Unless you’ve been living under a rock, I’m sure by now you know that the three CEO’s of Ford, GM and Chrysler have been to Washington to beg for about 34 four billion dollars to help keep their companies afloat.
The way I look at it is, if this were such a good investment for anyone, you’d have a line of investment bankers at their doors to give them money to make this happen but when you look at their stock prices and the lack of upward movement you can see that most investors don’t feel comfortable with these companies.
I want you to understand, I do not want to see these companies fail but there are some glaring lessons that we can learn in hindsight from what is going on with these companies now.
1. Listen to your customers – I worked in the automotive industry for about 11 years and I can tell you from first hand experience none of these companies listened to their customers.
They were focused on producing cars and trucks that made them money and they built them in excess pushing them on the dealers relentlessly.
When they had a vehicle that had high end user demand they would force the dealers to take the vehicles that were more profitable for them in order to get the in demand vehicles.
When you break this down the dealers were the manufacturers customer, and the buyer of the vehicles were the dealers customers. And this was always over looked by the manufacturers.
There was always a air of superiority from the manufacturers to the dealer. They always thought they knew more than their real customers. (The dealers)
2. Learn when to say NO – In hindsight, the Unions were much better negotiators then the Big 3. These companies never knew when to say NO. And they folded to way to many demands made on them.
No one should be paid an hourly rate, they should be paid for a result. Period!
People work at a different rates and performance levels. There should never be a flat hourly rate for a position.
3. Look after your own business based on sound business principles – The dealers who followed these manufacturers blindly and accepted the ordering suggestions (Taking the wrong vehicles in order to get higher demand vehicles) wasted a lot of money on financing charges to warehouse these vehicles for the manufacturers.
The should have focused on sound business principles instead of bowing to the demands from these manufacturers.
When you place your faith in thinking someone else knows all the answers you will soon find out they have no idea what they are doing. A lot of automotive dealerships are finding that out right now, unfortunately for them.
In the next post we will look at a few more lessons we can take away from the US Automotive Debacle.
Until next time, Here’s to Your LifetoSuccess,
John Clark
P.S. Make sure to pass this on to anyone you know who can use this information and make sure to visit http://www.habitbustingsystem.com and start to make this a habitual way of acting today!