How many Signals do you need???

[TheOne]

John,
I have been involved with more than 300 dealerships, and spoken at countless 20 group meetings. These Ideas and more have been shared with them. This leads me to clarify my point regarding sales departments. My comment was intended to provoke the idea that sales departments were never going to be the same again. Foolish spending in the hopes of one good weekend a month from the sales department to carry the store to profitability is in my opinion irresponsible. Better to LEARN the balance of the business and work to achieve balanced profitability, then spend judiciously and with specificity to build vehicle sales.

Unfortunately the dealer body as a whole only really listens when financial panic is imminent. The minority of those charged with charting the course for those thousands of dealership employees dependent on their decisions actually understand the nuts and bolts (figurative) of the business outside of the sales and finance departments.

My comments were intended to provoke thought and action relative to how our industry must morph for the future. Obviously our industry will survive, but in what form? Controlled by whom? I have not said it until now, but I for one am thrilled that our business have been pushed to the brink of collapse. Now is the time that the best of us will rise to the occasion and do more than complain. We will change ourselves, what we do, and how we do it. We will peer into the crystal ball see only a cloud, but chart a course that creates new opportunities now and for a long time into the future. We are Americans, we invent, and innovate. We continue to set the bar for standard of living in the world. We abandon yesterdays answers to the secondary countries of the world so that we can create new answers for today. We only do this however when pressed firmly as we are now. Drive through Detroit and experience just how hard we are being pressed. We have ridden yesterdays inventions and innovations as far as they are going to take us. Time to move on to something new.

We will prevail, but not without pain.....

[Gasser]

Are you thinking that the FRONT END might one of these days morph into a Concierge type
operation? Or.....maybe with a virtual showroom packed full of on-line ordering devices.