Or perhaps, miscalculators to the grave? Yesterday’s GM corporate announcement that it would offer early retirement deals to 125,000 employees made big headlines, but shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone. The world has long known of GM’s poor performance and lack of competitiveness, although the spin may be high pension and healthcare costs.
How hard is it? Listen carefully to what people want. Make it. Promote it clearly with no subterfuge, and price it fairly.
Since there’s so much controversy about the advisability of corporate blogs – will companies get good honest information or will they get mercilessly trashed? – I decided to check out the blog authored by Bob Lutz, GM Vice Chairman .
People commenting on the blog entries give an amazing amount of constructive, knowledgeable feedback, on the company, the cars, service, marketing and more. And yes, they’re blunt. For instance, on 11/21/05 “Zarba” wrote,
“The market NEVER LIES. GM vehicle have abysmal service records and resale values. GM sales were down 23% in October. Look, the people who post on this site a auto fanatics. We want GM to succeed. But it can't unless it stops drinking the PR Kool-Aid and addresses the long term systemic issues that are killing it.
Stop with the Red Tag sales, cash back, etc. CUT PRICES to real world transaction prices and you just might not need to spend all that cash on promotions and could put it into building better vehicles.”
Zarba was one of 145 comments that day. Even in good times, GM couldn’t pay for intercept interviews, focus grous, questionnaires etc, that would give them the kind of feedback they receive on this one blog – for free.
It may be late for them to take heed, but maybe not. It certainly isn’t too late for many other companies to have transparent, honest conversations with their customers.
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