Strategic Growth Articles

Strategic Growth

Good to Great Flywheel

Leadership Lessons - Good to Great Dealership Flywheel – SPOKE #5, Robust Marketing Process Drives Segment Sales (October 2020) - The fifth spoke in the upper right completes the Good to Great Flywheel — “Building your dealership brand with all segments” by employing a robust marketing process. Done right the process grows sales with all types/segments of buyers and generates momentum for the new to used cascade described in spoke 1. We’ll define the 5 steps of marketing and then the 3 critical elements of a robust process in a “great” marketing dealership. We’ll focus on element 1 in this article and will tackle elements 2 and 3 next time.

Leadership Lessons - Good to Great Dealership Flywheel Spoke #4 - Build a Balanced Dealership that Sells Solutions and Earns Trust (September 2020) - How your entire dealership hears and serves the customer is at the core of the 4th spoke of the flywheel. Dealerships that are built with balance and whose people are trusted to deliver and serve consistently will retain those customers and attract more new customers.
Leadership Lessons - Good to Great Dealership Flywheel – Leveraging Technology Assessing Technology as a Force Multiplier (June 2020) - Technology is a “Force Multiplier” for your dealership. The force multiplier concept comes from the military but to explain it simply, think of a hammer. A hammer amplifies your effort to produce more output. This idea fits exactly with the flywheel analogy for building a good to great (G2G) dealership as the leveraging of technology tools exert forces, speed and connection to increase a dealership’s momentum.
Leadership Lessons - Good to Great Dealership Flywheel Spoke 3 — Part 2, Build a Performance Culture: Be the Employer of Choice (June 2020) - The best dealerships attract and keep the best people. To move from good to great, you must strive to be the employer of choice. Do you want good people to work for you or your competitor? This spoke of the Good to Great Dealership Flywheel is building a performance culture, and it involves processes and people. Processes was part 1 of this spoke and here we’ll expand to people or being the employer of choice. In both, performance means discipline, rigor, consistency and willpower to succeed.
Leadership Lessons - Good to Great Dealership Flywheel Spoke #3 Build a Strong Culture & Leverage Vital Processes (March 2020) - “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” — a quote attributed to management guru Peter Drucker defines the core idea of this spoke. The best plans fail without a strong culture to support them. On the flip side a strong culture means your dealership is more likely to overcome setbacks and changes even without a strong strategy. To grow from good to great requires more than a strong culture — being great requires a culture of performance.
Leadership Lessons - Good to Great Dealership Flywheel Spoke #2 Invest to Grow: High Absorption (February 2020) - Absorption is simple to calculate, but to understand its “Good to Great” power in a dealership is complicated. Absorption is both a defensive and offensive strategy, and, although it is a financial metric that contributes to a high return on assets (one of two goals of a dealership), better absorption also contributes to creating repeat customers (the second main goal).
Leadership Lessons - Good to Great Dealership Flywheel, Leveraging the New to Used Cascade (February 2020) - What is the New to Used Cascade and why is it important as the first spoke to describe in the Good to Great Dealership Flywheel? There are many implications for leveraging the New to Used Cascade, which is why I choose to start our journey here. The biggest implication is the fundamental approach a dealership makes to selling machines.
Leadership Lessons - From Good to Great – The Sustainable Dealership Flywheel (December 2019) - What makes a dealership good? And what does it take to move a dealership from good to great? These questions are our subject for this column in 2020. Over the year, we’ll discuss each element of the Sustainable Dealership Flywheel, and how they link to build the momentum that distinguishes a “Good to Great” dealership.

Customer Centric Culture

Leadership Lessons - Drive a Culture of T.E.A.M. Work to Stay Customer Centered as Generations Change (October 2021 by Daniel Surprenant & George Russell) - MAC Advisors Daniel Surprenant and George Russell ask, How will your people take care of your customer?" Their answer: it's T.E.A.M. - work! They review the characteristics of each generation focusing on your people and their the behaviors and expectations.
Leadership Lessons - The Customer-Centric Dealership of 2030? (July 2021 by Jim Henderson) - MAC Advisor Jim Henderson discusses what customers see when they look at a dealership and what the right way for the future is. Is “customer-centric,” helping the customer? And does it lead to a more effective, profitable dealership in 5-10 years?
Leadership Lessons - Catch & Release or Catch & Keep (April 2021 by George Russell & Daniel Suprenant) - Can fishing help you appreciate the value of customer retention? If you’re “just fishin’,” catch and release is OK. But if you want to eat or sell the fish you catch, you want to do the things that hook the biggest fish. That’s the way to think about changing from conquest sales to a focus on keeping the customers you have. Retained customers are the most profitable.
Leadership Lessons - Focus on Satisfied Customers, Not Customer Satisfaction (January 2021 by Bill Mayes) - The customer is king! The customer is always right! The customer pays all our paychecks! You’ve heard these things and you’ve probably said them many times. I know I have. So, how can I possibly hate customer satisfaction?
Leadership Lessons - Creating a Customer Centered Culture - Lesson #1: Repeat Customers is the Objective (December 2020) - What have you learned since the Spring amidst the chaos of COVID-19? As a dealership leader, how will you apply those lessons to position your company to be relevant, sustainable and growing — how will you build your dealership’s momentum to move from good to great?

Build a 2nd Machine Age Dealership (January 2022 by George Russell) - Facing the challenge of 2022 - how to build a 2nd machine age dealership?

Building a 2nd Machine Age Dealership

Prepare to Power Through a Downturn

Think Like a Pilot for Stability & Sustainability (January 2023 by George Russell) - How to build stable and sustainable dealerships that adapt to accelerating change by being a leader who can prepare for turbulent times.
Prepare for Turbulent Times by Protecting Your People (March 2023 by George Russell) - Protect your people because in tough times, the numbers will never rush to save you, but your people will.
Add Equity Engineering to Your Strategic Planning for a More Stable & Sustainable Dealership (April/May 2023 by Jim Henderson) - Dealerships with a strong balance sheet can focus on operations and strategic growth opportunities during the downcycle, fueling higher growth once the business cycle turns.
Revolutionizing Support Using Military-Style Logistics (July/August 2023 by Jim Henderson) - Having the right technician — with the right knowledge, tools and parts — in the right place at the right time is critical. It is what the military calls Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) — a unified, iterative process that establishes the support of a capital asset, such as a piece of equipment.
How to Challenge Dealership Sales, Service & Parts Stereotypes (November 2023 by George Russell) - Understanding critical moments of truth and challenging traditional stereotypes can reshape your business to create opportunities for growth and success. This article will explore 3 specific moments of truth in sales, service and parts.

In Turbulent Times, Seek Stability by Adapting and by Seizing Opportunities

2025 Theme Intro - In Turbulent Times, Seek Stability by Adapting and by Seizing Opportunities (December 2024 by George Russell) - The current downcycle will test dealer leaders, particularly newer untested leaders and managers, who must also deal with the turbulence and uncertainty of new technologies, generational changes, and the economy.
Leadership Starts at the Top - Just Like Building a Grain Bin (You Start at the Roof) (February 2025 by Dave Dell) - What we learn through experiences forges our understanding and beliefs. For me, a core lesson about leadership comes from building grain bins.
Ag Industry Veteran: Can It Happen Again? (June 2025 by Leo Johnson ) - Inflation became an obsession of mine to figure out what was inflating, where in the U.S. the inflation was the worst or best, and how to make a buck with this variable between wholesale and retail in our industry. Learn if it can happen again and what you can do to sustain your dealership through an inflation period.
True Leaders Bow Before They Rise: Humility in the Face of Adversity (September 2025 by Jen Short ) - With tighter margins, your leadership style can either deepen a business crisis or it can be a vital source of stability. A tested and powerful approach in challenging times is humble leadership.
Tried & True Insights Into Equipment Dealerships (October/November 2025 by George Russell ) - Many of you are adjusting to turbulence from a cyclical downturn, employee turnover, tariffs, etc., etc. Elaborating on these truisms may prove leadership lessons.

Future-Proofing Your Dealership

Why Do I Need a Budget? Prepare for No Surprises (February 2026 by Leo Johnson) - If you haven’t yet put together a budget for 2026, it’s not too late … and I would highly recommend you start as soon as you’re done reading this article.
Future-Proofing Your Dealership: How to "Work on the Business" (March 2026 by George Russell) - Business advisors use the term “future proofing” to describe the discipline organizations need to prepare for generational success — economically, technologically, and culturally. Here are 3 practical leadership priorities that will help you future-proof your dealership.
Experience: Benefit or Liability to Future Proof Your Dealership? (June 2026 by Dave Dell) - Take a look at how experience impacts the future of a business. A diversity of experience leads to a balance of knowledge, capabilities and skills. Different experiences in business functions, industries and cultures create balance.
Future-Proofing Means Selling Systems, Not Machines (July 2026 by Jim Henderson) - The dealers who are still strong 15 years from now will be the ones who stop selling machines and start selling systems. Not as a slogan, but as a way of operating.
The Human Advantage: Coaching Leaders for a Future Powered by AI (September 2026 by Daniel Surprenant) - What we can say with certainty is this: the fundamentals of leadership have not changed — but the context has. Tomorrow’s decisions will be different. The human factor will remain essential, but leaders will also need to integrate robotics, automation, and AI-driven recommendations into their daily management practices. Technology will accelerate decision-making, but it will never replace the need for strong human relationships.
Future-Proof Your Dealership by Creating Capital in Four Dimensions (October/November 2026 by George Russell) - Financial Capital, Physical Capital, and Human Capital. The mindset shift ahead is the fourth form of capital: Digital Capital. It’s less understood, harder to define and growing in a way that makes it easy to underestimate — which is exactly why it’s the one most likely needed to for you to be competitive a decade from now, ie. Future-Proofing.