RALEIGH, N.C. -

Jeff Walker says that early on in his career with Anderson Automotive Group, chairman Fred Anderson told him that he wanted to get to a point “where we retail everything.”

With the purchase of a Chevrolet store in Creedmoor, N.C. in 1955, Anderson’s father, Andy Anderson, started Anderson Automotive Group, which now owns eight auto dealerships in North and South Carolina. The company’s most recent acquisition took place about two years ago with what is now Fred Anderson Toyota of Asheville, in Asheville, N.C.

Walker does not believe the company will get to the point where it retails every used vehicle, simply because not all of them are up to the company’s standards when they come in.

“But there’s always been a very large emphasis on keeping as much as we can in retail instead of wholesaling it or sending it to an auction,” Walker said.

But although Anderson Automotive Group chief operating officer Mike Brennan agrees with keeping as many vehicles in retail as possible, he said the company is also very conscious of what it retails. The company, he explains, wants to put good pieces on the road, because it’s a family-owned business.

“And we always want to keep the family with a good name,” he said.

He added, “So if it’s questionable, or can’t pass inspection or anything like that, it’s no decision. We’re never going to be a company that just puts anything on the road just to sell it for profit. That’s just not our philosophy.”

‘No excuses recon’

The group’s used-vehicle department has always set high standards like that. Another example is a program it started at the beginning of this year: A three-day peace-of-mind guarantee. If a customer is not happy with the vehicle from one of the group’s dealerships, the customer can trade the vehicle in for another “vehicle of like price.”

The Family Plan is another Anderson program that Walker said served the purpose of trying to “give a little something extra to the customer who buys from us to separate us from everybody else.” The Family Plan provides new- and used-vehicle purchasers with complimentary oil changes, car washes and loaner cars for mechanical repairs.

Walker says the group has “always put a big focus on used cars,” and the “no-excuses reconditioning” program is one example of that. For the program, Brennan said, “we recondition the cars to what we feel is a higher quality than our competitors.”

Walker expanded on that, noting that if the company acquires a vehicle through trade-in, through an auction, or through purchasing a vehicle from a customer who did not buy a car from the group, the company sets high standards by going through “a very structured process.”

First is a mechanical evaluation of the car and systems. Then it goes through exterior reconditioning, which could be work such as touch-up or painting a bumper.

Then comes interior work such as removing carpet stains.

“But this takes it to the next level of trying to get the car as close to (its) original position as we can,” Walker said.

Setting high standards for generations

Fred Anderson helped out at his father’s dealership, Anderson Chevrolet-Oldsmobile in Waynesville, N.C. He went on to take over a neighboring dealer in 1970 as owner-operator at the age of 21, becoming the youngest Chevrolet dealer in the country at the time.

The company grew to where it now operates Toyota and Nissan dealerships in Asheville; Toyota ,Nissan and Kia dealerships in Raleigh, N.C.; a Toyota dealership in Sanford, N.C.; and Toyota stores in Charleston, S.C.,  and Columbia, S.C.

Anderson Automotive Group became a third-generation company in the early 2000s, when Fred Anderson’s son, Michael Anderson, joined the business. Michael became president of the group in 2014, and in 2019, he became chief executive officer. The North Carolina Automobile Dealers Association in 2018 recognized the high standards of the company, honoring Fred Anderson with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Used-vehicle trends: A data-driven science

The company sold about 11,500 used retail vehicles in 2019, which was close to its 2018 number. This year, however, the company sold one of its Nissan dealerships, so 2019 is up slightly over 2018.

Brennan says that dealers around 20 years ago did not have near the amount of data they have now.

He said used-vehicle sales were more like an art back then. Now, it’s more of a numbers game, he said.

“It’s largely a data-driven science and not as much of an art, with tools like vAuto and ways to measure your recon time through things like Rapid Recon or ReconVelocity,” he said.

Rather than perform the minimum amount of recon to invest less money in the car and sell it quicker, the Anderson group wants to “recon the car the right way to make sure that the car is going to treat the customer the way that we would want the customer to be treated,” Brennan said.

Walker said “we’re becoming very analytical” in many areas of the business.

“We track everything from the minute the car comes into stock, or we acquire the car or however we get the vehicle,” he said.

He continued, “We can tell you how many hours it took to service the vehicle, how many hours did it spend in paint, and how long it took to get the vehicle ‘photo’d up’ and online.”

A people business

But even with all that data, the company recognizes the importance of the “people” aspect of the business. Hiring has been a challenge, Brennan said. But like other areas of the business, the company sets high standards in the people area, as well.

“We’ve taken some pretty innovative steps in the last year to stay current,” he said.

Training managers on “behavioral-based interviewing” is one of those steps, and Brennan described that as asking prospective employees how they would handle specific situations rather than just asking them yes or no questions.

“We hire more for skills and not so much what they’ve done,” Brennan said.

He added, “Do they have the skills and capacity to handle difficult situations, rather than go over somebody’s resume.”

When the company loses an employee, it is often “because of culture and not performance,” Brennan said. The company sets high standards for itself in how it treats customers “and how we treat each other.”

“And results will come if you take care of those two things,” he said.