"Dem are Soff"

REPRINTED from THE FRONT PORCH 6/30/10

Reprinted from Front Porch Wednesday, June 30, 2010
I love this one!!

"Dem are Soff"

Thanks for the visit. And listenin' to a story from this ol' fart. I'll try to make it useful to you! Or at least somewhat entertaining.

If I wanted to be more topical, I could have titled this, "Why your Village Idiot Would be a better Bet for Your Local Mayor than Relying on DC to Govern Your Town 'Long Distance'." BTW, this story has no politicians and is free of sex. Wha...wait!! Where ya' runnin off to? Come back!!

There. Didn't know I was so handy with a rope, didya? The ol' dog still has a few tricks. Relax, I'll untie you after the tale I'm about to tell. Long as you first tell me it was life-changin for ya'.

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Some of you may recall my telling you that in '74 when I moved from Richmond VA to southern Maine and New Hampshire, I found I actually
had to dumb down my vocabulary to communicate effectively in the social and commercial sense. So I unlearned, and after a while became quite good at keeping it real simple. I've only recently recaptured the fun of using synonyms. Fact is, since I've become lax in controlling my free range vocabulary, I'm enjoying myself immensely, even if it annoys...

Which brings me to "Dem are Soff."

As you know in your own occupation, the reality is far removed from the public perception, and typically a solar system away from what you're taught in academia. (Look who populates DC---get my meanin', Vern and Vernette?) What it takes to really succeed is totally unrelated to perceptions of the casual perceiver. One of the ingredients that is sorely underrated is experience in the field---actually DOING the thing yer talkin' about doin'.

OK,OK... I know the rope burns are actin' up. I'll get to the crux.

I started selling Dodges at the dealership in Portsmouth, NH (made me even more grateful for the less than comfortable training I had received in my one year at a fast-track Richmond C-P dealership 2 years earlier).

My alcoholic General Manager and the Owner, were very smart. I learned from them that a big part of marketing cars is knowing the approximate value of trade-ins. At YOUR dealership. The person who merely looks in a book and attributes national averages to his appraisal, in lieu of field experience, is either a novice, a banker, or a future bereaucrat. If he's actually doing the brain work of "knowing" the market at his own dealership, by relying on a book of national averages he'll inevitably cost the owner and himself, as well as all employed there, dearly. By as much as, can you believe, 33%?

When the guy charged with "putting the number on the trade" underappraises the local market value, one of 2 things will happen, both not so good. (1) he'll miss the deal, losing it to a savvier dealer who wisely offers the trader more money, or (2) he'll cost his store hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in lost revenue by underpricing the trade to the retail market, or worse, underpricing it to the wholesale market to the real professionals of the industry.

If our naive appraiser "overvalues" the trade relative to his dealership's capabilties in the local market, the owner, depending on his vigilance level, may find he's had thousands of dollars of his finite, precious capital, frozen for months because of an over-priced car sitting on his lot, losing more value by the day. If your appraiser has graduated to mid-level shrewdie, he packages "mistakes" in bundles which he wholesales, usually "breaking even"---first sign there's something amiss.. The owner never knows what happened to him.

"Dem are soff."

Years later, after a rip-roaring success at turning around other people's dealerships at the GM level, I went to work at a southern Maine AMC/Jeep/Dodge store I was considering buying, to get the lay of the land you could say.

The owner was a New England French Yankee good ol' boy, who had reluctantly given up dirt track racing when Daddy turned over the keys to the dealership to him. Now before you think I'm telling you he was stupid, there was one thing he did that had kept him in business against more 'sophisticated', by a gnat's nose, competitors by whom he was surrounded. Since he didn't trust anyone else, he was involved in the store's working right down to having the secretarial staff burn the Bic Pen ballpoints to get the last drop of ink out before the user would get another one. And lest I forget one of his proudest moments, on the busiest day of the week, he pulls me off the floor to inspect his newest accomplishment: a commode he'd just installed in the service department. You can't make this stuff up, right?

Where this anal approach really saved him was that NO ONE was allowed to buy or wholesale inventory, order new factory inventory, and most importantly appraise the potential trade-ins, but him. And when we were negotiating with a customer, too often we'd hear the dread:

"Dem are soff." (read "Them are soft")

That meant that the trade in question was worth less at his dealership, and locally, than whatever the book might say for a national average. Yeah, it cost us 'deals' usually the ones you regret later if you're the owner. Let some other wet-behind the ears owner/manager put the mistake on his lot. So despite his relative illiteracy and total lack of personnel management skills, and did I mention no Harvard Business School degree, this fella had been eking out a fairly decent living from his Dad's gift for years. It ain't easy, and you can't do it by remote control.

I'm sayin' that within one's own bailiwick, knowing when "Dem are Soff" is far more useful than a law degree.

Here. Tell me you enjoyed my little story and I'll cut ya' loose. Y'all come back now!!