Sorry - I've been out of the loop - hope this hasn't been posted yet....
http://www.hfxnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=64616&sc=270
Making business a driving success
Sean O'Regan knows a nice car when he sees it, and he knows how to sell that car to you
ANDREA MACDONALD
The Daily News
Sean O'Regan is vice-president of sales for O'Regan's Automotive Group. Along with its other enterprises, the company plans to have four dealerships under one roof at the former Home Depot site in Dartmouth by early 2008.
Q: So what do you drive?
A: That's kind of a tough question because I drive a lot of different cars.
Right now, the one I've been driving the last little while is a car that we've kept and is not really for sale. It's a 2003 Chevy SSR convertible. I like it and I've got a 20-month-old little boy and he kind of likes the convertible. You can prop him up in the front and turn the airbag off, so it's kind of a neat little thing to have in the summer. The fancy car, he calls it.
My wife drives a hybrid. I drive a various number of vehicles. If I'm going someplace, I'll try and see what I think might be a nice car to show off to the crowd, something people would be interested in. No particular vehicle, but something we sell, obviously.
Q: Did you own any muscle cars growing up?
A: Well, I had access to some, absolutely. We kept a few. We have a nice 1970 Olds Cutlass 455, which would be a muscle car. I have a '68 Cadillac convertible that I kept over the years and I like to drive. But really, growing up, I never had a car until I started working, after I graduated from university.
Q: What's your dream car, if money were no object?
A: I've always kind of wanted one of these (pointing to a model car in his office). It's a '59 Cadillac convertible. It's got the big fins, about as wild-looking a car as probably was ever made. To be honest, it would be hard to nail me down on one. I love cars and I love old cars and there are so many cars from so many different eras that I'd have to first go pick an emptied-out shopping mall that you could store them all in.
Q: What makes you a good salesman?
A: My grandfather was in sales and he always said, "You know, you have two ears and one mouth and you want to use them accordingly." So I think I'm a good listener when it comes to clients. I try to listen to what they want, what's important to them and what their priorities are.
Q: What changes have you seen in buying patterns?
A: Things change over the years, sometimes with the economy and sometimes with styling and so on. Right now, a lot of people are very concerned about gas consumption, a clean vehicle, how it is for the environment and so on. A lot of manufacturers, if they aren't already, are looking at hybrid technology or some type of a cleaner-burning fuel. So that's one of the trends we're seeing now. The styles change over the years, colours seem to come in and out; they seem to be very cyclical.
Q: What's your educational background?
A: I went to St. F.X. and I have a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Business Administration.
Q: Did you just assume that you'd be going into the family business?
A: No, not necessarily. We used to have a gas station and then we sold used cars out of the side before we were in the new-car business. So I always had a job there, pumping gas, cleaning cars from about eight years old. So I certainly grew up in the business.
My father would have bought what was Scotia Chev Olds Cadillac at the time and I would have been in high school. Starting in junior high and then in high school and university, I worked for Social Services, which turned into the Department of Community Services, in their summer camping programs, working with some disadvantaged youth, some severely mentally and physically challenged children and moderately challenged adults.
I didn't ultimately decide to go into that, but it certainly made a big impression on my life and I really enjoyed it. I always had an interest in cars and an interest in business but I guess growing up, I wanted to keep my options open.
Q: Was there a pressure to go into the family business?
A: I don't think so. When I graduated from St. F.X., I went back to do the second degree and came out in '92. To be quite honest, I was very happy to have a job because it was a very poor recession-type economy and one of the hardest hit was the car business.
It's not really like today, where there's such a pull for graduates of university, trade school, high school, you name it. There's a real shortage of labour. A lot of kids have their choice of jobs. When I came out, very, very few of my friends had jobs lined up. And a lot of them for many years went back and maybe got onto what they used to do in the summer or maybe worked in a restaurant. They didn't know what they were going to do. So I was happy to get the job and I absolutely enjoyed it.
Q: Why didn't you pursue a career in social work?
A: I kind of did them both at the same time for a while. Up until I went to university, I had worked in our business, which is a very small business, forever. In university, camp would generally start for me in about June, so I would sell cars for the first two months.
I always enjoyed both. But I really got into this and I really liked it. I had a job waiting here. It was selling cars, which is 100 per cent commission, so I didn't have a salary waiting for me, but I had sold cars previously and I knew I could do it.
It's a business that changes all the time; you deal with a lot of people, you deal with a lot of people on a team but then you meet a lot of people who are your customers and you can build those relationships. It's allowed me over the years to meet some of the best people you can ever imagine and see things and travel places that I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.
If I was a medical agent of something like that, I would typically be dealing with purchasing agents of either medical clinics or hospitals or whatever. If you're a movie director, you're going to be in with actors. When you're selling something like cars, everybody buys a car. So you get to meet some very, very interesting people, which is exciting.
Q: O'Regan's is pretty well-known for its community involvement. How does a company that's inundated with requests choose which causes to support?
A: Sometimes there's a personal connection. We've been very involved, for 30-plus years, with Heart & Stroke. One of the reasons for that is that I had a brother that was born with a heart defect. There's myself, I have a younger brother Patrick and Danny would have been the next one, then I have a sister Kathleen. He was between Patrick and Kathleen. So he was born with a heart defect and eventually he died. But from then on, we've been very, very involved in Heart & Stroke.
We're always involved very much in the Cancer Society because my grandmother died of cancer and I think cancer touches a lot of us. So sometimes there's that connection.
We've been very involved with St. F.X. over the years because we went there. We've been involved with stuff like Dartmouth Alderney Landing because my family all lives in Dartmouth.
So there are many where there is a personal connection, but there's others where you kind of look at the community and say, what does the community need and how much do they need your support? Because let's face it, there are some causes that are probably easier to attract support for than others.
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