Nissan focuses staff on selling its
product
By Dale Jewett / The Detroit News
GARDENA, Calif. -- School is in session at the Nissan Division
of Nissan Motor Corp. USA. The course: Marketing 101.
During the last couple of years, the division has attracted notice
with a series of eye-catching television commercials, such as a toy
sports car speeding around a house.
Those commercials made people pay attention, but didn't
convince them to buy Nissan cars and trucks. To do that, Nissan
started spending an average of $1,500 per vehicle in incentives.
Nonetheless, sales for the first four months of this year are down
31 percent.
So Michael Seergy, who was named vice-president and general
manager of the Nissan Division of Nissan Motor Corp. USA in
February, is sending his charges back to school. During the next few weeks, about 8,000
Nissan sales people will go through training courses to get them to focus on selling product
attributes, not incentives and low lease rates.
The move is part of Seergy's "back to basics" strategy for Nissan. Seergy last week sat
down with Detroit News editors and reporters to discuss his plans:
Q: How can you cut back on incentives at a time when companies such as
General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. have jumped in with a new round of
incentives?
A: We can't turn our back on what the competition is doing. But when you look at what
they are doing and how they go to market with deep discounting, the one thing that we
have that we haven't communicated well is our product. We think we have a more
competitive product. And that's something I think we can lean on.
Q: But in the past, Nissan has educated the customer to expect both an
above-average product and a steep discount. How do you break free of that
incentive legacy?
A: Well, there's only one way you can differentiate yourself in the car business today.
Especially if you have the opinion which I do that more and more consumers see products
as homogeneous to some degree, especially among imports. They're all reliable, all
dependable to some degree and the margins are small. How do you differentiate yourself?
You do it by handling the customer.
The biggest problem is you walk into a dealership, very few (sales people) have been
there and have the old book of business they use to have. The guys are all green now.
When you have a 3 (percent) or 4 percent unemployment, you have people migrating to
other types of jobs and you've got sales people living on what you call a mini -- $50 or
$100 a car. We need to keep the same people in place. So we launched a sales person
retention program where we pay them $100 for each vehicle sold as additional
compensation. And if they're still there three months later, we'll give them another $25 per
vehicle.
Q: In the late 1980s and early '90s, Nissan was thought of as the maker of
sporty, performance-oriented vehicles. What does Nissan stand for today?
A: What Nissan stands for today is probably the essence of what Mr. K was -- we
build quality products at the most efficient plant in the United States and the most efficient
plant in Asia. We stand for the basics of quality, design, designed by the right people and
sold by the right people.
Q: Are you going to change your ad agency?
A: Chiat/Day did exactly what we asked them to do. As a matter of fact, they did an
extraordinary job, so good that they won awards. And they had our blessing. Now our
direction has changed. And as far as I can see, they're doing exactly what I'm asking. So
they're not the problem, either. We're the problem. We're the ones who slipped on our
own banana peel.
Michael Seergy
Job: Vice-president and general manager, Nissan Division
Experience: Joined Nissan in 1990 as national market representation manager for
Infiniti Division. Prior to current post, Seergy was Northeast regional vice-president for
Nissan Division.
Education: Bachelor's degree in accounting from Manhattan College; master's degree in
business administration from Fordham University
Personal: A native of New Jersey; married, with two children |
