The 20 club experience: ‘It opened my eyes up’
Andy Kent’s Beach Blvd. Motorsports in Jacksonville, Fla., is part of a Garage Composites 20 club for metric dealerships. Garage Composites has 20 clubs for metric, Harley-Davidson and European brand dealership.
Andy Kent’s expectation of the powersports industry has changed. And that’s saying something considering the dealer principal of a Florida metric dealership has been in the industry for more than 10 years.
In January, Kent attended his first 20 club meeting with Garage Composites. The 20 club peer review process of meeting with 15 or so fellow dealers in non-competing territories wasn’t new to Kent. But the level of accountability the Garage Composites’ 20 club expected was. "In my old 20 club, if you missed your goal, it was like, 'Dude, you’ll do better next time'," Kent said. "Nobody was in your face."
That wasn’t the case with his Garage Composites peers. In that first meeting, Kent saw the gross profit his peers were making and what they demanded from their staffs to achieve that profit. "It totally opened my eyes up that more money could be made," Kent said.
A couple of weeks after his first 20 group he had hired more sales staff, demanded the daily use of a traffic log and installed an accountability system with his department managers that enabled him to stay on par with his 20 group members.
The result? A recent month Kent characterized as "bad" in unit sales grossed more than what his best month did in 2015, before he started with Garage Composites. "It’s way better now, man," Kent said. "Way better. You have to understand that yes, you may be doing a great job now, but you’ll need to open your eyes and ears to get a better view of the profits that our industry can make"