Take advantage of what comes your way, says Ford dealer Beth Beans Gilbert

Beth Beans Gilbert says she did everything with her dad, Fred, when she was growing up. At age 12, she went to work with him, spending the summer at the family’s Ford dealership. After seeing him on the job, she says, “I wrote him a letter and mailed it to him — and told him I wanted to be him when I grew up. I wanted to be ‘a great dealer,’ I told him.”
 
Gilbert is well on her way to achieving that goal. Today, she is vice president of Fred Beans Automotive Group in Doylestown, Pa., which has more than 1,700 employees at 21 dealerships, a parts warehouse, collision and quick service centers and a car rental business.
 
“When I look back, I think I took advantage of everything that came my way,” says Gilbert. “I was going to sales things with my dad when I was in my teens.” After college, she went to the National Automobile Dealers Association Academy, then spent time working for Carter Myers’ Virginia dealership business. “Dealer Academy was great training. After that, you could walk into a department and just know if something wasn’t right,” she says. “It gave you the skill set to run a profitable entity.” And Myers, she says, was a visionary and opened her eyes to how dealerships could be operated “as one corporation, with one personality.”
 
After she returned to the family business, she worked with her dad to form a new management company in 1994, centralizing functions including human resources, payroll, recruiting, IT and advertising.
 
Her first full-time role at the company was running the collision centers and helping her father acquire new dealerships. “But I really wanted to run a store,” she says. She was intrigued by General Motors’ Saturn concept. “My dad was sure we wouldn’t get a Saturn store but said, ‘If you want to fill out the application, go ahead,’” Gilbert remembers. Beans not only was awarded a Saturn franchise but took over a second dealership as well — and Gilbert took charge. “It was a huge turning point in my career,” she says. “Being involved in Saturn was everything correct about the car business.” She credits Saturn’s original president, Skip LeFauve, with helping her understand the power of having employees involved in decision-making — how it could build the consensus needed to reach important goals. 
 
She says it boggles her mind that the dealership industry is still 90 percent men and that most of the women she sees in leadership roles came into them as she did, as part of a family business. “Hopefully we are the generation who can serve as mentors for other women looking to enter the industry,” she says.
 
She acknowledges the challenge of finding work-life balance while working at a dealership, particularly for women with families. But she says she’s always looking to recruit women and to add new ideas and different perspectives. “As a mom of four, I know I am good at multitasking — I think most moms are, and that’s a huge strength to embrace in this industry,” she says. She also thinks mothers are conditioned to be decisive and to keep moving forward. 
 
“Women also have more empathy, which can be a great asset in this business,” she says. “One of my successes is putting myself in other people’s shoes. For instance, it’s hard to get your car serviced, to be without your car for a day — what a pain in the neck. I always try to empathize with that when I’m talking with people.”
 
Her advice for any young person in the business, she says, is to “Learn outside the industry to better yourself. I’m a huge book reader and like to listen to podcasts. That’s the way you’re going to grow and learn to lead and communicate.” 
 
But one of her most important pieces of advice is one she has witnessed firsthand, in how her dad has conducted business during more than 60 years in the car industry. It’s a lesson she shares with her own children. “You have to put yourself out there,” Gilbert says. “You have to like people to be in this business. You have to want to connect with them.” She says her dad still gives out his personal phone number to employees and customers. “Be the first one to smile, to say hello, to make eye contact,” she advises. “Don’t be afraid to be that first one to make a move.
 
“Especially now as we’re coming out of the pandemic, those small acts will have a big impact on your success.”