It has been quite a year. We started with a large amount of uncertainty with the international situation that seriously affected most dealerships. And as this is being written we are waiting for the 3rd quarter GDP numbers that consensus says will be in the 6% growth area. What a change.

The focus of my attention in January called upon matching expense levels to the gross profits realized in parts and service going backwards in time until you had a match in gross profit. To most of you this was the middle 90's. I know it was pushing too hard but the point was that we had to drive costs out of all of the processes that we have in the product support parts of the business. We must become the low cost producer of the highest value parts and services in the market if we are to prosper.

Then I brought back into the focus, I hope, the absolutely critical nature of customer retention. Without high customer retention we are lost. And based on my work in the field and surveys over the past few years we have a lot of work to do in this area. This led into market coverage issues which I believe is one of the most critical issues facing our Industry. Developing a strategy for market coverage and one in that is focused on parts and services is clearly necessary yet an area that we are not particularly success at developing. This leads into creating a parts department that is a sales organization rather than a process department. This is a huge departure from the norm. It is quite clear that we can't afford to provide personal coverage of all of our customers. It is cost prohibitive. But we can surely use the telephone as a selling tool. Just be alert to the "Do Not Call" rules. Putting together parts telephone territories such that more of our customer's get a "personal" touch from the dealership. And don't forget email. This is a wonderful tool to keep in touch with customers and communicate important information in a quick and effective manner.

However, in the midst of the hard work of serving customers and producing good results we need to have some fun so I focused on campaigns in the summer as a device to bring excitement into our world. Don't forget parts and service is a job that keeps on giving and taking. It is a job that must be performed efficiently and effective with a smile every day and many times in very trying circumstances. So let's not forget to have some fun. A very successful entrepreneur I worked with years ago liked to say - "let's have fun, make some money and be effective, and I don't care about the order". Good advice to follow.

Henry Ford was my focus in late summer as process effectiveness went to center stage. Time is the other element we don't get more of yet we rarely use it as well as we could or should. Whether it be in our own personal time management issues, to misdirected priorities such as free technical advise taking nearly 40% of our most scarce and critical management function - the service manager or just the number of times we do the same piece of work over in the pursuit of our jobs. Time effectiveness is critical.

Then we moved to the most overlooked aspect of dealership operations - training. You can reduce obvious expenses by not continually training true but at quite an onerous expense with under trained or under utilized employees. You can't retain qualified and motivated employees unless you show them in tangible ways that you are interested in their personal development. You will have a hard time attracting the quality of employee if they don't see a future through your interest in their personal development.

Well the year is nearing an end and it is time to review. How did we do? Did we make any headway in process improvement; in customer retention; in turning the parts and service groups into a selling machine; in personnel development programs? Are we now race ready for what most see as a stronger economy and growth in our Industry? I sure hope so and I also hope you have a safe and enjoyable holiday season. Be safe and have fun. I'll see you next year.

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