Ask almost any dealer what they're looking for in a new general manager or sales leader, and brand experience is usually near the top of the list. "I need a Toyota guy." "Has to have Ford experience." "We only want candidates who've sold Cadillac."
It's an understandable instinct. It's also, more often than not, a mistake. And it's one of the biggest reasons operators miss out on genuinely great talent.
The Real Divide Isn't Brand. It's Leadership.
Brand knowledge, how to order inventory, how a particular incentive structure works, the quirks of a specific OEM's systems, all of that can be taught. Great leadership, sales ability, and the people skills that make someone worth hiring in the first place can't be taught. Those are the traits that actually determine whether a store performs.
Come on, people aren't smart enough to figure out a brand? Of course they are. Yet time and again, dealers pass on proven leaders simply because their track record was built on the wrong badge. A general manager who's ranked number one in their state, at any brand, represents a level of ability that has nothing to do with which OEM they happened to work for. Somebody who can run a store, build a team, and hit numbers at a high level will do it again, no matter what's on the building.
What Gets Missed When Brand Comes First
Consider the following scenario. A top performing general manager, ranked number one in their state, gets presented to a Toyota dealer with an open GM role. The dealer's response: "I really need a Toyota guy." The recruiter hears it, but doesn't let it end there. About a week later, once the search for a "pure" brand candidate hasn't turned up anyone close, that same GM gets a second look. And all of a sudden, looks like a great choice.
That's the pattern. The brand requirement is often a first choice, not a hard rule. The dealers who insist on it upfront are frequently the same ones who come back around to a great candidate once they see that sometimes the best candidates are from other brands.
The Payoff for Dealers Who Think Bigger
The dealers who lead with "I need a great leader" instead of "I need a Toyota leader" open up a pool of candidates that's easily ten times bigger. And when a dealer says brand experience isn't a dealbreaker, that opens the floodgates, statistically there's a much higher chance of landing someone great.
That doesn't mean brand experience is worthless. Plenty of people still ask for it specifically, and that's fair, it's often the first choice. It just means brand shouldn't be the gate. The best outcomes happen when leadership and sales ability come first, and brand is something learned along the way, even if it's six different brands over a career.
The next time a search stalls because nobody with the "right" brand background is available, ask a different question. Not "who has experience with my brand," but "who has proven they can lead, sell, and build a team, regardless of brand." That's usually where the best candidate has been sitting the whole time.
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