posted unit, a named closer takes the conversation. The associate does not improvise a pencil.

Office / title and porter

Office owns the packet and the books. Porter owns the metal and the camera. Neither should be pulled into "just hop on Marketplace" unless that is a written backup in the RACI. For the letter-level version of these seats, use How to Build a RACI Chart for a Small Dealership.

Coverage, Call-Outs, and the Tenth Person Problem

Ten people means you are always one call-out away from a hole. Responsibilities have to include coverage, not just happy-path duties.

A simple coverage matrix

Write the matrix on the same page as the seating chart. When someone calls out at 8:10 a.m., you should not be inventing coverage in the hallway.

Split jobs vs. shared jobs

A split job has a primary and a backup. A shared job has two people who both think the other one will do it. Photography "shared" by porter and two associates is how photo day slips. Make one primary.

Pay and scorecards have to match the write-up

If associates post fifty units a week and only get paid on the rare deal they sit on, they will stop posting. If closers are paid only on gross and never on response time, they will ignore threads. Align the scorecard with the responsibility so metrics do not multiply until nobody reads them.

Mapping the Ten Seats to Posting and Lead Work

Used-car retail now includes a channel that did not exist in the org chart you inherited: daily Marketplace exposure. If that work has no seat, it becomes unpaid overtime for the owner.

Who may post

• Associates: assigned units only.
• Sales reps: units they self-queue, plus coverage units the manager moves to them.
• Managers: exceptions, aged units nobody claimed, and sold-unit takedowns when the owner is with a customer.

Who may not post

• Shared logins.
• The porter, unless they are a written backup with a trained checklist.
• Anyone who has not been through the one-day posting standard. Onboarding New Sales Reps on Marketplace Posting in One Day is the training packet; the role write-up should point to it instead of restating it.

Who answers

Match posting ownership to first-response ownership unless you have explicitly assigned associate posts to a closer. Dual ownership of a conversation is how two people quote two prices.

How PostToMarket Automates This

A ten-person used car team breaks when posting and lead ownership are informal. The product problem is not "more ads." It is giving each of those ten people a login and a lane so responsibilities are visible instead of argued. PostToMarket's four roles map onto the seating chart above without inventing a fifth title.

Four logins that match four kinds of work

• Admin: principal or GM. Billing, settings, the account.
• Manager (up to two on Dealership): used-car manager and, if you have one, the desk manager or a future internet director. They assign associate queues, see the team queue, release claims, and read analytics and the leads inbox.
• Sales rep: the three closers who self-queue from shared inventory.
• Sales associate: the two junior posters who only work what they are assigned.

Thirteen logins on Dealership is enough for this entire team plus a spare for office or a part-time weekend hire. Starter's single login is the wrong shape once you have ten people.

The queue is the daily version of the job description

Personal queues, manager assignment, self-queue for reps, and a team queue view turn "that's not my car" into a screen. Inventory statuses (draft, posting, posted, sold, failed) tell the used-car manager whether the associate finished. Mark as sold and archive from inventory or the queue is how office and sales stop fighting over who was supposed to take the listing down.

Analytics so the tenth person is not invisible

Team analytics by rep and source show whether associates are actually posting and whether one closer is absorbing every house lead. The leads inbox gives managers a view that does not depend on borrowing a phone.

Unlimited vehicles, bulk import with a row-level error log, and capture from auction and wholesale sites keep the office and the used-car manager from retyping inventory that already exists on a bill of sale.

Put Names on the Seats Before You Hire the Eleventh Person

Roles and responsibilities for a ten-person used car team only work if they are written as seats, collision rules, and coverage, not as a list of tasks copied from a franchise handbook. Ten people can run a serious used department. Ten people with overlapping jobs will still miss photo day.

If your floor is already this size and posting still lives on one Facebook login, the seating chart is fiction. PostToMarket gives you unlimited inventory, AI titles and descriptions you can edit, per-rep queues, two manager seats, a leads inbox, and posting analytics. The Dealership plan is $299 per month for up to 13 team logins. If you are still a solo lot pretending to be ten people, Starter at $59 per month keeps one login honest until you hire.

Start your 10-day free trial through secure Stripe checkout, map each seat to a role, and watch Saturday stop depending on whoever happens to remember the Facebook password. Cancel anytime.