A short, solo leadership talk by Chris Hunsicker framing predictable high-volume windows at dealerships as "festival season" (Coachella, Lollapalooza, SXSW). He argues that performance under surge comes from preparation, not pressure, and offers a concise "peak readiness playbook": preload your people, schedule like a festival, create tempo rituals, stack early wins, and rehearse busy periods. The piece targets dealership leaders and managers, urging them to anticipate, train, and rehearse for recurring rushes (Memorial Day, month-end, summer weekends).
Chapters
Coachella didn't sneak up on the bands, they planned for it. But sometimes in your store, the summer heat wave of customers hits and all of a sudden the service base are jammed, the sales team is struggling to follow up, and the phones are ringing off the hook. It's not that your people can't handle the volume. It's that you didn't train for the festival. See, performance doesn't come from pressure. It comes from preparation. I'm Chris Hunzicker and this is the dealership war room Leadership fire. Seven minutes. No fluff, just fuel. Festival season is a mindset. Coachella, Lollapalooza, south by Southwest, those events run like a machine because people plan for chaos. And you know what else is a festival? Memorial Day sales events, month end service surges, and summer road trip demand. These are your dealership's Coachellas. And yet so many teams treat them like it's a surprise party. Let me tell you what happens when you don't prepare. The BDC gets overwhelmed and you miss hot leads. Service advisors start doing walkaround because they're too busy in order to save times. And managers, they're not prepared. And so what they do, they go into chaos mode. Just start snapping at people. It's not about the volume. It's about a lack of anticipation. And anticipation is the key. Once you know where things are coming and you prepare for it, you can excel. Wayne Gretzky's most famous quote was, I was never the biggest and I was never the fastest and I was never the strongest hockey player. And they said, but how did you score so many goals? He said, everybody else would skate to where the puck was and I would try to anticipate and skate to where the puck was going to be. That's the power of anticipation. So here's what great leaders do before the rush, and it's critical we do that. Our whole business is filled with rushes. We have tons of Lollapaloozas and tons of Coachellas, but we've got to do is dump, dial in how we get ready for that. And I want to share with you what I call the peak readiness playbook. Or in other words, how do you handle a rush? Number one, preload your people. Train before the surge, not during the storm. Number two, schedule like a festival. Block time for lead, follow up, recon callbacks. Leave nothing to chance. You know your stress points. You know where your store starts to break down. You know exactly where your weak spots are. Well, plan for that in advance. Number three, create tempo rituals Morning huddles, midday resets, end of day wins. Keep the energy and focus locked in on purpose, on point with anticipation. Number four, stack your wins and push for early momentum. If you can book 10 appointments before noon, you already won the day. Remember, urgency is not the enemy of preparation. It's the reward for it. And when the crowd rushes the gates, your team should be prepared for it, not panicked by it. So the way to go from panic to preparation is pretty simple. You just have to continually look ahead to see what is your next high volume window for you. Is it going to be Memorial Day? Is it going to be a big June sale? Maybe it's just a regular old Saturday that you know is always big and it's always going to be there. Then ask yourself, have I trained my team for the crowd? Am I just hoping they survive it and stop reacting and start rehearsing? Because chaos doesn't kill culture. Unprepared leadership does. Some of the best training I ever got was working in four and five star resorts, both in the United States and over in Europe. And in five star resorts, there is a level of service that is expected no matter what. But we would have rushes just like everybody else. And every one of these elite places that I worked at, the process and the preparation was unbelievable. The rehearsal, how it was dialed in, we would actually, in the slow seasons, practice for the busy seasons and what was going on. We would literally rehearse how we're going to do stuff, where we're going to place things, what we're going to do so that we can absolutely execute at an unbelievable level no matter how busy it is. And that's exactly what I'm asking you to look at. That. We all have our Coachellas, we all have our south by Southwest, we all have our busy seasons, and we know that it's going to come. All I'm asking you to look at is say if you want elite level performance, then you need to rehearse and not react. And you need to take a look and say, okay, when the volume goes up. And sometimes these are just during the day, sometimes it's during weekends. Special events. All of you know the ebb and the flow of your business. What I want you to do right now is stop and write down where are three or four areas that you consistently get caught up short? Where are three or four areas where, you know, things go wrong? And it's not just the customer flow, it's also employees. Every dealership I've ever worked with has more employees take off during the summer at any other time yet in service, we're usually busier than summer than in any other time. We know it's going to happen. It happens every single year. How can you now prepare for it? How can you anticipate what's going to happen? How can you look at rehearsing and adjusting and setting up so that you are prepared to handle the influx and the flow, no matter how busy you get? See, that's part of having elite leadership. That's part of having elite culture, and that is literally how you dominate your market. If this hit home, please share it with someone. But more importantly, if it hit home, do something about it. And I want you to sit down today and write down where are the three areas that we constantly get beat up, where we always get hit by the rush? And then start looking at what can I do to anticipate, what can I do to prepare and how can I rehearse so that when those chaos moments come, you are prepared and you execute. And with that, I will see you tomorrow in the dealership war room. It.
