Digital Dealer - September 2019 - 6

D E A L E R OP S & M ANAGEM ENT: L e a d e rshi p

By Chuck Barker
President & Founder,
Impact Marketing &
Consulting Group

Want to Build
a Dealership
Where People
Want to Work?
First, You Must Do This...
Now and then, I meet a
dealership's leadership
team that resonates a solid
understanding of what
leadership/business
know-how is all about. For
those of you who feel a little
(or a lot) of tweaking in your
store could manifest into a
stronger overall business
unit, then this article is for
you.
J.W Marriott, Jr. is chairman and CEO of Marriott
International, Inc., one of
the world's largest lodging
companies. The successor
of the highly successful
hotel chain is a brilliant leader who understands what
it is that makes them so
successful. His leadership
spans more than 50 years,
and he has taken Marriott
from a family restaurant
business to a global lodging
company with more than
3,700 properties in over 73
countries and territories.
Known throughout the
industry for his hands-on
management style, Mr.
Marriott has built a highly
regarded culture that emphasizes the importance of
6

SEPTEMBER 2019

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's lists of
most admired companies
and best places to work.
Why? What makes Marriott
such a great place to work
and experience?
I feel any dealership
could receive (albeit not
quite the scale) a similar
success story and report
card if they would operate utilizing Bill's rules of
success listed below. If
followed, a dealership might
just find that their organization has become a better
place for people to work and
for people to purchase vehicles, and as a consequence,
begin growing their business
to unexpected increases.

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

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 then use 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, 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 a latent form. To give
them life, apply "action" towards making them happen.
How do we do that? We
have to design and implement a plan. I guarantee
that the Marriott corporation
had and has a continuing
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 high that few have
taken the time to fully initialize any plan at all, and that
is no way to run a business.
Develop a professional plan
and watch what happens.
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.
Wouldn't you be interested in renovating new energy
and business gains into your
dealership? If so, then a
terrific place to start is in the
direction of a strategic sales
and marketing plan, which
will lead to better focus and
positive growth results.
GETTING STARTED

Take a breath and plan a
couple of well thought out
meetings with your management team. Mix all department managers together
when doing this because
in doing so, you will yield
cross-boundary suggestions
to allow everyone to step
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