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Today's Guest: Bill Marsh of Bill Marsh Automotive Group in Traverse City, Michigan
Today's Host: Mike Kent

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Announcer:  Welcome to the Bill Marsh Chatroom, brought to you by the Bill Marsh Automotive Group.  Do better, a lot better, at billmarsh.com.  Now, here's your host, Mike Kent.

Mike:  And welcome to the Bill Marsh Chatroom.  This is Mike Kent, and I'm talking with Bill Marsh.  It is our intent for these chats to really talk about what's happening in the auto industry, both around the country and here in northern Michigan. Bill, how did a young Yale student going for his law degree end up selling cars?

Bill:  Well, probably like many of us, it was entirely by accident.  My father had bought a small Ford dealership about a year before I graduated from school.  I was in my first term of law school and went home for Christmas, and found out that his health was failing and the business was failing, and I didn't feel that I had any option but to go and see how I could see my parents through this.  And my intent was to get things back on track so they could sell the business and get whole again financially, and then get on with my life and go back to law school.  But, about the time the business started to get whole, I thought, gee, you know, I really like this.  So, here I am today, some 50 years later.

Mike:  And in that time, you ended up in northern Michigan.  How did that happen?

Bill:  This is an hour story, if you want me to tell it.

Mike:  No, we don't have an hour, but you can give me the abbreviation.

Bill:  I had roots in Traverse City through my grandfather, who was a singer.  He used to come up and work with Interlochen in the summertime as a guest professor back when Interlochen was merely a summer camp, wasn't a full-time school.  And he was also a great hunter and fisherman, and somehow he got involved in running a boy's camp on Skegomog Point.  So, my mother was a counselor, my uncle was a counselor.  As I was growing up, Traverse City was very topical in our family.  I used to look at the map and see all that water and think, gosh, that sounds like a really neat place.  I happened to be in Detroit once on a business trip and run into Julius Sleder, the local Ford dealer, and got friendly with him and ended up visiting Traverse City the next day and made up my mind that this was the place.  This is where I was going to move my family just as fast as I could make arrangements to do so.

Mike:  Ultimately, you bought the Buick dealership.

Bill:  That's correct.

Mike:  What happened there, because Buick didn't want to sell it to you, right?

Bill:  No.  There was an insider within General Motors who wanted the store, and he made it very, very difficult for me to eventually get approved.

Mike:  So, how did you get it?

Bill:  Finally, out of exasperation, I wrote a letter to the zone manager, saying that I am so certain that our action plan will work in Traverse City, Michigan.  And Buick, as you know, is now in last place in the market in Traverse City, and I will make you a guarantee that if you give me the franchise on January 1, 1982, by December 31st, Buick will be in first place in Traverse City, Michigan, or you can have your franchise back.  I don't know whether that's what got me approved or not, but I think it did get their attention.  And finally, on March 15th, we opened up the Buick store.  And, in fact, by December 31st, Buick was the number one selling car in the Traverse City market.

Mike:  How did you get from last place within the district to first place in selling Buicks in the area?

Bill:  Well, we were perhaps the world's first one-price dealer.  We literally sold everything we had.  We used to have one-price sales, where you have three different model cars of various prices and we would market them all at the same price.  And we really caught the public's attention.

Mike:  One price really seems to be a key.  At that time, you were a traditional car dealership.  You were still negotiating, but you would set a price for a number of vehicles at the same price, correct?

Bill:  Right.

Mike:  How did you eventually switch to a one-price car dealership, and why?

Bill:  Well, here again, in the early 90's, Saturn came into existence, and we were aware that Saturn was not only going to be a new automobile, but Saturn was going to reinvent the way cars were marketed, was literally going to reinvent the way a dealership is put together people-wise.  And I had always had issues with the way cars were sold. The basic approach to selling automobiles is a sham.  It's kind of a sham negotiation, where we hold all the cards and the customer feels that they are negotiating, but when we have all the information and they don't, it's really loaded on our side.  I was always uncomfortable with that, and Saturn represented a new way of approaching the market, where you respect people's intelligence, you respect their time, and treat them accordingly. 

Mike:  It is a type of car sales that was tried around the country, but not too many dealerships have stayed with it.  Why have you stayed with it?

Bill:  We knew once we made that commitment that that's who we were.  That redefined who we would be and we would never think about going back and doing it any differently.

Mike:  And how has it changed things for you?

Bill:  It has changed everything.  Perhaps one of the most important things that's happened is the quality of people that we have been able to attract to our organization that would never even think of selling automobiles for a living, for good reasons, you know, the reputation that this industry has over a long period of time.  But, we are able to attract a much higher caliber of person into our business and it has made a huge difference.

Mike:  We've got to take a quick break.  We want to come back and talk.  We're talking with Bill Marsh on Bill Marsh Chatroom, and we'll take a quick break and we'll be right back.

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Announcer:  We now return you to the Bill Marsh Chatroom.  Now, here's your host, Mike Kent.

Mike:  And welcome again to the Bill Marsh Chatroom, where we are talking with Bill Marsh about how he got the business up and running.  We're talking about the one-price car dealerships.  And Bill, let's face it, the car dealers, new and used, they don't necessarily have the best reputation, I mean a lot of fodder for Jay Leno with his jokes and that type of thing.  Was going to a one-price car dealership your reaction to the ethics of the industry?

Bill:  Oh, it's two things, certainly.  You know, I often remember one evening when my wife and I were out with some friends.  This is where we were back in Pennsylvania as a Ford dealer.  We were out with some friends in the dealership and when we got home that night, my wife said to me, you know, you're not the same man that I married.  I still love you, but I don't respect you like I used to because you tend to look down on other people; you tend to make fun of people.

Mike:  That's a tough criticism.

Bill:  Well, when you're involved in a situation where you're constantly trying to extract as many dollars as you can from every transaction, from every customer, as opposed to an approach to the business where the intent is to add as much value into the transaction as you can in order to make that customer into a client, somebody who's going to return and buy from you again and again and again.  It makes a huge difference in how you feel about people.  And probably that's the best part of it is that this is a way of doing business that respects people's intelligence, respects their time, and also respects their intentions that they're not out to get us, and so we should be out to serve their needs to the very best of our ability.

Mike:  We are on the Bill Marsh Chatroom, and we are talking with Bill Marsh.  Let's talk a little bit if we can, Bill, about the industry in general.  Obviously, going through some tough times.  There's bailouts.  There's government loans.  There's a lot of spotlight being shed on the auto industry.  In your mind, what's the future of the auto industry?  How is it looking? 

Bill:  Well, if you take a short-term view, sometimes it gets a little bit grim right now, but I don't think there's any reason to question the viability of the auto industry.  I think we're going to come out of this, probably having been better off for going through it. 

Mike:  How can that be?

Bill:  I would say the manufacturers are going to have to come out of this leaner and meaner than they went into.  You know, they were doing some things wrong and not paying enough attention to controlling their costs; not paying enough attention to building revenue.  And now, they're forced to.

Mike:  You didn't mention the quality of the vehicles.  What are the quality of the vehicles, like now, especially in comparison, the domestic compared to the imports?

Bill:  Well, you know, we tend to take that for granted now, because quality is a foregone conclusion.  I remember back in the 50's and 60's, and even into the 80's, I mean, there's no comparison between the product that we built then and the product that we build today.

Mike:  That's not the perception, though.

Bill:  No, it's not, particularly for the American manufacturers.  And, in my opinion, the biggest challenge facing the Chryslers and the General Motors and the Fords of this world is overcoming that perception.  I think it's as much a marketing issue as it is anything else in convincing the American people that we build products that are every bit as good, and in many cases superior in quality and in durability, to what comes from Asia and what comes from Europe.

Mike:  So, how does the public know, Bill, that that is the case?

Bill:  Well, again, I think it's largely an issue of marketing, not only on the part of the manufacturer, but on the part of the retail dealer.  We know that the quality is going up and what we have to do is look at the volume of warranty work that we did 10, 15, 20 years ago as opposed to what we do today.  That is a part of our business that is rapidly disappearing, work that is done under warranty, because the cars don't break down anymore.  And the other thing is that the manufacturers are building a product that they can have enough confidence in to literally put a lifetime warranty on it as Chrysler has done.  General Motors has a 100,000 mile warranty.  I mean, there's absolute assurance for the consumer that when they buy a product, if there is an issue, it's not going to be their issue; the manufacturer is there to stand behind them.

Mike:  Let's talk a little bit about Bill Marsh Auto Group.  It's Bill Marsh, named for you, but you recently sold the business a few years ago; sold it to your sons.  Where do you see the business going?  How is it doing?  Was it tough for you to let go?

Bill:  My sons came to me, oh golly, 3 or 4 years ago, and said I always told them that they would know when they were ready to take this to another level, and they said, Dad, we're ready.  We think we have got this figured out where we indeed can take it to another level.  So, I sold them control of the business.  I moved my office out of the dealerships, and for the last several years, they have been operating the business.  And that is probably; I was saying to my wife just the other night, that is probably the most satisfying aspect ever in my life is to realize that my sons are, indeed, taking it to another level.  And people often ask me, you know, do you miss calling the shots, do you miss making the decisions?  I am still involved in the business; on the peripheral of the business, I help with marketing, but in a very little way.  I am not a decision maker any more.  So, people say to me, you know, what do you miss?  And I'll say, well, certainly there are things that I miss, but that was a wonderful time of my life and so is this a wonderful time in my life.  It's different, but they're both wonderful times, and I can still live the business vicariously through my sons.

Mike:  You minimize the amount of impact that you have on the business, however, because you are still the soul of the business.  Would you agree with that?

Bill:  Well, that's nice to hear that.  I don't know that I necessarily agree with that.  I think they are firmly front and center in this business, and if I can represent the values that have long been part of this company, why that's, yeah, that's wonderful.

Mike:  It really is all about values, isn't it?  If you could have an elevator speech that you would give to the boys to say, let's talk about the values, what is the value of the Bill Marsh Group?

Bill:  I remember a service manager saying to me that, you know, ever since Jamie became my boss . . .

Mike:  Jamie, your son.

Bill:  Jamie Marsh.  He said, life became so simple back here. He said, whatever the issue; when we have a customer issue and the question is always what are we going to do?  With Jamie, it simply is what's the right thing to do for the customer?  It's about that simple.

Mike:  And that's what the value is?  Doing what's right for the customer.  Great.  We have been talking with Bill Marsh on the Bill Marsh Chatroom.  Thank you for joining us today, and we'll catch you next time on the Bill Marsh Chatroom.

Announcer:  The Bill Marsh Chatroom is powered by vertio.net.  Talk radio for the 21st century.



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