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Automotive News 40 Under 40 List Includes 3 Ohio Honorees

OADA wishes to congratulate 3 honorees from Ohio that have been named to the Automotive News 40 Under 40! It takes a lot to succeed in the industry, and being named to this list proves that they are really making their mark and are the absolute tops in their dealerships.

Heather Wagener (27) holds a position as General Service Manager of Acura Columbus in Dublin.  With family in the business, she started young, serving as a cashier in service and answering phones.  She also worked in the parts and sales departments before being hired into her current role.  She had planned to be a teacher, but now instead has a goal of one day owning a dealership.  Heather's success is highly attributed to her understanding of both her employees and customers.  When taking on the general service manager role in 2014, she noticed a lack of communication among departments, managers, and employees was impacting customer satisfaction scores.  So, Heather instituted a weekly meeting on Mondays to get the department heads and managers all on the same page.  It allows everyone to speak their mind and address issues.  There is now a stronger camaraderie among the staff and Acura Columbus' customer satisfaction is now at an 85.3%!

Anthony Ries (27) serves as Vice President of Sales at Bernie Moreno Companies in North Olmstead.  He started out working a "part time" job as a dealership sales consultant while he was a full-time student at the University of Akron in order to pay tuition bills.  With a goal of heading to law school after law school, plans quickly changed once he had graduated magna cum laude in 2012.  He then met the "electrifying" Bernie Moreno, who after discovering their many shared ideas about how to run a dealership dispatched Anthony after only 4 months of his initial hire to a position as general manager of a money-losing Buick GMC dealership in Beachwood.  Anthony quickly turned the store around.  By the end of the year, the dealerships old inventory of at least 3 model years was cleared out.  In 2015, the new-vehicle sales were up 55% from the previous year.  They went from one of the bottom 10 Buick GMC dealers in Ohio to one of the fastest growing in the Midwest under those franchises.  

Shujaat Siddiqui (37) is the General Manager of Dave Walter BMW in Akron.  On his list of achievements is their location being rated the number 1 U.S, dealership by BMW of North America in 2015, based on 15 key performance indicators plus customer satisfaction scores.  The dealership embraced online selling which enabled them to outperform larger dealerships in more affluent markets.  Shujaat said the key to his success with this was "the fact that I had my whole new-car inventory listed with an exact lease payment."  The result: lease penetration at Dave Walter BWM is around 70% of new-car sales, high even by BMW standards.  Shujaat believes in hiring the right people and working with customers in an efficient way.  Maintaining a small sales staff only 4 salespeople, Dave Walter BMW sold 1,289 vehicles in 2015.  

Read more about the stories of success for all of the 40 Under 40 here on Automotive News!

 

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