“You always have to be changing. You always have to be reinventing yourself. You always have to be coming up with new processes and better ways to do things.” — Bo Mandal, President and CEO of Mandal Automotive Group.
April 19, 2015, was a day that Bo Mandal will never forget. It was his mom’s birthday, which made the date easy to remember, and Bo had decided not to go into the office and spend time at home. He wanted to work in the yard and do some spring cleaning. As Bo pulled weeds and pruned the rose bushes, he had the dealership and how things were working running through his mind. “I remember that I kept thinking to myself, ‘There just has to be a better way to do this business. There must be a more hospitable way. I want our customers to feel like they are walking into an Apple store, but not just an Apple store, almost like an Apple store meets a Ruth’s Chris Steak House,’” Bo recalled.
That very day, Bo came up with a plan. He wanted his dealership to have a fun, vibrant feeling combined with great hospitality and excellent service. The next morning, Bo went to work, pulled his team together and said, “Let me tell you what we’re going to do … We’re not going to have salespeople; we’re going to have product specialists. We’re not going to have managers anymore; we’ll have leadership teams, and those leadership teams will help those product specialists.” Bo continued, “We’ll take customers’ orders and service them by teaching them about the products. And if they want to buy a car, we will deliver them a car.”
The plan started out with language changes, and procedure changes quickly followed. “Everybody looked at me like I was crazy at the time. I felt like I was herding cats,” Bo mused. “It was a nightmare. All the traditional-minded employees quit.” That was hard for Bo as he values his employees. The core set of employees who chose to stay got on board with the plan.
The next few months were filled with uncertainty and changes. Although there was no map to follow and the team was in unnavigated territory, the idea of where Bo wanted to take the company shone bright. He meticulously added procedures and continued to make changes, all while keeping detailed notes in a big black book. Bo likens this experience to “building the airplane while we were on it.”
At the eight-month mark, things had not come together as well as Bo would have liked. “I was missing a few pieces. I didn’t know what they were, and I was trying to figure it out, which was frustrating,” Bo stated. “I remember saying to my vice president, Daniel Ruggiero, ‘Let’s just say to hell with it and go back to the old way of doing things.’ Which is not in my DNA to be like that.”
That moment of weakness was met with a strong “We are not stopping now! We are going to see this through,” from Daniel.
Fourteen months and many changes later, the store hit an all-time record high volume of 250 units. Everything had come together and was working better than anyone could have imagined. The black book on Bo’s desk became the training manual. “I literally have two black books, big architectural books that sit on my desk to this day. We wrote the process of this whole thing from start to finish on how to make our dealership hospitality-centric,” Bo said proudly.
“We took the pressure out of sales, away from the customer and from our associates. When this reimagining started, there were about 100-150 units sold per month. Now it is in excess of 600 on average. Our customers are referred to as our guests now. We have reimagined how we go to the market, how we sell cars and how we do things. We completely changed from a sales business to a hospitality business.”
Today, guests are at the heart of all that happens, but it all starts with hiring the right people. “Guests are very important to what you’re trying to accomplish, and if your associates are treated right and trained properly, you don’t have to worry about the guest experience,” Bo said. “We hire for hospitality and train for culture.”
There are associates in the buildings from the time they open to the time they close; all they do is clean the facility and the furniture. “It looks like the day we built it,” Bo said. The floors are always swept and shined; the building gets a fresh coat of paint every two years, no matter what. When guests walk into the facilities, it looks like the day it opened — very welcoming and intentionally immaculate. Guests can further enjoy their experience with a menu of snacks and drinks that changes regularly. Now that says welcome!
The Mandal Auto Group has three stores on their main campus in the beautiful Gulf Coast city of D’Iberville, Mississippi: Mandal Buick GMC, Galleria BMW and Mandal Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram. The 25-acre campus is located right at the corner of I-10 and I-110 and has a little over 300 employees.
Bo Mandal has received Dealer of the Year for Buick GMC, the GM President Award and the BMW Dealer of the Year for seven years in a row. Additionally, Mandal Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram is the fastest-growing Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram store in the Southern Region.
The Mandal Group has as many women employees and leaders as they do men. In fact, most of the leaders in the organization are women. They shattered the glass ceiling long ago. Today, the company has found a niche in hiring, mentoring and coaching the younger generation. Bo encourages his employees “to be career oriented and have a path forward to a successful career, raise a family and buy a home.” One of the biggest accomplishments that Bo is proud to share is that dozens of associates, who are in their mid-20s, have bought their first home. That is truly amazing!
According to Bo, all of this was made possible because of the wonderful upbringing he had. He was born and raised on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. He and his two sisters spent time playing in and out of the water and learning the value of a hard day’s work. In 1998, Bo and his father purchased a dealership and together, through trial and error, have created something really special — a better way to do business, the Mandal way.
