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Dr. Terrance Hill 

Dr. Hill is a professor at the London Business School. Back in the 1980's he developed the concept of Winners/Qualifiers/Losers as a way for companies to look at their manufacturing strategy. Over the years following his research W/Q/L has been used by many companies to analyse just what they are doing right and doing wrong.

Winners: what a company does to keep current customers and to attract new customers.

Qualifiers: what a company is doing as a minimum to have customers to at least look at the company's offerings as potentially buying their goods and/or services.

Losers: what a company is doing to lose customers and to not be able to attract new customers.

As always an example: cannot remember the last time I purchased a new car for myself. This is the car that for 98+% of the time, I am alone in the car. Basically it is to be a commuter car and the family "truck". This vehicle is driven into the ground. But I want a good deal in the vehicle to start with and one that has staying power. So the review process starts with Consumer Reports, their annual auto issue that comes out in April. There is a section on cars that have a good, multi-year, repair record. It also tells you cars to avoid.

This is where the Qualifiers are selected from Consumer Reports. The features are: low price, mpg of at least 30 highway, low 5 year total cost & less than 40,000 miles. Normally there are about 30 different cars that are on the initial list. Doesn't take long to narrow it down to about 10. Then a quick look at Kelley Blue Book and/or J.D.Powers and what they have to say. Here it is a search for the price range of each vehicle. Then off to dealerships to see what they have on the lot. The best candidates for my last 3 cars are 3 year/36,000 miles, single driver leased vehicles.

I follow that old rule, "do not wait until you are really need a car, why, because the most powerful tool you have is to walk away if the deal is not exactly what you want!" So I do the dealership tour about 6 to 12 months before I need one. Keep in touch with my independent mechanic so there is a rough time frame before he tells me that you will need to put some serious money into this car shortly. It is fun to just go around and test drive cars, do some tire kicking and not have to make a decision.

Toyota, Honda, Subura, Nissan, Ford, Mazda were on my list that last time. Took about 4 months of on and off looking. The Mazda 3 is a very popular car and dealers wanted top dollar, Subura Impreza also drops off the list due to price. Nissan Sentra has not been a big seller when new so there is not too many on lots. Ford Focus has had some quality issues. So it became mainly a tour of Civics and Corollas. Once you get down to a few specific cars, then it is CarFax time.

Lastly comes the negotiations. Nice to be able to say "NO".  Got a 3 year old Corolla with 32,000 miles on it. Should get 150,000 to 200,000 mile range before the search starts again.

W/Q/L ranks right up there with SWOT as a great internal tool for companies to look at what is going on within the industry (that's the sellers) and the market (that's the buyers) are telling you.

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