Leading by example

When Mark Yuill was 10 years old, he figured out that the way to build his newspaper route into the biggest in Reno was by giving the customers what they wanted.

And so he walked the extra steps, over and over again, to carry newspapers up the front steps and place them inside the screen doors of his customers.

Why do the extra work?

"I'm from a very poor and meager existence," says Yuill."I learned that it was really nice to have a couple of quarters to rub together."

What works for newspapers works for motorcycles.

Yuill and his younger brother Brad these days own Freedom Cycles, a Triumph motorcycle dealership in Reno that recently purchased the Vespa dealership as well.

Among 181 Triumph dealers in America, the Reno company garnered the highest scores in customer- satisfaction surveys.

Freedom Cycles doesn't rely on consultants or complex systems of data to make sure it's keeping its customers satisfied.

"You have to care about people," says the plain-spoken Yuill."We are who we are.

It's everything we stand for."

The challenge at the nine-employee dealership in South Meadows,Yuill acknowledges, is instilling that customer-service philosophy in a workforce that didn't begin poor and didn't deliver newspapers inside screen doors.

"You've got to lead by your own example," Yuill says.

But he's also quick to acknowledge that the time he spends on the sales floor or the service desk working with customers keeps him away from another of his goals working on his business rather than working in his business.

The Yuill brothers have spent much of their careers wiping the oil from their hands at the end of a long workday.

Starting work in the family garage, they souped up the muscle cars of the late 1960s.

Before long, they had a regular job at Herb Hallman Chevrolet, where they put even more muscle on muscle cars.

The Yuill brothers' reputation blossomed on National Hot Rod Association tracks around the country,where they won five Winston Pro Stock championships.

By the late 1980s, they'd built a performance motor sports business that employed 18.

They developed a performance automotive emporium on Market Street.

In 1990, they took on a Saab dealership setting records for sales and customer service among the automakers' North American dealership.

Weary of the grind, the brothers scaled back during the 1990s.

They gave up the Saab dealership, sold the performance racing business to a longtime employee and planned to spend some time on two wheels.

But reputations die hard.

Friends asked the Yuills to tune their bikes.

A new business Freedom Cycles was opened to provide after-market service.

And when Triumph came calling in 2001, looking for a northern Nevada dealer, the Yuill brothers listened.

From a standing start, the dealership has built strong sales.

"We're bulldogs,"Yuill says, noting that a key piece of the company's success is the faith of its employees in the Triumph brand.

"When you really believe it, then people believe you," he says."It gets into your sales."

Now they hope to take the same faith into sales of Vespas, the high-end scooters that draw a different crowd than shoppers for performance motorcycles.

"We wanted to bring in people who weren't traditional motorcyclists,"Yuill says."But there's a crossover.

There's a common element about two wheels, about the motorcycle enthusiast."