4 Ways To Create A Winning Culture Around Your Dealership

In today’s work environment it is essential that organizations create work cultures that embrace its employees. We live in a time where I truly believe that people are no longer going to work a job for 20 or 30 years anymore. This is the direct result of mediocre work culture and poor leadership with no opportunities for growth within the organization. A work environment that doesn’t give its employees an opportunity for reward, growth and a sense of self-worth. Winning Work Cultures are all about encouraging and empowering employees to be at work because they want to, not because they have to. Work Cultures today require four things that I am firm believer of that will take a organization to their next level. This of course squarely has to start with strong leadership.

Strong Leadership

Leadership is the key reason that employees either flourish and grow into a great asset to the organization or the reason employees consistently fail the organization. With said it is a necessary that your organization have great individuals who one inspire, two motivate and three train employees to perform at their highest level. These leaders must bring about a presence of energy, a Championship Attitude, a great judge of character and can get people to do things that are required daily to move the organization’s needle in the right direction towards success. Strong Leadership of course is anchor in accountability; you need leadership to hold their people’s feet to the fire and not allowing no room for comfort.

Accountability

Do you job! No I am not trying to emulate the New England Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick, who challenged his players during a press conference a few seasons ago. Basically, he was issuing accountability to his players to take responsibility for the job that you signed up for. Winning Cultures, require that every individual be accountable for their actions meaning their work performance, work behavior and of course cooperation with all the company policies. We need leadership to remind and regulate a healthy work environment by making sure everyone understands their daily role and how important each individual roles are to the success of the organization. In oder for accountability to make sense to everyone, then it’s crucial for everyone to be able to know and see the organization’s vision for success.

Clear Vision( Mission Statement)

How many of you can say that you know that everyone in your organization knows the Mission Statement of your organization? Or they all perhaps understand what the organization is all about and clearly see the vision or perhaps the direction of the organization? You see, clarity is totally up to the leadership within your dealership. Far too many times I have witness dealerships that have hired both Managers and Sales People who are not a great match for the organization but since he or she can sell we hire them. I will give you an example, let’s saying you are all about having a team concept with a emphasis on Customer Service comes first meaning working together for the common cause of taking care of the customers. You hire a good sales person who sells cars, makes you money but is consistently receiving poor Customer Survey Index (CSI) scores and they only care about their concerns. So is the sale person a good fit? Think about it, you have more sales with twice as many problems based off this one bad hire. This is the result of leadership not recognizing the vision of the organization which what continues to happen to dealerships over and over again. You must realize that successful dealerships hire people base off of their Mission Statement and the fact that leadership has a clear vision of what ownership is all about. You must have the vision of your dealership Mission and Purpose clear to all who work for you. This all has to start with training and training daily.

Personal Development

The number one way to create a Winning Culture in your dealership is by training and coaching your people. I cannot stress it enough that so many dealerships focus on performance; sell, sell to the point they totally disregard training. I have been around dealerships for nearly two decades and people continue to taking training lightly; wondering why Sales People quit, never reach their full potential, have bad habits and rituals. All of this has continued contributed to the downfall of many dealerships. Currently the annual turnover rate for sales people stands at 67 percent. Part of the problem is managers fail to realize that they are a big contributor to this turnover problem. One thing I have learned being in a position of leadership is that all Sales People desire opportunities to learn, grow and advance in their careers. If that is not provided, they become discouraged, frustrated and often leave or hop from store to store, searching for acceptance.

Speaking of acceptance, your support staff such as your receptionists, office staff, parts department and service department all need constant training as well. I hear so many owners and managers complain that good help is are to find, when in fact the truth of the matter is that good training changes this situation each time. I truly feel that every dealership should have training curriculums that meets the standards in which the vision of the dealership is looking for. Think about it a doctor does not become a doctor in just three days, a teacher does not become a teacher in just three days, well you get the gist of what I am conveying. You want people to remain in your organizations_ then start training them, coaching them with one on one mentoring. Let’s not for get we must have someone to coach the Coaches too. Just because you made people leaders doesn’t mean that the don’t need training. Managers in most dealerships are good at what they do but are poor managers of people and lack the ability to teach what they have learned. Many managers become so occupied with the day to operations of selling or managing parts, service or the office staff that we minimize training. Failure to train brings about excuses to complain of what’s wrong with their lack of success. Failure to train is the reason so many dealerships are bleeding money by the hundreds of thousands of dollars each month.

If you want to create a Winning Culture in your dealerships, focus on training it’s the secret sauce to building Championship caliber teams. Winning Cultures are a direct reflection of its ability to train successfully. Once you take training seriously and lost it as a high priority on your list of requirements in your organizations, then you will see Personal Development take place in your people’s attitude…positive attitude is Champion over mediocrity. A Championship Attitude always wins.

Reminder

People want to work in a dealership that lives up their core values and have strong leadership that can help them grow. Everyone want a job that has structure, a great work atmosphere, where they can feel good about coming to work. Create a work environment that inspires people to work there because they want to not because the have to. Winning Cultures in your dealerships are possible if you take the four areas of concentration given into strong consideration and I assure you that you will increase your bottom line.

Be Great,

Roger

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