Volume with Honor: Schaumburg Toyota Proves It Can Be Done

Ten years ago, a hand-picked team of Toyota Motor Sales (TMS) associates spearheaded an effort called the New Era Business Project (NEBP). Its mission was to take a fresh look at the changing automotive retail marketplace (including the anticipated impact of the Internet) and determine how Toyota could—at the risk of mixing metaphors—remain ahead of the curve rather than slip behind the 8-ball.

Their findings could be boiled down to three words: "volume with honor." A longer version also took root: to become "the most successful and respected car company in America."

This visionary thinking from the past made itself known in the present during a recent conversation with Chris Haley, general manager at Schaumburg Toyota in the suburban hinterlands of Chicago. You see, four years ago, the dealership ranked 111th out of 113 Chicago Region stores in TMS’ internal customer satisfaction survey. Today, it is among the best in the nation when it comes to customer care. Yet, simultaneously, its sales have increased by more than a third. In short, volume...with honor.

What changed? Very simply, Haley completely overhauled the dealership’s sales process, eliminating pay plan conflicts between departments (such as sales vs. finance) and tying compensation—at least in part—to customer satisfaction.

Further, salespeople became product specialists freed from the need to negotiate price, sales managers and finance managers became business managers empowered to make deals and highly-trained billers were brought on to process paperwork efficiently and accurately. The net effect is that customers zip through the purchase in far less time. That relates directly to satisfaction for them and the capacity to process more sales for Schaumburg.

Albert Einstein defined insanity, in so many words, as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The car business can change, but only if it changes. Schaumburg Toyota, posting sales of more than 6,000 new and used cars annually with glowing customer comments, proves the point.

~ Contributed by Dan Miller, Corporate Communications