The GM Bottleneck: How One Auto Group Built a Pipeline for Growth

DealersEdge
May 5
3 min read

When Horizon Auto Group opened its fifth dealership location, it was a moment of celebration. The owners had grown from a single rooftop just ten years ago to a respected regional brand. They had ambitions to double that number within five years—four, maybe five more stores, depending on the market. The opportunities were there. So was the capital.

What wasn’t there?

People.

Specifically, General Managers.

The Dilemma of Expansion Without Leadership

Horizon’s founders knew what success looked like: a strong store run by a high-performing, fully empowered GM. Their existing GMs were exceptional—each a self-starter, results-driven, deeply committed to their teams and customers. But therein lies the problem.

Transferring GMs from within risked destabilizing what was already working. Remove a top-tier GM to lead a new acquisition, and you potentially compromise the performance of the original store. Leave them in place, and you delay the success of the new location. It felt like a lose-lose.

Hiring from outside seemed easier. The resumes poured in—many from veteran GMs at competitive dealerships, some even with better individual metrics than Horizon’s current team. But every experienced dealer knows this truth: people who leave for money, often leave again for even more money. Cultural fit was another concern. Horizon had worked hard to define “the Horizon way,” and most external hires would need months—sometimes years—to unlearn old habits and adopt new ones.

More often than not, those external hires flamed out. They either couldn’t adapt, or didn’t want to. Store performance wobbled. Turnover spiked. Customer satisfaction fell. And worst of all, the rest of the team lost faith in the organization’s ability to scale.

Facing a Hard Truth

That’s when Horizon’s partners realized: their biggest barrier to growth wasn’t market saturation or capital—it was leadership readiness. They had no bench. No rising talent ready to step into a GM seat. No roadmap for development. And worse, no documented system to transfer their culture, processes, and performance standards to new leaders quickly and consistently.

They weren’t alone. According to DealersEdge research, most dealership groups—even highly successful ones—face this same bottleneck. The transition from mid-level management to senior leadership is vague, inconsistent, and too often driven by gut instinct rather than structured preparation.

So Horizon did something different.

They paused their expansion plans and made a strategic pivot: build the bench first.

A Blueprint for Leadership Growth

Using the framework in the DealersEdge Guide to Executive Leadership Development, Horizon launched an internal leadership development initiative. They began by identifying high-potential leaders within their sales, service, parts, and admin departments. Then, they mapped out a structured development journey:

Cross-functional exposure: Future GMs rotated through fixed ops, F&I, and variable ops, building a 360-degree view of the dealership’s profit engines.
Financial literacy training: Using chapter 3 of the Leadership Guide, managers learned to read financial statements, understand cash flow dynamics, and build ROI-based proposals.
Process mastery: With help from the Guide to Dealership SOPs, Horizon aligned all stores around standardized, documented workflows. This gave future leaders a common language and framework—no matter where they started or ended up.

Critically, each rising leader was paired with a current GM mentor. Together, they reviewed KPIs, shared war stories, and worked through real-world scenarios. By the time Horizon reopened its acquisition pipeline, it had six fully vetted candidates ready to lead.

The Result: Expansion With Confidence

Fast forward 24 months. Horizon now operates nine dealerships. Each new store was launched with a trained, homegrown GM who hit the ground running—no lengthy onboarding, no cultural whiplash, no “learning the hard way.”

Better yet, Horizon’s performance metrics held steady—or improved—through the expansion. CSI scores rose. Employee turnover fell. And profitability remained strong.

The secret? Horizon stopped treating leadership as a last-minute hire and started treating it as a long-term investment.

Want to Build a GM Bench of Your Own?

If your auto group is preparing for expansion—or even just long-term succession—you need more than ambition. You need a plan. The DealersEdge Guide to Executive Leadership Development is a powerful tool for identifying, training, and promoting dealership leaders from within. And when combined with the Guide to Dealership SOPs, your new GMs will step into leadership roles with a proven operating playbook at their fingertips.

Don’t wait for leadership gaps to derail your growth. Prepare now. The future of your dealership depends on it.