Let’s face it, for every 10 businesses that exist, 9 have some sort of rewards program. While they used to be novel and exciting, customers are now …
Added by Mike Gorun on August 16, 2017 at 9:42am — No Comments
Education is the process of facilitating learning. It is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Training is teaching or developing skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. Its particular goals are improving one's capability, capacity, productivity, and performance.…
ContinueAdded by Jennifer Lockman on July 27, 2017 at 12:02pm — No Comments
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve undoubtedly heard about all the chaos that’s been happening at Uber. What began as a …
Added by Mike Gorun on July 6, 2017 at 9:29am — 1 Comment
(The following post was written by a respected colleague of mine in the automotive industry. The author, who shall remain nameless, is one of the brightest, most energetic, hardest working and truest “team players” I’ve ever met. His/her frustrations are far too common in most industries; but are especially common in automotive. His/her words should be heeded by OEMs who’ve enjoyed moderate success despite their shortcomings. Pricing transparency and other threats to virtually all OEMs’…
ContinueAdded by Steve Stauning on February 18, 2014 at 3:33pm — 3 Comments
A top 10 nationally-ranked auto dealer called me recently and asked me to do an assessment. I said no problem, I’ll send the list of schedules that I need from your controller and we can get started. The dealer responded no, not that assessment, the management assessment that we did two years ago. Based on the urgent tone in his voice, I asked, “Tell me what’s going on?” The dealer explained that in 2011, the store had a record year in volume, market share and net profit. Based on that year,…
ContinueAdded by Garry House on February 5, 2013 at 3:30pm — 4 Comments
One of the questions on the NCM Institute post-class surveys is, “Which of the trainings presentations or topics were the most useful to you?” One of the most prevalent answers we see is “Time Management.” This is interesting because the subject seems to be of a lot greater importance to dealership managers than those of us involved in retail automotive thought leadership have always believed. The quandary I’m…
ContinueAdded by Garry House on January 8, 2013 at 2:38pm — No Comments
Recently, I’ve been busy out in the field doing what I love most—rolling up my sleeves and working on-site with client-dealers, which is something I don’t have much time for in my position as director of the NCM® Institute. Recently, though, I’ve had the opportunity to work with two exceptional dealership groups who are committed to going “from good to great.”
I know I’ve been remarkably fortunate, over my 25+ years in training and…
ContinueAdded by Garry House on October 25, 2012 at 10:08am — No Comments
In my 25+ years in the automotive dealership training and consulting arena, I have been exposed to numerous dealership executives, department managers, and sales and service personnel who felt the need to be “on the job” 60, 70, and, yes, even 80 hours per week. And no matter how much you love the retail business and its diversity, excitement and challenges, that level of time investment in your business career will never allow you to achieve any type of reasonable balance between your…
ContinueAdded by Garry House on October 4, 2012 at 2:37pm — 1 Comment
I’m sure you’ve heard this theme over and over: the automotive retail world we work in today is in continual flux, requiring continual adaptation and an unprecedented acceptance of change. At the beginning of each of our NCM Instituteclasses, we ask the attending dealership executives and department managers, “What is your biggest single challenge?” Although it may not quite come out of their mouths this way, the answer we…
ContinueAdded by Garry House on September 20, 2012 at 1:03pm — 3 Comments
Normally I don’t receive my copy of Automotive News in south Florida from the U.S. Postal Service until Thursday or Friday. This week I was pleasantly surprised to find it in my mailbox on Tuesday. A couple of articles in the current issue (authored by Lindsay Chappell and Christina Rogers) inspired me to revisit the vehicle personalization… |
Added by Garry House on September 4, 2012 at 12:42pm — No Comments
In an NCMi Leading Your Dealership to Success course that I taught in April, I made three “punch-in-the-nose” statements in my introductory comments that were related specifically to the retail automotive industry:
Most (a lot more than 50%) auto dealership employees give…
Added by Garry House on August 21, 2012 at 2:55pm — 2 Comments
Added by Garry House on July 24, 2012 at 3:08pm — No Comments
I am again continuing the mini case study focused on the objectives established, and challenges faced, in building processes to measure and manage OTDBs in the operating departments of an NCM client dealership group. Today, my focus is on one of the greatest vehicle sales opportunities that most dealers enjoy, but fail to capitalize on.
At one point during this engagement, I had asked the dealer principal if he was satisfied with the strategies being employed to develop vehicle sales…
ContinueAdded by Garry House on July 3, 2012 at 12:40pm — No Comments
We recently completed a regional NCMi® training workshop in Washington, D.C. titled, “How to Make the Phone Ring and the Door Swing in YOUR Used Vehicle Department.” One of the class exercises was for the attendees to complete a checklist to determine if they operated a “World Class” used vehicle department. Following are the questions that resulted in the most productive discussions:
Is the Daily Trade-Walk discipline being diligently followed?
Is the…
Added by Garry House on June 27, 2012 at 8:45am — No Comments
So your automotive sales are down, and you lay awake at night praying that you make this month’s budget just so you do not have to put all of your possession in the provided cardboard box and take the walk of shame out of the dealership. Does this sound familiar to you?
Anyone who has spent any time in automotive management has experienced this anxiety. For that matter anyone in sales management has had this same gut wrenching stomach turning feeling at one time or another. There…
ContinueAdded by James Schaefer on May 18, 2012 at 11:26am — 1 Comment
Over the last 15 years, NCM Associates has provided hundreds of educational programs that delivered unparalleled training to thousands of dealers, general managers and department managers. However, there is one area in which we have admittedly fallen short…focused leadership training. Up until now, our primary focus has been on the “nuts and bolts” of dealership management. However, the NCM Institute faculty members, as well as many of the dealership personnel that…
ContinueAdded by Garry House on May 15, 2012 at 4:30pm — 2 Comments
It was in late 1987, and I was conducting an in-dealership workshop focused on financial and operational planning and controls. I was describing an F&I process that I had recommended to increase service contract penetration, when the general manager said, “We used to do that.” In response, I asked, “Did it work?” “Absolutely,” he answered. I was tempted to say, “Then why did you stop doing it?” but I was new to the consulting business and didn’t want to risk offending one of my few…
ContinueAdded by Garry House on May 10, 2012 at 11:28am — No Comments
At most automotive dealerships the last two to three days of the month are typically a flurry of activity by department managers and their productive and support employees trying to get the last deal, the last R.O., and the last counter slip billed out and counted. It always has been, and always will be, the culture of the retail automotive business because, unlike most other businesses, the “counting and accounting cycle” is measured in individual months.
Why is it then that very few…
ContinueAdded by Garry House on March 23, 2012 at 8:45am — No Comments
“I don’t need another book on farmin’, when I ain’t farmin’ as good as I know how right now!”
I remember that statement like it was yesterday. That’s what a dealer told me over the phone back in 1987, in the the early days of my consulting career. It was right after I explained the services I could offer him. He made it very clear to me that he wasn’t interested in anything new and different. He knew that “magic bullets and shiny objects” wouldn’t provide the solutions he…
ContinueAdded by Garry House on February 15, 2012 at 3:48pm — No Comments
By now, many of you have verified your dealership’s profitability for 2011. As most dealers, general managers and controllers understand, until we perform a final year-end reconciliation of each asset and liability account, the YTD profitability displayed on our income statement remains an unproven number. For some of you, this verification process will result in an upward adjustment to your 2011 profitability. However, experience tells me that most dealers…
ContinueAdded by Garry House on February 10, 2012 at 10:30am — No Comments
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