Take a conservative approach
The loss of Saturn hurt Jackson Automotive Management with regard to morale, manpower and sales. But in spite of all the negative fallout, the business remained on solid financial footing. Jackson attributes the resilience to a conservative financial game plan in which he emphasized rainy-day planning.
To endure bad financial times, you need to lay the groundwork when times are more prosperous. Jackson lays the groundwork for future success by limiting the amount of debt his business shoulders.
“One of the good things about our business is that we’ve never had a lot of debt,” he says. “As a result, we did have some cash and were able to weather the storm. We didn’t come out unscathed, but we were still healthy. We’ve always run very tight with regard to our expense structure, so when a lot of people started dialing back their operations, we didn’t have to do a lot of dialing back. We were already efficient.”
With some cash available, Jackson was able to open a new Mitsubishi franchise in Florida, and transfer some of his Saturn employees there, helping to cushion the blow for at least some of his people.
To acquire financial flexibility when the economy goes sour, you need to refrain from overly aggressive spending when times are good and you have extra cash in the coffers. Just because you have the cash to spend on a new venture doesn’t mean you always have to do it. You have to know when to pounce on an opportunity that makes sense for your business and matches well with your business plan and when to hold back.
“My philosophy is that if you maintain a level of conservatism, then you never have to have a fire drill,” Jackson says. “A lot of businesses went into a fire-drill mentality, because they were overly aggressive and maybe even greedy. They may be full of what Warren Buffett calls irrational exuberance. But I think if you maintain a level of conservatism, while still being able to jump in and out of an aggressive mode when necessary, that’s a good balance. A certain level of conservatism breeds safety.”
If you are going to take a chance on a new business opportunity, make sure it makes sense for your situation and make sure you have performed detailed research on the market potential of the idea.
“Don’t leverage yourself too much from a debt standpoint,” Jackson says. “Be careful about building it and hoping they will come. Don’t go out and build without an absolute certainty that the market is there. That’s not what a lot of dealers did. A lot went in and overbuilt. They built buildings and leveraged themselves out with extreme debt. Then, as cash flow slowed down, they couldn’t make their payments. That happened to businesses as a whole, not just auto dealers. So you want to have more expense structure than you think you might need. I believe in running things more tightly as opposed to loose.”
The way you maintain that level of control is to measure your goals, your finances and your spending habits on an ongoing basis. At Jackson Automotive Management, each dealer communicates its projected needs for the coming year to Jackson and his corporate leadership team. Jackson wants his general managers to think along the lines of a CEO, taking a wide-angle view to the next year’s projected expenditures, so there are as few surprises as possible.
“If you’re anticipating needing extra personnel, giving them raises or bonuses, you plan that out, put it into your forecast and approval process,” Jackson says. “That’s as opposed to a random manager promising a raise to an employee and then you end up adding that overhead as you go. Or worse, promising a raise and then realizing you don’t have the financial ability to do it, and then you have a morale issue on your hands.
“You have to have good financial controls in place to pilot a business through a recession like this. You need to have those approval processes for capital expenditures and the adding of personnel. A lot of that involves good yearly planning, which ensures that you can maintain proper control over those types of things.”
How to reach: Jackson Automotive Management and Mercedes-Benz of St. Clair Shores, (586) 773-2369 or www.mercedesbenzofstclairshores.com
