Sporting Clay Shooting is one of my favorite things to do. It is like golf but with an over and under shotgun. If you have ever done it you know the joy of getting outdoors with a few buddies, smoking a cigar, laughter, the smell of gunpowder and the exhilaration and high fives by “dusting” clay pigeons. This past weekend, having super nice weather here in Virginia as we were shooting we stopped at a couple of stands whereby the trapper sends out a pair of clays simultaneously. It is called Simo. They fly so fast you have to think very quickly as to the best position and timing of the shot to make. It first appears easy but it is actually quite difficult because your senses are so magnified in making sure you hit both birds going in different directions that you sometimes overeagerly shoot too quickly or too late at one and/or the other bird before formulating your plan. If you are patient, however, you can actually shoot both birds with one shot because there is a point in time where both birds actually intersect as they cross on their pathway in different directions. This requires calm, confident patience in carefully planning your shot to get both birds. I track the birds with both eyes open and when I see the intersection getting ready to occur I close my non-shooting eye, take aim and at that precise moment and take action by pulling the trigger. It is quite rewarding to see both clays reduced into “dust” with one shot. The formula; having vision (seeing it happen before it happens), planning, patience, timing, and action.

This reminded me of many dealerships out there where the formula gets mixed up so often it resembles a three-ring circus. Action, action, action without the vision, planning, timing, and patience required to afford their people the skill sets to accomplish their tasks and consequently their goal attainment.

When you don’t know what to do, try doing something.

Breakdown of the formula:
Vision:
A number of years ago, when she was still alive Helen Keller who was blind at birth was interviewed. The interviewer asked her “What could be a more de-habilitating handicap than not having your eyesight?” Helen Keller quickly responded, “Oh, that’s easy, it’s not having vision.” You see, sometimes you can see more with your eyes closed by envisioning what and how you want things to happen.

Vision is a cornerstone for true leaders because they cast out their vision beyond the reaches of mediocre shortsighted managers who typically wait for opportunities and/or problems to occur. True leaders reach out to the future and envision business getting better, their team getting stronger and envisioning a dealership synergy that bonds the team together like super glue. That is when everyone looks in the same direction instead of each other. Some of you know that my roots were well planted in Corporate America with Harris Corporation way before the car business. The thing that struck me about that work environment, first, as a salesperson and all the way up to an Executive was that we were trained every month and sometimes weekly to sharpen our leading-edge abilities, knowledge and self-confidence. We had to because our greatest foe was IBM. We owned the markets we wanted because we were provided with the ‘extra measures’ to become our best.

“IF YOU TAKE ACTIONABLE STEPS TO MAKE CERTAIN IMPROVED CHANGES TO YOUR STORE, YOU WILL REAP AWESOME BENEFITS FROM DOING SO.”

As an executive I was promoted quickly several times because of three things; I hired right, I trained my people right and showed care and concern for them all the time. That’s it, plain and simple. Like the tide coming in, when my people rose to new ranks so did I. Because of my background, I have been given a gift of seeing things in a dealership way beyond just being a ‘car guy.’ Certain aspects of dealership business are readily recognized and changes implemented to repair and/or improve. Why is it we in this industry don’t have the same vision? Ready, shoot, aim comes to mind. Due to the changing marketplace and economic conditions, statistics now indicate that in 1-2 years, half of what a salesperson knows about selling is obsolete for the current changing market. And, some of us are still using old material and the same tired word tracks. This will give you progressive deterioration if left unchecked along with high attrition, lost deals, team disintegration and lower profits because your team members are not growing. Put on a new pair of glasses and enhance your vision by taking your team to new heights of skill achievement. Do not confuse short-term motivational ‘raw raw’ locker room sessions, product or technical skills with sales training enhancement. None of these help your sales team or service advisors skillfully sell or build customer relationships or your managers become true leaders.

The pressure on business managers to deliver consistent, improving financial results is relentless – and often unrealistic. We must visualize our store and our people grow to their fullest potential. Then, constantly begin seeing the improvement areas to take them there every hour, every day, every week, every month. Your reward for this corporate approach to running your business will be rewarding in so many immeasurable ways. The galaxy of opportunities will surprise you.

Planning:
The challenges of modern business are so intense and ever-shifting, managers need all the help they can get. Most managers will spend more time planning to advertise than providing their all-important team members with ongoing ‘high quality’ personal skills training. I know a few GSMs who are much more concerned about what color balloons go up on the lot Saturday morning than about the care, well-being and personal growth of their team that produces (or not) his or her income every month. Go figure. I see dealers all the time spending $20,000-$80,000 a month on advertising and at the end of the month cannot, for the most part, give a clear analysis of the ad sourcing to determine the real ROI on their expenditure. Like buying swamp land in Florida in my book. What is the unrecovered ad expenditure? Guarantee it’s a ton of money that goes wasted and they don’t even know it. Am I just not getting it or would it make perfect sense to consider taking a small percent of the ad budget each month and place it into a ‘value building effort’ to increase the abilities and skill sets of your team members including management? Call it the “synergy fund” and let it build value then plan event training. You know, major league baseball players make millions of dollars but still get into the batting cage and take grounders or fly balls to improve their skills. Most, if not all of them, have personal trainers to fine tune those abilities even further. But many dealers are too busy counting deals and complaining about gross profits instead of utilizing their vision to see there are better ways to grow and develop their business.

Mr. Trump gets it and refuses to be pulled down by old-school paradigms which are perpetuating the continuing madness in our industry. Every dealership is saying the same things. Most websites look the same. And, most dealers do nothing to improve the skill sets of their management team to promote solid leadership. Nothing limits achievement more than small thinking! When you start your car, you should know the direction you are heading. Therefore, let your passion pull you forward and your planning give you direction for processes and training which endure the down times as well as the up times.

Patience
It takes time and effort to heal a sick or wounded work environment. In laying the groundwork one must first recognize that a commitment towards making improved changes is most important. Without this, nothing happens and everything defaults to business as usual very quickly and you lose credibility as complacency sets in. I do not agree with the notion that in order to create an improved effective change in the way you do business takes a long time. In fact, it can occur very quickly given a few cornerstones like empowering your people, sharing the plan with the team and giving them the economic results as they occur so everyone knows where they stand. Secrecy breeds fear and worry. It sends a signal to your people that you do not trust them or think they are incompetent in absorbing the information. Next, is investing in your people by investing in training and skill development which ultimately makes you more money. Investing in your people over an extended time frame says to them “you are important to me and a valued asset to this organization.” The moment you clearly recognize that you really do achieve a competitive advantage through your people, everything else falls in place nicely. Loyal customers are incubated through loyal workforces who are exhibiting new relationship building techniques which energize them towards customer-centric skills.

A dealership can, unlike the Titanic turn things around for the better much faster than most actually believe. How many times have you seen a sports team way behind in the game only to shock everyone by coming back strong when the chips were down to win the game? The patience element comes into play because you have to first give your team constant encouragement and pasture running room to build their skills and then continue allowing enough time to build them. If you corral (micromanage) them they will get unused organs atrophy and never run again because you crushed their spirit and creativity. I have found that almost every dealership employee I have ever spoken with would eagerly accept the opportunity to grow through effective personal development and enhanced training strategies. Sadly, most never receive it as they wait for their next job opportunity to appear.

Timing
No Dealer or GM starts out intending to build a lousy store culture, or even a just an average one. Most dealers would like their team’s productivity to be born out of a passion for the job and team synergy. Yet in this maddening marketplace, many dealers fail to see the value they can receive from well-trained people. About the timing, I guess the question you must ask yourself is when do you want to make a whole bunch more money? If later or next year is ok then that is your timing course of action. If you want to make more right now then now is it. Now is always better than hemming and hawing around “until next quarter” because the stores that choose to implement now will blow right past you.

Start a new agenda at the beginning of next month. Start your plan for doing so now. The job never started takes the longest to finish. Just don’t get fooled into thinking, like so many, that everything will work out without a plan. Be the entrepreneur you are intended to be and do it now. Breathe new life into the dealership and your people. Plant the seeds now for growing and reaping a harvest of opportunities down the road a bit. Sometimes the pursuit of the almighty dollar leads to selfish incorrigible activity ala VW’s willful skirting of emission requirement. Timing must coordinate with a well-thought-out plan.

Action
Sometimes we are more comfortable with activities that make us feel like we’re doing something opposed to actually achieving a goal. In order for the action step to succeed, the aforementioned steps need to be handled first. No more ready shoot aim. You are now taking all the planned steps to reap an abundant harvest of increase. Of course, to win the battle you must have good well-equipped soldiers. Winning is virtually impossible if your soldiers are weaponless, cold and starving. Three things must occur for any great action achievement; purpose, persistence, and patience. One tiny spark can ignite a raging forest fire and you can ignite enthusiasm for individual and team member growth the same way. If you take actionable steps to make certain improved changes to your store you will reap awesome benefits from doing so. If this is not a priority it will be like having a flat tire; then one day in the future you have to take care of it at a most inconvenient panic-stricken moment.

Three thoughts;

1. If you are the smartest person in the room, you haven’t hired right.
2. It is easy to get into a routine, complacent way of conducting business. If you don’t actively disrupt that and put new ideas in front of your people all the time, they and you will lose creative muscle.
3. Stay focused and don’t try to win a popularity contest.

Here are some action steps I would begin running my dealership by; Provide short and long-term company outlook to every employee, abide by the golden rule, create an atmosphere where the business was like family, constantly be developing employees and finally challenge yourself to be the best employer in your marketplace. The latter will attract the best future employees from your marketplace.

Faith that you can do something without action is useless. If you would like some help to starting a new direction shoot me an email requesting “action” and I will send you some ideas.

Take your most popular selling make and model and pick your very best zip code.

• Do you know how many of those particular vehicles were sold in that zip code in the last quarter?
• How many of those were used?
• What year was the most popular?
• Who sold those vehicles?
• What color were those vehicles?
• Did they finance?
• What was the average advertised price?
• What did those buyers look like? Young? Female? Income?
• Where can you find similar consumers?
• Where do those consumers shop?
• What beer do they drink now that Earnhardt has gone to AMP?
• How has the data changed from last quarter?
• Extra credit: Which vehicles will be the most popular used vehicles 90 days from now?

What would you do if you had all of this information? Could you use it to make better decisions regarding used cars, mailings, Internet leads, service, finance, training, etc.? All of the answers to the questions above are pieces of data. The trick is to find a way to quickly pull this data together, think about what the data means and how it has changed, and then take meaningful action. How do you know if you have used data correctly? Easy, cash flow!

Try this. You have decided to use direct mail this month; you’re going to send out 5,000 pieces offering free groceries for a month. Who are you going to send the piece to? One of your staff is now shouting “five-mile radius, five-mile radius.” It’s a shame your store is one mile from the Atlantic Ocean. Someone else is telling you to mail your customer base…again, another wants to mail to all minivan owners. How do you know which criteria to use to get the best results? Which mailing list do you buy? Your own data (CRM) combined with local market vehicle sales and consumer demographic data will yield your answers. You will be able to target local families, with two-plus kids, which shop nearby and have a minivan that is at least three years old. Or is that the wrong filter? Do not let direct mail companies from thousands of miles away choose your mailing list without your oversight and direct input. Watch for rivers, mountains, seasons, and road construction – all will impact your ROI.

Important safety tip: All direct mail pieces should have your store’s return address. Do not throw the returns away, keep them, count them, update them and you will thank yourself because it will improve your ROI next time. You must appoint a point person for this task in order to assure thoroughness and correctness.

Refer to the title above. (Data + Thought + Action = Cash) Action, however, is the key component for any success. You can look at data all day long and have nothing to show for it unless you develop a proactive action plan toward using it. The question is how to implement the action to put things in motion.

Recently I was sitting in a very successful dealer’s office; he had a stack of lead provider and Internet-related invoices sitting on his desk. What he confessed next was stunning, “I have no idea if any of these invoices made me any money last month.” He followed that up with a reasoning that kills the income line on his balance sheet, “but I know we had a pretty good month, we sold 157 cars.” In a dealership, “but we had a good month” is an excuse and is used to remove data accountability as well as other good sense “discipline processes.” The enemy of great is good and for years we have hung our hats on good enough and that philosophy simply does not work anymore in this market climate.

If the dealer is not going to hold himself or someone he/she really trusts responsible for managing his money, it is certain no one else in the dealership will truly care about managing his money. He asked, “What can I do to get a better handle on the effectiveness of my monthly expenditures?” My answer stunned him, “Become a better leader and train your people how to perform.” Who would have guessed that leadership, profitability, and data (ROI) were so closely linked?

ROI, return on investment, is an accurate measure of your short-term financial success. What you spend versus what you earned. As an owner or general manager, ROIs provide monthly feedback on your decision-making – good or bad. Advertising, inventory, and service equipment are straightforward ROI calculations. You are wasting your own money if you do not have these calculations as part of closing out your month. When it comes to advertising, track everything. Have your staff justify, with data, each advertising expenditure. We spent $3,250 with this lead provider and we sold three vehicles with a total gross of $6,211. Expensive. If you have a dealer management system and a customer relationship management system, then you have all the tools at your fingertips that can give you the answers to your ROI questions – provided your process requires your people to maintain your systems. Remember: Garbage in, garbage out, create a process that requires you and your staff to enter information accurately. Once again we have circled back to leadership and accountability.

Most ROI calculations are useless unless you have some meaningful way to compare the results. Baselines (not a baseball reference) are a standard set of values created over time. Use baseline data to determine your results. Be aware that your baselines are yours when you first establish baselines make sure you compare your results to industry results. NADA is a great place to find useful data/metrics.

Important safety tip: Just because your DMS system has 126 different reports available, it doesn’t mean you should run them all! The interesting thing about CRM reports is that you can very effectively run your business with maybe 20 percent of them. Try hard to avoid the analysis paralysis syndrome by getting bogged down on trivial reports and remain focused on the one that moves the needle on ROI, additional training needs (because of inferior performing salespeople), inventory, sales ratios (the phone to appointment to delivery or Internet conversion processes). ROI calculations based on training, people, and process are more difficult. How do you know if your training is effective? What should you measure? How long until the training takes effect? How long until the training wears off? How do I hold my managers accountable for implementing training and standing steadfast on discipline?

Worst case scenario: your best salesperson, 30 cars a month, does not want to take the time to follow your CRM process. “I’m too busy with customers to take the time to enter all of the customer’s information.” Consider a policy of compensation based on procedure compliance with escalators built in for repeat offenders.

How about an ROI calculation for leadership? Hmmm…

Chuck Barker

Chuck Barker has been CEO of his two companies, Impact Marketing & Consulting Group, LLC and Impact Summit, LLC, for the last 24 years, both located in Virginia. His experience ranges from an executive with Harris Corporation (16,000 employees) one of Fortune Magazine’s largest companies to the automobile industry where he has performed all executive positions. His companies specialize in growing businesses, dealerships, and people. He delivers unparalleled sales & service development programs, management leadership workshop programs, and dealer/principal business & profit improvement ideas for automobile dealerships. He has recently published the first comprehensive ‘in-house’ sales training solution program for dealers entitled The Dealership Success Guide.

I also enjoy seeing stores that are scared to death of change embrace some new processes to improve their performance too. You know the stores I am referring to; yes the ones with inconsistent management and sales staff attrition hovering around 70%.

Here are a few of the critical elements to launch a new successful flight path for you and your dealership. We first need to recognize that there are good stores and there are great stores. The great stores are willing and able to do something extra all the time to encourage and create a better all round environment for their people, and subsequently for their customers.

Want to make a difference? Then it will involve an investment in training, time, and stretching your world as you know it. The good news is it can be done and it is not going to cause you to lose arms or legs in the process. If you can’t implement all of these, focus on the ones where you can make a commitment to stay on track and see the effort all the way through. Here are some of the critical elements which must be present in your business growth plan foundation to ensure a practical and sound approach to a successful implementation.

A True “Customer Focused” Approach

Everything you and your team touches needs to be accomplished with the customer in mind. If you believe Customer Relationship Management is just about the customer you are mistaken. CRM is a full all out effort to employ relationship strategies in every corner of the store. When this happens, the customer knows it and is the major benefactor of your efforts. One of the byproducts of this effort will be that the entire dealership is enhanced and everyone working there is better from the experience.

My top ten solid essential areas (in no particular order) for the New Year that everyone needs to adopt an understanding of, be trained in, have proper dialog for and most important, possess, enact or figure out the processes like a road map for success are:

1)  Incoming Telephone Prospect Inquiries

2)  Rock Solid Follow-up Strategies

3)  Owner Base Retention and Renewed Referral Strategies

4)  Orphan Owner Strategies

5)  Service Department ‘Sales’ Training

6)  21st Century Business Development and CRM Practices

7)  Owner and Employee Loyalty Efforts

8)  Internet Department Strategies to employ “customer focused foundation”

9)  Employee Retention and Appreciation

10)  Enhanced Continuing Training for Your Team including Leadership, Management, Sales, Service Department

Ok, that is quite a list. In my opinion, there are other things but the aforementioned are the required active ingredients to bake the perfect self-rising ever growing dealership. The ROI you will receive will most defiantly evoke enhanced employees, revenues and customer relations. You can, of course, choose it or lose it.

The “pre-flight” checklist has to possess the following initiatives in order to gain proper altitude for sustained flight into the new levels of achievement:

Inter-Relationship Development

An all-inclusive dealership campaign must be adhered to. The entire Management Team must work together as a single team committed to accepting and selling the positive new processes to come. The Team must instill a positive atmosphere of ‘great things are coming to help us grow the business and ‘wait until you see the new and exciting tools coming to help you become your personal best and increase your income”.

Planning For Solid Cultural And Process Change

Yes, it will most definitely require a change of latitudes and attitudes. If you want to improve you must change something you do daily, weekly and monthly. New enhanced sound business processes will take you there. Break out of those old paradigms and accept new and improved ways to do business in your store and you will be glad you did. Be better than you are by continuing to improve something all the time. The correct changes we make today will make a better tomorrow. Starting is the great inhibitor to your pathway for success. So, start now this New Year developing the cultural and process changes needed.

Disciplined Decision Making

Here today, gone tomorrow decision making will guarantee failure. Decision making with consistency and discipline will point you toward a successful dealership-wide growth path. When you and your management team adopt certain new processes in your store then stick to them. Sure, we must be flexible to accommodate change for the better when we identify improvements to our processes but not to retreat on our process adoption principles. Remember, we do not change a process because no one wants to do them. We change a process only to make improvements in the way we are now conducting our business. It must be fruitful. Make good decisions and be consistent in doing so because you are making a new way of life in your store forever. Do it right and methodical.

Leadership

This one is the most important of these core principles you must have in place if you want to succeed. This is the single strength which will allow your store to succeed or, if it is not present, fail in your endeavor. We could spend months on the subject of leadership as it applies to building a strong work discipline. It comes down to this, if you have it or develop it you will be able to withstand a sustained growth path to overcome the adversities which will arise along the journey. If you don’t, I wish you well.

Because Management Leadership is the cornerstone of any business success and the associated rich growth elements we will derive from it if we have it in place you simply have to have it! Choose it or lose it. Leaders can’t help but change the present because the present isn’t good enough. They succeed only when they find a way to make people excited by and confident in what comes next. This includes new processes and new store cultural changes which are going to occur in order for us to maximize business. It also requires for these leaders to be well taught in recognizing what true leadership is all about. Don’t assume they know. Get them trained well at what they need to be doing and asking and the ROI will be immeasurable.

This can and will be a great year for you and the entire team if you are willing to employ a little “extra” effort and creativity in doing so. Make it so and you will be happy you did.

Vision

I have spoken previously about the importance of visionary leadership in your store.  Why is it this industry largely doesn’t grasp the concepts that successful companies embrace regarding the adoption of a corporate vision for growth?  Ready, shoot, aim seems to be the mantra.  This will give you progressive deterioration if left unchecked along with high attrition, lost deals, team disintegration and employees wandering lost in the desert.  When the shepherds sleep the sheep go their own way.  Put on a new pair of glasses and enhance your vision by taking your team to new heights of skill achievement. Do not confuse short term motivational ‘raw raw’ locker room sessions, product or technical skills with proper team and individual development enhancement.

Having vision is the cornerstone for true leaders because leaders cast out their sight way beyond the reaches of mediocre shortsighted managers who wait for opportunities and/or problems to occur so they can pounce.  These are the fixers and they usually bring people down with the store.  Too little too late. No, true leaders reach out to the future and envision ideas for improving business, their team getting stronger and envisioning a dealership synergy that bonds the team together like Bondo.  This is when everyone looks in the same direction instead of each other with finger pointing.  When Helen Keller was asked what handicap could more debilitating than being blind, she answered; “O that’s easy, it is not having vision”.  Poignant.

We must visualize our store and our people growing to the fullest potential.  Then, constantly begin seeing the multitude of improvement areas to take them to new altitudes every hour, every day, every week, every month and every year.  Your reward for this ‘corporate approach’ to running your business will be a galaxy of opportunities in so many measurable ways.  This galaxy will surprise you with renewed business enhancement in every area of the store!

Planning

You know, major league baseball players make millions of dollars but still get into the batting cage, work on pitch techniques and take grounders or fly balls to improve their skills almost every day in and off season.  They don’t wait for the BIG GAME to mess things up due to lack of conditioning and preparation.  Instead they recognize the important requirement for success planning;  practice, practice and practice.  If you notice big league ball player at the plate invariably you will see no two stances the same.  Why?  Because each individual is just that, an individual.  What works well for one does not work at all for another.  Similarly, your entire team; sales, service, parts, F&I, admin. – everyone is an individual and their skill sets are in most cases different from one another.  Therefore we need to identify strengths and weaknesses in each then capitalize on the strengths by feeding and developing those strengths. Sure we have to conduct broad training as a group but the batting averages go exponentially up when someone can interview your employees, identify individual strengths and weaknesses and develop a ‘tailored’ training program (like BP in the cage) for each individual.   Most pro ballplayers, if not all of them, have personal trainers to fine tune individual abilities even further.  But many managers are too busy counting deals, complaining about gross profits and then beating up the team for failing to fulfill the aforementioned instead of utilizing their leadership to envision there are better ways to grow their business and their people.

“Great leaders and salespeople have an edge because they are able to let go of obsolete ideas” – Donald Trump

Donald gets it and refuses to be pulled down by old school paradigms which are perpetuating the continuing madness in our industry.  Everyone is saying the same things.  Most web sites look the same.  And, most dealers do nothing to improve the skill sets of their management team to promote solid leadership.  Nothing limits achievement more than small thinking!  When you start your car you should know the direction you are heading.  Therefore, let your passion pull you forward and your planning give you direction for processes and development programs which endure the down times as well as the up times.

 Timing

It takes time and effort to heal a sick or wounded dealership work environment.  In laying the groundwork, a leader must first recognize that a commitment to making improved changes is critically important.  Without this, nothing happens and everything naturally defaults to business as usual very quickly and you then lose credibility.   I do not agree with the notion that in order to create an improved effective change in the way you do business takes a long time.  In fact it can occur very quickly given a few cornerstones like empowering your people, sharing the plan with the team and giving them the economic results as they occur.  Empowerment should be part of your overall business strategy.  Secrecy breeds fear and worry. It sends a signal to your people that you do not trust them or think they are incompetent in absorbing the information.  Next is investing in your people by investing in their skill set development which ultimately makes you more money (duh).  Spending money on your people over an extended time frame says to them “you are important to me and a valued asset to this organization”. The moment you clearly recognize that you really do achieve a competitive advantage through your people; everything else falls in place nicely.  Loyal customers are incubated through loyal work forces who are exhibiting the new relationship building techniques which energize them towards customer-centric selling skills.

A dealership can, unlike the Titanic turn things around for the better much faster than most actually believe.  How many times have you seen a sports team like the Cardinals in game 6 of the World Series way behind in the game only to shock everyone by coming back strong when the chips were down to win the game? The patience element comes into play because you have to first give your team constant encouragement, planning, provide pasture running room to build their skills and then continue to allow them time to build strength.  If you corral them by micro managing them, they will get unused organs atrophy and never run again because you crushed their spirit.  I have found that almost every sales consultant I have ever spoken with would eagerly accept the opportunity to grow and be challenged through affective new sales training strategies instead of the old tired sales technique videos.  Sadly, most never receive the good stuff as they eagerly await for the next job opportunity.

No Dealer or GM starts out intending to build a lousy store culture, or even a just an average one.  Would you get excited about going to an average restaurant with average food and service?  How about hiring an average heart surgeon for your critical required operation?  Maybe, but most people I know look for the best.  Most dealers would like their team’s productivity to be born out of passion for the job and team synergy.  Yet in this maddening marketplace, many dealers drastically fail to see the value they (and the team) can receive from well conditioned, prepared and trained people.  About the timing, I guess the question you must ask yourself is when do you want to see and experience a positive difference?  If later or next year is ok then that is your mission time horizon course of action.  If you want to make it happen right now then now is it.  Now is always better than hemming and hawing around “until next quarter” because the stores that choose to implement now will blow right past you.    Start a new agenda at the beginning of next month.  Start your commitment plan for doing so now!  The job never started takes the longest to finish.  The biggest reason for failure to succeed is never starting. Just don’t get fooled into thinking like so many in waiting for the preverbal vacation spot – Someday Isle.  Yea, someday I’ll start something new around here, someday I’ll look in to some new methods, someday I’ll train my people in new measures for success, etc, etc, etc.  For most, Someday Isle never comes.  Be the entrepreneur you are intended to be and do it now.  You people are looking to and at you for the fresh air to begin to blow.  Breathe new life into the dealership and your people.  Plant the seeds now for growing a harvest of opportunities down the road a bit.

Action

Having faith that you can do something without action is useless.  In order for the action step to succeed, the aforementioned steps need to be handled first.  No more ready-shoot-aim.  No, you are now taking all the planned steps to reap an abundant harvest of increase so get out the Leopold scope and draw a focused bead on improvement areas.  Of course, to win the battle you have to have good well equipped solders.  Winning is virtually impossible if your solders are weaponless, cold and starving.  Three things have to occur for any great action achievement; purpose, persistence and patience.  One tiny spark can ignite a raging forest fire and you can ignite enthusiasm for individual and sales team growth the same way.  If you take actionable steps to make improved changes to your store you will reap the benefits from doing so.  If this is not a priority it will be like having a flat tire; then one day in the future you have to take care of it at a most inconvenient panic stricken moment.

Here are some beginning action steps I would initiate running any dealership:

• Provide a long term company outlook to every employee; Make your dealership the dealership where people enjoy coming to work because they see security and growth potential.
• Abide by the golden rule; Builds team unity, growth and an awesome overall morale.
• Create an atmosphere where the business is like family; Comfortable environment allows for natural talents to become better.  Let them know it is ok to screw up but provide them with the knowledge of how to do it right next time.
• Invest in all your employees through strategic training elements; Well trained employees perform better and are engaged in their work thus, productivity increases.
• Challenge yourself to be the best employer in your market place; this will not only dramatically reduce attrition (huge savings) but attracts the best future employees.
• Develop a pattern of leadership consistency;  Here today and gone tomorrow initiatives  confuses employees.  Consistency gives employees security and a willingness to follow the new initiatives.
• Finally, you have to monitor results closely not only internally but externally.  Internal results will show up in the form of morale, processes and numbers.  External being a little tricky should be administered by an outside reputation management company like CarFolks.  As the saying goes; you don’t know what you don’t know.  Get yourself in the loop with every aspect of running a strong business.

If you would like a refreshing approach plan to starting a total new store culture direction shoot me an email requesting “action” and I will send you a plan.  Go to www.impactgroupcrm.com/impact-summit/.

By Chuck Barker

Known throughout the industry for his hands-on management style, Mr. Marriott has built a highly regarded culture that emphasizes the importance of Marriott’s people and recognizes the value they bring to the organization. Today, approximately 300,000 people wearing Marriott International name badges are serving guests in Marriott managed and franchised properties throughout the world.

Marriott International is also well known as a great place to work and for its commitment to diversity, social responsibility and community engagement. It has consistently been named to Fortune Magazine’s lists of most admired companies and best places to work. Why? What makes Marriott such a great place to work and experience the mammoth success it earns and the respect of their guests? They have a plan.

I feel any dealership can receive (although not quite the scale) a similar success story and report card if only the dealership would operate utilizing Bill’s rules of success listed below.  If they did, all of a sudden the dealership just might find that it has become a better place for people to work and for people to purchase vehicles and consequently, begin growing their business to unexpected increases.

Bill Marriott’s 12 rules of success:

1. Continually challenge your team to do better.
2. Take good care of your employees, and they’ll take good care of your customers, and the customers will come back.
3. Celebrate your people’s success, not your own.
4. Know what you’re good at and mine those competencies for all you’re worth.
5. Do it and do it now. Err on the side of taking action.
6. Communicate. Listen to your customers, associates and competitors.
7. See and be seen. Get out of your office, walk around and make yourself visible and accessible.
8. Success is in the details.
9. It’s more important to hire people with the right qualities than with specific experience.
10.  Customer needs may vary, but their bias for quality never does.
11.  Eliminate the cause of a mistake. Don’t just clean it up.
12.  View every problem as an opportunity to grow.

These are such great line items, but they are just that, line items sitting on a page in latent form. To give them life we have to apply “action” towards making them happen. How do we do that? We have to have design and implement a plan. With certainty, I guarantee the Marriott Corporation had and has a continuing tactical and strategic plan to make sure these line items come to life in their properties.  Ask 50 dealers this question; “What does your three to five year marketing and business plan look like?” and see how many have one. Do you? Odds are very high that few have taken the time to fully initialize any plan at all and frankly we all know that is no way to run a business. Develop a professional plan and watch what happens. If you will take the time to dig down into a subject (like planning carefully enough), a few deeply useful truths will dredge up beneath the seemingly surface complexity of the task.

However, as Dave Anderson quotes: “A brilliant plan not followed by consistent action isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” I agree with Dave on this wholeheartedly.  It is like looking at a target through a rifle scope on a gun range with no rounds in the chamber. Looks good, dead on bullseye, but you will never hit the target unless you first load the rifle, take careful aim, and then apply action by pulling the trigger. Many are shooting with no rounds or even blanks (false starts) and never hit any target. Don’t be that person. Take charge now and develop a rock solid growth plan and shoot for excellence not average. Say goodbye to yesterday and hello to tomorrow with optimism and you will see the core concepts more clearly.

Remember, leaders have to be optimistic. Being less pessimistic is not synonymous with optimistic anymore than less rude is synonymous with courteous.

Wouldn’t you be interested in renovating new energy and business gains into your dealership to receive sustained organizational improvement? If so, then a terrific place to start is to begin next month to at least move in the direction of a strategic sales and marketing plan. Many of my clients have initiated better focus and positive growth results from taking the first step by using this exercise, I know you will too if you stop, take a breath and plan a couple of well thought out meetings with your management team. Mix all department managers together for this because in doing so, you will yield cross departmental boundary suggestions to allow everyone to step out of their departmental paradigms and hopefully discover a new way of running their department by hearing from others.

Below I have listed the first simple steps for getting control of your growth and developing leaders and managers to get you there. At your first meeting, explain to your team that you are venturing into the development of a sales/marketing plan to transform the dealership’s present condition into something better and you need everyone’s help to do so. Let them know, that ideas are the beginning of all great achievements and each manager is a contributing factor in the success of the plan. Later on, in subsequent questions we can adjust questions to fit any particular needs you may have.

Start out with the following easy stuff then ramp up to the meat, which will drive the processes and inspire your people. Here is the first three-question template to use whereby everyone in attendance gets a copy as his or her personal worksheet. Print copies to pass out at your first meeting. Ask them to take this with them and over the next few days apply some good thinking toward completing their answers, which will be returned in next week’s mangers’ meeting. In that next meeting, go around the room and have each manager read their responses to the group. Make room for comments after each reading. Encourage team engagement by asking them things like: “How do you feel about Roy’s answers?” or “Would you agree this makes sense?” or “What would you add to those comments?” Remember, getting this meeting started is like rocket thrust being most intense coming off the launching pad then much less energy is required to navigate in orbit. Once you get things rolling you will be amazed how easy the flow of information becomes. You most likely will derive some solid thinking and talking points when things get opened up in this meeting.

2012 Management Planning Workshop

• Can the dealership be better?
  • How? What changes would have to occur?

• Can my Department improve?
  • How?

• Can I improve personally?
  • How?

Strive toward implementation of a total “Consensus Style Leadership” vs. Bureaucratic. Make sure your principles remain stronger than your ego. This approach will get people on board and engaged with the plan in order to draw out strong opinions and effectively funnel them into equally strong collective “buy-ins.” Ask them to be brutally honest without any repercussions because this is the only way you will hear what needs improved.

There you go. By following most of the aforementioned step one guidelines for a strategic plan, you will most certainly engage your management team into a new way of thinking. Moreover, you just might rouse some of those latent ideas stuck deep in the minds of your team. Communications is a wonderful thing and can launch you towards a more productive and growth oriented pathway for total dealership growth. Good fortunes can come your way by strengthening your team in this fashion.

If you are interested in taking this concept to the next level of planning, send me an e-mail requesting “The Plan” and I will send you the full template of questions for designing your own strategic marketing and sales plan. Of course, you do not have to accept my plan, but at least get one from somewhere; or else tomorrow will only be today, but a day later and nothing has changed. In theory, this seems complex but in practice, it often proves surprisingly simple and straightforward.

Dr. Werner Heisenberg (1901 – 1976) was a German theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics and is best known for asserting the ‘uncertainty’ principle of quantum theory.   In plain English (sort of), the principle says that it is impossible to determine simultaneously the position and velocity of a particle. This is due in part to the fact that ‘observations’ on a system ‘influenced’ the system being measured.

How does this relate to business management?  The Heisenberg theory simply states “You get what you inspect, not what you expect.”  When you understand that the system and ‘practice of measurement’ does exert a psychological influence on the people being measured, that, in and of itself, affects the operating results.  Part of the control process is measuring people and processes. The measuring action alone works like the Heisenberg Principle and affects the results.

Measuring systems, people or processes should focus on the ‘activities’ to insure the desired results.  Communicate priorities to your entire team. What is important to the manager then becomes important to the employee, and what the manager does not give attention to is perceived as unimportant by the employee.   Choose it or lose it.  The Key here is to make certain you are checking on the correct things.   I particularly like what Sam Walton practiced – Management by walking around, seeing and hearing what was going on.  Or inspecting instead of simply expecting.  He could have chosen to sit in his office and guessed at outcomes or become dependent upon his managers to tell him their ideas of what was happening.  The MPI should not be reserved for the service department.  It needs to be a regularly performed leadership practice.  Remember;  “You do get what you inspect, not what you expect.”

The following is a very cool and enlightening example of  how just the act of ‘measuring’ affects the outcome:

Based on a five year study conducted in the 1920s at the Western Electric Plant in Cicero,  Illinois a Professor from Harvard Business School Management wanted to determine the optimum level of lighting for employees to create the best  production output.   Actually, they really wanted to find the least amount of light to “stream” into the plant to save money and still get good production from the workers.  Where would the happy medium occur?

They commissioned a team of students to watch, document, and observe the assembly line workers. The premise was to measure the physical and environmental influences of the workplace such as brightness of lights, humidity, and the psychological aspects such as breaks, group pressure, working hours and managerial leadership.

The lumens were manipulated up and down. Lo and behold, when more light was fed into the factory, the workers were happy, productivity went up and everything was copacetic.

Then, they started to dim the light. The expectation of course was that productivity would go down. To everyone’s surprise productivity continued to climb.  They made the decision to dim the lights even  more and to everyone’s bigger surprise, productivity climbed higher.  Whaaaat?

This inspection process continued for a while.  It actually became a little humorous.  The Western Electric employees were practically working in the dark, yet productivity was exceedingly high.  Plant management was happy.  Employees were happy. They all looked forward to going to work each day. Win-win situation: happy employees, low electric bill. Life was good all over the place.

The commissioned study was coming to an end. The diligent observers packed their notebooks, clocks, pocket protectors,  calculations, wing tips, white coats and left.  Within a mere  two days productivity started to go down. More light maybe? Productivity was still in a downward spiral. After much analysis, the definitive conclusion was that the real catalyst in all this was the ‘attention’ the workers were getting and how valued they felt because of it. Where otherwise they don’t get any, except when something goes wrong . That alone kept the morale and the productivity up. It had nothing to do with the amount of lumens in the factory.

Why is this important?

• Management needs to understand that there are unintended, un-thought factors that affect productivity. Watch what you say, how you act and what you emit to your team.
• Management should be mindful of understanding what and how to deal with the emptiness after a project was managed, implemented, and life returns to normal. Gotta start a new initiative. Keep your initiatives, learning, leadership and personal growth workshops on going!
• The relationships that Managers develop with employees tend to influence the manner in which the workers carry out directives and the productivity they produce. Better focus on positive, enhancive and new employee relationship initiatives. Employee satisfaction index (ESI)makes better CSI.  Believe it and live it.
• The team is important; there is a social system that is interdependent in the workplace. The individual talents in your store are paled by the sum of those talents working together.

Just like in quantum physics or quantum mechanics:  The very act of observing a system, or people will in itself affect that system and the people. In this case, behavior is altered simply because it is being observed and making the people feel valued.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming taught that by adopting appropriate principles of management, organizations can increase quality and simultaneously reduce costs (by reducing waste, rework, staff attrition and litigation while increasing employee and customer loyalty). The key is to practice continual people improvement.

In the 1970s, Dr. Deming’s philosophy was summarized by some of his Japanese proponents with the following ‘a’-versus-‘b’ comparison:

A) When people and organizations focus primarily on quality (inspecting), defined by the following ratio,

Quality = Results of Work Efforts / Total Costs

Quality tends to increase and costs fall over time.

B) However, when people and organizations focus primarily on costs, costs tend to rise and quality declines over time.

Thus, your focus and attention needs to be on your greatest assets – your people.  Any dealership can compete on capital expenditure like advertising but no one can compete with a store that values and places their stock in their employees.  The newspaper is in the trash the next day, the ads are in most cases forgotten but the lingering assets of your team’s enhancement towards professionalism will remain fixed in place. Give them new tools, new learning techniques, encouragement and inspection regularly.

Here is one (and there are many) simple example of how to use this concept of inspection vs. expectation?

When was the last time you or had a friend inspect and examine the service lane?  A friend of mine, let’s call him Hal,  recently stopped into his local dealership for service.  Hal, a humble guy,  happened to be good personal friends with the dealer and although no one resented  this, everyone in service knew it.   Hal drove his vehicle into the service lane within sight of everyone working the desks.  Every Service Advisor including the Service Manager  looked up to see who was driving the “only” I might add, vehicle in their lane.  All 4 SA’s after looking up diverted their eyes back to paperwork, computer or some other form of ‘busyness’.  Even the Service Manager after seeing Hal, looked away and went back to speaking with one of the technicians.  Hal stood there alone by his vehicle for 13 minutes and began pondering where the next closest dealership was.

Finally, one of the SA’s came over and greeted him with “what can I do for you today”?  Are you kidding me?  No one could muster up the courage, courtesy much less the customer relationship building requirements by immediately greeting Hal  a.) when he first drove in?  Even if it was a “good morning Hal, I’ll be with you in just a few minutes, how about a cup of coffee while you wait”?  Just something.  Then, b.) after the excruciating wait without any acknowledgment  of Hal’s presence, the first words out of the SA’s mouth was “what can I do for you today”?  Come on.  Where was the “I apologize for the wait Hal we just became consumed with a lot of deadline stuff and although it did, it should not have taken  precedence  over your importance in being here.  How may I serve you today”?  “Hey  Hal, could I offer you a cup of coffee”?   OK, maybe that could be tough for the average SA to say, but give me a break here, if these guys are treating  a dealer’s ‘buddy’ this way how are they treating Tom, Dick and Harry?  Hal spent $872.00 that day and the store never knew how close they came to giving that money to their number one competitor right down the street.

Don’t just expect results – inspect how to achieve better results.  Recently, I have been  working with service departments showing them how to communicate, handle objections, and up sell their customers using new professionally designed techniques.  When asked, there was not one Service Advisor who had been through any of these selling processes.  They essentially dwarfed into order takers.  “Ok, I’ll get your oil changed.  It will be about 45 minutes are the keys in it”?  Much to my surprise, none of the managers had ever experienced a leadership training workshop either.   Blind leading the blind.   After some attention through training the SA’s each experienced a .2 to .4 increase per RO.  But here is the key;  the stores that had disciplined leadership in place held steady these increases.  Yet , as expected,  the stores who had order taker mentality management in place slowly retreated back to previous numbers.  No inspection.  Once you stop showing care for your people they stop caring as well and usually get by on as little as possible.   The first stores were given attention daily and felt valued thus, productivity went and stayed up.

If you would like a few more examples as to where you can look and how you can achieve an improved inspection process to yield better results, just send me an email requesting them and I will be happy to get them out to you.

Keep Inspecting for a Better Expectation!