‘People’ Top Dealer’s ‘Five P’s’ of Management Philosophy
Dealership group’s flagship store contains a fitness center and health-care clinic for employees.
Jay Cimino places “people” at the top of his “Five P’s” management philosophy.
The others are passion, processes, product and profit.
The people who work at his dealerships are the beneficiaries of that philosophy.
Cimino is president of Phil Long Dealerships based in Colorado Springs, CO.
The group consists of 11 stores in Colorado and New Mexico. It’s No.73 on the 2015 WardsAuto Megadealer 100 with total revenues of $704.2 million.
Three individual stores are on the WardsAuto Dealer 500: Phil Long Ford of Denver (No.128), Phil Long Ford (No.129) in Colorado Springs and Phil Long Ford of Chapel Hills (No.374).
The flagship Colorado Springs store houses a fitness center and health-care clinic that employees can use free of charge.
A local physician, a physician’s assistant, and a nurse staff the clinic three days a week providing basic care, including health risk assessments and blood tests. A Ph.D. runs the adjacent the fitness center.
“It’s convenient and it allows people to leave their job, go for an appointment, then get back to work,” says employee Sherry Bliss. “They don’t have to pay out of pocket for a co-pays or deductibles or a lot of pharmaceuticals.”
Cimino says: “Our mission statement states that our primary mission is to be the best we can be and help our fellow employees be the best they can be.”
But he recognizes that human nature and circumstances being what they are, people can’t be at their best all the time and every place they are.
“That’s where the challenge is, because not every day are we the best,” Cimino says. “But even if there’s a crisis in a family, we want that person to be the best they can be for themselves and their family.”
He likens it to a train. “The speed of the engine is the speed of the caboose. Being the engine, you have to do your best to help your fellow team members be the best they can be so they can stay on track with you.”
He’s optimistic about this being a good year. “Have you met a car dealer who wasn’t an eternal optimist?” Cimino asks. “We see the market in 2015 staying pretty steady. Our overall growth, depending on the franchise, is from 10% to 20 % this year over last. We think we have the franchises and the team to do that.”
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