Caught me, didn’t you! You’re absolutely correct. For the title of this article I have selected part of the five-year mission statement from the Starship Enterprise…not surprisingly, an event that also takes place in the twenty-first century.

Sitting here staring at the keyboard on my word processor; My thoughts are beginning to crystallize into a clearer vision and words begin to materialize on the screen in front of me. "Beam me up Scottie!" This is one of those special events that, back in the sixties, might have been referred to as a "Flow of Consciousness".

Thirty years of marketing expertise…sales…sales management and advertising has brought me to a point where I have to rethink everything that I have done and taught over the course of my career.

In the movie, "Back to the Future", a collection of well-meaning fools interfered with the "Time/Space Continuum" and created shock waves that had disastrous effects as they rippled into the future.

In the retail automobile industry, we’re experienced monumental changes for the worse. The changes that are currently taking place in our industry are not good for anyone, not for the automobile dealers, not for the manufacturers and these changes are certainly a disaster for the retail public.

Soap Powder Executives, Cookie Wholesalers, Video Store and Garbage Collection Wizards, Inbred Factory Droids, and now, Legislators and State Attorneys General have been experimenting and tinkering with a system that truthfully wasn’t broken.

If you’ve followed my articles over the last ten years, I have chronicled and predicted with laser-sharp accuracy every failure and misstep these alleged fools have made. However, the fact is, like it or it, the landscape has changed. The latest changes in the Truth in Lending Laws, specifically Federal Regulation Z, are going to immediately effect the way that we retail automobiles.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear here…I don’t like these changes any more than you do…they hurt the consumer and the dealer. BUT, we have to deal with the issues, and the main issue is "Compliance".

Negotiation has been with us in virtually every culture on the planet since before recorded time…Even during and before the time of Christ…It is not illegal, or criminal, or dishonorable. As a matter of fact, the procedures to limit dealer’s profitability that some of the Attorneys General are advocating resemble a political system created by Karl Marx. Excuse me, folks, In the United States of America, we are Capitalists and that is not a dirty word.

If some of you Political Liberals ever want to relocate from the Land of the Spotted Owl to a place where you would better fit in; I know a number of Car Dealers who would gladly chip in to buy you a ticket to Cuba where you might feel politically more at home.

In the negotiation process, the vendor starts high and the buyer starts low and you end up meeting somewhere in the middle. The public has overwhelmingly cast their vote with every reputable research firm in the universe that they prefer negotiation to get a better price.

There are however, those that represent the intellectual elite…The Politicians…The Factory Executives…Wall Street Opportunists…Publishers and Editors of Industry Publications…and Questionable Research Firms who are dead set on forcing changes in the industry that no one wanted. These people are, in my opinion, more screwed up than a pile of coat hangers.

Nevertheless, I have to concede that the time has come to reconsider and redesign the way that automobiles are retailed. Now, don’t lose your lunch here. I have not sold out, nor have I stepped over to "The Dark Side". Read on and you will see I am still the same old Ziegler…Relax!

Ideas that I am about to express to you are not new. As a matter of fact, If you will review the speech that I made at the 1993 NADA Convention in New Orleans, you will see that I have been working on this concept for more than seven years. In that presentation, I said that by the millennium, the year 2000, Retail Automobile Dealerships needed to consider a selling methodology that totally eliminates the Sales Manager and The F&I Manager positions. These departments are rapidly becoming obsolete.

Now, with recent changes in "Truth in Lending", Dealers are going to have to formulate sales processes that control the way that payments and rates are disclosed to the customer during the sale. No, I am not proposing some goofy, "No-Haggle" nonsense.

In recent weeks, My staff and I have been feverishly rewriting all of the sales procedures that we teach…again. I am currently in the process of authoring and redesigning the sales process with new "Word-Tracks" for Sales Persons and Managers as well as new Negotiation Procedures.

Certain State Attorneys General are going to start prosecuting (persecuting) and fining dealers for not disclosing interest rates to the customer at the time the payment is presented…This is even though we have no legal right to pull the customer’s credit file to pre-qualify them, according to the New Federal Trade Commission Clarifications. We are, in effect, Damned if you do…Damned if you don’t.

It has been ruled illegal to quote payments to the customer that include finance products such as extended service agreements and credit insurance, etc. "Payment Packing" is becoming increasingly sensitive. If your people are quoting "Packed Payments" to the customer or, unrealistically high payments, terms and rates, you could be facing fines and prosecutions and class actions in the hundreds of thousands of dollars of exposure.

Unfortunately, these are the accepted negotiating processes that most dealerships have taught and used for decades.

Regulation Z, as amended, now says that you must declare to the lender and itemize any portion of the loan applied for that will go toward covering negative equity in the trade-in. This law alone has been a nightmare of misinterpretation with almost every bank and state putting their own twist on compliance.

Some State Attorneys General have issued guidelines defining their interpretations of what constitutes "Deceptive Trade Practices" in the negotiation process. Dealerships that quote artificially high payments based on 36-month terms and inflated interest rates could find themselves fined or prosecuted.

One of the most profound quotes ever attributed to me is… 

"Average People With Great Procedures Can Do Incredible Things".

Sometimes I amaze myself. That statement literally means that I believe that the "Sales Process" is more important than the whims of the individual "Superstar".

The long and Short of it is that I am advocating that we abolish the Sales Management and the F&I Management positions. Actually, that these positions be merged. I am talking about Fully Cross-Trained Managers who are capable of performing every management function in the front-end operation of the retail automobile dealership.

Currently, I know of several highly successful dealers who are experimenting with variations of this concept. I have been in close contact with them as they bring these processes to reality.

I am picturing fully cross-trained "Hybrid-Managers", capable of negotiating the entire deal, front and back, selling all products, in one sitting, face-to-face with consumer, never getting up from the computer until the deal is done and contracted. In some larger dealerships, we might be talking about four or five teams of one Manager for every four Sales People, and one additional Manager whose total responsibility revolves around getting deals approved and paper bought at the banks.

I am still thinking about Used Car Specialists and Special Finance Managers in the equation.

As radical as all of this might sound, I think it is going to be an extremely reasonable, profitable, and customer-friendly process. It will certainly eliminate the back-and-forth negotiation procedures we have traditionally taught. The most important element in this process is that it takes Sales Persons out of the Negotiation. It will eliminate the risk that the Sales Person might quote a payment or interest rate or packing payments or any of the other habits that we have always endured that legally expose the dealer.

In the new process, the Sales Person’s total responsibility would be the selection and demonstration procedures.

Still in the experimental stages; We are still working out the details and the logistics for different dealerships but, I am confident that, "This is the Way". Some dealerships will require "Finance Secretaries" and additional "Support People" to implement the process. After all, it is still on the drawing boards.

Of course, most dealerships are still heavily invested in traditional negotiation procedures and we have to continue to work on consumer-friendly, legally acceptable ways to do business within the framework of the Sales Person and Manager, back and forth, negotiation. Those of us in the training industry are working overtime to be sure that our training teaches dealers and their employees to operate legally and profitably, in the spirit of the law, and, more importantly, in the spirit of creating a consumer-friendly, legal selling process.

In the meantime, I strongly suggest that every dealership needs to review your processes and examine your sales procedures to be absolutely sure that your dealership is operating within the guidelines of current laws and State Attorney General interpretations of what constitutes "Deceptive Trade Practices".

I have always said that I look forward to the day when CarMax lots would become big outdoor skateboard emporiums. Well sports fans…Have you guys (gals) seen CarMax’s stock prices lately? The legal description of the state of that company’s stock value is… "In the Toilet".

About two weeks ago CarMax stock bottomed out at just slightly more than 3 ½ dollars a share. My little boy and I showed up at the CarMax in Norcross early Sunday morning with our skateboards. We were wearing baggy pants and tank tops, hats turned backwards, helmets and kneepads. Much to our surprise, they still hadn’t taken the cars away. The security guy was not amused and asked us to leave. Oh well, we’ll try again next week.

Don’t ask me why! I was sitting in my office last week fooling around with my Charles Schwab account and I hit on this crazy idea. Before I knew it I had actually bought several thousand shares of Republic Industries stock.

My reasoning was pretty sound…there couldn’t possibly be any way that stock could go any lower…could it?

Well I worried about it all weekend. Then, I sold it this morning…at a nice profit. Oh well, that’s what I call a walk on the wild side.