I am not wanting to start "target practice" with people taking shots at individual dealer attitudes and experiences. Rather, I am going to make a generalized observation based on working at two GM dealerships before my 19 year career with Snap-On. With Snap-On I continued to have dealership experience, just at a different viewpoint. Additionally, owning almost exclusively GM products since 1980 (two new Fords have secured future GM purchases for me) and 2 new Saturns since 2006 has given me plenty to draw from.
With that as a backdrop, fast forward to this morning when GM's new guy (can't remember his name - doesn't matter) stated that one of GM's new priorities is the customer (I believe that was #1) and culture (#3?). They better play hard ball with the DEALERSHIP culture in general. I am assuming his statement about culture was focusing on at the company level vs. the franchisee level. BOTH need overhauls. Backtracking to my Saturn experience, GM had the right idea and concept there. Sure, there were Saturn stores that weren't up to Saturn's goals, but generally the majority were. There is a reason that Subaru has fairly well maintained their sales rates while EVERYBODY else dropped well over 35% including Toyota and Honda. Subaru is as much a culture as it is a car. GM needs to re-educate their dealers to STOP acting like domestic car dealers !!!!!!! And that will not be easy. Maybe GM can just show the owners how Hendricks does business. To me, they are the Gold Standard. There is a reason why he has been so successful. Listen to what his NASCAR drivers, crew chiefs, and employees speak of him, watch and listen to him in interviews, and it is WYSIWYG - what you see is what you get. He has a $4B/year empire. Other dealerships can be as good, and should. Fix the culture, the rest will fall in place.
Of course, this is true of ALL business as Tom Peters has pointed out SO well.
