I got an e-mail today from one of my former colleagues, asking me to lunch next week and asking the magic question, “How’s That Book Coming?”

When I left work at the end of June, I conceived of a plan to write a book along the lines of Moneyball, only for auto dealerships.

Ever since then, I’ve paid particular attention to television car ads and have visited a car dealership, both of which figure prominently into Chapter 1. What’s my thesis? Simple: auto dealerships do not understand the demographics of their customer base – women. According to recent research, 71% of all car buying decisions are ‘strongly influenced’ by women. But when I speak with women, they tell me they’d rather go to the dentist, have a mammogram or put a stick in their eye, rather than visit a car dealership. Why would that be?

That’s where Moneyball comes in – the idea that you have to reinvent the way you approach baseball in order to succeed. The Oakland Athletics have the second lowest payroll in all of professional baseball. The San Diego Padres have the lowest. The Padres are in next to last place in their division, having won a total of 52 games this year. The Athletics – the “A’s” – are second in their division and have won 61 games this season. Who’s ahead of the A’s? The Texas Rangers, whose salary budget is 4 times’ the A’s. You get the idea.

Back to auto sales – most dealerships compare their sales results monthly versus the previous month and the same month last year. They have no idea how many sales they didn’t make, because they do not collect any data on their prospects. In other words, they assume a certain percentage of their customers will come into the dealership and leave without even leaving their name. The analogy to Moneyball is in how the teams find players. They use scouts that look for all the criteria that don’t matter: fielding expertise, RBIs and other ‘soft’ attributes like how they look in a uniform (?!) The Oakland strategy, from a guy named Bill who was a night watchman at a food factory, was only one criteria matters: can the player get on base? In the dealership section, out of x prospects, how many are women, and how many cars did you sell to those women? They have no idea. But if you want to know more about my strategy, stay tuned. I’ll post Chapter 1 within the next 10 days. Ultimately I’ll publish it on Amazon’s Kindle.