Warren Buffett. But it seemed natural after catching up with Texas dealer Carl Sewell this year. Sewell's cancer fight helped shape the future of his dealership group, Sewell Automotive Cos.

The top state of residence is Georgia, followed by Texas. But he counts himself lucky for being born into a dealership family and gives credit to many others for his success.

Courtney is a Managing Director at the J. Morgan Private Bank in Washington, D. As a banker with 24 years in the industry, Courtney provides strategic advice and consultation to high-net-worth families, foundations and endowments.

That doesn't sound like a big deal to many people but he became the top luxury automobile dealership in the U. Anderson with saving his life, and he preaches the importance of seeking treatment at top cancer hospitals. The principles work in any industry - a fact that made Customers for Life an international bestseller. Value Your Trade Now. Among them are his father, Carl Sr. Sales In , The Sewell family began their next chapter of the car business in Odessa, Texas.

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Huber, who turns 36 a few weeks before training camp, chalked up career-highs in averages of gross and net yards in besting the marks of his one Pro Bowl season in April 7, After graduating high school Peter began his full time career as an employee of C. Abbonizio Contractors Inc.

Not Now. This is the Sewell Automotive Companies company profile. Annual Salary. We look forward to continuing to offer a high level of sales, trade-in, finance and service assistance for many more years to come. A former SMU linebacker who is also in the sports agent business with former Mustang coach Meyer, Blount, according to sources familiar with the SMU program, has willed 2. Carl has 2 jobs listed on their profile.

Easily add multiple stops, live traffic, road conditions, or satellite to your route. Carl Sewell Sr. Sewell is proud to give back. Active 9 President 1. Add garlic, bay leaf, red pepper, thyme, basil, oregano, salt and pepper; stir until well blended. Carl passed away on November 11 , at age Being Updated. We will be at the top when measured against appropriate business standards of performance in every function, in every department, in every dealership.

Carl Sewell. My new vendor is doing a better job for less money. Even though I liked the old vendor, they did not value the relationship with me or did not understand the basics of customer service, and acted on emotion when challenged. Worse still, they did not learn anything that might improve their service from losing my business.

I teach the client service employees at my companies to deal with customers by listening, empathizing, and acting to correct the issue. We spell out the steps that we will take to fix the issue and ensure that it does not happen again. We apologize and we fix it. Keep your eye on the lifetime value of the customer whose issue you need to solve. What is all of his or her future business worth? What are the referrals that he or she could send you worth? Think lifetime value, not single transaction, and you will find it gets easier to keep customers for life.

Ron Sturgeon, Mr. Mission Possible, has been a successful business owner for more than 35 years. He reasoned that if each customer has the potential to generate that kind of revenue, he could easily justify spending money on breakthrough auto service amenities like a free car washes and free loaner cars to increase customer satisfaction. Today, these amenities are common place but it was Carl Sewell who understood the value of a lifetime customer that have him the confidence to invest in customer service and forever change car dealer customer service.

First, you need the following information: The average dollar amount a customer spends with you in a year? Divide the total number of sales by the total number of individual customers Average gross profit percentage? Our rule of thumb: Is this something a friend would charge for? If you locked yourself out of your car, and you called a friend, would he charge you for running over a key?

Well, we won't either. Let's talk about why this makes economic sense. Think about the cost of a radio ad. Common sense tells me we're not going to get 28 customers for life from one radio commercial. Now, is everything free? Of course not. If we have to go out and install a battery and an alternator, we're going to charge you normal rates, plus the call. But if it's something unusual, like breaking off a key, we won't charge. We'll just help. If it's for a customer, there Is no such thing as "after hours.

It has to be. First off, customers will, upon occasion, ask you to do something after 5 p. And if the rule is: "When the customer says, 'can you,' the answer is always yes," it has to be yes then, too.

But there's a more basic reason why there's no such thing as after hours. How can we be giving customers the best service if we're forcing them to conform to our schedule?

By definition, that has to be inconvenient for them sometimes. We have to work when they want us to, not when we want to. So that's what we do. We're happy to deliver cars complete with bows on them, if desired to people's homes on birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas Eve — even on a Sunday or holiday.

We'll be happy to meet someone here at the dealership on Sunday morning, and give them a private showing, and if they want to show up in their pajamas, that's fine with us. Someone needs to come in at 9 o'clock at night, and we close at 8? No problem. We'll wait. As a rule, all of our salesmen, and service advisors, give out their home telephone numbers to customers. If you lose the number or don't have it with you, it's no big deal.

All you have to do is call the dealership. A police officer who's there after we've locked up for the night will arrange to have the right person take care of you. By city ordinance, we are required to give customers a guaranteed estimate of what we will charge them to fix their car. There is a tendency on the part of the service advisor to make the estimate as low as possible. He's afraid we'll lose the business if the customer thinks the quote is too high and decides to shop around.

But we don't want our service advisors to worry about that. In fact, we ask them to build at least a 10 percent cushion into every estimate. That way we can ensure the final bill will always be less than what we quoted. The result? Happy customers. Here's how it works. We don't rip people off. The nice thing about this approach is that we build in a safety factor, in case the job costs a little more than we thought. It also allows us to do a little bit extra for the customer, without charging him.

Say we find that the windshield wipers needed replacing. Well, we can replace them, and still give the customer back his car with a bill that will be less than the price we quoted. Now the customer has a strong sense that he has received additional value for his money.

But that may be 1 or 2 percent of the people. And if they really feel that way, then we're not the folks they should be doing business with.

Smiles are nice, but the real challenge is in designing systems that allow you to do the job right the first time. When people think of customer service, it's usually the warm fuzzy things that come to mind: saying please and thank you, yes ma'am and no sir, calling another store to see if they have the item in stock.

Doing a good job has two parts: first, doing the job right the first time; and second, having a plan to deal with things when they go wrong. It's like going to a restaurant: The staff can smile till their jaws ache and hold your chair for you when you sit down, but if the food is not good, you're not likely to go back.

What's needed in restaurants, department stores, car dealerships, and everywhere else are systems that guarantee good service, not just smiles.

McDonald's provides the best example of this approach to customer service. When McDonald's began their quest to serve the perfect french fry every time in every store, there were no national standards for potatoes. The U. Department of Agriculture didn't have a grading system which said this is a good potato, that one's better, and the one over there is awful.

In addition, no one knew exactly how hot the grease should be, or how you could guarantee that temperature would remain constant during cooking or how the potatoes should be stored to keep them from spoiling.

By the time McDonald's finished, they knew what kind of soil the potatoes should be grown in to achieve the consistency they wanted. They even created their own frying equipment to help ensure that the potatoes were cooked the same way every time. To me this story exemplifies customer service.

By devoting all that attention to potatoes, McDonald's has virtually guaranteed that the fries they serve you will be good every time because they've eliminated almost every variable that could cause them to be less than perfect.

All over the country the best service people have started thinking about systems. Take inventory management. The idea behind it is pretty basic: If you don't have in stock what the customer wants, you can't give it to him.

And if you can't give the customer what he wants, you haven't provided good service. Wal-Mart provides great service; it also has the best inventory system of any retailer anywhere.

Every item in the store is barcoded, and as it's sold, that fact is recorded at the check-out counter. At the end of the day, the data from all Wal-Mart registers is sent not only to Wal-Mart warehouses, but also to the company's suppliers.