Joel Manby was one of the 8 guys who kicked off Saturn back in the 1980s, with a finely honed focus on the customer being more important than everything else – even the cars they were selling.
In the mid-late 1990s, he was slotted in as the head of SaabUSA, staying there for four years. He’s now working as the CEO of a company dealing with entertainment parks called Herschend Family Entertainment.
Manby did an interview recently with Georgia Public Broadcasting. The interview was mainly concerned with his current role at Herschend, but in discussing the corporate culture there, he also touched on his past experiences at GM in general, and Saturn and Saab in particular.
The full interview is available in PDF form here or you can watch it on video here.
I’ve reproduced the Saab and GM bits below:
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“…what I saw at General Motors which was not very good. It was chaos. It wasn’t very well led. And at General Motors it was only about the bottom line. It was only about money and, you know, at the end of the day, I don’t think great people are really attracted to that…”
“…when I was in the GM culture, a lot of the discussion was about cutting costs and labor issues, union issues, and not enough about what’s going on with that customer.”
“…with Saab, we had a fantastic car, but we had no marketing strategy and no dealer network.”
“On Saab, the biggest thing I learned is how difficult it is to change a culture that is not customer focused and in Saab’s case, it was an engineering driven company. When you’d be in the meetings, it’d be all about having the absolute, best car, which actually, you can go too far, because you can put things into the car that customers aren’t willing to pay for. The engineers want it, but you’re not willing to pay for it as a customer,and that’s what I walked away with [from] Saab. You’ve got to only put in things that the customer is willing to reward you for…”
“At Saturn and Saab I saw a lot of mistakes there where, frankly, it became poor leadership. It really comes down to strong leadership and at Herschend, the owners just permeate the values.”
This guy is incredibly customer-focused and running a car company has to be about the product first and foremost, but some care and attention on the customer side is going to be crucial as Saab emerge from GM’s shadow.
Under Koenigsegg, Saab will have a chance to rebuild their identity under the flag of an exotic and very Swedish ownership identity. The customer experience will hopefully be developed to reflect this.
This has been an interesting insight from a guy was, at one time, right there at the coal face.
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My thanks to Alan H for the tip and quotes!
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{ 19 comments }
Interesting. I sure hope K-Segg doesn’t make even more engineering focus. The distribution is critical for success. Customers and dealers.
Interesting insight indeed. Perhaps a veiled reference to the fibre-optics program in the 93 if my memory is correct?
@ None – I’m sure Koenigsegg will be interested in engineering but given B.Ekers comment (an off-hand remark in my view) about “too many engineers” then perhaps we won’t see over-engineering being an issue.
Having said that, nothing worse than a car which is underengineered and over-marketed/over-priced. Hitting the sweetspot is the name of the game.
Agree that sales & marketing have to be really tight. Dealerships/support and customer experience could do with some help in my hometown.
@, Pete +1 Lots of hometowns.
Notable, but not surprising.
A lot of goofs are still with GM, they have just been moved around for the time being so they stay off the radar and the payroll. I know this because some of them that have been relocated are now in charge of training and bugging me.
I still think GM’s dealer network will continue to be a problem for them going forward – we will see if they recover and get on par with some of the better import stores. I am skeptical the remaining ‘good old boys network’ under Fritz will be willing or able to change.
I work in sales for a large healthcare company which is very financially driven and its a constant battle to remind some of my colleagues that sales do not just “happen” and that money only continues to arrive in our bank accounts while customers continue to prefer our products & services.
Knowing the numbers in any business is crucial (you can’t manage what you can’t measure) but so is knowing your customers and your market. None of Joels comments about GM surprise me. Sadly.
PT and that sweetspot +1.
Leadership really does matter.
The risks I see with Eker & CvK are 1) in being insulated too long at the top high-end price points of their respective product markets, and 2) perhaps no real insights into the markets outside of EU or the sudden change in consumer behaviour in Saab strongholds of U.K. and U.S. Hopefully they do realize they are in a serious rebuild process over the next 18 months.
We shall just have to wait to see what niche New Saab targets. They should start with the price point and get creative in a reverse engineering process, NOT building the product, and letting sales figure out how to make a profit at the end.
@ Karen – I reckon that the K-segg guys know what they’re signing up for and don’t see the risks you outline being realised. Between them and JAJ I think Saab should have great leadership on a variety of fronts.
None: “distribution is critical for success” well put. Engineering alone doesn’t sell cars – you also need marketing and by that I don’t only mean ads and TV spots. Customer satisfaction and good dealership experience can also be part of a successful marketing campaign.
You can have a great car and some clever ads to move your mind and move your bottoms to the dealership, but if the dealer’s rude and/or not knowledgeable you’re most likely not going to end up buying the great car. But people do buy mediocre cars from great dealers (Saturn comes to mind).
So, as a CEO, Manby had more or less the right approach. It’s true that he may be acting it up somewhat (I read and hear CEOs talk about “customer is number one” out of their a** every day)… But he knew Saabs had great cars already at this point, so what was needed was focus on the marketing side. I’ve criticized Saab for this before. That’s why CEOs are CEOs and not CTOs or CMOs – they need to look at the big picture – what we have and what we need. They balance the company’s executive team.
The Japanese have turned this into science. I attribute 90% of Lexus’ leading satisfaction scores in all these surveys to stellar dealership / customer experience. I personally had a Lexus experience with my girl’s purchase earlier this year and must say that I now know why people walk back in there and buy another one. They just take care of you, no bullshit.
When engineers prefer a certain solution, they might have a reason. Maybe that reason should simply be explained to the potential customer in detail, and maybe than, she/he might be willing to spend more money? It’s all about information.
Maybe a booklet “why we are more expensive” available on request to the inclined customer would help?
Maybe not for saturn customers, but certainly for saab’s customers.
Agreed Thyl and thats an itegral part of selling any product well. Its easy to just focus on whats fashionable or what your competitors have got. Often the basic design & engineering advantage of a product can be forgotten. In the worst case, it can be just a price war with no discussion of features or benefits. The “why we are expensive” brochure you propose should already exist – its the product brochure and marketing material thats already there. Except that its perhaps not “why so expensive” but more” why you can’t afford not to buy us”
I still believe in my statement above about a sweet point where design/engineering/cost of production is balanced with the customers expectation and financial reality.
Yes, I am afraid that Joel has hit the nail on the head. I mean no disrespect to the Saab folks however they have very much been an engineering company…and a good one at that. One that has delivered leading edge automotive engineering and technology. However, a little more focus on what the customer wants and really needs in a car and what is saleable. Working in the IT industry I have seen many compannies that have been great and innovative engineers but lacked a good sales, marketing and customer strategy. Consequently, many of these companies are no longer in existance or have been acquired/subsummed into a larger organisation. Koenigseeg appear to also be an engineering company but with maybe more marketing nouse??? Time will tell however this time represents a good moment for Koenigsegg and Saab to take stock, stand back, analyse the sins/errors of the past and develop a successful strategy going forward.
PT: When i said in detail, i meant it
). A white book with lots of tables, charts and numerics. Really open hearted, and to the point. Nithing for the normal sakes brochure, but available if asked for.
Nice touch Thyl. That would indeed be an innovative marketing direction. Not for everyone but a very interesting idea. I would normally refer to such a thing as a product monograph – at least in the medical world. Same concept perhaps?
Hi Thyl, Hi PT,
I thin Europeans and Americans have a different concept of an interesting product. Europeans like to have more insight into the product, and know about it, for example I don’t care who sells me the product that has the technical features I want, on the other hand I have a growing feeling that for Americans the customer experience is about everything.
This for example was something I read as daimler owned chysler, Americans didn’t want to pay for daimlers’s engines, as they didn’t care about their technical capabilities but about the price.
I think it’s fair game right now for every ex-GM employee to offer their own 20/20 hindsight into what went wrong and how they would have fixed it, if only they had been given the chance.
As far as I am concerned, Saab would have done much worse by following his advice. Selling style over substance is what got GM into this mess in the first place, and we can only be glad that Saab fought this tooth and nail. The world certainly doesn’t need yet another GM brand selling under-engineered, “fully loaded” anachronisms. Saab customers would see right through that and drive past Saab dealerships on the way to the German brands.
Under Saab-Scania ownership, such a ‘book-let’ existed.
It was hefty ‘collectable’ volume called ‘Form follows Function’ in the European markets and ‘Engineering Principles’ in the North American. I believe one particular late 1980s edition even had a drag equation describing the multiplying effects of air resistance!
By the time the NG900 came around it was being ‘dumbed down’ and then all but disappeared by the late 1990s.
And yes, the right leadership is everything. Bob Sinclair & JÅJ Q.E.D.
(greetings too from Stamford, CT, USA!:)
Manby is legit as a CEO. I work for a company that sells services to Herschend and they go all out for the customers. The Herschend parks are owned by none other than Dolly Parton and she goes all out for the customers and employees. I hear it all of the time when they call into us, so I think this is a case where a CEO is not b’s-ing us.
Given the numbers of problems I’ve seen with my NG, I wish SAAB has spent a bit more on the engineering side.
That being said, I think the interview has a point b/c that was when discussions on what to replace the 9-3 were going on. I can see SAAB engineers being too ambitious. However, as I’ve said before, the 9-3SS is a horrible mistake and utterly outclassed, so I’d rather have a better engineered product.
Lexus does not have an excellent dealer network and experience but if their cars weren’t bulletproof people would still complain about the service while they get their espressos and free car washes.
I had the priviladge of working for Joel Manby when he was at Saab in Norcross Ga. and I can tell you he is all about customer service and also employee satisfaction. It was a joy to work at Saab with Joel at the Helm !!!The beginning of the end is the day he left Saab, and GM took control. The rest is tragic history.
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