Pub. 60 2019-2020 Issue 5

26 Ronald Bowie, 35 General manager, Lonestar Toyota of Lewisville R ona ld Bowie is a second- generation dealer. His father has a partnership in a Del City, Oklahoma Hyundai store. Bowie’s father gave him his first job in the automotive industry when he was 16. He placed protective plastic on car seats. By the time he went to college, he’d expanded his work to other ac- counts. He would come home from college on breaks or weekends to sell cars on commission; as a result, he sold his first car when he was 18. He saw an opportunity with the internet and began listing cars on Craigslist for his father’s dealership. That was the start of the internet sales department for the dealership. Other groups soon wanted the same service. In 2017, Hendrick Auto Group re- cruited Ronald to become a general manager. He was offered two choices. The f irst was a problem store, a Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram dealership located in Charleston, South Carolina. The second choice was a dealership that would have been easier to manage. Bowie says that if he has a choice between two challenges, he almost always prefers choosing the bigger one. Therefore, it’s not a surprise that he decided to manage the problem store. He turned the dealership around. The dealership soon had a $2.2 million net profit. FCA US set aggressive goals; the dealership always met them. Bowie believes in two critical strate- gies for fixing struggling dealerships: 1. Creating consistent processes across departments. 2. Helping talented employees you already have to grow. The second strategy is especially im- portant because it gives employees a reason to stay, and the resulting reduced turnover makes it easier for a dealership to be profitable. The dealer- ship begins to grow from within. Bowie currently works as the general manager at Lonestar Toyota in Lew- isville, Texas. He says COVID-19 has reminded him of what he learned when he first got started in the busi- ness. According to Bowie, you have to be prepared for anything because you don’t know what can happen. No one at the dealership or in the auto indus- try, in general, knew the pandemic was going to upend the way everyone does business, and as a result, they weren’t prepared. He thinks the pandemic changes will be permanent in that dealerships will not sell as many cars, but they will make more profit.  under