I joined dealerElite in July of this year. The purpose was twofold. The first was to let the Dealerland community know via the NET that I had written a book, DUH! and secondly to share my thirty –two years experience as a controller, the one person who sees it all in a dealership.

Since joining dealerElite I have participated and shared with members, posts, discussions, photos and joined 2 groups (mistakenly).

I am new to the social media, networking arena, still haven’t completely figured it out but am learning fast. With that said, I would like to share some thoughts and observations since I joined dealerElite.

First, this is fun. One gets to share thoughts and dialog with industry folks.

Secondly, why is it necessary to have groups? As of this writing there are 3,476 dealerElite members with 710 members belonging to 31 groups. That means 20% of total membership belongs to a group - the 80/20 rule? Not really, some folks belong to many groups.

Anywho, recently Nancy Simmons posted, “What do you like about the car business? … and why?” - a great topic. It is a topic that perked my interest and off to the keyboard I went to add a comment. After laboring with English 101 to put my thoughts together and typing a comment, I hit the reply button and up jumped “You need to join this group to post to this forum”. Huh! and Why? I don’t get it. Maybe it’s a networking thing. I have never been a group joiner. If I were to join a group it would be to participate and contribute. From what I have gleaned many group members are silent. So why bother.

If there are posts by a member of the 31 groups and one would like to comment, then one needs to join 31 groups. Again, why? A dealership is a complex entity where decisions made in one department could crossover and effect another department. A decision in the service department could have an adverse reaction in the used vehicle department. So, why does a front end person need to join a fixed operation group to comment how a decision may effect the sales department? My personal preference is open discussions.

In an open discussion, Bobby Compton wrote about spiffs and Manny Luna added a comment. I then added a comment. Manny replied and it looked like I had stepped in his mess kit. After adding another comment to clarify my position, we were not really in disagreement. It was just a matter of semantics. The point being that if Mr. Compton had posted “Spiffs” in a group and either Mr. Luna or myself were not a member of the group there would not have been a discussion. How many other members do not comment because they have to join a group? Or is it just me? Sometimes it is not what is being said, but what is not being said.

Without doing an analysis, where are the dealers, managers, fixed operations, and other dealership folks. The silence is deafening. Maybe they are tucked away in the groups. From what I can glean posts and discussions are heavily weighted with conversation about the front end. What about the rest of the store. I am looking at a twenty group composite and 60% of the gross is generated by the front end and 40% from fixed operations. Yet, fixed operations voice seems to be minimal in the blogs and forums. Wonder why?

Sure am glad to see dealerElite do away with the “Who’s the Best” category. I have always thought, if you need to run around campaigning you are the best - THEN YA AIN”T. The Best let others make that call.

Well I am done pontificating and leave with this thought, even in the Rust Years an old dog can learn new tricks. When one stops learning it is time to pack it up.

Have a good day!