Watched this today on C-Span. Considered it my first meeting as a member of the board of Chrysler and GM. My impressions. Chrysler is just sleaze. Been junk for a long time. Seems like Chrysler is really screwing their dealers. Most of the dealer complaints were directed that way. But who trusts the word of car dealers? I don't care about Chrysler anyway. Besides, now it's Fiat. 'Nuff said about Chrysler. Henderson is a hard-ass, and will lead GM to profitability. No romantic notions about bringing back muscle cars as volume leaders. He's brutally honest, except for one thing. I'm guessing here, but I think I know what was behind him not coming out and saying what he really meant about "underperforming" dealers. At different times he did use the words "customer satisfaction" and "poor sales." Never used them together and got deeper into what it meant in terms of strategic company goals though. The dealer reps at the meeting had many points to whine on about being dumped. Here are the main three I recall. "We are a profitable dealership." "My dealership has won 3 (unspecified) awards." "We don't cost corporate anything. We pay them even for the staples." Etc, etc. Let's look a bit below the surface, as I think Henderson is. "We are a profitable dealership." So you're making money. How's customer retention? Do they buy again, or did you screw them with price and poor service so they'll never buy another GM as long as they live. "My dealership has won 3 (unspecified) awards." BFD. So you got a hug. Were they for customer return sales or sponsoring a bowling team? "We don't cost corporate anything. We pay them even for the staples." What's the cost of turning off a customer on maybe 10 more GM sales during his lifetime? Ok, you get my point. Now I'm not saying GM quality itself doesn't play a large role in GM's predicament. I'm betting Henderson has that as his number 1 priority. Just saying he was holding his tongue on the real reason for most of the dealership axings. GM has good customer and dealership data on their computers, and I bet they ran some analysis on that in deciding who goes and who stays. I worked in the marketing department of McDonalds for a couple years doing IT for store sales, day part sales, store locations, foot and street traffic analysis, customer surveys, etc. It ain't rocket science, just business. I think GM is finally in good hands with Henderson. Besides seeming to have his head on straight, he's got Obama kicking his ass around to keep his eyes on making a profit instead of a Cimarron or Vega. Expect GM sales to exceed Toyota pretty soon. Maybe 3 years. When can I buy stock in GM instead of payroll tax deductions?
--Vic