Manage: "To control the movement or behavior of." The definition of the word manage is the core of most management problems at automotive dealerships. To control the movement or behavior of someone is to manipulate their actions like a puppeteer. The problem with this management style is that it does not teach correct behavior, but continues to modify bad behavior.
There is an old saying that roughly paraphrased says, "If you catch someone a fish, that person can eat for a day. If you teach them how to fish, they can eat for life." That phrase holds true in managing people. Sales managers in dealerships tend to correct problems as they come up instead of daily coaching their employees on what the correct actions should be on a regular basis. The role of a manager is not to sit behind a desk and wait for salespeople to bring them deals and potential problems to be solved, but to teach the salespeople all of the correct steps and how to handle the problems before they arise. Sales managers tend to modify short-term behavior rather than teach long-term behavior.
Do your managers have a daily game plan to teach correct behavior? What is the job description of a sales manager at your dealership and has that been communicated to them? Often a manager simply imitates the actions of managers before them; therefore, you have a continuum of management styles that you may not desire for your dealership.
Let's review some positive management actions:
Save-A-Deal Meetings. Sales managers as well as finance managers should be in attendance at these meetings every morning. Items reviewed should include finance deals pending, finance approvals, finance turndowns, contracts in transit, dealer trades, recap sheets, today's agenda and hot items, merchandizing, training plans, appointment logs, floor traffic logs, and phone traffic logs. If the aforementioned items are not reviewed and communicated every day, management will not have an instant snapshot of the position of their dealership every day.
One-On-One Meetings. These meetings are to be held between the manager and the salesperson to begin a good proactive coaching experience. The items to be reviewed are goal sheets, recaps, yesterday's business, phone back yesterday's unsold customers, follow-up system, Daytimer with action plans, to-do lists, role-playing, appointment logs, and yesterday's traffic logs. Find out the number of customers seen yesterday and for the month, the number of customers on demo drives for the day before and month total, write-ups for yesterday and month total, as well as closed deals and deliveries. Look at month-to-date percentages that would put the salesperson on pace for his or her goal. These meetings are to be held with each salesperson every day. A person who is selling twenty or more vehicles a month would obviously need less attention in these sessions than someone selling twelve vehicles. A typical reaction from most managers would be that those actions are too much and would take up most of their day. Coaching for long-term behavior is time-consuming, but the results are incredible. If you do not do these things daily, who is really managing your salespeople?
No longer can managers and dealers be seat-of-the-pants type operators. All dealers and managers have to become better business people. Do you have clearly defined and communicated goals that have been created with the help of managers and salespeople? If not, all of the daily actions that we have mentioned will not get you the maximum results. You must know where you are going to be able to get there.
Dealerships have to take strong steps to be better than the day before. If a dealership operates just as it did ten years ago, the dealership will lose market share and eventually will be eaten alive by competition. You can bet that Microsoft or Coca-Cola know exactly where they want to go and what actions management and salespeople must take to get there. You can bet that those companies are proactively coaching their employees instead of waiting for problems to arise. Why shouldn't your dealership(s) do the same?
Mark Tewart is President of Tewart Enterprises, Inc., a sales and management training and consulting company working with dealerships internationally. Mark is also a keynote speaker and seminar leader. If you have specific questions or require more information about this subject, please check the appropriate box on the reader response form on page 3. mtewart@dealeronline.com