Automobile Dealer Magazine

The Extended Forecast... More Cadillacs

by Michael Roscoe

If you're ever looking for the #1 Cadillac Mega Dealer in the world, just go to Plymouth, Michigan, and you'll find Don Massey Cadillac, the longtime #1 Cadillac store in the world. Walk into the showroom and look for the man who speaks with the deep Tennessee drawl. If he's not in the tower or in the service department talking to customers, he's probably in his office right on the show-room floor.

Don Massey was born in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and entered the retail automobile business at the age of 14 when he went to Jacksonville, Florida, to work at a Dodge dealership during summer vacation. But Don's success story begins in earnest when he started selling used cars for a Desoto Plymouth dealer on Michigan Avenue in Wayne, Michigan, just outside of Detroit in 1955. From there he went on to Paul McGlone Chevrolet, just down the street and in ten short months of selling, Don Massey was made Assistant Used Car Manager.

"I thought that I had truly arrived at that point; I thought that I had peaked early and was set for life as Assistant Used Car Manager," Don said. Less than two years later, Don was made the General Manager. He remembers it this way: "I didn't under-stand why in the world they did that---I didn't think I was qualified." Apparently they knew something he didn't because Paul McGlone Chevrolet went on to become the world's largest Chevy dealership from 1958 to 1960.

Just when he had apparently made it to the top, fate dealt what initially seemed a cruel blow to Don Massey. As Don tells it, "In 1960, I had a health encounter that led my doctors to believe that I had to quit my position. I had to start eating right, sleeping right and working right or my working days were over. I thought it was all over; I left McGlone Chevrolet to retire. I started eating right, sleeping right and resting, and in only a couple of months I had recuperated. I was ready to go---I had to do something, so I opened a used car lot on Michigan Avenue. I made enough money in six years to last me a lifetime, so with retirement in mind once again, I moved to the quaint community of Plymouth, Michigan (just west of Detroit). I bought a little store that sold a couple hundred Oldsmobiles and fifty-sixty Cadillacs per year. I thought that it would be the perfect retirement---I'd work three to four hours a day and take it easy, take care of my health. Well, I got here January 1, 1967, and a blizzard dropped three to four feet of snow right on top of us. While I was digging out to do inventory on New Year's Day, I sold seven cars. I don't recall getting home before nine o'clock any evening since." Don Massey Cadillac in Plymouth is the longtime #1 Cadillac point and was the #1 GMAC Smart Lease store in 1995. They have also been a Cadillac Master dealer every year since the program's inception, 23 years ago.

DON MASSEY'S SELLING PHILOSOPHY

If there is a common denominator of Don Massey's success at McGlone Chevrolet, with his old used car lot and at his Plymouth Cadillac store, it is this: Don Massey loves selling cars - not necessarily his stores selling cars, but Don's personal selling of automobiles. Stories abound of Don's adventures in selling.

Like when, as a Chevy salesman, in the course of a half hour visit to his doctor's office, Don sold a convertible to the doctor, another convertible to his nurse and a sedan to the receptionist. Or the time when he bought a house and the former owner left with a new station wagon, the real estate agent leased two cars and Don sold cars to three other real estate agents. Did you hear about the time when Don had some remodeling done and sold two pickup trucks to the contractor---and a sedan to the painter? How about the time that an insurance investigator came into the dealership for information on an employee---he left half an hour later in a new car. He had to call back the next day for the information he had come in for.

When asked about his sales philosophy, Don had this to say, "I think that a lot of salespeople are actually afraid that they are going to sell a car. Many salespeople walk up to a customer believing they are not going to sell that customer a car. Well, I believe that a customer is sold when they walk in. If we don't un-sell them, they are going to leave in one of our cars. You have to take the time to acquaint yourself with the customer."

When asked to share his approach, Don continued, "First, I don't go straight for the wallet. I walk up, I talk to the customer, I try to get to know them and I listen. If you listen to customers they will usually let you know what they want and from this you can determine their `hot buttons.' I try not to spend too much time with a customer, but I never let them feel hurried, rushed or pressured. I try to let them feel comfortable while moving them along as quickly as possible, because if handled properly, it really doesn't take long to sell a car. Usually, a person comes in looking for a car, they have an idea of what they want and I listen to them for a few minutes. By listening carefully and asking the right questions, I can determine what their real needs and wants are. Many times I show them something that's more fitting to their needs and desires than what they were initially interested in. Usually, I make a friend---this person believes me. I sell cars every day---my customers buy one every two to three years. Surely I can use my expertise to determine the automobile that will best fit their true needs and wants---their `hot buttons.' As a bonus, I gain their confidence and if I don't betray it, I can build a loyal clientele that will send their friends and family to me. There's no mystery in selling cars, really."

DON MASSEY'S DEALER PHILOSOPHY

Don explained his Dealer philosophy this way, "I meet the finest people in the world, people from all walks of life. Hardly a day goes by that I'm not invited to some `blue blood' dinner or something of that magnitude, but I would rather be here with my customers. I like to visit with them when they come in for service in the morning, I like to visit with them when they come back at five or six o'clock in the afternoon to pay their bills. This requires a tremendous amount of courage---or stupidity. Each Dealer can label it their own way. You do run the risk of getting mooched pretty good out there. But after a while, you learn to roll with the punches. You learn to protect your feelings while you protect your customers and what you're really doing is protecting your business."

When asked to give advice to Automobile Dealers and/or aspiring Automobile Dealers, Don said, "My advice is to talk to as many customers as they possibly can, listen to as many customers as they possibly can, service as many customers as they possibly can and stay the hell away from as many meetings as they possibly can. Let the customers be their meetings. You can have analysts and consultants come in and poll the community to see what you should do, but you won't learn as much as you will from your customers." Don shared one more piece of advice for Dealers and Dealer wanna-be's: "Keep both feet firmly on the ground and don't overextend yourself---socially (time-wise) or financially."

MEGA DEALERING

Don Massey never intended to be a "Mega Dealer." When asked why he bought his second store, Capitol Cadillac in Lansing, Michigan, Don said, "Well, that's a good question. That's a very good question. Why does any successful single point Dealer look for a second store? I don't know if anyone can give the real answer to that. In my case, there was a very nice Cadillac store 70 miles away in Lansing that had been in another family for a long time. They let it be known that they wanted to sell so I went up, took a look at it and bought it."

This step, Don's first step towards becoming a "Mega Dealer," was typical of many Dealers' experiences with a second store. As Don tells it, "Needless to say, I didn't know how to run two stores. I could run the second store okay, but as I did, I was zapping this one (the Plymouth store). I was pulling strength from this one and it took almost double the effort to make the same money with two stores. Initially, the second store did not generate that much additional profit for us. Eventually, through trial and error, we got both stores running smoothly."

The acquisition of Don Massey's third store was a result of a combination of fate and salesmanship. First, the fate part. "My wife had been injured in an accident and was in a hospital in Englewood, Colorado, just outside of Denver," Don said. "For a time it appeared likely that she might be confined there indefinitely," he continued.

While Don was at this wife's side, he had some time during the day, which he one day spent at a local Cadillac dealership. As Don explains it, "I had a Chevy van to accommodate my wife's wheelchair and I was having trouble with something in the rear end. I took the van to a Cadillac dealership across the street from a Chevy store. I told the Cadillac service writer that I would rather pay a Cadillac dealer to repair my van than have the Chevy dealer repair it under warranty. Well, I really just wanted to look the place over. I spent half the morning there waiting for him to tell me there was nothing wrong with my van. In the meantime, the Dealer comes by and suggests we go to lunch. We see the Service Manager on the way out and after he also tells me there's nothing wrong, I tell him how to diagnose the problem and how to correct it. Well, the Dealer and I get back from lunch and the Service Manager comes into the Dealer's office to tell me once again `there's nothing wrong with your Chevy'."

Now, the salesmanship part of this acquisition. Don continued, "At that point, I looked at the Dealer and said, `Sir, why don't you sell me this place.' Now this man was a very fine person, a true gentleman---he looked and acted like he could have been Dean of Harvard. So when he said, `Why would I want to sell this place,' I said, `Well, sir, these people are not just selling your merchandise, they are selling your dignity and I don't think you're that kind of man.' Well, he got a little grumpy at that point, so I said, `If you decide you want to sell, I'll be at the hospital.'"

Don obviously talked, listened and found this guy's "hot button" because within two hours, he showed up at the hospital. "He had the cleanest set of records I'd ever seen in my life---tracked from day one. It was like a diary. So we did the deal. I got there the 11th of the month and we sold 138 cars that month, their best month ever. My darling wife got better, they released her from the hospital and we went back to Michigan," Don said.

From there Don Massey acquired Cadillac stores in Memphis (since sold to Bud Davis), Nashville, Charlotte, NC (two Arnold Palmer stores), Orlando, Downy, CA, Detroit and most recently, Lone Star Cadillac in Dallas (renamed Massey Cadillac). Although Don's notoriety comes predominantly from his Cadillac stores, he does own stores selling other nameplates.

Don picked up a full line G.M. dealership in Quincy, California, and a Chevrolet/Geo/Buick dealership in Cave City, Kentucky, as part of the Arnold Palmer deal. As Don tells it, "We had to work with Arnie on the Cave City and Quincy stores to do the Charlotte deal."

Don also bought a Buick/Pontiac store in Englewood and has been awarded three Saturn franchises in the Detroit area - one in Plymouth, one in Farmington Hills and one in Okemos. Don has also acquired a Honda store in Nashville.

DON MASSEY'S MEGA DEALER PHILOSOPHY

Okay, so Don Massey's got a lot of stores. You probably already knew that. How does he manage them? Read on as Don shares his "Mega Dealer Philosophy." "I guess you could go back to Harry Truman's philosophy of running a country: too much government is not good government. I don't over-manage my stores. I don't over-scrutinize our managers. I don't question their integrity. I get daily reports and if I see something wrong I move on it immediately---and I move on it in the form of discussion. If major problems can't be resolved that way, then I have to do what I have to do. I don't have management teams like a lot of so-called "Mega Dealers" do and I think, for me, it works better that way. I put a person in a dealership and let them make the decisions. Because they came up through the ranks with us, they know our policies and the way we work. We have one manual, but naturally everyone has different opinions. But they've been trained with us---they know how I like it done and they know how we treat customers. It's not complicated and if you don't stifle it with sophistication, it'll work."

When Don Massey buys another store, he doesn't make widespread personnel changes. As Don tells it, "When we buy a store, we hope that the Dealer is the only person we have to replace. When I'm looking at a dealership, the first thing that I want to see is the personnel files. We are, after all, in the people business. In Cadillac, we already know we've got the right cars, so if we've got a reasonable location and if we've got the right people, we're going to win."

Sometimes opportunity presents itself before Don has someone ready to move up, as was the case with his most recent acquisition, Lone Star Cadillac (now Massey Cadillac). Says Don, "When we bought the Dallas store we didn't really have a General Manager candidate in house, but the opportunity was there and I couldn't pass it up. I went out there and stayed about two weeks, the longest I've ever stayed with a new store. I brought in guys from Orlando, Charlotte and Plymouth and we had a lot of chaos, a lot of confusion. I called a meeting and I asked if any of the Lone Star guys have ever worked for a so-called `Mega Dealer' before. Some of them had and some of them hadn't. I said, "Well, this is what you don't want to have happen again. You don't want people coming in from the outside, confusing you and causing all the dissension and chaos that we've had here. This is what a lot of `Mega Dealers' do. This is what we don't want to do, ever again. You've got it, now take it and run with it. If you fail, we'll be back.' I think they're going to do pretty good." Obviously, Don successfully created a "hot button" for the new store management.

When asked to share his process of buying a new store, Don responded with his trademark simplicity, "I want to see the personnel files, then buy the dealership plus inventory---new, used, parts, etc. If the seller doesn't ask too much, we have a deal."

Although Don Massey is in the very early stages of considering two other stores, he didn't want to jinx them by talking about them too early. He did have this to say when asked if there were any markets that he's interested in, "Anywhere the Cadillac flag is flying is what I'm interested in. I like Cadillacs. I have other stores, but Cadillac is the one I like best. If you have a decent size Cadillac store, I'd like to buy it from you." There you have it, an open invitation to all Cadillac dealers.

Although Don Massey is, without question, one of America's preeminent "Mega Dealers", he almost seems uncomfortable being called a "Mega Dealer." Even though Don Massey owns seven of the top forty Cadillac stores and presides over a dealer group that ranks third in body shop sales, ninth in used unit sales and tenth in parts and service sales, he views himself this way: "I travel all over the country and when people ask me what I do, I don't tell them I'm a `Mega Dealer' or I own a dozen car dealerships," said Don. "They ask me what I do and I tell them `I sell Cadillacs.' That's what I do. We have some other dealerships, but I sell Cadillacs, that's what I do for a living. That's what I like to do."