For Toyota dealers, sales process sure is familiar

As someone who has been selling new Toyotas for more than 50 years, Steve Gates said he never would have believed that he and his fellow brand dealers could have had as much success as they did last year with so few vehicles in stock.

"I was absolutely certain, when this all started, I thought I needed to jump off a bridge because I didn't think that there was any way that we could survive with virtually no inventory," said Gates, dealer principal of Gates Auto Family, a group of 11 rooftops in Kentucky, Tennessee and Indiana that includes three Toyota stores.

Gates is a dealer council veteran but is taking his first spin as a chairman, with the Toyota National Dealer Advisory Council. He's also a former chairman of the American International Automobile Dealers Association. Gates said he has been selling Toyotas since he was a senior in high school, and the current sales process looks surprisingly familiar.

"My dad became a Toyota dealer in 1970, and this is the way we sold cars," Gates recalled. "I was selling Toyotas, and we would take reservations with pride, and with a $25 deposit, and then we'd wait for the car to come in. But there were no computers, obviously, so we didn't know when the car was going to arrive, and we really couldn't provide any information. I guess in this business, history always repeats itself."

Gates said he and other Toyota dealers are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Grand Highlander, a larger three-row crossover that will debut at next month's Chicago Auto Show. He said it will allow Toyota dealers to keep customers with growing families who aren't interested in a minivan but have outgrown the current Highlander.

"Our Highlander isn't big enough" for some families, and the body-on-frame Sequoia large SUV may not fit everyone's tastes, he said. A larger three-row crossover is "long overdue, and customers can't wait for it to get here."

An unabashed fan of the brand and the way it works in partnership with its dealers, Gates said he wants to concentrate on getting new dealers involved and invested in the dealer council process.

"I would love to get younger dealers involved in dealer council because it is vital," Gates said. "We don't need guys that are 70 years old on dealer council — we need 30-year-old dealers. And so that's one of the things I hope to be able to do, is convince men and women to get involved in dealer council."