I had the same reaction to this as I do to most of your posts, Jim.
You are clearly well informed on the art of selling cars. And I think most, probably all of your points are worth implementing. The GM card I can vouch for being broken, and for me it's because of the puny redemption limits on smaller, less profit-packed,
fuel efficient cars.
But I think what you illustrate here is the difference between a saavy GM Salesman and Company Loyalist, and a GM Product Fan like me.
In other words, I don't see much of a focus on product in your list, aside from the annual updates. And I guess I'd expect a list like this from you to be much different from the list of "how to fix GM" that, say, an Engineer who is passionate about cars and winning the technology battle (but who knows nothing of how to sell new cars to people who don't particularly need them) might write.
From what I'm reading, you'd be fine with GM selling old 200 horsepower 3800 Buicks ad infinitum if they'd just add some Planned Obsolescence in to each model year. Forget what the competition is doing. Beat the customer into submission with an array of sales tactics. Play on brand loyalty. Dazzle them with the Wookie in the corner. Get them in that car today, whatever it takes.
But there's a reason that the Prius is a household name, and it wasn't just an array of sales tactics from Toyota that made it happen.
Product matters too. I think you know this, but it is hard to find mention of product, or what kind of product can save GM, in your list here, or your posts in the past. It's a subject you seem to stealthily avoid -- possibly because you don't have an opinion one way or the other - or you prefer to leave the product engineering and design up to other people?
I often wonder, are you really a fan of GM
product, or would you be happy selling anything GM, as long as it will turn a buck? I'm not being critical of you personally here, I'm just curious. I'm sure someone like me would get a lot of raised eyebrows and disapproving stares if I went into a dealership lined with SUVs and told the salesmen that I thought the way for GM to save itself was to master the art of selling smaller, more fuel efficient sedans, hatches and wagons that would put Toyota and Honda to shame. After all, the dealerships and salesmen love selling those profit-packed SUVs and large cars with the bloated MSRP's just as much as GM does.
All that said, it is refreshing in a way to see how someone with a focus on sales would attack GM's decline, here on a GM fansite that is product-centric. I just cannot agree fully with the approach, because I see nothing in this article that makes the points about fuel-inefficient products that I did not too long after you proposed your list in the Winter of 2005/6. See here:
"GM in America is a Truck and SUV Company" - Shaking the Gas Guzzler Image Note the date I wrote it, and the price of gasoline back then. Was I psychic? No, but I saw GM sinking deeper and deeper into an addiction to the "Devil's Candy" (as one poster put it here) of Truck and SUV profits.
I also have worked with Japanese automotive workers in the past, and I know their PASSION for engineering cars - yes, even 4-cylinder cars - and a sense of competition that the Ron Zarella 3-brands of toothpaste style of marketing could never have hoped to match. As my co-worker once put it, "GM is a Marketing Company, Honda is an Engineering Company".
You can only polish a turd (or a lineup of turds) so much, and putting the 3400 in the Torrent, calling it "Pontiac's Commitment to Total Performance" --- now that was an example of some spin that only a salesman could love. And the buying public, lead by critical reviews, saw through it.
But in truth, a fresh approach like yours from the sales side, combined with my product wake-up calls to GM...well, we could have made a fine team. (ha ha
) Of course, I'm just an armchair product quarterback, and don't even work for GM or the automotive industry for that matter...
Now I'm thinking that it's possibly too little, too late, and am guessing that is one reason you are showing us the plan you once kept secret. You either want to show us ho you tried to change the tide, or you are hoping in a last act of desperation to save GM from itself.
Good luck.