Cover Story ~ Gail Duncan, Jerome - Duncan Ford
Interview by Michael Roscoe
In past cover stories, I have interviewed many of the giants of the retail automobile business. Some were the biggest, some were the best and some were legendary "lions in winter." This cover story features our second female cover story dealer, Gail Duncan of Jerome-Duncan Ford. Gail, with her general manager, John Hagar, can best be classified as an "up-and-comer" amongst the dealer ranks, and is the odds-on favorite to finish the year as the #2 Ford store in the country.
Tell me, Gail, how did you get into the car business?
Actually, it was not intentional. I worked here for six years while studying to go into social work. Sometime during the seventh year, I realized I had fallen in love with the business. I didn't plan on being in this business.
You were just doing it to make money while you were in the process of pursuing your real career?
Right. I started out working in the body shop and I ended up just filling in for people in every department as they went on vacation.
You were a utility player.
Right.
How did you get your first position in the store?
Eventually, I was made a service counselor. I got all of the customers who were upset. I really did enjoy the service department, and eventually, I ended up being a dispatcher. I then spent several years in F&I. It was at that point that I made the decision to go to Dealer Academy.
After seven years in the business?
Yes.
What happened after that?
After that I was parts and service director. My father had a general manager here who had been with him for 25 years. It wasn't until he retired that Dad said to me, "Why don't you get involved in the front end?" I still felt that there was a lot of work to do in the back end of the business, so I stayed back there so I didn't take on the open general manager position. When Red Carpet Leasing came into play, in the late '70s, early '80s, I became more interested in the front end. It seemed like a more sophisticated way to sell, rather than the old negotiating. That's when I got involved in the front end. Then, in '91, I became President.
John, how did you get to Jerome-Duncan Ford?
I will have been here two years this November 1st. I was working for Dealer Development prior to joining Jerome-Duncan Ford. Dealer Development had transferred me on a DD deal in Pittsburgh that went bad, so when I came back to Detroit-I'm originally from the Detroit area-I met with Gail, who was looking for somebody, and we put the package together and it's been a great marriage ever since.
Gail, what have been some of the biggest hurdles you have had to work through as you have grown Jerome-Duncan Ford?
Starting in '91, I knew that the place needed to be renovated. It was a 25-year-old building that was really worn down. I really got deeply involved in the top-to-bottom renovation. I said, "If I am going to renovate, I am going to really think about how we want to do business and get the employees involved." We had two or three years of talking about it and another three-and-a-half years of actual renovation. It was truly a life-altering experience. When I ran across John, I had, for eleven months, general-managed the place myself. It was a nightmare. I was so exhausted from the past couple of years, I desperately needed a good general manager. I couldn't be both dealer and general manager in my size store. I have a masters in guidance and counseling, and my favorite area is career development. But I wasn't able to lead the team at this point. I will add, the Ford Network tried several of the same initiatives with deeper pockets and also couldn't achieve the right outcomes. Technology wasn't there to assist either. I have a certain level of patience, along with not being afraid to try new ideas. But when the new process didn't work, it took me too long to alter the plans. So along comes John Hagar who, over time, developed his own team. They are just the most incredible, talented group I have ever seen. Yes, it is all about PEOPLEbut most importantly, it's not about a beautiful facility as much as it is about the RIGHT PEOPLE.
John, you said you were with Dealer Development. Had you worked in dealerships before working in Dealer Development?
Yes, I have been in dealerships since I was a little kid. My dad was general manager of a Chevy store. I used to wash cars when I was 14 or 15 years old. I've stayed in the business ever since.
What do you see as some of the keys to the growth and the success here? I know the new facility had to have a lot to do with it, but what else has been implemented at Jerome-Duncan Ford that you think has made a difference in your rise toward the top?
John: I think that facility and location really are key. We brought in a new management team. Basically, the whole management team of the dealership has changed over except for the parts manager. Being in the car business myself twenty-some years, I do know the best people around town. I like to create a total team effort, a winning attitude. I formed a team and molded it together to work within my system. The location is great and the facility is fantastic. All we had to do was bring in the right players.
Gail: My Dad has been such a community leader; he started the chamber of commerce, and we are just real deeply seeded in the community. I think that the community has been very patient with me. Maybe I am being a little bit hard on myself, but there is no way I could handle the growth that John is handling right now.
Without the facility and location, you wouldn't be where you are, but it appears to me that John is being too modest. It's like the quarterback who throws for five touchdown passes and then says, "It was the offensive line, they were giving me time." That's true, the offensive line is giving you time, but most every dealer in the country would like to go out and put a team together like you have. In less then two years, you have put a team together that went beyond a level that might ever have been expected. How were you able to do that? I know you know some people, but it's one thing to know some good people, it's another thing to get them to come on board and buy into your program.
We have a selling system that I teach and that I believe in-basically, treating the customer the way you would want to be treated yourself and with a full sales presentation. We have a six-step sales process. We try to give everybody who walks in the door a full sales presentation, a demonstration ride and try to get a commitment to buy the car today. We have accountability of everything. We have accountability of every phone call coming into the store. Everyone gets logged. We have to have accountability for everything that goes on in the dealership. Our advertising that we put into place, we try to get whatever works in the marketplace at that time. We tweak it and we hit it pretty hard. If something is working well, hit it hard. If it is not working, we go to the next thing. The management and everybody in that whole dealership has accountability of everything that is going on around them. Whether it is a phone call, or an up coming into the dealership, our salespeople are required to log every up that they get and follow up on them. It's a system I put into place in which there is accountability of everything. Obviously, being in the car business my whole life in this town and the people I have worked with over the years, I just put the right people in the right spot and tweaked them. I think we are very good at motivating, training and teaching. We try to make every department the best department in the country, whether it is the fleet department, the Internet department, the medium duty truck department, van conversions, new, used or truck.
John, when you said you know the "good" people in the area, are those people who were already producing and you got them to come over, or people who have potential and you brought them over, or a combination?
A combination. Obviously I'm not going to bring a guy in who was selling, and make him a manager right away. I can move him up the system once he learns it and has worked here for a while. I brought in managers who were managers at other stores who I have worked with in the past that I knew would fit.
You mentioned a six-step process for selling. Can you tell me a little more about that?
We have a system in which everything goes on a worksheet. It's like out in California, they use four square. We use an APB-type worksheet. We try to be very consistent. Everybody has to do a full sales presentation with every up, every time. Really, it's the follow-up in selling that counts. We make sure that we follow-up with everybody, every time.
Gail: If I could just add that what I see from John is, number one, everyone who comes here respects the heck out of him. I used to be like a little squirrel who would chase around to make sure that people were doing things in my "micro manage" days. Well, without a good system in place, they do it when you check on it, but otherwise, they never do it. John does things A through Z, and because the people respect him, the system doesn't fall between the cracks. It's like magic. Everyone knows the right things to do, but for some reason, over all the years, I have seen people stop doing it. For the most part, that doesn't happen here now. And they are passionate about it. The other thing that amazes me is that when we first started delivering 100 cars in a day or some astronomical amount, surprisingly, it is not stressful. Previously, people would have been laying on the floor. They were just so stressed every second of every minute. The most amazing thing is, they are having fun and you don't see one iota of stress. It just tells me that John has got a great system going. Not that there aren't tough deliveries every once in a while, but I'll tell you, it's minimized.
John: Do you see how the Rams are playing right now?
Please, I'm a Titans season ticket holder. But the Rams are really clicking on all cylinders.
That's what we are doing right now, we are clicking on all cylinders. If we can just keep the people going in the right direction and keep the systems in place, and because the ownership will let us, then we are going to go forward. Nothing can stop us. I think that is the way the Rams feel right now. I'm a sports guy and I try to create that team effort, the winning attitudes. Selling cars is like anything else, it's contagious. When they see salespeople volume selling and delivering happy customers, with smiling faces, everybody is on top. Our system we have in place does not fail. All we do is take a good salesperson and make them an excellent salesperson, take an excellent salesperson and make them a superstar.
Let's talk a little bit about your Internet strategy.
John: That is one area that is really, really difficult to gauge. I can't tell you where that area is going, especially in Detroit with so many A plan buyers. All I can tell you is, we've got the best Internet-type people available. We brought a couple of salespeople into the Internet department who weren't superstar salespeople downstairs, but they had good phone skills and good computer skills and right now we have a department of six or seven people. I think we do a very, very good job up there. We are real close to 100 cars a month, new and used, through the Internet department. Last month I believe was somewhere in the mid-80s. Every month it seems to go up five, eight or nine units.
Is it your opinion that you would not have gotten most of those sales without that department?
Oh, no question about that. I would say 80% of them, we would never have seen the people.
Of the Internet customers, how many of those are A plan or involved with the factory?
Very few. Almost zero.
What do you see down the road for the retail automobile business?
Gail: I am feeling very comfortable in that we have a bigger store, rather than a smaller store. I feel very comfortable that we have gotten past our renovation. I think that John and I are both fans of Blue Oval, in the sense that it is the right thing to do.
We have been pretty critical of Blue Oval. You've said that you are for it.
Well, I think where Ford shot themselves in the foot is with the two-tier pricing, but what I am saying, and I think I can speak for John too, is that we are both believers. When you go down the list of what you need to be doing within the store for the customer, most of it was on our list already. I can't say that I am a fan. It takes people away from the real purpose of Blue Oval, continuing to insist on the two-tier piece.
Here is a question that I'm sure you have thought of at some point, Gail. As I talk to a lot of other highly successful dealers across the country, they all seem to feel it's imperative to grow your business to have growth opportunities for your top managers and your top salespeople. Meaning, if they can only grow so far, then your top people are going to look somewhere else. How do you reconcile that with your wanting to have just one store and do that one store very, very well? Could what you and John are doing at this store be replicated at other stores?
Really, if he did approach me sincerely to say we need to do this as our next move, I think that he knows that I would listen. But I couldn't do it without him. I personally think that this one store has been enough to manage and I am enjoying my community and enjoying my girls so it would only be with him approaching me. I wouldn't be out there looking myself.
John: Let me say something about this. We still have a long way to go here. Who knows how high is high here and how many cars we can sell out of this store? We are constantly fine-tuning each department. Believe it or not, it is really, really a big job. I told you we are running on all cylinders right now, actually we are really not. We are running at a 75% to 80% clip of what we could be right now, and we definitely have room for improvement in every area, to get it running really finely tuned. We have had only two years under our belt, so we don't have 100% of our people in the right spots, doing the right things all of the time. I think we are still a year, year-and-a-half away from that happening. Because it has been such a short period of time, you're not going to have a 100% trained sales management team and 50, 60 salespeople, and the Internet department, your truck department, your van conversion, no one is going to have all that running on all cylinders in two years. It takes longer than that. We have made tremendous strides in two years, but we still have a ways to go in some of these areas. I think that we will be the number one Ford store in the country possibly next year.
Are you sure you want me to put that in here?
John: Tell Bert Boeckmann we are coming after him.
Gail: John mentioned to me a few weeks ago that, I believe starting in March of next year, he's got 700 Red Carpet leases coming back per month, so that's a job to look forward to. The other thing is that I was the proud recipient at Top 100 last year of the most improved dealers because, after my renovation, my numbers actually slid backwards. John got me that award from Jim O'Connor. He continues to say that he thinks I will get it again this year. That would be very special to me. I just want to do one store right. I am not as interested in six or seven stores at this time. You can't find a team like this just anywhere.
