BMW Shoppers Want Dealership VIP Treatment – and Get It

The Rusnak name has been part of southern California car culture ever since Paul Rusnak began selling Triumphs in 1961.

Jan and Dean’s “Little Old Lady from Pasadena,” who the song calls “the terror of Colorado Boulevard,” presumably raced her shiny red super stock Dodge past the Chrysler-Plymouth dealership that Rusnak opened on that roadway in 1966.

Noting California car buyers’ growing interest in European sports cars at the time, Rusnak opened a Porsche/Audi store in 1970. The Rusnak Auto Group has since expanded to 12 other international brands: Jaguar, BMW, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Mercedes-Benz, Sprinter Trucks, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Volvo, Hyundai, Land Rover, and Maserati.

Dealerships are in Pasadena, Westlake Village, Arcadia, Anaheim Hills, Loma Linda and Torrance, all in the greater Los Angeles area.

Rusnak’s Audi, Bentley, Jaguar, Maserati, Porsche, and Rolls-Royce dealerships occupy historic buildings in a prime location on Pasadena’s West Colorado Blvd., along the route of the annual Rose Bowl Parade.

The group’s Porsche dealership is in a building that once housed Duesenberg coachbuilder Walter M. Murphy Co. Other historic former automotive tenants include Hudson, Nash, Essex and Pierce-Arrow.

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics designated the building that houses Rusnak’s Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Pasadena as a historic aerospace site. It was the first factory built by jet-propulsion pioneer Aerojet Engineering.

The group has four dealerships on the WardsAuto Dealer 500: Rusnak Jaguar and Land Rover Anaheim Hills (No.404), Mercedes Benz of Arcadia (No.76), Rusnak Pasadena (Bentley, Rolls Royce, Maserati, Audi, Jaguar, Porsche, Volvo No.10), and Rusnak BMW in Thousand Oaks (No.9).

WardsAuto spoke to Rusnak BMW General Manager Al Lemoine and General Sales Manager Mehran Forutan. Their store sold 5,622 units in 2015 (3,704 new, 1,918 used) and posted $366,218,289 in total revenue.

WardsAuto: To be No.9 on the WardsAuto Dealer 500 is doing pretty well. To what do you attribute your sales success?

Lemoine: We hold ourselves to a higher standard and we cater to clients not only locally but also in the greater Los Angeles area. We actually have clients coming in from northern California and San Diego. That definitely contributes to the number of units we sell.

WardsAuto: Do these customers have higher expectations of a car dealer?

Forutan: Absolutely. A client in this category definitely expects a little more than just the average sales experience and we cater to that.

WardsAuto: What do you do differently from a typical Ford or Chevy store?

Lemoine: The secret to success here is the Rusnak brand, which is iconic in southern California. It’s a family-owned organization and it has a very high profile in the area.

For this store specifically, our success is all about the team. We have highly qualified and highly motivated people in practically every position.

Half of our sales consultants are very highly tenured; they have a book of business that’s very rare to see in any kind of car dealership. I’ve been in the business for 30 years and this is without question the most talented and motivated sales management staff I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.

WardsAuto: When it comes to the nuts and bolts of the sales process, how does that teamwork help?

Lemoine: Ideally you like to have early involvement by your managers. We have a lot of veteran salesmen who don’t need much help from a sales manager, but for the others that do, our sales managers are involved early on.

WardsAuto: What value do the sales managers add to the experience?

Lemoine: First, you have that level of professionalism. They’ve been in the business for many years and they’re very polished.

Beyond that, everybody likes to buy a car from the manager. Nobody likes the back and forth or the grind. Any time you’re negotiating directly with a manager you feel like, one, you’re getting a better deal; two, you’re talking to a person that has all the information; and three, having a better experience.

Forutan: We value our clients’ time. We want to make sure they have a good experience. We listen to our clients, making sure that we address their needs and reach a price quickly and easily.

WardsAuto: Where do your best leads come from?

Forutan: We are fortunate to have a very large repeat client base. Most of our business is referrals and return clients. And we have an Internet department that contributes to our sales.

WardsAuto: Are you getting enough support from “the factory”? Is there anything they can do to provide more assistance?

Lemoine: We had some issues with that earlier in the year, but as of late, the incentives we have currently we couldn’t be happier about. We’re getting tremendous support from BMW. This store is going to be involved in a sales pilot. Later we’re going to be involved in a new service reception pilot. We’re getting a lot of training, a lot of support in different areas just to make us better and better and better.

WardsAuto: Can you give us details of these pilot programs?

Lemoine: We’re going the same way as Lexus and Mercedes. We’re getting the BMW Genius, which is a product or technology specialist like an Apple Genius.

They know these products inside-out, and we’ll be using them much earlier in the sales process to demonstrate vehicles and to take customers on road tests.

We want clients to have to talk to only one or two people in the whole process so it’s streamlined and comfortable.

We’ll also be streamlining our service reception and get to the point where you see only one face – your service adviser – when you drop your car off and you see that same face when you pick it up. The goal is to have you in and out of here in a loaner car in eight minutes if that’s what you’d like.

WardsAuto: What are your biggest challenges today?

Lemoine: Right now it’s our model mix. Sedans have gotten pretty soft, and unfortunately BMW relies heavily on sedans. We have a lot of sedan inventory that we have to work through. No one anticipated gas prices dropping like they did.

WardsAuto: Are you happy with the number of X3 CUVs you’re able to get?

Lemoine: Yes. They made an adjustment mid-stream because we were short for a while. We have plenty now.