Brad A. Black isn’t afraid of change. He embraces it.
“You need to change something every day,” says Black, vice
president of Downtown Ford Lincoln Mercury Inc. “Not just these
big changes, the little changes add up.”
The dealership has made many big and little changes since it was
incorporated in 1985.
Some of the changes have been related to the dealership’s product lines, like the pursuit and eventual addition of two Lincoln
Mercury franchises. Three years ago, Black and his management
team were looking for ways to at least stay even with the level of
growth to which they had become accustomed. It appeared to be
a difficult challenge, but Black thought that if the company added
similar vehicle lines, it would be able to increase sales without
requiring major changes to the dealership’s current operations.
In September 2006, the company purchased one Lincoln
Mercury franchise and in December 2006, it jumped at the opportunity to consolidate another one. So now, even though many dealerships are shrinking, Black says Downtown Ford Lincoln
Mercury has been able to maintain its sales by offering additional
product lines.
Another major change Black has implemented at Downtown
Ford Lincoln Mercury is the dealership’s Quick Lube Service. He
departed from the traditional Ford program, which required the
customer to either make an appointment, then leave their vehicle
to wait for the service to be performed. Black thought there had to
be a better way to fill that basic service for his customers.
“The first service you need on your car was to schedule your first
oil change,” he says. “It was a day out of your life, and that didn’t
make any sense. It didn’t make any sense for the customer; it didn’t make any sense for us.”
So instead of lifting a customer’s car, Black elected to put in a pit
so customers could stay in their vehicle and be done with the
whole process in about 10 minutes. He expected the business to
max out at about 500 customers per month, or about 6,000 oil
changes per year. Since the Quick Lube Service began in 1997, it
has grown to about 2,250 oil changes per month — or 27,000 per
year.
The unexpectedly high level of success for the Quick Lube business has held, even through the near-constant inconvenience of
road construction surrounding Downtown Ford’s location on West
Tuscarawas Street. Some form of construction has been impeding
easy access to the downtown location for about three years, Black
says. Dealing with the challenge of the constant clatter and din has
been quite a struggle, especially because everyone knows about the
construction and many potential customers just avoid the area completely. Still, Black wasn’t about to just stop selling cars until the
roads and bridges surrounding him were pristine and no orange
cones were in sight.
“We got our head around it,” he says. “It wasn’t, ‘Oh, boohoo.’
There was nothing we could do to change it, so we decided that
we needed to get ahead of it.”
To entice people to the dealership, Black needed to get creative. He
says the city was cooperative and helped him get some new signage
posted. The new signage’s desired effect was telling people how to get
to the dealership because all of the construction made actually driving to the dealership a harrowing, confusing ordeal. He used other
incentives to convince potential customers to brave the construction.
“It would have been easy to give up, but we didn’t,” he says. “We
actually lowered the price on the Quick Lube as an incentive to get people here.”
In 2007, Downtown Ford Lincoln Mercury’s sales were more
than $43 million — a 175 percent increase from the $15 million in
sales it racked up in 1985. No matter what challenges face him,
Black remains undaunted. He continues to plan changes to help
Downtown Ford Lincoln Mercury adapt to whatever the future
brings.
“Every day one of my goals is to try to improve the way we do
business or our facility or something,” he says. “Just make a
change. Not to make a change for the sake of making a change but
to make an improvement.”
HOW TO REACH: Downtown Ford Lincoln Mercury Inc., (330) 456-2781 or
www.downtownford.com