Electric vehicles are coming, but are you ready?
When I started on the bench as an apprentice back in 1959, my favourite vehicle to work on was a Jaguar XK 150 with a D type head and three SU carburetors. Its top speed was about 135 miles per …
Category: Columns
Crunch the numbers
Do some simple math and figure out how well you are performing This is the sixth in a series of aids developed by Jim Bell, of Global Automotive Consultants, which we provide periodically to help you assess the operation of …
Let’s check the first quarter scorecard
The numbers are looking good, but inventory is a challenge We are well into 2011 now and some of what we expected to see in the wholesale market has, indeed, trans- pired in the first few months of the year. …
Are your affairs in order?
There’s never a bad time to work on succession planning Over my many years of practice I have witnessed many different ways that dealers plan for the road ahead. One thing is true — when ahead becomes now, very few …
The weakest link
Chaos in Japan underlies fragility of global supply chain As I write this article, about one month after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the northeastern coast of Japan, the extent to which the Japa- nese, and indeed …
Does your pay plan measure up?
As salaries diminish keeping good staff has become challenging Some dealerships still have a good market share and strong bottom lines, but they appear to be getting fewer in number and there are others that could be running in the …
NADA: More questions than answers
But social networking was clearly the overriding attraction I have just returned from attending NADA 2011 in San Francisco, which was a better conference than those of the last two years. Surprisingly, a little of the wild, wild, west seems …
Let’s not get distracted
We can’t deny progress There are some individuals, myself included at times, who believe that the interior of the modern car more closely resembles the cockpit of a jet airliner than cars such as my mom’s 1978 AMC Concord, in …
Embracing social media means giving up control
The social media beast can’t be easily tamed There was a time, in our not so distant past,(like maybe last week) that automobile dealers exerted a sizable influence over their local media channels. As big advertisers, they had a way …
Monopoly, anyone?
In the dealer game, the money is real. A few months back I wrote about the possible outcomes arising from the Canadian dealer network rightsizing initiatives that had just been announced. As that downsizing now begins to unfold, activity is …
NADA Convention helps evolve some thoughts
Tools and technology are advancing at a rapid rate I didn’t really think about it at the time, but my last article was somewhat like a preview of this year’s National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Convention and Expo in San …
Perception is everything!
So it’s important that you are perceived to be honest with your staff Trying to quantify how much money it costs your business when the staff feel like they are being cheated is hard to calculate and even tougher to …
