Automotive Management (AM-online) BUY A CAR CAMPAIGN motor industry action letter is weak – Ling critique
Posted on | February 12, 2009 | Comments Off
Automotive Management is owned by Baur Media and edited by Stephen Briers. Faced with declining new car sales they have written a letter for incapable owners of dinosaur car dealers, that they want posted to MPs. The letter is weak and inaccurate and (in my view) a bit pathetic. Dealers are meant to fill in the blanks and post to their MP. A joke. I explain (the letter is in BOLD, my critique in italic text):
—-
AM Buy A Car Campaign 2009
Dear MP
I am sure that you are aware of the particular problems facing the UK motor industry, which is felt most urgently by us local dealers.
(The particular problems are overcapacity, massive overheads, inefficiency and dominating manufacturer control, poor staff training, poor management, underperformance and low margins, dealer overborrowing and panic selling. I am sure there are more. Shouldn’t that “IS” be an “ARE”?)
People are just not buying cars – although we are doing our best to persuade customers that NOW is the time to buy a car (low finance rates, reduced VAT and great deals available).
(Wrong. People ARE buying cars, just at a slower rate than last year. However, my business is 20% up on last Jan. I finished last year at £355k commission, up from £280k in 2007. Clearly your statement is wrong. Maybe it should be recognised that NOW is not the best time to buy a car, with uncertainty, depression and risk. Maybe car dealers should explore other routes and methods instead of flogging the same old horse? Maybe all the car price rises have had some cause and effect? That has been partly self-inflicted!)
The local dealers, like ourselves, play an important role in the local community.
(…like maintaining demand for flag and helium balloon sales? Everyone plays a role, a car dealer is not special in the community!)
We recruit and train our staff locally – we employ XX people in (town names). Our staff support the local economy – they spend a large proportion of their wages locally.
(This applies to every business. Like Tescos, or me. Why are motor dealers different?)
We have invested in the very latest equipment to service and maintain your constituents’ cars and vans – enabling them to conduct their business too.
(Spent too much to try and create a restrictive servicing arrangement per franchise. Forced to do this by manufacturers. Independent garages do it much cheaper than franchised dealers, but the franchises/manufacturers try to make their lives difficult. Instead of investing intelligently, now they are over-specified for the current volume of work.)
We support community issues and charities (state examples).
(So does everyone else. So did Northern Rock. So do I. Car dealers are not special in that regard.)
The UK Government has stepped up and recognised the need to support the manufacturers, but without the dealer network to sell the cars, this help will be a waste of time, effort and money.
(Has it “stepped up” (terrible phrasing)? Mandleson has agreed to guarantee loans if car manufacturers want them. A thinning out of the dealer network is a good thing, there are too many of them – try multi-franchising, allowing dealers to run their own businesses and other novel ways to make it work? Do they really need muilti £-million outlets?)
We need help to stimulate the local economy and start selling cars again. If we fail, then xx people will lose their jobs and there will be a knock-on effect throughout the community.
(Ah, you and whose army will “stimulate the local economy”? The whole world from China to Brazil is trying to do that. You are stating the obvious and the ridiculous. On the other hand, maybe it will do the rest of the population some good not to spend loads of cash on the latest car? Is it really a sensible use of cash at the moment?)
Please be our voice in Parliament and obtain a commitment to enable us to continue trading through these very difficult times.
(This sentence is rubbish. What commitment are you asking for? This is so banal. What does “be our voice” mean? The Motor Industry has several wealthy organisations to do that – albeit very hopeless and confused in their requests/demands and exactly who they are representing, manufacturers or dealers. This sentence is generalised waffle, because like the weak SMMT and the rest, you can’t think of specific answers.)
—–
—–
Stephen, your letter above is a whinge and a moan. It is embarrassing. It has no specific requirement of the MPs. I think many dealers need a slap and a kick. So do manufacturers. They still go down the same old route to sales. If the best they can do is copy and paste a weak letter… they deserve to fail!
You do not mention the effect of the £ devaluation. That has impacted badly on imported cars. A big omission in your letter? Maybe you should beg for miracles on currency exchange rates, too? Did the Government “step up” to this currency collapse… and maybe ask why the UK car manufacturers are closing plants and capacity instead of taking advantage of a weak £ and moving production here?
What have I been doing: In the past 2 months, I have worked to increase my web visits from 50k in Nov to 75k in January. I have spent time to move myself up Google and am now behind just one or two massive players for most car leasing or contract hire searches. I have improved my website by making the best image library online (better than CAP’s by miles). Which dealers have done this? Web visits are up by 50%, proposals are up, sales are up. I refuse to allow my business to suffer while dealers experience less foot traffic. I can prove this with stats and invoices.
An example of doing something worthwhile for free: – I now have >1200 customer testimonials online, but who else bothers with this, why not? It is free. It gives confidence to buyers. But no one else (at all in the whole industry, no franchised dealers) can be arsed to do this stuff.
Why not stand up like men and say “BRING IT ON” to the public and the MPs, and fight? Instead of this industry-wide whinging? Why not use AM to give the industry a real kick back into reality, instead of your current group outpourings of despair?
Reading AM every week makes me mad, you are all in a gloomy depression. Instead of getting mad and getting even, putting on your boots and fighting for customers. How ironic that I am the girl? Try publishing this critique of your letter. – Ling
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