When you think about success and what it actually takes to be successful, what comes to mind? Is it a learned and practiced skillset that helps you meet a sales goal? An “all hands on deck” mentality that results in early EOY completion? Maybe it’s a fully staffed service department that allows you to increase the number of repair orders completed?
Whatever the setting or circumstances, having the right people, processes, and technology are all essential parts of success. In a business consisting of many different departments and moving pieces, success and profitability ultimately come down to the combination of these three things – how they function together and complement one another.
Just ask Jason Owens, owner of Patriot Automotive Group. As someone who’s been in the car business more than thirty years, Jason has seen everything from the ’08 – ’09 recession, to GM’s bankruptcy, to more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite these challenging times, however, Jason’s vision for success never wavered. His commitment to people, process, and technology has allowed Patriot Automotive group to remain profitable through it all.
“Everything we have is designed around our Reynolds system. From our service write-up process and looking at service history, to our CRM through the sales department looking at our customer base, to how we structure deals in our docuPAD® system.Every time you come into one of our stores, you get the same consistent message. There’s no lack of transparency, no lack of customer service. Everything’s right there; service history, warranty history, term of loan or lease, and interest rate. We can communicate with any of our customers anywhere, at any of our locations. No matter where they go, we have their information.We really want to make sure it’s all about the customer experience and how we can make things transparent and easy for our customers. That really is everything in our business. If you have people and process, everything else comes. Profitability comes simple.To know that we have a system that can warehouse three dealerships and hundreds of thousands of customers and information, it’s awesome. I never thought our system could be better than it is today, but every day it continues to amaze us. It’s something we would never want to do without.”
With a system like this in place, “success” in the dealership becomes clear: increased efficiencies, boosted revenue, reduced costs, improved experiences, and ultimately, greater long-term profitability.
Instead of focusing on one specific short-term result, dealers must shift to a dealership-wide approach that prioritizes improvement across the board. Because when you have the right people, processes, and technology as a focus in your dealership, as Jason said, “profitability comes simple”.
