Big Motor President Izumi’s “devil’s orders” demanding a net profit of 5 million yen per store.

On August 31, President Izumi sent an e-mail to all employees. One part of the message is noteworthy.

In terms of MQ per location, we will increase the MQ by 5 million yen per dealership and 2.5 million yen per satellite store.

The “MQ” in “MQ increase” is an abbreviation for “margin quality. MQ at Big Motor simply means “net profit,” not sales. To get a better understanding of the meaning of “MQ add-on,” we asked Mr. A, a former employee who until recently worked for Big Motor in western Japan.

He said, “Normally, the store’s expenses are about 20 million yen per month. What President Izumi means by MQ5 million yen is that the store should make a net profit of 5 million yen after deducting all store expenses, labor costs, utilities, etc.

In the case of a store with 10 salesmen, if each salesman simply earns 2.5 million yen MQ, the total MQ will be 25 million yen. If this can be cleared, the profit and loss will be surpassed, and the president’s target of 5 million yen net profit will be achieved. In other words, what President Izumi means by “topping up” is to bring profits back to the previous quota of 5 million yen MQ.

During the first six days of the first week of August (August 1-6), when the new system came into effect on July 26 and media coverage heated up, the number of vehicles sold at Big Motor nationwide was 672. This is approximately one-third to one-fourth of the number before the cheating scandal broke. Due to the negative publicity caused by the revelations, it is now very difficult to achieve even the normal MQ target.

The MQ of 5 million yen is not a “new quota,” nor does it mean that we should work hard to achieve our existing quota.

For a regular store to make a net profit of 5 million yen, please visit ……

Furthermore, on September 4, it was discovered that an e-mail with specific quotas was sent to assistant store managers and chief managers as well. To summarize the contents,

(A) 5 units per month for the number of units sold and 3 units per month for the number of units purchased
(B) 1 unit per month for sales and 10 units per month for purchases

Two types of quotas were imposed: (A) 5 units per month for sales and 3 units per month for buy-back. The quotas are not low, however, given the company’s image has been dramatically damaged. However, it has not yet been decided whether the “remedy” will be applied from October onward.