I was reading Automotive News and struck by the headline "Whitacre wants more sales – NOW!"Apparently unhappy with the pace of sales and unable to take full advantage of Toyota's troubles, GM is has fired a few top sales and marketing executives, reorganized the sales department and is considering reinstating 600 or so dealers that were scheduled to be cut from the roster.
I'm not going to argue with his desire. What CEO wouldn't want more sales? Given the fact that the products in Chevrolet, Buick, and Cadillac dealerships are as good as they've ever been, and in many cases equal to or better than the comparable offerings from Honda, Toyota, Lexus, BMW, Mercedes and Ford, the expectation is almost reasonable. There's just one problem.
The Brand (or Brands).
GM Brands have a 40 year history of disappointing car buyers. Every year they've rolled out new models promising world-class quality, exceptional performance, alluring design. I know. I wrote a bunch of ads making those claims in the '80s.
After crying wolf for so long, people don't start trusting you overnight. Not unless you do something radical to demonstrate that you've really changed. I'm not sure what that is, but changing ad agencies and reshuffling the marketing department alone isn't going to get it done. That's just more of the same. And that's what has been holding GM back for 40 years.
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I was thinking of the Hall of Shame for Ford and Chrysler and zowie, wouldn't it be much easier to find 2-3 models during the 70's-90's that would be part of a Hall of Fame. Hmmm now that I think about it- a Hall of Fame would be much much more difficult-perhaps impossible. Heavy metal blah.
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You're spot on Harvey. "More of the same" seems to be the strategy. Look what happens when Toyota stumbles, the first thing Ford and GM is do is put the incentive needle back in. You would have thought they would have taken the opportunity to sell their products based on merit/quality rather than the deal (http://wp.me/pGyRI-6y) especially because that's what Toyota buyers are looking for.
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