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| Jun 20, 2009 3:47 am |
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re: re: re: Executives spend an extra 11 hours a month online. |
Kurt Schweitzer
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Lamar,
The focus of a 20 Group is first and foremost to improve the profitability of our dealerships. The primary mechanism for doing this is benchmarking: We compare our own business' performance on a number of financial metrics with those of the other members in the group, and against similar metrics in our industry.
An example might be the ratio of available service hours to billed service hours. If the ratio is too high, mechanics are being paid but not working. If it's too LOW the quality of service is decreases because the mechanics are overworked and probably taking shortcuts.
Because we are in different markets many marketing approaches that are successful in some dealerships don't work so well elsewhere. For example, I have a large deaf community locally, and a significant number of deaf customers as a result. None of the other dealers have any deaf clients, so they have no ideas for marketing to them.
Each of the dealers in the 20 Group has made commitments to the group. Failure to meet those commitments results in various sanctions, ranging from pointed questions to expulsion.
There's also a fair amount of work involved, but the rewards (guidance towards a more profitable business) makes the work worthwhile.
Personally I just like picking the brains of guys with older, larger, and more profitable businesses. For example, how does a guy selling scooters in Minnesota wind up making $30,000 in one day in January? Or how does another guy wind up having his scooters featured in the TV series "Scrubs"? (These are the "fun" questions I like to ask. What's amazing is that those guys don't really know how they do it!)
There are times when it's really valuable to have someone with good knowledge of how your business works review what you're doing. That's what a 20 Group is for.
Kurt Schweitzer
Urban Village Scooters
P.S. We focus on PROFITABILITY, as opposed to revenue, market penetration, or other metrics. This means you end the year with more money than you started with, regardless of what the economy does. What would you be willing to pay to ensure you're profitable year after year?Private Reply to Kurt Schweitzer (new win) |
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