In Search of New Cheese

Sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor of the hotel ballroom...His eyes were closed, eyelids lightly fluttering, with his hands in his lap, both palms turned upward. A kinder, gentler, twenty-nine year old Jim Ziegler was chanting his secret personal mantra beneath his breath, over and over again. There were fifty people scattered around the darkened room, each one seeking a higher level of enlightenment.

For just a flicker of a moment in time, way back there in the mid-seventies, I found myself searching for answers to some very deep questions. It was during this time that I dropped out and embarked upon a mission to discover the meanings of the universe. Before I was thirty I had enjoyed a great career as a nationally known radio announcer and as a record-setting advertising salesman. Now, here I was broke and divorced, confused and angry...sitting in a hotel ballroom humming words that had no meaning.

Within a tight period of about three years there, I attended literally dozens of awareness seminars and self-discovery retreats. It was during this time that I first heard the story about the rats in the maze.

Fast-forward through time…August of 2000, a fifty-three year old Ziegler is rushing through O’Hare airport, returning home after conducting a four-day automobile sales management seminar. As he clears security there is a little kiosk that sells books right at the beginning of the "L" concourse.

The title of the book jumped off the shelf and grabbed me… "Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal With Change in Your Work and Life" by Spencer Johnson M.D.

It took less than an hour during the flight home to Atlanta to read the little book from cover to cover. What an incredible little book! It was very close to the way that I remembered the story with several small variations. Reading it today had the same impact today that I experienced nearly thirty years ago when I first heard it. Johnson told the tale of two rats and two little people who lived in a giant maze. They had designed their entire lives around what they thought was an unlimited supply of cheese. Of course, one day when they suddenly realized that their cheese was gone, their lives were temporarily turned upside-down. The book is about how the four different personalities dealt with the catastrophic changes they had to face in their lives...how each one handled the quest for new cheese. Each of us needs to read his book cover to cover, several times. I recommend that you give a copy to every employee in your organization and then conduct meetings to discuss what they got out of it.

Change is inevitable. It has always been with us. Even now as you sit here reading these words, everything around you is dying or being born. Nothing will ever stay the way it was. There is one character in the book that refused to accept change. I suggest you find out what happened to him.

Now don’t get me wrong here, certainly not all changes are good things. I guess what I had in mind when I started writing this article is that so many people refuse to accept inevitable change, whether it is good or bad. Whether you like it or not, the automobile business will not stay the way it was. It is up to us to mold the changes in a positive and productive way that will be good for everyone.

Recently, I went on record endorsing FordDirect.com, the new Internet Company owned and operated by Ford Dealers. Yeah, yeah I know…I know Ford holds a 20% ownership and a "Super Majority" veto and that they will be pricing cars over the Internet. I still despise deep discounted online pricing and I cringe to think we have to stoop to those lows. Yeah, I am aware of the negatives.

Believe me, it was a decision that wasn’t made lightly. Nobody distrusts Ford Motor Company more than I do. If it were only a matter of trust, I would have to say that the current executives at the very highest levels of that corporation have definitively demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither their dealers nor the public nor the government can trust them.

First of all, as I have written in nearly a dozen previous articles, the Internet is still a major non-event…and I predict that isn’t going to change anytime soon. We’ve seen our industry invaded by an army of virtual-reality geeks, nerds and propeller heads. We’ve all heard and read the predictions about the extinction of the traditional bricks and mortar retail automobile dealership. At the same time I have repeatedly predicted that these Internet companies were going to fail and, ultimately go bankrupt when their investors’ seed money ran dry. Guess what! Now, all of a sudden, almost every pseudo-quasi-expert columnist in every other industry publication is starting to agree with that. Where in the Hell were these people when I was the only one saying it? If you read Auto Snooze, you’d start to believe that that 99% of sales were happening online. Every issue is saturated with e-crap.

The point is that I don’t think the Internet is ever going to account for more than seven or eight per cent of total sales. Yes, there is always going to be that niche market segment of intelligentsia who will opt to buy their cars sight unseen with a keyboard. The greater danger to the retail dealer and to the public is the e-brokers and Internet referral services of every kind. I see this dealer initiative as the best weapon in the war with the Greenlight.com or the AutoByTel type of models. The aliens have indeed landed, and believe me, they are not your friends. We will always still be friends otherwise but I have a sincere personal issue with any dealers who continue to do business with any of these brokers or referral services. The factories are 100% right when they severely penalize dealers who sell cars through brokers of any kind.

I generally put Sonic Automotive in the category of being extremely competent retailers. (On the other side of the ledger from where I see AutoNation and CarMax) Did you see where Daimler-Chrysler finally made a muscle and pressured Sonic Automotive to stop selling cars through Greenlight.com? In a similar move back in August, Ford and Lincoln-Mercury had also convinced Sonic to discontinue selling Ford and Lincoln-Mercury products through Greenlight.com.

Joel Manby, president of Greenlight.com said something to the effect of… "We’re working with the automakers to educate them to make sure they understand the Greenlight.com model."

What a pompous pile of dog doo that last alleged Manby quote was. He’s going to educate the automakers. Well Joel, ole boy... "Excuse me! Ziegler here…No need to explain big guy. I think we already got your number."

I personally view Greenlight.com as one of the worst of the new parasites that have popped up on the retail landscape. I have placed them right down there in a Ziegler category of low regard right next to AutoByTel and J.D. Power and Associates.

(Raising my hand now) Excuse me; I’ve got some questions. Is J.D. Power and Associates in the car business too? Sure why not. I went to the official J.D. Power information center online and there was a link to CarClub.com from that website. There is a website called CarClub.com which is a subscriber dealer referral model which is endorsed by J.D. Power as a partner. On the CarClub.com website it says "a J.D. Power Club". Wow! Does that mean that the prestigious J.D. Power is in direct competition with car dealers and that they have an apparent conflict of interest that would evidently make any really honorable corporation have an integrity crisis? Are they still going to be inspecting Ford stores while, at the same time, they are representing other dealers in business deals? Are they helping to steer your customers elsewhere? Maybe those Ford dealers’ direct competitor is doing business with CarClub.com. Will their signed-up dealers be preferred? If you don’t play ball with the Power people, will you be zapped or punished? Is J.D. Power and Associates going to be setting Ford pricing while at the same time they are gathering your information and helping others to compete with these same dealers online? Does this apparent conflict of interest appear to be immoral or unethical or criminal to you in any way? When you think of J.D. Power and Associates, do you ever catch yourself blurring your eyes and imagining late night city street scenes with streetlamps and lots of makeup and fishnet stockings?

Not just Greenlight.com; I honestly believe that there isn’t one of these new Internet companies who don’t ultimately have an agenda of putting the established and invested retail dealer out of business. That’s why any dealer who does business with any of these people doesn’t deserve sympathy when they are severely sanctioned by the manufacturers.

Looking at the landscape with all of these dynamics in motion, I came to a conclusion that I’d much rather see a website owned and operated and somewhat regulated and controlled by the dealers than to see the manufacturer (especially Ford or General Motors) in total control. All in all, I think FordDirect is going to be a good thing. I will certainly support it.

Well, I have a lot of Internet marketing expertise and I certainly reserve my right to reverse myself later and withdraw my support if everything is not exactly as it’s been presented to be. There are certainly legal issues that must be cleared if FordDirect.com is going to operate in all of the states anyway. But, if or until those obstacles occur, I will personally enthusiastically support the FordDirect.com initiative.

Hey! How about them Mitsubishis? Can you believe that they actually covered up serious defects and hidden recalls for more than twenty years on more than a million cars and nobody in the Japanese government was aware of it? (Wink-wink) We’re going to have to award them the prestigious Bridgestone/Firestone trophy.

No sooner is the ink dry on that story than Mitsubishi dealers get caught red-handed falsifying sales reports. My God, what do they think they are? Cadillac executives?

I don’t know about you, but personally, I am really sick and tired of talking and writing about tires. Just when you think you’ve heard it all, The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is saying they are expanding their investigation to include…. get this…47 million additional Firestone tires manufactured under several brand names. (Holding my head screaming now) Argh-h-h-h-h-hhhhh.

Isn’t it amazing how everything that goes around comes around? I was writing about this situation, all over it, nearly three years before any of the other publications even printed the first word.

Ford Motor Company’s current problems were 100% predictable. If you will archive my articles all of the way back to 1997 when Alex Trotman first rolled out his goofy Ford 2000 worldwide initiatives, you’ll see that I was right out there on the front lines at the time predicting that Ford was setting themselves up to take a hard fall. I have always been critical of Ford and General Motors cost-cutting programs that I predicted were going to ultimately endanger the lives of their customers.

Most recently in an article titled "The Times They Are A’Changin" written back in December of 1999 I wrote... "Personally, I believe that unless the Ford Family does step in and take over, that Nasser’s regime will totally wipe out their family heritage."

I went on to say… "Ford Motor Company’s dominant market position was built on two cornerstones...a superior/motivated dealer body and superior, top-quality product. As for a quality product, we are talking about a company who is currently recalling more cars than it is producing and a dealer body that is demoralized and feels betrayed."

(Future article title "Auto Collections" the Bob Rewey legacy)

Then in another article titled "Quality is Job 1" back in March, I wrote these words… "Now comes the Alex Trotman era at Ford. Trotman’s vision seemed to signal a shift in priorities. British Bloke, this guy Trotman he was. Had his eye on the Global market…South America …emerging markets. Of course, at the time I pointed out that these were going to be Submerging Markets." 

Remember, it was Trotman’s initial five billion dollar cost cutting binge that initially started the ball rolling. I read that the original Explorer was equipped with Goodyear tires until Firestone underbid them by nearly ten dollars a tire. Informed rumor has it that Goodyear refused to lower quality standards to meet Ford’s pricing demands.

At the time I wrote… "I think ole Alex wanted to build the "New World Car"…a legacy that our beloved Jac Nasser is even more rapidly pursuing. It was under the Trotman regime that it first occurred to me that Ford was in decline, starting to decay

(James A. Ziegler on Nasser cost cutting, originally written for a speech October 1999)

They are so busy acquiring foreign car companies and developing emerging markets, dicking around with the internet and the retail process and all of that Jac Nasser international crap that they are about to get their butt handed to them right here at home."

Remember I said that long before there was a tire issue on the table. The stock prices were soaring when I wrote those words. I could archive my articles back to 1997 and find dozens of similar quotes. You can find archives of my past articles in Dealer Magazine on my website at Dealer Articles or at www.DealerOnline.com.

It’s relatively easy for some of these Johnny-come-lately columnists to be critical now after I have been accurately predicting current events…more than three years ago.

Manufacturers collectively recalled more than 19.9 million cars last year, more than 3 million more than they sold.

You’ve got to remember that Ford was already squeezing suppliers and slashing costs long before Nasser took the helm but then he (Nasser) said that it still wasn’t enough. It was never in the interest of the consumers, it was always about manipulating stock prices from the very beginning.

Well, Jac you made your own bed mate. It really doesn’t take too much of a fortuneteller to imagine that your neck is positioned squarely on the chopping block.

I just read where Jac was named number two in the "Automotive News All Stars" issue as CEO and president of Ford. (Seriously) The caption next to his picture says, "His push to reposition Ford pays off for shareholders". Honest to God, it’s true. No I didn’t make that up.

Well folks, let me predict there are going to be some more Earth-shaking changes in the immediate near future in our industry. With the price of oil being the "Wild Card" here, who knows how it will shake out? I never wanted to see Ford Dealers having to go through the pain that I knew was inevitable. The sad part of the whole equation is that it was always predictable and preventable. The supreme arrogance and greed of some these factory executives are beyond comprehension. Remember Napoleon, the little egomaniac, who marched an undefeatable army into the Russian Wilderness in the bitter cold of winter, outdistancing his supply lines? He got his ass kicked too.

I strongly suggest that everyone buys the book, "Who Moved My Cheese" and send it to your favorite factory guy (gal)…Somebody’s about to move a whole lot of their cheese…they’re gonna need it. 

Well folks, once again I near the conclusion of another article. I am getting tired; this article was difficult to write. It was a lot more serious and there was a lot less humor in the words. I am staring at a half-filled snifter of Remy Martin cognac sitting here beside the keyboard. It is already October 1^st. A roaring fire heats the room and my beautiful trophy wife, Deborah, just came in with a plate of sharp cheddar cheese and crackers. I will always get my cheese. It just doesn’t get any better than this does it.

More Food For Thought 

Off With Their Heads…Through the years both Ford Motor Company and General Motors have been accused of, factoring in the cost of fatality related lawsuits into the production cost of certain models. Juries believed the plaintiffs and awarded record settlements. Now, we have John McCain introducing a bill that would pass into law legislation that would require felony criminal penalties for factory executives who put a product into the marketplace knowing that it could kill or injure their customers.

In an article I wrote for this magazine back in November of 1999, titled "This Way to the Egress" I wrote these words… "The other thing I hear is that the manufacturers are concerned about "Customer Satisfaction" in a way which implies that dealers are the bad guys. Once again, let me point something out here…If anyone ever gets all teary-eyed over General Motors' concerns for customer satisfaction, please back up and remember they were just hit with a $4.9 billion judgment (since reduced) because they allegedly factored into the cost of doing business, approximately $2.40 a car, electing to handle the lawsuits stemming from survivors of product safety related fatalities. The main evidence was a memo written by a junior engineer in 1973, a document that several courts have accused GM of trying to conceal and suppress.

In a similar case in Georgia involving a fatality, a state court judge said in September, (1999) "In certain instances GM, by and through its counsel, toyed with and ignored court orders, ethical constraints and legal barriers." He also wrote, "Plaintiffs have exposed a shameful scheme by GM to defraud and mislead several courts, to thwart and obstruct justice and to enjoy the ill-gotten gains of likely perjury."

Excuse me, does that really sound like the "customer satisfaction guys" to you?"

You can archive that article at www.DealerOnline.com. When I wrote that article back in 1999, I was incensed with anger that any pious, self righteous factory executive(s) could ever have the testicular fortitude to chastise or punish a dealer for customer satisfaction issues if they themselves were willing to look the other way while they shipped cars or trucks that they allegedly knew were going to kill those same customers. Especially if there was smoking gun evidence that they had factored in the price of the fatality-related lawsuits into the production costs of the vehicles.

In other words, I believe that offense should carry the same penalty as any other premeditated homicide. Maybe some day the nation’s number one bestseller will be the memoirs of a former factory executive entitled "Big Bubba’s New Bride".

To speak with us about this topic

or any other, give us a call today!

800.726.0510

As always: Free Dealer Support