Listening to David Long's All Things Used Cars last Friday was the best kind of words-becoming-actions. Both sides of a challenge came with open minds to explore both sides of the opportunity.
Vendor partners and dealers shared how to build healthier relationships within the store that will ultimately become healthier relationships with each customer the industry encounters. Here are my fly-on-the-wall thoughts. You can also listen to the full show here!
Transcend the Transactional: Transactional thinking is the killer of collaboration. An unwillingness to work, share, invest, and listen outside our network is slowing. this. whole. thing. down.
Instead, we may risk taking the health of the entire industry's relationship with the consumer experience as ours to care for. Like the dealer-consumer relationship, the dealer-vendor relationship carries the lingering impressions of each interaction the two groups have had, not just the specific encounters of the businesses.
Collaboration > competition. The only way anybody truly wins the long game is in a commitment to real collaboration across the whole industry. The only automotive retailer worth competing against is the one you were yesterday.
Keep pushing back, friends!