Dealer Profile: Waylands Automotive

In November 2017, just 16 months after stepping down from his role as CEO at Ridgeway following the sale of the group to Marshall for £106.9m, John O’Hanlon launched Waylands Automotive with the acquisition of a Volvo franchise in Reading.

O’Hanlon, who went on to reveal a five-year plan to turn Waylands into a £100m-turnover business, has since seen his Reading franchise trading out of temporary premises while construction of a brand new, eight-car showroom is completed. The new facility is due to open in November this year.

Now the new venture has become a group, with the acquisition of Fawcetts Garage in Newbury. Having held a Volvo franchise for 50 years, Fawcetts is the Swedish brand’s oldest UK dealer. Motor Trader spoke to O’Hanlon in the Newbury showroom, just three weeks after he took over the business.

Having been CEO of a very successful group and sold it, what brought you back into the business so quickly?

We learned a few lessons running Ridgeway, about playing to our strengths and having a good local business that works and dominates the local area. Having a business which I was local to and understanding the territory was important to me. It is much easier to run a business where you can touch and feel it – directly celebrate the successes,
and address any problems that need fixing.

A lot of our potential success comes from the brand – we were close to representing Volvo with Ridgeway, had done our research, and I was excited at the prospect. So to be able to work with Volvo in Reading was an opportunity I had to take.

How do you apply your strong business culture to a new business that may have worked in a different way for a long time?

The first step was to have an internal launch evening – we take the team off site and spend time together. I present what I think is important and get feedback on what the teams think is important, then we agree what our goals should be.

The second part is following it up, sharing those goals in a clear
visual way around the business. This is supported with the basics, from a company handbook to a code of business ethics. Everyone needs to understand what should be done and what shouldn’t be done; how
we should treat our customers and our colleagues.

The final part is ‘walking the talk’. Your teams can tell when you
are genuine, when you believe what you are telling them. They can
taste sincerity.

What is John O’Hanlon’s correct way of working?

It’s the old saying, treat people how you would want to be treated. It’s really simple, about having a level of honesty and transparency and bolting on a core of strong and efficient processes.

It should feel different coming into a Waylands showroom. You should feel more warmth, a stronger welcome, and it should be consistent. That can only be achieved if there is a belief around the values and culture of the company.

How are you marketing your business to attract those customers?

Very early on I invested in marketing and we have a full-time marketing manager in April Wyatt, who was recently named a 2018 Motor Trader Rising Star. She gave me a flying start in more difficult areas to establish, such as our digital presence, social media – areas we know are important. She also took charge of GDPR compliance which could have been a huge distraction to the management teams.

We are launching a completely new group website and that needs a level of resource that a smaller business doesn’t always have. Yet while a smaller group might not have the resources the big dealers can draw from, you still have to give the customer an understanding of what your business is about. With digital there has never been a better opportunity to sell your strengths.

You returned to the sector just as a rocketing new car market tripped up…

I did – but I was aware that new car registrations couldn’t go on the way they had been. I’m not running a national group, my group works in Thames Valley for Volvo, so for us the question is can we sell more Volvos to the population of those areas? And based on our performance focus, the growing economy of the area, and of course the product, the answer is an absolute yes.

How do you exploit the used market and what are the difficulties?

We exploit it by offering the right cars at the right price, prepared incredibly well and marketed phenomenally well. The biggest problem we have is sourcing enough product. It should be getting easier because the Volvo car parc is growing but there is still not enough availability of used vehicles across the entire network.

How do you keep your aftersales performing strongly?  

There are certain KPIs that every dealer will want to meet, around lead times, technician productivity and customer satisfaction. One of our wins is through transparency. Every car coming through the workshop gets an electronic visual health check, plus any additional sales we need to make are supported with video.

When the customer can see what’s wrong on a video, it makes the sale easier and builds trust. Such technology has been available for a number of years but making it part of how we do business is the vital factor.
It’s not a ‘nice to have’, it’s a ‘must have’.

How has Waylands performed and are your predictions?

The last six months has been an absolute roller coaster and I’ve loved every minute. The business has been stronger than I ever could have hoped for. Seeing the group grow with Newbury so soon, that was
the icing on the cake. I predict that the market will become steady –
it feels like we are through the worst of the decline. We’ve seen some of the froth come out of the market and more orderly trading can be more profitable. Cars have never been such good value and we need to remind our customers that this value is available today.

All-New Volvo XC90 Momentum

Are you looking to further expand?

I have a declared ambition to get to £100m turnover within another three years. Part of that will be organic but it will also require further acquisitions. Sometimes these are planned, at other times opportunistic.My job is to ensure the group is in a position to take advantage of opportunities that arise, whether in terms of management depth or financial capability.

My short-to-medium term ambition is to grow a Volvo-centric regional dealer group. You need scale to deliver fantastic levels of customer service, to run an efficient business, to be important to the manufacturer and the manufacturer important to you. And it will only be the one brand for the foreseeable future; Volvo will be our key brand partner.