“Don’t ever mess with the hippo.” One of my best friends of all time from sub-Saharan Africa told me that human river waders who underestimate the aggression and speed of the hippo may end up being slammed and jammed in a very uncomfortable way by a fast moving gigantic watermelon on legs.
And so it is with the federal government’s Hippo Crisy, hired by the President, Congress and the Car Czar to assist in the gobbling up of America’s once vibrant car biz. Big government’s Hippo Crisy, a native of the Zambezi River delta and a veteran of combat with killer crocs, was brought on board as a contractor (three year term) with a salary of $5 million per year and with full health care insurance coverage, including comprehensive dental. Sweet package!
For the first few months on the job, the feds’ Hippo Crisy was tasked merely to bask in the sun on finely manicured lawns outside the enormous, energy-sucking “cribs” (hometown mansions) ...

 

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13)
Driving Sales community members, please know that my late Uncle, U.S. Army 2nd Lieutenant Geoffrey C. Ferris, Field Artillery, (Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, Purple Heart, Killed in Action at Beja, Tunisia, North Africa, May 6, 1943) and my late father, U.S. Army Major Stuart C. Ferris, Field Artillery (a veteran of the Omaha Beach landing and the infamous Battle of the Bulge), were both avid "car nuts" who would be thrilled to see what is happening right now on Driving Sales. Consider hoisting "a cold one" this weekend in their honor. They would get the biggest kick out of being so recognized by members of the automotive industry.
Readers who are veterans of military service or who otherwise appreciate the cost of freedom, take a few minutes during Memorial Day weekend to read my Uncle Geoffrey's posthumous citation for herois...

 

They live! They really do.
Not the skeleton-faced aliens in the Rowdy Roddy Piper sci-fi film of that name (“They Live”) who disguised themselves as humans and controlled the media spin on all current events. Nope.
Not the chain store shufflenos of all ages wearing service pin-adorned blue, orange or red vests bearing mindless slogans such as “How can I help you?” as they run away from you at breakneck speed if you should dare to approach them in an attempt to ask a question. Nope.
Not the fast food store burger slingers who respond monotonically to every departing burger chomper, “Have a nice day.” Nope.
Well meaning, well trained, highly skilled people within our own industry. They live. Conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs by years of repetition, sales and service professionals in the auto industry have taken to using and reusing the phrase “no problem” reflexively, day in, day out, whenever their customers might have req...

 

Many years ago when I was undergoing Army Special Forces training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, I was assigned to mentor, as my SF buddy, an airborne infantry lieutenant from a sub-Saharan African country who was attending the same course as a guest of the United States government. At the time, his country’s government had friendly relations with the USA. Due to changing political winds over the past two decades, I will have to refer to my SF buddy as “MSB” in this essay to insure his continued safety. Why? He is a prominent politician in his homeland these days, and there are those who might use an “American connection” against him.
During one of our many camo-clad jaunts through the woods of rural western North Carolina, we got turned around (big time) and had to sneak out to a nearby dirt road junction to determine our exact location. As we approached that intersection, we noticed three white males exiting from the side door of a nearby chur...

I drank Tang religiously as a kid and prayed that gulping down that orange energy drink would help me become a NASA astronaut. Tang ran one heck of an ad campaign, that's for sure. Alas, I never got to wear an astronaut's cool blue flight suit or to put my boots on the surface of the moon, but God remembered my prayers. You see, He allowed me, in His infinite wisdom, to get involved in the retail automotive industry. As a result, instead of having to travel millions of miles through boundless space to visit the Red Planet Mars, I need only drive three short miles to my workplace on terra firma to experience routine encounters of the third kind with Martians who visit my colleagues and me on a routine basis.
Before you dismiss me outright as a Discovery Channel-watching, UFO-believing whack job, please extend me the courtesy of reading this blog entry in its totality. Then, perhaps you will understand how best to win over your own customers from Mars. Because, yes, they are among us....

During a time long ago when dinosaurs still walked the Earth and I was a ninth grader, I had the good fortune to play right wing on my school's soccer team during the first year of that institution's soccer program. It was truly a learning experience, as teams with years of training and games under their belts thumped us with discouraging regularity.
One of my most valued teammates was named Peter. Peter was deaf from birth and struggled mightily to articulate and pronounce words. In spite of what we perceived to be Peter's disability, he would accept no limits on his activities and he would place no boundaries on his successes. Peter played soccer with a zeal that was well beyond remarkable.
Due to his hearing disability, Peter had to compensate for the lack of heard sound by becoming extra aggressive and vigilant with respect to his vision and his movement. His head was constantly turning as he raced up and down the field. He was unstoppable. He was undefeatable. He was a machine...

 

Omaha Beach. The next time you are tempted to feel sorry for yourself because your GM teed off on you, your skittish customer vanished into thin air (sans T.O.) after a demo ride, or you had to split a monster gross commission with a know nothing newbie who appeared to have used the film 10,000 B.C. as a sales training video and as a fashion guide, take a deep breath to regain your perspective.
Repeat the words "Omaha Beach" a few times, and thank the Good Lord that you are not wading ashore (today) into a hail of fast moving metal projectiles that felled many brave Americans on a bleak, late Spring day during June of 1944. The courageous men buried in a massive cemetery located above the beaches at Normandy, France, did not disembark from their landing craft years ago to buy Egg McMuffins for their sales teams at Mickey D’s or to treat their buddies to Denny’s Grand Slam breakfasts because last month’s used car gross was way, way up. No, their mi...

 

As Santa Anna’s disciplined, well trained Mexican Army prepared to conduct a final assault on the Alamo on the morning of March 6, 1836, one can only surmise what Colonel Travis might have said to Davy Crockett, “Yes, Davy, we’re in big trouble, but look on the bright side, things could be much worse, we could be the CEOs of Chrysler and GM in Spring of 2009!”
The rest is history. Santa Anna’s forces overran the Alamo in short order and took no prisoners. Travis, Crockett and their comrades went down fighting before they could declare Chapter 11 or be tossed out of their offices by the President of the United States or a Horse Czar. In the process, they became part of a Texas legend.
After the Alamo fell, Texans rallying to avenge the defeat took up the battle cry, “Remember the Alamo”, a slogan which remains famous to this day. Many embattled auto business professionals may suffer from occasional bouts of “Colonel Travis...

Heads up, dealer principals, general managers, general sales managers, Internet sales managers and sales consultants! Double check your battle rattle. Be sure you are good to go. An operations order will be issued before sunset. Tomorrow morning? Raid time.
Here's the good news: it's not a suicide mission. Here's the bad news: Chuck Norris has sent his regrets and will be unable to participate. That's unfortunate. Mr. Norris would be a great guy to have by one's side when confronting the enemy. All one would have to do is point at Chuck, turn to the approaching enemy, and say, "I'm with him!" It is likely that the enemy would either surrender on the spot or flee in terror. Reputation can indeed be a fearsome weapon.
You will get detailed information on the planning and conduct of the raid during the review of the operations order, but here's the gist of it, and it isn't pretty.
Reliable intelligence assets report that you have various personnel in your organization who a...

Stop your hand wringing about the swine flu. Set aside your concern about ebola. Worry not about anthrax. Malaria? Don't lose one minute of sleep thinking about it. NADA? Well, that's entirely another matter, a grave development meriting the attention of automotive dealer principals nationwide and perhaps even internationally from Andorra to Zambia.
I know exactly what you're thinking. NADA is the glue that holds us all together. NADA watches out for us in the halls of Congress. NADA is our industry's NFL and we are coaches and players on thousands of teams scattered all across the country. The NADA annual convention is a must attend affair. NADA is the fabric of automotive commerce in our great nation. NADA is our collective strength in the midst of the storm. NADA is our past, our present and our future.
Well, I have news for you. NADA is a cancer. NADA is a plague. NADA is a virus. NADA creeps stealthily into the air of automotive dealerships worldwide and takes an enormous toll...

 "The Gauntlet"
During the 18th century, visitors to Abenaki Motors’ showrooms in the northeastern USA often encountered stressful shopping experiences. The reins of each customer’s equine trade were routinely tossed onto the roof of a village lodging hut after the used horse manager had taken Sea Biscuit for a quick spin around the forest. Before each customer could state the current status of his search for new transportation, he was most often forced to run the “gauntlet”, which race entailed jogging between two long lines of Abenaki braves armed with war clubs.
As the anxious customer reflexively raised his arms to protect himself during this dealership-mandated run, he was whacked in sequence by “Meet and Greet” (the chief’s favorite son), “Trade Appraisal”, “Early T.O.” (the chief’s wife’s second cousin), “Demo Drive”, “Write Up”, “After Seller” and ...

With all of the "what to name your baby" books flooding the market for the past few generations, something unusual has surely transpired. No, it is not a conspiracy, to be sure, but it is definitely a phenomenon worth investigating. A million plus babies named "Justa" have grown into adults and, as soon as they have reached adulthood, they have descended like locusts upon automotive dealerships all over the USA.
They have swarmed our showroom floors, our service drives, our parts counters, our front lines, our websites and our telephone switchboards from all directions. And this all but inexplicable invasion of Justas continues relentlessly 24 x 7, seemingly unaffected by the current turbulence in the national and world economies. Well, every dealer may not have the Minnow's fearless crew from Gilligan's Island to deal courageously with the Justa invasion problem, but he can always call upon his own Justa Defense Force (JDF) unit to keep his domestic and import f...

During Motown's heyday, Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions recorded a soulful hit, "People, Get Ready", a knock out of a chart climber that has surely stood the test of time. Noted recording artist Alicia Keys re-recorded this beautiful song recently as part of the soundtrack of the inspirational film "Glory Road", the moving story of the 1966 NCAA college championship basketball team from Texas Western that featured an all African-American starting five in a turbulent era when overt bigotry and racism were still much in evidence across much of the USA.
The lyrics of this memorable song's first verse are: "People, get ready, there's a train a comin', you don't need no baggage, you just get on board, all you need is faith to hear the diesels humming, don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord." Overt religious meaning of the song's words and our own personal religious preferences aside, reflecting on the lyrics of "People, Get Ready" provid...

 

Last Easter Sunday, three AK-47 wielding Somali pirates were threatening the life of U.S. Merchant Marine Captain and Vermonter Richard Phillips, whom they were holding at gunpoint in a lifeboat. That reckless decision on the pirates' part turned out to be an extremely bad career move.
Let's just say that staffing managers at Blackhawk Down Employment Services in downtown Mogadishu need not be looking for any more inbound e-mails or resumes from those three job-hunting pirates, thanks to the outstanding marksmanship skills of three intrepid U.S. Navy SEALs who got the green light to drop the hammer on the modern day Blackbeards. The U.S. armed forces sent an unambiguous message to Captain Phillips (who was "in extremis"): "We've got your back." As for the pirates, the message was, "AMF", and that doesn't stand for American Military Forces.
Tight 360 is a term used in the military to denote a formation in which a small group of armed combatants ...

 

I was visiting a domestic and import brand dealership located in a large metropolitan area with a diverse, changing and growing population of first, second and third generation immigrants from all over the world.
One of the youngest members of the sales team had a light skinned brown complexion, angular cheekbones and was very slim and tall. I walked up to him, introduced myself and asked him where he was from on the Horn of Africa. He beamed, shook my right hand firmly and replied proudly, “Eritrea! I will bet that you have never heard of it.” I laughed as I answered, “Well, I was going to guess that you were either Ethiopian or Somali, so I was darn close to being correct!” I told him that I was really impressed that his country had successfully fought a difficult, lengthy war of liberation against neighboring Ethiopia after having endured decades of Italian and British colonial rule. He kept smiling and invited me to sit down at his desk and to sha...

"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war ..." Julius Caesar, Act 3, scene 1 (William Shakespeare)
"The Dogs of War" was a classic action film that starred Christopher Walken as the leader of a band of mercenaries (dogs of war) tasked with assisting in the overthrow of the government of a (mythical) African country named Zangara. The movie was actually filmed in Belize and is well worth watching, especially if one admires Mr. Walken's acting skills. What does all of this have to do with car sales, you ask?
Daisy Duke and Emmie Lou (shown in the photo above) are automotive sales professionals extraordinaire! These two fantastic female mountain cur / boxer mixes came to the Ferris family courtesy of West Tennessee Animal Rescue. Mrs. Ferris and I picked them up while attending the March 2007 Digital Dealer conference held in Nashville, Tennessee. Daisy Duke and Emmie Lou really like Dealer Communications President Mike Roscoe, since Mike convinced me ...

When the black powder cartridge smoke and plains dust had cleared and the last arrow had been launched at the Battle of the Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer of the 7th Cavalry Regiment was dead, along with five companies of his command. Prominent military historians and professional students of the American West have analyzed and dissected Custer’s Last Stand ad nauseam. Bottom line: Cheyenne and Sioux American Indians had inflicted on a respected regiment of the United States Army the worst defeat in the history of the Indian Wars.
George Armstrong Custer was certainly a complex character. He was described by some correspondents of the time as arrogant, brave, egotistical, opinionated, self-centered and self-promoting. Everything was usually “all about Custer” to an extreme extent. Custer did not spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on or worrying about the opinions of his own command or about the skills of his ad...