Hard-Charging Dealer Tries to Make It Fun

Some dealers shun subprime customers, treating them as undesirables. But Scott Simons insists, “You can do special finance with class.” He does so not only out of respect, but also because it makes business sense in his market.

He’s an outgoing but hard-charging dealer who represents five franchises in Staunton, population 24,000, a city in central Virginia. Simon has hit impressive numbers while turning around struggling dealerships.

“You can do well buying under-producing stores,” he says. Much of his success centers on knowing how to do deals for people with imperfect credit scores. 

“If you’re not involved in special finance, you are missing a big part of the market,” he says, indicating subprime customers account for more than half of the car buyers in many markets.

Simons, 43, showed an interest in dealerships at a young age. As a teen, he’d negotiate with finance officers on behalf of his car-buying father. He started working at a defunct Saturn store 20 years ago.

“I always told people I wanted to be a dealer,” he says at a DrivingSales Presidents Club conference.

In 2001, he took over a Honda store in Harrisonburg, VA, that was netting $100,000 a year. “We grew to $2.5 million a year,” he says.

Carter Myers Automotive recruited him to run Valley Honda in Staunton. That is now Valley Honda Volkswagen. More acquisitions followed, leading to Valley Nissan and Valley Subaru.

Carter Myers III, a former National Automobile Dealers Assn. chairman, is executive director of the namesake dealer group.

The Valley stores are near each other on a stretch of U.S. Route 50 called the Lee Jackson Memorial Highway named after Civil War generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

Simon holds a 26% stake in the dealerships. “Carter Myers' motto is ‘Owners do more.’” Last year, the Valley organization had $111 million in sales and $5.5 million in net profit.

Simons describes himself as assertive. “I ask the team to work hard. When we go in, we change the culture. We want to be market-dominant. When we take over a store, we don’t play nice.”

If a customer drives away in something other than a newly purchased car, he wants to know, “Why didn’t we sell that person a car?”

Simons admits he’s a bit hyperactive. “I get my hands dirty. I’m not sitting in my office looking at numbers.”

He acknowledges his approach is a bit controversial. “I get a lot of questions about it. But it works for us.”

The auto-retail industry is seeing more no-negotiation1-price dealerships, or variations thereof. But Simons, who as a kid haggled auto-finance rates, believes in bargaining vehicle prices. “We’re negotiators. You can make it work, if it is done in a respectful way.”   

Used cars represent 35% of his dealership deliveries. His used-car managers don’t interact with customers. Their main job is to appraise cars. Simons made a former mechanic a used-car manager. “He could drive a car and know if anything was wrong with it.”

He hired one of his used-car managers from CarMax “because I wanted to learn from him and them.” Simons’ subsequent take on CarMax: “They do some things right because they sell a lot of vehicles, but nothing special. Their employees are kind of like robots.”

Each of his franchises is characteristically different, he says. As a VW dealer, he’s feeling the pain from the automaker’s diesel-emissions scandal. “With VW, I’ve never worked so hard for so little.”

As an employer, “I hold people accountable, but try to make it a fun place to work. It’s tough sometimes.”

As a hirer, “I look for people who care. If they do, I can work with them. I can make something out of them.”

On paydays, Simons hands out checks personally and hugs staffers. “A hug can make an amazing difference,” he says.

But he defers to employees who are uncomfortable hugging the boss. That includes some women. “And the auto technicians don’t like to hug, so I give them a fist bump.”

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