Looking to the future
Greg Hedgepeth, CEO of Turners Group NZ, gave some insights into the company’s future in his speech at the 50th party held for Turners Car Auctions’ first official board meeting. This is an edited version of the speech he made at Auckland Museum on September 21. It gives me great pleasure to share this occasion with you all, celebrating Turners reaching the mighty half century, which is a seriously impressive feat. I believe only about three per cent of Kiwi companies achieve this milestone, so I’m obviously in the right place. As mentioned, I’m the new guy. I’ve only been here six weeks to be exact, so unfortunately I can’t “hand on heart” talk about the history of Turners, as I haven’t been part of that journey. Though I must say my timing on joining was impeccable as the August result was one of the best months ever, which I will more than happily lay claim to. I can say that when the opportunity presented itself to join Turners, it was an easy decision to make. I’m a self-confessed petrol head, who’s passionate about innovation and brand transformation. Turners certainly ticks all those boxes. But there were also a few other reasons that also appealed to me. Turners obviously has a rich history, but also one that is dear to my heart. As a young lad I vividly remember the excitement of accompanying my dad to Turners to buy my first car, a 1991 white Honda Civic. Turners has many core values that it’s well-known for, but there’s one in particular I really admire – integrity. This value aligns very well with the way I like to do business, so Turners felt like a natural fit for me. It was clear this organisation had already begun a major transformation, basically reinventing itself in recent years, and this journey was something I wanted to be part of. So here I am, 50 days in, and I must say that I’ve been pleased with my impressions so far. I’ve now been to all branches and met the team around the country. From those visits, a few things really stood out for me. Turners has a positive culture with happy engaged employees and an almost family feel to the place. I’ve heard so many examples of the team going above and beyond for our customers. I can now confirm that some of Turners team would literally “bleed blue”. The organisation has a clear view of why change is important to help drive success, and more importantly a willingness to embrace that change. And it’s not like “Donald Trump change” where nothing actually happens, but rather there are fundamental changes taking place here and in a reasonably short space of time. It has a strong focus on innovation with significant resource dedicated to technology and this is effectively deployed to help simplify things and drive better levels of success for our vendors and buyers. I believe Turners is well-placed to lead a paradigm shift in the New Zealand remarketing landscape – for both our vendor partners and end customers. This is something we need to do due to three key factors – our ever-changing customer needs, an increasingly competitive landscape and the rapid onslaught of digitalisation. For example, earlier tonight I Googled the weather, Binged on Netflix, backed up to the cloud, Uber-ed my way here, Facetimed my kids in the car, updated my status when I arrived and I’m hoping to grab a selfie with John [Key] later to post on Instagram. Now 10 years ago if I had said that, you would have asked if I was speaking a foreign language or possibly insane. But in 2017 it’s basically the norm and this illustrates how quickly things can change. With that in mind, here’s a glimpse of the rapidly changing world we will be operating within in the next decade. All of these technologies are happening as we speak, and will impact both Turners and customers in the years to come. They present interesting challenges and opportunities for us, and we’re already thinking about how we adapt and prepare for them. I thought I would take this opportunity to quickly share some key areas we will focus on as we develop our plans for the future. First and foremost, we will increasingly invest in our people and culture. In order to serve and delight our customers, we need happy staff who enjoy what they do and are armed with the skills to do it well. We will intensify our efforts here with the goal of becoming one of New Zealand’s best places to work. While we have vast technology at our disposal, at the end of the day it’s really our people who help our customers. They are the foundation of our business, and we will continue to invest in them. We will increase our focus on the customer experience. I’m a firm believer an integrated customer experience strategy is key to building loyalty, retention and better profitability. We will work towards ensuring every customer touchpoint in our business is geared towards this goal, and the culture of the organisation is obsessed on achieving positive outcomes for our customers. We will develop our digital experience creating an omni-channel approach. While most customers still prefer to purchase a vehicle offline, we know a large part of the purchasing journey is already digital. We believe online purchases will certainly pick up in the future, so we will need to deliver a seamless brand experience no matter what the channel. Finally, we will expand our retail network to be more flexible and relevant. We’ll roll out innovative retail formats that suit specific markets and customer profiles. This will involve investing in new retail locations and channels to give us access to more customers. While bricks and mortar yards will continue to play a significant role, we will investigate new value propositions and channels that answer our customers’ end-to-end requirements. In order to adapt to our environment and achieve growth, we’ll continue to build on the solid foundations Turners already has in place, create a seamless multi-channel shopping experience to convert more leads, and develop our people to become absolutely customer centric so we turn our customers into loyal fans for life.
