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“When I first joined the company last year, I actually met with Bill Buckle Senior and Bill Buckle Junior, who both continue to live in the local area. Although they have no direct financial interest in the business anymore, when I met them I still assured them I was conscious that their name was on the building. I wanted to assure them that I would continue to strive to leave a great legacy. Ultimately, I take a lot of pride in the brand that I work for, and that has been the case throughout my whole career.”

Andrew has spent a large portion of his professional life in the automotive industry, having worked as the dealer principal for Adrian Brien Automotive in Adelaide, South Australia, for the twelve years prior to his appointment with Bill Buckle; both dealerships being part of AP Eagers Limited, Australia’s oldest listed automotive retail group.

Andrew says there have been many similarities between his two previous roles, in terms of the size and the number of vehicle brands held under each banner. Thanks to this experience, he was adequately equipped with the knowledge and tools necessary to grow the Bill Buckle Group. And the proof appears to be in the pudding, with profits soaring in 2015, resulting in the company’s most profitable year to date. Andrew says he implemented a few changes when he first stepped into the role, mostly to straighten out some performance and customer experience issues, which assisted in the business’ strong growth.

“My predecessor, who was here for two years prior, did some good structural work to get the business heading in the right direction, so I have been fortunate that I haven’t had to make a lot of structural changes,” Andrew says. “But the one thing that I believe I am really skilled at is getting the best out of our people and the best out of our teams. Early on, we adopted a vision that would guide us: that we are ‘Dedicated to be the best in all things’. It means applying ourselves to a cause or a process, and continuously improving to keep the business in better shape than before, whether that’s better in August than it was in July or in better shape in August 2016 than it was August 2015. Our people are aligning to this cultural approach: to be the best they can be, and to make sure that month on month, year on year, they are looking at ways in which we can do better. Staff cohesion and having the whole team believe in and work towards our shared vision for the business has been my greatest success.”

Andrew admits that it isn’t always easy attracting good talent for the workforce. He likes to have people living in the Northern Beaches area serving the local customers, and something he often talks about is the concept of ‘live local, work local, buy local’. “That has been really tough, though,” he notes. “There is very low unemployment on the Northern Beaches, so to attract people hasn’t been easy. But when we do hire, we hire slowly and thoughtfully.”

Applicants are put through psychometric tests, a series of interviews, and then, when they are finally on board, they are wholeheartedly welcomed into the place. Andrew adds that he wants them to feel like an important part of the organisation and as if they are part of the team straightaway. The next priority is then to invest in their training and development.

“What I have learned over the years is that people love to be invested in. And when they give their all, they deserve to be. So we spend an inordinate amount of time training, whether that be in telephone skills, customer service, or sales. When I first arrived, no-one was receiving appropriate training to improve their telephone skills, nor their customer-service skills. Now we have two external trainers who come in on a monthly basis for these areas. It not only improves our customers’ experience; it improves the quality of our employees with skills they can use both inside and outside the business. By investing in our employees, it also creates a point of difference because people in other dealerships hear about what we are doing and therefore we are able to build ourselves up as an employer of choice.”

Another focus for Andrew, in terms of his staff base, is to encourage and motivate them to do their best work. “I find that if you choose the right people, then most of them are generally pretty motivated,” he shares. “So the next step is simply to not demotivate them through my actions. Part of that comes down to being careful about how I critique. We adopt what we call a ‘strength-based approach’, where we continue to work with people on their strengths so they can get even stronger, and then we approach the areas that need development in myriad ways, tailored individually according to what suits them best.”

Each of the major vehicle brands under the Bill Buckle umbrella is run as an independent business within the group. They all have their own showrooms, their own management teams, and their own sales structures. With vehicles becoming more technologically advanced, there can be many differences between each brand, and therefore it is crucial to have specialist staff who can cater to the different needs of each individual vehicle and, ultimately, each customer. And with the internet allowing access to every piece of information imaginable, people are coming into the dealerships with more knowledge than ever before.

“Using the internet to research goods prior to purchasing has been something that has really ramped up over the last few years,” Andrew notes. “Consumers have access to so much information in all sorts of areas, whether they are booking a hotel or buying a car. Thus, they come into our dealership more knowledgeable than ever before. At all dealerships across the country, there are times when some potential customers will know the specifications of the car better than the salespeople. In the past, someone may have come in and been considering four different vehicle brands and would browse a number of showrooms before making a decision. What’s happening now is they are coming in with their mind already made up on what they want. Perhaps it’s a Toyota RAV4 or a Volkswagen Golf; whatever it is they want, they have arrived at that decision thanks to online research, social media, and through the influence of their friends. The only choice they have to make now is about who can assist them in the best way to supply them with their choice. And if we at Bill Buckle don’t facilitate that well enough, then their choice is to go to a competitor who sells the same type of car. We obvioiusly don’t want that to happen.”

Therefore, as well as his staff knowing everything there is to know about their vehicles, having a high degree of customer service is very important to Andrew and the Bill Buckle operation; it can make or break a sale. For this reason, he focuses a lot of his attention on evolving and improving these skills. He has recently attended a course put on by the Disney Institute — which is the professional development arm of The Walt Disney Company — to look at ways he can better engage staff and drive results that are customer-centric. He says there were a lot of principles that came out of the program, all of which were wonderful reminders about what Bill Buckle should be doing with regard to selecting the right people for the workforce, getting them involved with what the business is doing, keeping them engaged, giving them transparency and the scope to do great things, and making sure they have accountability and feel a sense of responsibility.

“For Disney, and for ourselves, we are on show every single moment of the day that we are open, and we are always being judged, whether we like it or not. So when someone walks into the business right now, or tomorrow morning, or next Saturday, we need to be looking as good as we ever have. Our cars need to be spotless, the showrooms must be neatly presented, and we should have available, up-to-date reading material and other specialised guest services. Every morning when we open, we need the dealership to look exactly like it did on the first day we ever opened our doors. We don’t want to look tired; we need to look like we are ready for business, and that we’re the best in business, every single day.

“That goes for the showrooms and for the service departments. I sometimes talk about the ‘five metre rule’; it doesn’t matter who you are or what your role in the business is — a car cleaner, a receptionist, or a salesperson — you must acknowledge a person if they come within that distance of you. It’s fundamentally about putting the customers, or our guests as we like to call them, at the centre of everything we do, and that’s because our actions are always on show.”

Bill Buckle has four showrooms, as well as two service centres — one in Brookvale and the other in Mona Vale — effectively servicing the entire coastline of the Northern Beaches. It is currently in the planning stage of building a new service facility which will replace the old infrastructure on the original Brookvale site. If all goes well, it will open in the later part of 2017. That upgrade, Andrew believes, will position the business well for many years to come.

“The main growth that I would like to see for Bill Buckle in the future is within the Northern Beaches region, rather than going out and chasing business all across Sydney. That broader approach in a market like Sydney with distinct regional communities simply doesn’t make sense to me. If we did that, it would be short-term business, and the likelihood that someone would come back to us and have a repeat relationship with us around servicing and even buying again would be quite slim.

“We play an important role as the conduit for the vehicle brands we stock, allowing them to effectively reach the customers out there in the market. Those franchisors are our key suppliers, and our financiers are also pivotal to our success as a business. I don’t think there are many other industries that have partnerships like we do. As well as providing our new vehicle floor-plan financing, all our financiers are constantly providing class-leading financial and insurance products to provide our customers with valued and competitively priced finance and insurance packages. Toyota Financial Services, in particular, with its Access financial product, allows customers to regularly update their vehicle to suit their lifestyle needs, knowing they have the security of having a guaranteed future value protecting them. Having quality products and services such as these certainly impacts on our success as a business.”

Currently, the market condition in New South Wales is looking very favourable for Bill Buckle. The strength of the economy is good, the increase in property prices is helping people to feel wealthier and thus have more disposable income for car purchases, and interest rates are low and attractive. “There is no doubt that buying a car, whether that be new or used, is much more affordable than it used to be,” Andrew concludes. “People are tending to cycle out of their older cars that they might have bought just three years ago, allowing them to enjoy all the benefits and pleasure that a newer vehicle can bring them, and their monthly payments are actually less. They can almost get into a brand-new car for less than what they were paying before. And, at the same time, over the last few years, vehicle prices have actually come down. These are all big factors for us when it comes to sales, and I believe this trend will continue strongly over the coming years.

“It’s an exciting time when there’s that forward momentum, and I feel that there’s never been a better time to be in this business.”