GM promises to punch back in pickup race

General Motors aims to solve its dealers' retail pain points and fight in the pickup race with more stamina in 2020, executives told Buick, GMC and Chevrolet dealers.

In 2019, Fiat Chrysler's Ram outsold the Chevy Silverado on an annual basis for the first time to rank as the industry's No. 2 full-size pickup. Silverado sales fell 1.7 percent to 575,600 for the year, while Ram pickup sales climbed 18 percent to 633,694. GMC Sierra sales rose 5.8 percent to 232,323 vehicles, according to the Automotive News Data Center.

Now that GM's redesigned light-duty and heavy-duty pickups have been fully launched, "we can really attack it" in 2020, said Mike Bowsher, chairman of the Chevrolet National Dealer Council and owner of Carl Black Automotive Group in Kennesaw, Ga.

GM executives told dealers that the company won't let competitors upstage it. "They're ready to fight, and now we have the product to do it," Bowsher said.

Executives also went through a list of retail challenges with Chevy and Buick-GMC dealers, and they offered strategies to address them, Bowsher said. Among the pain points were incentive complexity, dealer profitability, parts and service issues and improved floorplan credits.

"They have absolutely listened, and they are coming out with solutions and go-to-markets to combat all of this going forward," Bowsher said.

Improving brand value and dealership profitability are major initiatives for this year, said Steve Hill, GM's vice president of U.S. sales, service and marketing.

One way GM aims to boost dealership profitability is by introducing more vendor options, such as Tekion's dealership management system. GM has made a strategic investment in the startup.

"The biggest expense that a dealer has in terms of their outside services is typically their DMS," Hill said. "So if we're really serious about driving expenses out of our dealers' business and improving the profitability, we felt like the DMS was a place that we could really make some headway."

Executives also told dealers to expect more training on electric vehicles. GM plans to build 20 EVs globally by 2023.