I had spent The Past 22 years of my career working my way up to what I thought was my dream job, I was the General Manager of Crown Dodge in Greensboro, NC, but now it looked like I was an absolute failure. Perhaps I would be the next ‘Poster Child’ for the Peter Principal, (promoted to a higher level of incompetence).
17 January 1991 in world history would note the beginning of ‘Operation Desert Storm’ and just as I got my own store, little did I know that would scare people out of buying a new car for a few months. For my career it would seem the ‘Perfect Storm’ as adding to the lack of customers I had an over abundance of the worst selling Dodge products including, at the time Monaco’s, Sundance’s and Spirit’s. My predecessor had taken large sums of incentive money in the previous quarter by ordering more than his fare share of the colder selling products. He knew he would be gone, (Buying his own store) so why not pad his pockets a bit and make Chrysler happy at the same time.
Those were my excuses, yet by October that year I could sense that patience with our poor sales and service performances was running out. The death blow I thought was when I got our CSI, (Customer Satisfaction Index) letter that month from Chrysler. It was indexed on a 4.0 scale similar to High School. That letter came in red letters as the index for Crown Dodge for that month was 1.2 a Solid F-. Being that Crown was part of a Chain of dealerships the relationship to the Manufactures and their CSI scores was critical to the owners keeping and procuring franchises. Low CSI was not tolerated and I knew Royce Reynolds the owner got the same report I received and he was well known for quickly firing poor performing GM’s.
When I read that letter my blood went cold, I had nothing left, nothing and no answers. I can tell you the day and the date, Friday afternoon, October 11th, 1991, we only had 15 cars out and we needed more than 100 a month to make a profit. I simply walked out and got in my car and started to drive. Somehow, although I was not a Christian, I knew I needed to pray and for me that meant a prayer I had learned at a Presbyterian Church in 1987,(The Phi-Slamma-Jamma Cat’s Pajama Prayer).
The prayer as described in the article linked here requires that you get quiet and relax and listen for God. So I pulled into an open field off the highway and just walked out and lay in the grass and tried to hear from God and get quiet. Apparently I must have gotten quiet but instead of hearing from God I fell asleep, when I woke up it was dark. Now I was in more trouble, nobody at work knew where I was or my wife and everyone was mad at me. I went home totally discouraged knowing clearly I had no answers.
With all that sleep I woke early the next morning and again took to the The Phi-Slamma-Jamma Cat’s Pajama Prayer and after some time of really listening and waiting expecting to hear from God although still in my sin, He came. He simply said to me, “Robby, when all is said and done it won’t matter how many cars you sell or what your CSI score is, all that will matter is how many people you truly helped.”
Those words would change my life dramatically and still do to this day. That morning I knew I really had something, something I really could get behind and rally the troops, use the gifts God had given me to influence others. Although we didn’t have sales meetings Saturday mornings I called one that morning.
Now remember I was not a Christian, (and a car saleman) at the time and my language in meetings was well known for its expletives. Imagine the absolute shock when I announced to the sales team that I had heard from God. I told them exactly what God had said, “Robby, when all is said and done it won’t matter how many cars you sell or what your CSI score is, all that will matter is how many people you truly helped.”
Further I told them, “As of today we are no longer going to try and sell cars we are simply going to help the people who come in. That means if they don’t really need a car you tell them, if they need a Nissan help them get a good salesman at the Nissan store. If they need a low payment we get it for them, if they want a red one we get it for them. The last thing I want to hear you say about a customer is that you can close them or slaughter them or make a big gross, (that’s not to say profit doesn’t need to happen it’s to say it’s not the most important thing). What I want you thinking and feeling and planning is how can I help this person in front of me like it was your mother.
God had provided the answer and he gave me the clarity of mind to understand it though I had no understanding of sin or a Savior. A few months later He provided that in another Story “My Heavenly Promotion”. The following three weeks we saw unprecedented improvement in all departments so much that we out sold even the Honda store that October. Not only did I not lose my Store I was given a bigger adventure Crown Honda Volvo in Chapel Hill, again read “My Heavenly Promotion” . I do want to share that I know this was not from me, Jesus knew what it took to truly succeed and even if we hadn’t sold many cars, rather, if we did in fact help our customers we succeeded.
Beyond that, may I ad that He has since revealed much more to me, and to truly help people they too need a relationship with Jesus and all the freedom and joy that comes with that. I find it more than cool that 25 years later I am still helping people with their transportation issues through the Christian Car Guy Ministry and with His direction even making Disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of The Father and The Son and The Holy Spirit. After all, “when all is said and done it won’t matter so much of what concerns me now, but how many people I truly help.”
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