How to eliminate 90% of your day to day problems in the dealership

If you would have told me six years ago that there was one thing I could do that would eliminate 90% of my day-to-day problems, I would have laughed in your face. I was stuck in the grind, working my ass off trying to grow our dealership by shear force. I had people quitting every month from being pushed too hard and more customer complaints than I knew what to do with. We had launched an all-new marketing campaign that was a huge success in terms of driving leads and traffic, but we did not have the infrastructure or team in place to take care of those new customers. In a last-ditch effort to try and solve our problems I stumbled upon my first leadership book. Leadership 101 by John Maxwell. The first chapter alone woke me up to the fact that if I wanted to lead a team of successful people, I needed to raise my leadership ability first. After reading through most of this book I realized the impact I could have on not only my life but the life of all of those around me. I come to the realization that this could be the one thing that I could do that would have the biggest impact on our dealership and all those connected to it. Thus began my journey in leadership and what happened after is short of amazing and changed our business forever.

The first thing that was the most noticeable was how our employee problems started to taper off. The problematic ones seemed to disappear without friction, and we started having good quality candidates applying for jobs WITHOUT running job ads. I mean, I could not set up interviews quick enough and was having to turn people down. I thought that was extremely weird considering all my peers and other business owners I knew were having a hard time finding quality people and we seemed to attract a lot of them. This was due in part to the culture shift that happened once we started implementing leadership throughout the dealership and started getting everyone on the same page. Also, this allowed the employees that wanted to get better to step up and be heard which motivated them and made them feel like they were contributing to the betterment of the business. Inside the subject of leadership are skillsets that help people become better employees and communicators. And when people feel like they are making a difference and that you (the employer) care about their career, they will work harder than ever before and over all will be happier. This one thing alone is like a waterfall effect into the next set of problems that leadership helped solve for us.

I’m sure we all have delt with bad Google reviews, upset customers in our office or even worse an upset (loud) customer on the showroom. All of which can be detrimental to our reputation that we worked so hard and so long to build. These problems can be broken down into two main causes. Communication or attitude. Either the customer was not communicated with properly and expectations weren’t set or quite simply the employee they were dealing with had a bad attitude.  Generally, the source of a bad attitude can be because that person is unhappy in their job, or they feel their efforts are unappreciated and no one cares therefore why should they care? Bad communication can be broken down in a few ways, either the employee doesn’t know what to expect therefore making it impossible to communicate to the customer, they don’t believe that what they are selling or saying can be backed up, or they don’t have the ability to make a firm decision therefore leaving the customer in confusion. All these things are can be solved within the subject and skillsets of leadership. As stated in the above paragraph, when your employee feels that you care about their career, they feel like they are advancing, and that they are contributing to a bigger cause they are going to be happier all around. And a happy employee will always take care of your customer better and offer them a better experience. They will also learn the skill of decision making, which can be crucial to keeping customers out of your office. Decision making boils down to two things, confidence and foresight. They must be confident that what they are doing is right and that you will back them up, and they must have the foresight to look down the road and see how that decision is going to affect the customer and the dealership. All in all, these things eliminated virtually all the customer complaints that we were having and gave the managers the confidence and the skills to take care of the customer before it escalated into a problem where a GM or owner had to step in.

This brings me to my next point and probably what most of you would consider the most important. After we started implementing leadership at our dealership, we became more profitable and sales increased year over year (pre Covid). As industry standards were quite stagnant in terms of growth (1-3% YOY) we experienced 4 years of growth that ranged from 15-35% year over year. Now, I will say that our dealership had a lot of potential for growth, and we did move to a larger facility during this time which helped our growth, but I do know for a fact that without leadership and effective marketing we would not have been able to attain that growth. We also experienced higher profit margins. This was because of two main things; 1) our refunds and discounts went down because our customer satisfaction went up and complaints went down and 2) the customer will pay more for a better experience. Once we got the team on the same page and everyone was rowing the boat in the same direction, we started focusing on the customer experience. This was a game changer and could not have been as effective If we did not have happy and productive employees. We built value around what made our dealership different than most of our competition. A lot of this was built around our culture and the people inside the dealership. When someone walked into our dealership, they were guaranteed to get the “Great Western Experience” as we called it.

I believe that effective leadership is the key to creating a more profitable and sustainable dealership. Now a days we get caught up in paying attention to problems, inventory, supply issues, etc when we need to be paying attention to our most valuable assets, our employees. Your employees are on the front line and when a customer walks into your dealership your employees are who they are talking to. And I guarantee you that if they are happy, they feel like they are valued and they feel like they are growing, your customer will be delivered an unforgettable experience. This increases your customer retention, and the customer will sing your praises to everyone they come in contact with driving even more business in your door. Leadership is by far the easiest and most effective way to eliminate most of your day-to-day problems and get your team on the same page for the best results possible. If you can eliminate most of your employee problems, customer complaints, and increase your sales and profit margins, it opens you up to be able to focus on more important things and to have a smoother run operation. As the New Year approaches, we are all looking down the road wondering what’s next and how can we stay ahead? Leadership does not require a huge capital investment and just might be the magic potion your dealership needs to reach its potential. If you’re serious about starting your leadership journey reach out to me and I’ll send you a free book and help you get started in your leadership journey.