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A&S BMW Motorcycles
by Gary Henson


The Business / The Organization
Randy Felice is the owner of A&S BMW Motorcycles, the largest BMW Motorcycle dealership in the world. With humble beginnings, A&S began as a salvage motorcycle store in 1968. In 1988 they became a BMW motorcycle dealership. By 1998 they finalized the contract to provide BMW motorcycles to the California Highway Patrol and began to grow rapidly.
 
The Partnership
As the son of the original founder of A&S Cycles, Randy has worked in the business all of his life. When his parents retired in 2003, he began registering his leadership team in management classes. On the last day of one of Randy’s courses, the leader recommended getting a business coach.

Although Gary Henson, president of BusinessCoach.com, had spoken previously to Randy several times about business coaching, Randy admits not really understanding the value that coaching could have for him and A&S BMW. The timing was right; Gary made a routine follow-up call soon after Randy’s discussion with the management course leader. Randy said, “I chose Coach Gary because he was committed to being my coach. I could tell that he would be committed to the success of my business like it was his own.”

The Challenge
Randy’s priority in hiring a business coach was to cut business expenses. Even with his degree in business, Randy also knew that he needed help learning to be an effective manager. As the partnership developed, Gary and Randy found that these additional issues needed addressing:

• The company had no clear vision or mission
• The company had no stated core values
• Employees didn’t know the strategic direction of the company
• Employees had no clear goals or commitments
• Randy was uncomfortable leading staff meetings
• He didn’t know how to become an effective leader or see the clear value of leadership
• He didn’t know how to develop a team culture

The Approach
At the beginning of the coaching partnership, Gary asked Randy to clarify three things: “What do you want? What are you committed to? Who’s going to hold you accountable?” When the foundation of trust and accountability was established, Randy began to take the following steps with Gary’s help:

• Established all-company staff meetings to build shared vision, values and goals and foster communication
• Established managers as leaders of their individual departments
• Implemented performance- and commitment-based systems for the company
• Developed a monthly managers’ budgeting and training meeting
• Utilized profile assessments to ensure that employee characteristics were in alignment with critical need areas
• Replaced underperforming employees with highly effective team leaders
• Added new product lines that were complementary to A&S BMW’s retail environment, such as Vespa, Kymco and Rokon Powersports 

The Value Delivered
Once A&S BMW developed and implemented the shared vision, mission statement, commitments and goals, the impact on the bottom line was striking:

• An 18% increase in profits from retail operations. This was despite a 5.9% decrease in sales as BMW Motorcycles discontinued many of its models to prepare for new models.
• A 12% decrease in employee expenses, including insurance, worker’s compensation, etc. Randy states, “Once we got everyone going in the same direction, we could get more done with fewer people.”

Randy says, “so much has changed that it’s difficult to cover it all, but what’s important to know is, Gary made a promise to transform our business and he has kept that promise. I would have never believed that my life could have changed to this degree, not in a million years.” Randy further states, “Anyone who hasn’t taken on coaching is only half running a business.”

Today, a year and a half into the business coaching relationship with BusinessCoach.com, A&S BMW is a different place to work, and now, a different place to play. 

About Gary B. Henson
Gary B. Henson, founder and president of BusinessCoach.com, specializes in business coaching as a strategic/change management tool leading to improved customer/employee satisfaction and overall increased corporate performance. Gary Henson and Randy Felice have recently partnered to write a book called The Fearless Leader.
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