I wrote this article back in 2012, but it’s such a great story that it’s worth repeating. I wonder where this person is and what they are doing today? I can’t put the name of the dealer group in the article, but if you recognize the story and know this person, please reach out and share with me. I’m often asked what it takes to be successful? No doubt there’s a long list, but in my opinion if you don’t have “true grit,” then you don’t have much of a chance. You have to have a mindset to grind things out when the going gets tough and it will no doubt get tough along the way. I came across an example of “True Grit” last week that I want to share with you. I was speaking to a group of managers and owners of a large auto dealer group out of Orlando, Fl. They own 20 dealership around the country with 4 located in China. One of the managers in the meeting is from their Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge Dealership in San Antonio, TX. As he tells the story he had just gotten out of the Navy about 5 years ago and needed a job. He was a member of the Seabees, which you may know is an engineering unit often building bridges, etc. for the military. With a new wife and fresh out of the Navy he need a job and went to a construction site to put in an application. When he arrived it had started to rain and most of the workers had left the site and he was told he could wait around to see if the rain let up and/or come back on another day. He had just driven 40 miles for the interview and was standing their kind of dumfounded as to what to do next. It so happens that he was actually standing on the lot next to the site which was a new car dealership. A sales manager walked out and apologize to him for someone not having waited on him. He quickly explained he was not there to buy a car but had come for a job interview which had fallen through. The manager began to chat with him and quickly found common ground as he too was a military veteran. He said “since you need a job, we will hire you to sell cars. Show up tomorrow morning with a coat and tie on and for the next two weeks we will put you through our training program. At the end of each day when the training is done I will give you $50 cash for the time you are spending in class.” He drives the 40 miles back home and tells his wife he got a job. She’s very excited until he tells her he’s gong to be selling cars. She starts to laugh at him and says you’ve got to be kidding me. He tells her he’s not and that he needs ties and shirts to wear to work. She tells him they have no money. The only clothes he owns are boots from the military and T-shirts and jeans. So, in the middle of the night they head out and raid a Goodwill drop off box. In the middle of the night he’s inside the box with a flashlight pulling clothes out, handing them to her, weeding through them to try and find two outfits. And now the rest is history. 5 years later he’s a very successful sales manager making $250,000 a year. Talk about “True Grit.” How many people do you know who would go to such extremes to take a job in an industry they know nothing about?Here’s the moral to the story: There’s a lot of room at the top for those who are willing to do what it takes to be successful. It takes hard work, determination, a little luck and a lot of “True Grit” along the way… That’s all I’m gonna say,  Tommy Gibbs.

I wrote this article back in 2012, but it’s such a great story that it’s worth repeating. I wonder where this person is and what they are doing today? I can’t put the name of the dealer group in the article, but if you recognize the story and know this person, please reach out and share with me.

I’m often asked what it takes to be successful? No doubt there’s a long list, but in my opinion if you don’t have “true grit,” then you don’t have much of a chance. You have to have a mindset to grind things out when the going gets tough and it will no doubt get tough along the way.

I came across an example of “True Grit” last week that I want to share with you. I was speaking to a group of managers and owners of a large auto dealer group out of Orlando, Fl.

They own 20 dealership around the country with 4 located in China.

One of the managers in the meeting is from their Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge Dealership in San Antonio, TX. As he tells the story he had just gotten out of the Navy about 5 years ago and needed a job. He was a member of the Seabees, which you may know is an engineering unit often building bridges, etc. for the military.

With a new wife and fresh out of the Navy he need a job and went to a construction site to put in an application.

When he arrived it had started to rain and most of the workers had left the site and he was told he could wait around to see if the rain let up and/or come back on another day. He had just driven 40 miles for the interview and was standing their kind of dumfounded as to what to do next.

It so happens that he was actually standing on the lot next to the site which was a new car dealership. A sales manager walked out and apologize to him for someone not having waited on him. He quickly explained he was not there to buy a car but had come for a job interview which had fallen through.

The manager began to chat with him and quickly found common ground as he too was a military veteran. He said “since you need a job, we will hire you to sell cars. Show up tomorrow morning with a coat and tie on and for the next two weeks we will put you through our training program.

At the end of each day when the training is done I will give you $50 cash for the time you are spending in class.”

He drives the 40 miles back home and tells his wife he got a job. She’s very excited until he tells her he’s gong to be selling cars. She starts to laugh at him and says you’ve got to be kidding me. He tells her he’s not and that he needs ties and shirts to wear to work. She tells him they have no money. The only clothes he owns are boots from the military and T-shirts and jeans.

So, in the middle of the night they head out and raid a Goodwill drop off box. In the middle of the night he’s inside the box with a flashlight pulling clothes out, handing them to her, weeding through them to try and find two outfits.

And now the rest is history. 5 years later he’s a very successful sales manager making $250,000 a year. Talk about “True Grit.” How many people do you know who would go to such extremes to take a job in an industry they know nothing about?

Here’s the moral to the story:

There’s a lot of room at the top for those who are willing to do what it takes to be successful. It takes hard work, determination, a little luck and a lot of “True Grit” along the way…

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

I’ve written about this before, but you know as they say, “timing is everything,” so I’m think now might be a good time to stir things up a bit.

I’m thinking about half my readers know what a “wash-out sheet” is and the other half probably don’t. For those that don’t, in the early years of the retail auto business, dealers used a “wash out sheet” to determine how much money they made on the sale of a vehicle.

Here’s the way it worked. A new car comes into your inventory. You don’t know how much money you made until all trades are sold and thus “washed out.”

Follow the sequence. A new car creates a trade; you sell the trade. You trade in another and finally sell the last one with no trade. You then calculate the total gross generated by the sale of that one new car plus all the trades.

In this case, it took 3 transactions to determine how much total money was made. You would do the same thing if you purchased a used vehicle. If there were no trades or maybe one, the washout occurs much sooner.

With the technology that dealers have today, I believe it would be prudent to track the total gross each unit brings to the table. That would include F&I, Parts, and Service Gross generated from reconditioning on each unit as well as packs and doc fees.

Your first reaction is “We’re already doing this.” But you aren’t.

You might have a vague idea of what a single unit brings to you on the front side of the business and you might even know what a unit creates from the reconditioning gross, but you don’t have any idea what the total gross is when you track it in totality going from the first sale to the last sale that was created from the first unit sold.

The wash-out sheet is kind of like suits and ties. Keep them around long enough and they will come back in style.

Let the washing begin.

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

I realize aged units are in the eye of the beholder, but for the sake of simplicity and this conversation let’s go with anything over 60 days.

If you are of a mindset that you’re not worried about them, I can’t help you.

Actually, you can’t be helped. You’re in a state of euphoria from the horseshoe you’ve had stuck in a magical place where the sun doesn’t shine during these unprecedented times. (I know that’s a ridiculously long sentence, but I like it.)

A bunch of hardheads will just delete this message, so let me serve up some suggestions for those of you who are still with me and sitting on the bridge peaking over.

The number 1 reason you still have those over 60-day units is price. There may be other reasons, but price is number 1. There’s a price you can unload that 75-day-old car for, but you haven’t gone there yet.

It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway; you are far better off selling a unit at retail for the same price as you would sell at wholesale, for all the reasons that you and I know.

Now you’re going to tell me you can wholesale that unit at a profit. Keep in mind we’re talking about a 75-day-old unit.

Rock star, my suggestion is to go ahead and take the wholesale profit on that bad boy (to be politically correct let’s go with bad girl too) and move on.

Maybe ROI doesn’t matter to you, but trust me on this, your ROI sucks on that unit whether you retail it at 75 days or wholesale it.

If you create a focus on those over 60-day units, that’s a good thing, but it won’t solve your problem moving forward if you don’t pay close attention to those units now between 30 and 45 days old.

They are coming. They want to jump over there with those already 60-day-old units. You need to be price conscious of those bad boys and bad girls.

My final suggestion is to be sure to identify problematic units on day one. Have a unique strategy for them and they will never see day 61.

Units don’t age on day 61. They age on day 1, because someone isn’t paying attention.

I’m giving you smart advice. Be smart.

That’s all I’m gonna say. Tommy Gibbs

When you’re in business you have a ton of issues to deal with. None are more important than communicating with staff and management team to help them improve performance and profitability.

When you’re in a dealership day-to-day it’s like living with family members and therein lies the problem. It can be difficult to hold family accountable.

There’s tons of data for you to sort through each day to help you create a roadmap of accountability.

You often ignore it and look the other way because you don’t want to lose your family members.

Actually, sometimes it is family and that can create all sorts of issues for you and the team.

The problem is a lot of people see the word “accountable” as a negative word. Holding people accountable is actually a tool to coach them to the next level.

Coaching is about pointing out those things they may be missing. The reason you see what they don’t is because of your experience and the data you have at hand.

People don’t do things because either:

A. They don’t know what to do.
B. They know what to do and refuse to do it.

As a leader, you’re responsible for making sure they know.

Once they know you’re responsible for making sure they do it whatever it might be.

When are you going to stand up?

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