The manufacturer relationship is one of the most important a dealer principal manages — it governs the franchise, the programs, the scorecard, and a lot of the dealership’s profit. Managing it well means hitting the standards that matter, working the programs for all they’re worth, and being a strong partner without being a pushover. The…
Every dealership is full of small wastes that nobody sees because “that’s how we’ve always done it” — the tech walking to the parts counter ten times a day, the deal that bounces between desks, the double-handled part. Process improvement is the discipline of seeing those wastes and removing them, and it compounds into real…
Change is constant in this business — new technology in the machines, new systems in the office, new processes, new expectations — and the manager’s job isn’t just to adopt it but to bring the team through it. Most change efforts fail not on the technology but on the people, and leading that well is…
Running multiple locations is not running one store several times — it’s a different job of building consistency, developing local leaders, and balancing central standards against local judgment. Dealership consolidation has made this common, and the leaders who do it well build systems and people rather than trying to personally run every store. You can’t…
Every owner and every key leader eventually leaves, and the dealerships that survive the transition are the ones that planned for it years ahead. Succession planning is uncomfortable — it means confronting your own exit and mortality — which is exactly why so many put it off until a crisis forces a bad outcome. Plan…
Dealerships get bought and sold — consolidation is reshaping the industry — and understanding roughly how one is valued matters whether you’re buying, selling, planning succession, or just working at a store that might change hands. The value isn’t one number; it’s the sum of the pieces plus what the business earns, and the OEM…
Culture is the thing that runs the dealership when the owner isn’t in the room — the shared “how we do things here” that shapes every customer interaction and every decision nobody’s watching. In a tight labor market it’s also the employer brand that decides whether good people want to work for you. Leaders don’t…
