With 101 facilities in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, Bilia is Scandinavia’s largest automobile chain, with a leading position in sales and servicing of cars and pickups. Bilia is the main dealer for companies like Volvo, Renault, Hyundai, Nissan, Honda and BMW.

Bilia has been working with Scandinavian Leadership since 2006. In the middle of this summer the board of Bilia met with Carl Filip Bergendal at Kullagårdens Guesthouse in Skåne, Sweden for three day business planning session.

Jan Pettersson is the CEO of Bilia.

How is your current situation?
“Of course the crisis of the car industry affects all car dealers. For instance, in the history of Bilia, October 2007 was the best month ever but one year later in October 2008 we faced the worst month ever.”

How can you handle such a fall?
“This is the largest decline in sales in modern history for cars. The market has dropped 30-50% and for us this has made us work hard to adjust our business to the current situation. We have lowered our inventory of cars and by reducing our workforce. On the other hand, we see some light, used car sales and service work are doing increasingly better.

Bilia is using Lots ^®
“I have been working with Lots^® and Carl Filip since early 1990s. After a certain period in Bilia, I felt the need of a structured way of working within our business plan. The first year my co-workers were a bit hesitant towards the method, but now after four years of working with Lots ^® everyone feels it is really good. The Bilia group works continuously with Lots^® and once in a year we meet Carl Filip to work with the overall business plan.”

“Carl Filip is one of the best facilitators I have ever met. He knows how to lead us. By coaching us he helps us to move forward to the level of asking analysis questions. He makes sure that we know the purpose of things we do.”

What challenges are ahead of Bilia?
“The greatest challenge for us is that nobody knows how cars will be marketed in the future. Will they be sold in facilities like ours or will they be sold directly on the internet?”

In the second quarter of 2009 Bilia has reported a profit of 38million SEK.