Automotive News - September 21, 2020 - Best Practices Supplement - S44

44 | SEPTEMBER 21, 2020
S T E V E N S C R E E K N I S S A N , S A N TA C L A R A , C A L I F.

Calls become daily life check-in
Staff members stay up
to date on business and
share crisis experience
Published in Automotive News April 20, 2020

Lindsay VanHulle
lvanhulle@crain.com

usiness development center employees at Stevens Creek Nissan already were accustomed to regular
in-person check-ins before the virus
outbreak.
So when the Santa Clara, Calif., store was
placed under a local shelter-at-home order
in the middle of March that closed physical
sales departments in the Bay Area, General
Manager Brian Bakhtiari and his team needed to find a way to keep those conversations
going.
Enter Zoom, the video-conferencing app
that has hosted virtual staff meetings across
the country since organizations began working
from home last month to
counter the spread of
COVID-19, the illness
caused by the novel coronavirus.
Bakhtiari, who also is
vice president of Bakhtiari
Auto Group - which has
Bakhtiari: Calls
six dealerships in Califorbring people up
nia - extended a Zoom
meeting link to the center's staff, as well as any
other sales employee who wanted to join.
What started as a routine call about that
day's business has turned into an opportunity
to check in on a human level and make sure
everyone is doing OK.
After talking shop, the group turns to life in
general. "How's everyone's family? How are
their parents? How are their loved ones doing,
and how's everyone doing?" Bakhtiari said. "It
brings everybody up because people are at
home, they're helping their children do
homework, they're stressed out, they really
don't have any answers.

Powering through
"I don't have any more answers than they
do," he added. "Just hearing from me: 'Hey,
guys, I'm in the same boat, I don't have answers' ... a lot of times that just kind of helps
them, as well as it helps me just power

While Stevens
Creek Nissan's
showroom is
closed because
of the pandemic,
employees
connect via
video.

Employees at Stevens Creek Nissan
in Santa Clara, Calif., use a daily
video call to discuss the day's
business activities - and how life is
treating them.

through the day until we can get to the end of
this."
Bakhtiari aims to hold the call daily. So far,
it's held only for the Stevens Creek Nissan
dealership, though Bakhtiari said general
managers at other stores in the group could
adopt the idea if they like it.
"It'll probably be about 10 to 15 minutes of
business talk and then we'll just kind of catch
up," he said.
The conversations run "the full gamut of human emotions," Bakhtiari said.
Witnessing customers fighting over a shopping cart at the grocery store. Joking around
with colleagues they haven't seen in person
for a while.
For employees home with their children, it's
a chance to converse with other adults.
Even birthdays are recognized. Normally,
employees' birthdays are celebrated with
cake, Bakhtiari said. That's not an option right
now, so when a staffer mentioned on the call

that he was spending his birthday at home,
"we sang them 'Happy Birthday,' " he said.

Slow sales
The three employees in Stevens Creek Nissan's business development center essentially
are the only sales staffers still working while
showrooms are closed, other than the finance
managers, Bakhtiari said. They're working
from home and responding to incoming
leads, but it has been difficult to reach customers to talk about a vehicle purchase.
Customers they do talk to have relayed their
own uncertain financial circumstances, he
said. Sales have been slow. "They're not prospecting right now," Bakhtiari said.
He said he wanted to share details of the
daily check-in calls to possibly inspire other
dealership managers to try the idea.
They are important, he said, because a business is only as successful as its employees.
"If a staff is motivated, they're going to do
well," Bakhtiari said. "If a staff is demotivated
or not mentally prepared for what it takes to
be successful, they're not going to do as well.
And my investment in the staff is - it's everything.
"If I don't have people that are willing to
work for me and willing to work with me, then
I'm not going to be successful." n

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