The Contrarian Succession Plan: Why Your Family Dealership Shouldn't Revolve Around One Person
Most family dealership owners spend their succession planning meetings talking about which kid goes where, who gets what title, and whether the next generation ...
Do You Really Need a 20-Group? A Contrarian Take on Dealer Peer Groups
Twenty-groups have been a fixture of dealership culture since the 1970s, when a handful of forward-thinking dealers started meeting in small peer circles to sha...
Why Your Next Dealership Location Might Be Your Worst Decision
Why Your Next Dealership Location Might Be Your Worst Decision You've been running the same store for years. Sales are solid, CSI is respectable, and your team...
Why Your Recruiter Is Costing You More Than You Think: A Contrarian Take on Dealer Group Hiring
You've probably spent $40,000 to $80,000 on a recruiter to find your next general manager, only to realize six months in that the person you hired doesn't fit y...
The Uncomfortable Truth About Open-Book Management in Dealerships
Back in 1992, Springfield ReManufacturing Corporation became the poster child for open-book management when Jack Stack published his manifesto about teaching em...
The Contrarian PTO Policy: Why Dealership Principals Have It Backwards
According to industry surveys, roughly 73% of dealership GMs believe unlimited or overly generous PTO policies hurt sales performance. Most dealer principals st...
Why Smart Dealerships Are Dropping Drug Testing (And Why You Should Too)
Back in 1986, Ronald Reagan signed an executive order requiring federal contractors to maintain drug-free workplaces. Within a year, workplace drug testing beca...
The Contrarian Take on Dealership Cybersecurity: It's Not a Technology Problem
You're sitting in your general manager meeting on a Tuesday morning, and your IT person just told you that your dealership needs to spend $15,000 on a new cyber...
The Local SEO Trap: Optimization Without Inventory
You're spending $8,000 a month on local SEO for your five-store dealer group, and your general manager at the flagship location keeps asking why the store down ...
Stop Obsessing Over Attribution Models (You're Measuring the Wrong Thing Anyway)
Stop Obsessing Over Attribution Models (You're Measuring the Wrong Thing Anyway) Most dealership marketing teams spend weeks building complex attribution model...
The Contrarian Take on Spanish-Language Dealership Marketing (And Why You're Probably Doing It Wrong)
The Spanish Marketing Trap Most Dealers Fall Into It's Tuesday morning at a Midwest dealership group with three stores in a market that's roughly 28% Hispanic....
Stop Chasing Every Platform: The Contrarian Approach to Dealership Reputation Management
Most dealerships are chasing reputation management all wrong. You're probably spending money on review-generation software, hiring reputation agencies, and obse...