A special December sales message from Jim Press and Steve Landry

Posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 1:32 PM EST.

Watch this feature online

Jim Press
Vice Chairman and President
Hello, team Chrysler. We want to take this opportunity to express our deep, strong congratulations for a great end of the year, and a great month of December, and what a Happy New Year we’re going to have. You should know how well the company really did in December. Steve’s going to give you some numbers, but the fact of the matter is everybody pulled together-it all came together. We had great products out there-manufacturing did their job. We got it shipped. We got everything through-the advertising, the finance company was supporting us. Everybody in the organization did their particular part to make December one of the best months that we’ve seen-not only in 2007, but it’s the beginning of a great new start for the new Chrysler corporation for 2008. All of you should pat yourselves on the back and really feel good. When you hear these numbers that Steve gives you, you’ll see how good you really are. Believe it because next year we’re going to do the same. Steve, why don’t you cover some of the highlights.

Steven Landry
Executive Vice President-North American Sales
Thanks, Jim. I’ll tell you what. December is always a little bit of an unpredictable month, but the horses were running at the end of December, and those horses were our dealers and all of you who work for us as a company. We finished the month of December with 191,400 sales—total sales for the month of December up 1 percent, while GM was down 5 percent and Ford was down 10 percent. We’re gaining some momentum going into the month of January. And just think for a second on this number. This is our calendar year-to-date number for 2007-2.1-million units. I mean, that’s a big number. We’re a big company, and even though our sales were down marginally a little bit compared to last year, I think with all the distractions we had to deal with we’re in pretty good shape. And I think by the time the day is out, and we get all the information from the industry, we may have even picked up a little bit of share, but at least stayed flat for the 2007 calendar year.You know, this isn’t just a sales and marketing thing, and it’s not just everyone who works in the field. It’s an entire, huge team effort from everyone in Auburn Hills—all of our locations across the country, whether you’re in a manufacturing plant, or whether you’re in Featherstone, or one of our other locations here in the country …

Press
Parts center, parts operation, the depots, the people that drove the cars.

Landry
Absolutely. You know, we got half way through the month and we thought, “what the heck is going on with the month?” And then we really picked up momentum. Our whole marketing team, with The Event of a Lifetime, with the dealers advertising just the right incentive plan—our net price was obviously in the right place. It was enough to really give us, like Jim said this morning, “Hey, we got one out of one and now we’re heading for number two month.” So we’ve got the right team, I think, Jim.

Press
There’s momentum there, and it proves that the quality of our dealers, the quality of our people, the quality of our organization and most of all, the value of the quality of our products-when we believe, the customers do, too.

Landry
You know, we just did a video with the dealers, and Jim talked about, Jim knows, product around the country from other manufacturers, too. Tell them a little bit about what you said about our products.

Press
Really, it’s frame-of-mind. Toyota, to be quite honest with you, is a small company that got bigger. So we had sales increases over the time, and as people see increased sales, they say, “Well, what’s the cause? It must be good products and good dealers.” The fact of the matter is, coming here I see our organization, our team members—all of you, everybody, dedicated to this whole company. From production, from every aspect of what you’re doing—IS, the mailroom, security—everybody-the quality of our organization is better. Keep that in mind. And our products? Boy, are they underrated. We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. We’ve got much-improved quality, we’ve got a great product line, and it’s getting stronger. So we actually have as many good things as they do, and now what we can see is that the customer can see it, too. And that’ll give us the belief, the momentum, and all that will do is allow us to do better next year and the year after that because that’s the new Chrysler organization.

Landry
And for your information, the month of January is really busy. Detroit auto show is in a couple of weeks, then Jim and I are hitting the road. We’ll see all 3,700 dealers by the end of the first week in February as we do and eight-city roadshow tour, as well as some Jim Press fireside chats with our dealers. We’re really getting a lot of good feedback from our dealers and from our folks in the field, and really making our business better as we go along. Great plans for 2008! Obviously they won’t work without your great work. So just a big fat thank you for 2007, and I look forward to working with all of you in 2008. Thanks for everything you do.

Press
What a great, empowered organization. I’m proud to be just a small part of what you’ve done. I look forward to serving you and working with you, and maybe 12  more times we’ll do this—a high five. That’s for all of you. Thanks so much.

Landry
All the best, everybody. Thank you.

Press
Happy New Year.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 1:32 PM EST and is filed under Company. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are currently closed.