I’m a big fan of making the team inclusive of what’s going on.

I’m a big fan of educating the team.

I’m a big fan of getting insight from those who are in the trenches.

I’m a big fan of listening to the troops.

But, I’m not a big fan of rule by committee.

Ruling by committee is an easy way to avoid accountability.

Ruling by committee allows us to blame no one when it fails.

Ruling by committee is a sickness designed to allow those in charge to accept responsibility for nothing.

Ruling by committee is a way to hide in the back room. Ruling by committee is peeking through the closet door.

Step out of the closet, come into the room and be counted. If you’re ruling by committee, stop it! You’re not running a democracy, you’re running a business.

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

I want to speak to those of you that are in charge of the hiring and struggle to find that superstar used car manager. The used car manager you need may very well be right under your own roof, and you’re walking right by him or her a dozen times a day.

For whatever misconceived reason, when you need a used car manager, the first thing you want to do is find a used car guru that works someplace else and lure them away.

I don’t have to tell you the challenges of hiring from the outside. I don’t have to, but I will.

1. The person you hire isn’t going to have the same culture that you’ve been working so hard to develop.

2. Their thinking about the used car business isn’t going to necessarily align with yours. That doesn’t mean either of you has it right or wrong. It just means it’s going to be frustrating and more than likely expensive.

3. If you’re running an ad in Automotive News, most of the respondents are going to be from outside your area. I’m not even going to attempt to list all the issues tied to bringing someone in from afar. If you don’t understand those issues then you’ve got a lot more problems than I can help you with.

4. When you hire from the outside you are looking for a miracle worker to fix the mess left from the last miracle worker. Most likely the mess will get bigger. All you’re doing is rinse and repeat.

5. You’re doing nothing to encourage people to want to grow and develop within your organization when you keep going to the outside. You need to promote from within.

The real answer is that you don’t need someone from the outside with a bunch of experience. What you need is to commit to giving someone from within a chance and a whole bunch of your personal time and energy.

What you need is:

1. Someone that’s a young “thinker.”

2. Someone that has high energy.

3. Someone that believes in your culture and store.

4. Someone that’s coachable

.5. Someone that has common sense.

6. Someone that understands technology.

7. Someone that has integrity.

8. Someone that has a strong work ethic.

9. Someone that has good communication skills.

10. Someone that’s hungry.

If you don’t have someone or multiple someones like this in your organization then you need to rethink your organization. That’s all I’m gonna say, Tommy Gibbs

We often read and hear about courage as it applies to heroic acts during war, when people are dealing with pain or dangerous circumstances.

The term is also loosely tossed around in the world of sports. Depending on one’s point of view, those may all very well be true.

I like to think of courage in business and politics in several simple ways:

1. Courage is doing the right thing when it’s easy to do the wrong thing. Courage means taking a stand even when sometimes taking a stand is not the most popular thing. Never forget it’s not about who is right, but what is right.

2. Courage is about changing direction when your decisions are less than perfect. That means saying, “I got it wrong, let’s go in another direction.” You’re not always going to get it right.

3. Courage is having enough sense to listen to those around you and be able to separate bull shit/self-interest that some people have toward self-serving goals. Courage is standing up to such nonsense and doing the right thing.

4. Courage is the willingness to stick your head above the fence once in a while knowing full well someone’s going to throw a rotten tomato in your face. It’s a willingness to try something different. It’s a willingness to get out of your comfort zone. It’s a willingness to accept harsh criticism.

Sometimes I tell you stuff that I know you’re not going to like. Sometimes I poke my head above the fence and sometimes you throw a rotten tomato at me.

If nothing else, I’ll help you improve your aim.

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

For years now many of you have been in denial about what the new green deal is all about. Some of us have been cheering it on loud and clear, but still, many just don’t “get it.” You have fought it and fought it, and told those of us who cheered it on that we were stupid, we’re idiots, and it will never fly.

Then the pandemic hit and you were like, “Hey, charging full window sticker and being a one-price dealer ain’t so bad.”

You have finally come around and said, “All this green cash going in my pocket is pretty cool.” Some of you have even become a little humble and said, “Man, I wish we had done this long ago,” or “I hope we never go back to the old way again.

Have you ever made this much money on new cars? No

Have you ever made this much money on used cars? No

Have you ever made this much money in F&I? No

Have your CSI scores ever been better? No

Have your sales and management staff ever been happier? No

You’re riding the fat green wave wagon. A few of you are hitting a little bump in the road occasionally and slipping back into your old ways. Fortunately for you, the law of supply and demand pushes your butt back up into the buckboard and you chug along, smile, and keep counting the greens.

My fear is that you will bump your head, amnesia will kick in, and you’ll think the good old days are the good old days.

For the good of our children and grandchildren, we know we need to stay with this new green deal.

Enjoy the new green deal and remember I told you one price was the way to go long before the pandemic told you so.  That’s all I’m gonna say.

Recently I got my normal early morning start…up early, some computer work, wrote a couple of articles, and headed to the gym. After the gym, I had a couple of errands to run but felt a little hungry after lifting all those heavy weights.

Because I’m conscious of eating healthy, I decide to zip through Taco Bell and grab something with some nourishing protein in it.

I pull up to the menu board and can’t find any of their breakfast food on the menu. About that time a little voice says, “Welcome to Taco Bell, order when ready.”

I’m still trying to find breakfast on the menu. Finally, I speak back into the little box and say, “Hey, I can’t find the breakfast menu.” Crickets.

I’m thinking, ok they must be busy, so I’ll just pull around to the window and order. I pull up to the window and the worker opened the window. I say, “Hey, what’s for breakfast?” She says, “We’re not open.”

I say, “What time do you open?” She says, “8:00.” Oh, ok…I pull up to the exit driveway and look at the clock on my phone. It’s 7:59.

I wonder, would she have been fired if she had said, we don’t open until 8, but it’s only one minute early so I’ll take your order. Or, I guess she could have said, drive around the building and you will be on time.

This reminds me of when I was a new car dealer. Back in those days, we opened the service department at 7:30 am. There would be customers lined up outside the service doors waiting for the doors to open. The service writers would be inside standing at their podium getting ready for the day and staring back at the customers.

“It’s 7:25, hey we’ve got customers, let’s open the door and get them on their way,” said no one ever.

Of course, you can imagine when Tommy hit the building, he’s screaming, “Open the door and take care of our customers.”

Now, what do you think the pushback was when I chatted with the service director later in the day about this hot topic?

“Boss, if we do that, we are training the customers to show up earlier and earlier.”

OMG, what a horrible thing that we train the customers that they can count on us to exceed their expectations and get them on their way lickety-split.

Does one-minute matter?

Maybe not to you and the Taco Bell bunch, but it matters to me and your customers. That’s all I’m gonna say. Tommy Gibbs.

Being able to inspire people can be complex and tricky. There are times when people in leadership positions actually un-inspire their team more than they inspire.

Even with good intentions, we often overthink whatever it is we’re trying to improve. Keeping it simple and real is always the best approach.

“A mediocre person tells. A good person explains. A superior person demonstrates. A great person inspires others to see for themselves.” Harvey Mackay.

Keeping It Simple:

1. Challenge them with reasonable objectives. Not too easy, not too hard. The key is the objectives have to be achievable. Achieved success will lead to even greater achievements. Success breeds success.

It’s great to be an optimist. It’s even greater to be a “realistic optimist.” Tossing out “pie in the sky” numbers doesn’t challenge people; it defeats them and they eventually just ignore them.

2. Show encouragement by leading from the front and pushing from the rear. Cheer and cheer some more. There’s nothing better than a pat on the back or a double high five to get ’em going and keep ’em going.

Sometimes you have to show them “how” and sometimes you coach them “how.”

3. Watch what you say and how you say it. Saying the right things, in the right way, at the right time can do wonders. Choose your words carefully. Remember the whole world is watching and listening to everything you say and do.

4. Show them that you care in a sincere way. It has to be real. People can spot BS from a mile away. You can’t fake it.

There’s nothing more powerful than a leader that truly cares. You either care or you don’t.

I’m pulling for you, 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 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