• Stop being a LURKER - join our dealer community and get involved. Sign up and start a conversation.

What is the worst thing to happen....?

I'll never forget the day, back around 2002, a simple construction accident snapped the coaxial cable entering the building... The Internet was down. Everywhere I looked, work had slowed or stopped. Managers were creating paper work arounds to keep business moving.

#InternetRulesTheWorld
 
When I was selling cars some construction down the street knocked our power out. I think we were down for around 6 hours. Fortunately, in those days, computer usage consisted of printing final contracts so we were already doing everything by hand. However, the Keytrack system (new product then) could only be accessed with a manager override drawer key so we were all bombarding managers. Obviously our fax machine didn't work either so we couldn't push paperwork to the loan officers in banks to see if they could buy. We made some very trusting spot deliveries that day. Fortunately everything worked out there.

The worst part was this happened in August in Virginia Beach on a very hot/sunny Saturday. Not only is August traditionally the biggest month of the year, but temperatures are around 100 with disgusting humidity. Not having air conditioning in the building was horrid. We also had a suit and tie dress code back then.
 
Really not a horror story, but I remember May of '07 or '08 -- we needed one unit to set the Northeast PA all-time Toyota sales record.

It's about 11:30PM or so... worked this guy on a Tundra all week, and all night -- was absolutely sure he was going to commit the next day, so we punched that Tundra -- set the record, got a banner from Toyota -- high-fives all around --woo-hoo!!

Six months or so later that unit celebrated a birthday on the showroom floor... it may still be sitting there for all I know :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: joe.pistell