Today newly appointed GM North America President Mark Reuss, and Susan Docherty, new vice president of Sales, Service and Marketing, hosted a media telecon to give some initial thoughts on their way forward. Later in the day, Ed Whitacre hosted a text based web chat with the media, taking open questions.
All three of them made some quotable quotes. I continue to be cautiously optimistic that the New GM ‘gets it’ and is ready to come out of hibernation and compete for the car business.
I say optimistic because I do think that Mark Reuss has (finally for GM) a sense of urgency about selling cars:
Mark Reuss, Susan Docherty
“We need to sell every vehicle we can, customer by customer, dealer by dealer, here, in Canada and Mexico,” GM North America President Mark Reuss said today during a conference call with media. ‘
We’re not setting a metric (for market share) until we do that.”
I say cautiously optimistic, because I think any of the things we heard today could have been said by past CEOs for GM, or any other car manufacturer. As Suzanne Denbow of Ridelust.com chided me, you don’t get credit for doing what you are SUPPOSED to do. GM is supposed to be competing for the car business already; they are supposed to recognize that they have to make the best cars in the world already.
So, I hear the right things from the new GM Management, and the Cadillac Management. I *want* things to change and for GM to continue their current arc of making some really fun, interesting, high reliability, high efficiency cars and thereby reclaim their market share. I want to believe. Please new GM, ‘walk the talk’ and get into the game.