I don’t care what you know.

I care what you can teach others to do.

That’s what leaders do.

They teach it. They coach it.

It’s a wonderful thing that you have talent and great skills, but if you can’t teach it to others then your organization’s growth is limited. You limit your own growth when others aren’t growing.

I cannot tell you how many times in my career I’ve seen talented managers not be able to teach others.

Consequently, when they are not on the job, nothing much happens. Productivity goes in the tank and the company suffers.

Should the B team be blamed for not getting the job done?

No, the team leader who should be doing the teaching, coaching, and the development of the staff should be blamed.

As much as you may think you’re “IT,” you’re not. If you can’t teach “IT” then you ain’t “IT.”

That’s all I’m gonna say. Tommy Gibbs.

1. Guard Against The “Peter Principle”-Don’t promote people based strictly on how they have performed in their current role. Promote them to their ability to perform in their new role. People are often promoted to their level of incompetence.

2. Guard The Processes-The team with the best and most consistent processes wins the most often.

3. Guard The Team-It really is about the team. You need team players. If they aren’t on the same team you cannot afford to keep them on the team. They will destroy morale and production.

4. Guard The Customers-When you protect your customers, you build your business and set the bar for the team to do the same. The team is watching and emulating how you deal with customer issues.

5. Guard The Vendors-You must demand the same high quality and standards from your vendors as you demand from your team. Don’t lower your standards because you’re saving a few bucks.

6. Guard The Culture-There’s nothing more important that you can do than guard your culture. You cannot afford to hire people who aren’t of the same mindset. If you make that mistake you will wake up one day and there is no culture.

7. Guard Against Legacy Thinking-Just because you’ve always done it that way doesn’t mean it’s the best way. Stop looking back. Look forward.

8. Guard Against Making The Same Mistakes-Mistakes are a part of growing, but what you cannot allow is the same mistakes happening over and over again.

9. Guard The Training-You cannot train too much. It’s not “redundant training” until the team is perfect. The team isn’t perfect.

10. Guard The Passion-Don’t let anyone steal or drain your passion and don’t be afraid to show your passion for all the above.

That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs.

Some of the most frequent questions I get these days are:

1. Is there a crash coming with used car values?
2. Where is the market heading?
3. How aggressive should I be when appraising and buying cars?

1. Is there a crash coming with used car values?

Nope, there’s no crash coming in the used car market. The bottom isn’t going to fall out. Things are going to level off, and values aren’t going to keep soaring. Unless of course, the new car manufacturers have additional chip issues, or their workers can’t come to work due to a major covid outbreak.

The number one thing that has impacted the rising prices of used cars is the lack of new car inventories. Therefore, any dealer with half a brain is going to keep a close eye on their new car franchise’s production.

2. Where is the market heading?

The same place it always heads this time of the year. In most markets sale volume starts to trend downward as we roll into the fall and winter months.

If you take a look at your used car sales volume over the past 5 years on a month-by-month basis, you’ll see a consistent trend of sales volume by month. The number one problem for most dealers is they stock the same inventory in December as they did back in May.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t always be looking to improve our business month over month, year over year, but it does say, “Hey, pay attention, look at the numbers and start to make some seasonal adjustments with your inventory levels.”

3. How aggressive should I be when appraising and buying used cars?

If you’re well-disciplined and using life-cycle management, you can keep doing whatever you’ve been doing.

That said, you’d be well served to be somewhat cautious with the high-dollar stuff. Everybody has a different definition of what high-dollar means and it is often tied to your new car brand.

On the cheaper stuff. Go for it! It’s hard for you to screw up much when you put $12,000 or so in a used car.

From time to time, I’ll see a cheaper car in a dealer’s inventory that has aged.
For this example, let’s say the dealer has a car with $8000 in it. Think about it, if a car like that has aged there has to be something wrong with it. How many people in this world do you think are looking for an $8000 car?

Let’s go back to the being aggressive part. If you’re aggressive on a $65,000 car and you keep it too long and the market makes a shift, you’re going to lose a lot more money on it than you ever would by being high in a $12,000 car.

Everything I’ve said here you already know.
Sometimes you want to be stupid.

Don’t be stupid. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs.

One of the things I encourage dealers and managers to do in my workshops is to sort their used vehicle inventory by cost or investment, with the most expensive units at the top.

Then I teach them 4 specific ways to attack their 10 most expensive units. (If you want the 4 specific ways, shoot me an email.)

If you want to be better, start attacking your 10 most expensive units every day. There’s only one definition for the word “every.” Go look it up.

One of the more interesting but not surprising things we’ve observed over the years is that if you lay your aged inventory side by side with your 10 most expensive, the two lists have a lot of the same units.

You would think the more money you have tied up in a unit, the more money you would make. If you think that, you would be wrong.

Adding to that problem is the longer the more expensive units sit, the worse the ROI is going to be. If you want to spot “brewing trouble,” start attacking your 10 most expensive units.

Of course, inside your head ROI doesn’t matter to you today because you have such a “sweet” bottom line.

That said, for the well-disciplined dealers everything matters.

A whole bunch of things will start to matter to you as this market changes.

So, go ahead and lay your two lists side by side and validate what you already know.

We often know things but look the other way.

When you look the other way, you’re just being stupid. Don’t be stupid.

That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs.

Most of my messages are geared toward management, but today I want to talk to your sales staff. You should forward this to every salesperson on your team and suggest they sign up for my newsletters.

If you’re a salesperson, I want to help you re-frame what you do every day and what a great opportunity you might be missing. If you’re in management, this is a message you need to share with all.

Have you ever wanted to be in business for yourself?

Have you ever thought about going into business, to get someone else to invest the money and you reap the rewards?

Welcome to the amazing world of the automobile business:

You have free office space.

You get rewarded based on how hard you work.

You have opportunities for advancement.

You have healthcare, vacation and retirement opportunities and Christmas bonus programs.

You have a management team working to help you be productive.

You have a free computer system.

You have a CRM/DMS and other software provided free of charge.

You have staff and technicians available to handle customer problems.

You have free marketing, advertising, and a website developer.

You have an administrative staff to help process your deals, DMV work, etc.

You have millions of dollars of inventory to sell with zero personal investment.

You get special spiffs/incentives from the factory.

You get all the free training/coaching that you can stand.

You have a detail/clean-up department that gets your vehicles ready for delivery.

You don’t have to pay a penny for phone, electricity and other utilities.

You can demand an assistant when you become productive enough.

You have an Internet/BDC department begging you to take leads.

You have free janitorial service.

You have free coffee.

You have your own personal financial officer (F&I) working to put your deals together.

You work out of a multi-million dollar facility located on prime real estate.

You have an opportunity of a lifetime with no personal financial investment.

You need to “own” your own business.

That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs.

Go to my website to “join list” tommygibbstraining.com

Without question, some people are luckier than others. It’s not always true, but some of the time it’s just a fact.

More often than not, luck is a by-product of being prepared.

The more you prepare, the luckier you get.

Being prepared means studying your craft.

Being prepared means making some mistakes and moving on.

Being prepared means willingness to change.

Being prepared means listening to other points of view.

Being prepared means getting outside of your comfort zone.

Being prepared is a constant thirst for knowledge.

Being prepared means having lots of residue on your hands.

Change is coming. Are you prepared?

Many have the will to win. Very few have the will to prepare to win.

That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs.

How was your June?

How have your first six months been?

It’s been a crazy year and I know that most of you have set some all-time records.

I can understand why you might be beating your chest a little bit.

Your record-breaking pace may mean you’ve gotten lucky or it may mean you’ve got your act together.

Either way, you need to be cautious of becoming complacent.

Even though things have been going well, you would be very smart to review how you can make things better as you tackle the second half.

But let’s suppose you’ve not been setting records or maybe you recognize you’ve done well despite some flaws in your plan of attack.

Since we still have 6 more months to go, I have a couple of questions:

1. If you’re a record-breaker, what are you going to do to get better?

2.If you’ve not been breaking records or have broken some despite yourself, what are you going to do to get better?

Everything we do is about choices.

You can choose to let things be as they are, or you can choose to dial it up a notch or two.

Your other choice is to do nothing. Go sit in your office, stare at the wall and count your money.

If you do nothing, your pile of money will likely go down and the year will soon be over.

That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs.

Your inability to move fast is a killer for your used car business. Moving fast puts you in the winner’s circle. Not moving fast puts you in the loser’s circle.

Oh sure, speed has mattered to you all that much over the last year.

What better time to pick up your speed and improve what you’re doing than when you’re making record profits?

The speed of your recon operation has a direct impact on your ability to produce gross in the used car department.

And without a doubt, it impacts how fast you get a car out in the Internet world. You cannot afford a 7 to 10-day window.

I’d be preaching to the choir if I went over all the reasons the recon/service department needs to cooperate and for you to get your used cars through service just as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, many service managers haven’t been trained to understand that your inventory is costing you a lot of money when it’s sitting.

Continuously educating your management team about how fast the market can change on a used car and what it does to your bottom line is critical to your long-term success.

If you want to improve your speed, then you need to take a hard look at my “Life Cycle Management” process.

“Life Cycle Management” will change your used car world forever, make you lightning-fast, eliminate wholesale losses, improve turn and gross profit. Y

You don’t need to buy anything from me. You just need to understand the concept.

If you’re dead serious you will get off your duff and improve your speed.

If you’re not then you’ll soon be giving back some of those record profits.

Speed Wins. Speed Kills. You get to make the choice.

That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs

I often wonder what dealers, managers, and leaders are looking at. At times it seems they are looking, but they don’t see.

Yogi Berra once said: “You can observe a lot by just watching.”

And sometimes even when they see, they don’t hold people accountable and take corrective actions.

Believe it or not, people want to be held accountable. It’s hard to hold people accountable when we haven’t set or determined what the expectations are.

Once expectations are set then we have to have a way of measuring the progress. Measuring progress is probably one of the easiest things to do in the automobile business.

When the measurements are not satisfactory we have to communicate the results and seek corrective action.

Once the corrective action plan is in place it all starts over again and at some point, there has to be, there just has to be, a consequence for failing to measure up.

And that’s where the biggest problem occurs. Not wanting to hand out the consequences is when leaders look, but don’t see.

I see it all the time. That’s all I’m gonna say. Tommy Gibbs.

“Showing up” is a term that is sometimes used in sports when a player performs well, has an exceptional game, or makes ESPN’s top ten plays.

In reality, it doesn’t actually mean what it says.

Anybody can “show up.” People show up every day. Sometimes you wonder why they even bothered to show up.

Showing up and performing, excelling, kicking butt and taking names is a whole different kettle of fish.

Great players and great leaders “show up” every day for every play. The great ones don’t pick and choose which day or which game they intend to excel in. It’s ingrained in their DNA to “show up.”

They don’t say to themselves, “Hey, I like this day, I think I’ll show up.” They say, “I’m here, let’s get on with it.”

Of course, they have days when they don’t feel like giving 110%, but they dig in, they grind it out, they push through the mess and they make it happen.

The automobile business is a tough game. If you’re going to have sustained success you have got to show up every day and “get after it.”

Getting after it means guarding the processes.
Getting after it means creating high energy.
Getting after it means holding yourself and others accountable.
Getting after it means making those tough personnel decisions that you know you need to make.
Getting after it means amping up your training to be the best you can be.
Getting after it means paying attention to what’s going on around you.
Getting after it means not ignoring “the elephant” in the
room.

Here’s The Biggie:

Getting after it means removing those obstacles that keep your team from reaching their goals.

If you’ve not been showing up, maybe it’s time you did. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs.