The dealership culture wars

[kcatdeejay]

One more thing (or two),calgm988. The PHD and his PHD'S are no longer in business which brings up one more thought. We have had numerous PHD's go belly-up in our geographic region (rather not say where) of late. I mean long-time businesses established by their fathers many years ago-could it be an epidemic?? Let's just say the midwest, ok?

[calgm988]

PHD's as it is; were given these dealerships due to their fathers entrepreneurial spirit. The founders new what it took to make business successful. Bottom line is hire the "right" people then get the hell out of thier way. It takes more than an advanced degree in business to make our business work. Most, inherit their business and don't grow up inside learning the important factors.

It doesn't suprise me that as the market changed (economically) that the PHD's had a hard time making a profit. The way you survive is not by increasing your advertising budget, changing managment staff, cutting pay-plans and underselling the value of your cars!

Having the right people who understand and value the customer is the key. We've cut our ad budget in "the most competitive major market" in the country, and with corporate stores all around...yet our volume is up compared to the market which is down. Good people? Or, good leadership?

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"focus on the purpose, not the outcome."

[kcatdeejay]

Since I wasn't a PHD, I wasn't eminently qualified to give a PHD advice, although, many times I thought it could have been very beneficial. I challeneged their advertising budgets with regard to actual impact-'are you getting through to people'- 'do you have any feedback to support it'?They seemed to gravitate toward consultants and 'spin doctors' (this behavior wasn't confined to PHD's alone). I always thought they should go home to get their egos inflated by their wives or girlfriends and keep it out of the store. I wonder what they did when a doctor gave them a bad prognosis-keep looking until they got one that they liked?

[This message has been edited by kcatdeejay (edited 06-16-2007).]

[Colin W]

Our dealership had the Parts vs Service dept. thing going on pretty fiercly. The dealer was forever arbitrating squabbles at weekly meetings. He finally came to the end of his rope and told us that both departments would be combined when calculating bonuses.
Now it really did not matter where the expense went. The task was to reduce and eliminate expense in both dept.s to maximize net. We don't necessarily like each other any better but we do get along a whole lot more. Net has never been better!

[Vince Lyons]

Yeah, here too.
Chronic "I can't do my job because they don't their job...".

Well, we had an after hours sit down... The dealer, the SM, the Advisors and poor me.

Well...
I lost it.
After about 30 mins of everyone doing the "Parts needs to..." and "Parts should...". The ol' pressure relief valve hit redline.

Well it wasn't pretty.

I don't really remember everything I said but a few key phrases had something to with:
Get off you fat ***** and do walk arounds.
Learn how to do your ****ing job before you tell others what they should do.
Quit looking for excuses as to why you don't know your job.

The dealer wasn't happy and ended the meeting with a "We're not making any progress here" and I felt like a complete idiot for loosing my cool. Haven't done that in years.

The truly amazing thing is that since that eve there have been virtually no confrontations and the cooperation between the two departments has been getting much better.

[scotstrong]

Vince:

Sometimes what needs to be reinforced is that "cooperating" with another department does not mean bending over and taking it up the backside repeatedly for that department. Good for you for making that point, and rather pointedly!

Sometimes the "bully" gets the black eye; and is a bully no more.

[kcatdeejay]

Earlier on this thread I mentioned one boss in thirty years who actually knew what he was doing-one of those things was to combine the parts, service and body shop profit for pay plans. It sure eliminated all the petty, mickey mouse arguments over nothing.
A moment of silence please: It appears Larry, Curly and Moe from my sordid past have finally managed to run their stores out of business-even their MANY consultants couldn't save them.

[calgm988]

"One in 30 years - that knew what he/she was doing", sounds a little fishy to me. I too have been around this business for a long time and most of the people that I've worked with "knew what they were doing".

I've met many dealers, and GM's that know a lot about running a successful dealership (both fiscally and morally). I have only met a few who didn't know the first thing about running a dealership or a dept. and those people usually get routed out anyway. The strong survive and the weak die.

It sounds to me like it's a personality issue rather than a knowledge issue. Perhaps they were going in a direction you didn't want to go in. Obviously those dealers failed and are out of business...again the strong survive and the weak die.



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"focus on the purpose, not the outcome."

[calgm988]

"One in 30 years - that knew what he/she was doing", sounds a little fishy to me. I too have been around this business for a long time and most of the people that I've worked with "knew what they were doing".

I've met many dealers, and GM's that know a lot about running a successful dealership (both fiscally and morally). I have only met a few who didn't know the first thing about running a dealership or a dept. and those people usually get routed out anyway. The strong survive and the weak die.

It sounds to me like it's a personality issue rather than a knowledge issue. Perhaps they were going in a direction you didn't want to go in. Obviously those dealers failed and are out of business...again the strong survive and the weak die.



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"focus on the purpose, not the outcome."

[kcatdeejay]

I didn't say I never met any intelligent dealers, I said I only worked for one good one. Different direction? Personality? Hmmm, let me think about that.....well, I guess we did have some differences of opinions over the years. I thought hiring known thieves was a bad idea, turning over 50-75 employees or more per year at a single point was just a bit excessive, allowing a GM to buy and sell used cars (from his pals) instead of the used car manager,hiring friends who showed up bright and early every day at around 11am, having consultants in every department and the ink running bright red,etc. I could go on but lets stop it here. Many were PHD's, some were just clueless and others just shouldn't have been there at all. MBWA never entered their minds. If mine was an isolated case, I could give more credence to your comments, but, alas it was more the rule than the exception. I have seen so much unrealized potential over the years. I like to think I knew a little of what I was being paid to do since I was a twice invited speaker to the NADA national convention. Lots of folks would seek me out for advice and evidently once in a while I came up with some good stuff for them. I believe that in the not too distant future, the auto manufacturers will find another way to sell their vehicles-that 'middle man' they always talk about??? I think his 15 minutes of fame is just about up.