Continental Motors

CONTINENTAL MOTORS GROUP have to bounce every daily operational idea off my brother and cousin makes things easier. But we come together very democratically for the larger Group decisions – three decision-makers and the majority wins. And we all respect that.” Even though the Group still operates with its traditional family values intact, car buying and car selling have both changed radically since John and Herm’s day. Aaron Nelson, Cheryl’s son, explains a bit about the former: “Most people, nowadays,with everything online, are just a couple of clicks away from getting a price,”he says.“They can essentially shop at five different dealers in a matter of minutes. I do the internet sales, now, and I spend all my hours with internet leads, phone calls, and people calling in and asking,‘Is that car available; is this available?’ And the first thing they’ll tell you is,‘I’m also looking at other cars just like it.’ It could be different makes, but if it’s the same size vehicle, theymight be looking at a Nissan, a Honda, a Toyota, and you have to win them over with why your brand is better. So, the com- petitiveness is definitely there on the internet; it’s the first step of shopping around.” Joel talks about how things have changed in the showroom: “The three stores that I operate on a daily basis are Acura, Audi, and Mazda. At those three stores, we’ve initiated some additional po- sitions in the showroom, which we call product specialists, which are salaried positions; they’re not commissioned. I like to think of them as cus- tomer service agents where they’re presenting the product and answering questions. If they want to get to numbers, we have a manager come in and work the numbers. That’s been about two years in the making and it seems to be pretty well-accept- ed by people walking in the door; they like that type of approach.” Cheryl talks about the expansion of customer amenities, such as the opportunity to have their cars picked up at home, for service. “That’s now standard procedure,” she states. “There are cookies, apples, dog treats, several big screen TVs. Ten years ago that was an exception. But we’re willing and flexible enough to serve their needs. And we’re always conscious of peoples’ time. That is the determining factor in how good their experience is. They come in, they know what they want, they know about what they’re going to pay. That’s the fast and easy part. It’s now waiting to get into fi- nance that takes a little bit more time if everybody decides at 3 o’clock that they’re going to buy a car and you’re ten cars deep. So, we have to be very conscientious about a customer’s time and show that we value that.” Joel adds that at his Mazda store, he just completed a renovation of the wait- ing area “We’ve added a business center and IPads