Digital Dealer - January 2018 - 16

DEALERSHIP MANAGEMENT

Continued from pg. 15

saying, yes. Unfortunately, most of them will continue putting off the critical
steps that will give them
that 20% gain. They say
things like; "we have other things in the fire," "we
just don't have the time,"
or "well, let's get through
the quarter" or some other irrelevant time-sucking
reason for not growing.
Most people are living in
the Land of Just Good
Enough. I see a lot of
dealers personally making big money so their
concentration is not on
improving but maintaining. The problem with this
thinking is if your people
are not growing they will
leave you and while they
are in your employment
they are not engaged nor
productive waiting the
next job opportunity. We
can't just settle for good
enough anymore. We
must begin to expect only
the best performances
from the dealer and all
departments.
I continue to hear from
dealers, things like;
"Yeah, but my people don't know what to
do, they simply reply to
inquiries."
"We can't get people in
on appointments."
"I can't make my people
follow processes"
"We have a hard time
attracting quality employees."
"We are selling a lot of
cars but our gross profits
are down."
"Nobody knows how to
really manage their department to get the results
we need." Or,
"We haven't had much
luck selling shoppers
16

JANUARY 2018

because they only want
best price."
Now is the time to
forget the past and look
toward the future. We
can't change the past
even if we wanted to but
we can do something
about tomorrow and the
day after that. You have
a huge windshield in your
car to see the world to
coming at you yet some
want to look in the small
rearview mirror most
of the time looking at
what has passed them
by. You need to impinge
upon your professionals,
things that color their
forward-thinking view as
it relates to their business
into a positive "new"
growth potential. Replace
doubt with confidence,
faith and discovering the
awesome new ways to
excel within your dealership. Get excited about
new opportunities you
can create because emotion creates motion. Your
thoughts are the software
telling the hardware what
to do. Therefore, focus on
the right stuff.

PROCEDURES AND
PROCESSES FOR
BUSINESS INCREASES.

Your dealership is not
a branch of the military.
For morale reasons,
it shouldn't feel like
it is. Your employees
probably don't follow
every command while
dotting every "i" and
crossing every "t." And
this isn't all that bad; your
people who best connect
with your customers are
normally not that detail
oriented anyway. The
challenge is helping
your team members

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

remain on the right
track and stay focused
doing the correct things
through effective process
adherence and giving
them "proper" training
techniques. Below is a
five-step progression to
continuously enhance
your people, processes
and as a consequence,
building a solid growing
dealership.
STEP 1: ASSESS
YOUR CURRENT
PROCESSES. Retired

GM chief executive Jack
Welsh, in his book about
Winning in the business
world writes, "Candor is
important." Using candor
as you look introspectively at your processes is
vital. And, to facilitate a
clear view, you need the
right information. Don't be
fooled by monthly sales
numbers or total gross
profit because both are
influenced heavily by multiple factors - to find real
value look deeper. Deep
dive down into your CRM
software to find relative
numbers, success ratios
that are sub-divided into
all the steps involved in a
profit and customer process then compared them
against total opportunities
to do business.
Once you have the
right information, focus on
finding those real areas
of improvement. Make a
list of your highest failure
points. For example, your
highest failure point may
be in email response time
and your second highest
failure point may be customer appointment show
ratios. Whatever you find,
be honest and prepare for
change to make it better.

STEP 2:
COMPARE PROCESS
ASSESSMENT TO
INDUSTRY AVERAGES
AND SET GOALS.

Step one is all about
finding where to make
improvements and Step
two involves quantifying
the level of improvement
required in comparison
to industry benchmarks.
Once you've developed
an idea as to the level of
improvement, set your
goals accordingly.
To improve the
success-rate of your
process improvement
goals, utilize the SMART
goal setting method. The
acronym SMART stands
for specific, measurable,
attainable, realistic and
time-based goals. In
practice, a goal simply
stated as "decreasing
email response time"
wouldn't be as effective
as a goal to "send initial
email reply within 15
minutes to 95% of leads
received during operating
hours by the beginning of
next month." Or, "shoot
for a 60%-70% show
ratio on appointments
made." These goals will
give your employees an
unambiguous objective
with a clear deadline, and
if the goal is attainable
and realistic, it will give
you basis for reprimand if
the goal is not met. Now,
take your areas of improvement from step one
and develop a SMART
goal approach for each
process to be put in place
during step three.
STEP 3: IMPLEMENT
CHANGES. If you're

stuck in limbo between
steps two and three,
http://www.DIGITALDEALER.COM
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Dealer - January 2018
