How To 'Lock And Load' On Complacency
By Dave Anderson
The biggest threat to your company comes from the inside, not the outside. Outside forces; interest rates, inventories, competitors and economic conditions have far less to do with the demise of organizations than complacency within the enterprise. Listed are four reasons complacency encroaches within your dealership and the action leaders must take to stamp it out. Ignore the dangers of complacency at your peril. And if you think complacency isn't affecting your business or that it's someone else's problem, you especially, must read on and take action before apathy and ignorance cause you to preside over the erosion of your company's vitality and ability to reach its potential.
Four Causes and Cures For Complacency:
1. No visible crisis to provide focus and motivation. It's easy to get people's attention, to rally them and keep them focused when your back is to the wall. The toughest time to lead, to develop urgency and focus, to motivate to higher levels is when there is no visible crisis. But the ability to do so is what separates players from pretenders.
Sometimes to break complacency's hold, you must allow a crisis. Quit jockeying the numbers around on the statement to make things look better and let people see the real picture: a substantially missed forecast or a loss. When poor C.S.I. reports come in, don't hide them or discuss them only with your inner circle. Post them. Circulate both individual and total dealership scores to everyone from the receptionist to the detailers. Make more of your personnel call and meet with unhappy customers. Freely distribute 20-group reports that show where you fall short of industry benchmarks. Send more managers on visits to friendly dealerships that are outperforming you so they may gain ideas, perspective-and humility. An effective way to beat complacency is to demonstrate clearly that all is not well, that you haven't got it all figured out and that there's plenty of room to improve.
2. Too many visible resources or expensive toys. Get rid of symbols of excess: multiple 800#s, corporate credit cards complete with liberal expense accounts, ego-driven advertising that focuses on promoting you more than the dealership, first-class airfare and suites when traveling, doling out high-dollar demos-especially to mediocre performers-bonuses and spiffs to the average and undeserving, extended lunches and anything else you can think of that will get the point across that every minute and every dollar does count, that you have not 'arrived' and that there's still work to do. Make a point of questioning more expenses, putting all your outside services up for bid and requiring managers to get multiple bids before spending money.
3. Low performance standards and expectations. Weak expectations and standards invite complacency. For starters, look at your pay plans. Are you rewarding average, or just above average performance with bonuses? The average salesperson in the country sells between 10 and 11 cars per month (highline sales are 3-4 units less.) When you give a bonus for selling 10 units or less, you are rewarding mediocrity. It's like giving your kids extra cash for every "C" they bring home on their report card. (And just because everyone else is getting "Ds" or "Fs" is no reason to reward a "C.") My bet is that 75% of your salespeople sell either 1-2 units under or over where your bonuses start. This is because people tend to give you what you expect and when your expectations are low, you condition them for mediocrity and nurture complacency. Another way you send the wrong expectation is by having a stopping point in your bonus plan. Some pay plans stop at 20 units or so. But when you think in terms of limits, you create them. Why would you want to send a signal that once they get to a certain point, they have "arrived," that they've done all that's expected, that now it's permissible to let up or rest? Chances are if your bonuses stop at 20, you don't have too many people selling over that. Pay a bonus on 20 and then pay another one for every three units over 20, ad infinitum. You also create complacency by not setting and communicating definite standards to new hires. For example, do you spell out the minimum number of cars they are required to sell after 60 days, six months, one year, etc.? And do you hold your veterans to high enough standards? How many more cars per month are they expected to average over last year; especially since they have an additional year of training under their belts and hundreds more sold customers and prospects with which to follow up?
Destroy complacency by setting expectations and goals so high your people cannot reach them with "business as usual." Eliminate talk about beating the dealer down the street when your sales are falling short of potential. Reject "happy talk" and boasting how profits are up over last year, while forgetting that last year wasn't near what it should have been.
4. Leaders become disconnected from their people and detach visibly from day-to-day operations. When your managers stop meeting regularly one-on-one with co-workers, spend too much time on factory contest trips and 20-group meetings, attend more tee times than sales or training meetings, take extended lunches, come and go as they please with a vague schedule, don't know or can't remember the names of front-line employees, plant in their offices all day with phones in their ears, and invest more time in e-mails, voice mails and memos than in meaningful conversation and coaching, you birth a debilitating disconnect that wreaks a climate of complacency and indifference. Leaders often detach gradually until one day they realize they don't have the impact or influence they should, that results are flat and urgency is dead. When you don't personally and deliberately set the tone and create the climate for your dealership, you leave required doses of energy, focus and motivation to chance.
To eradicate complacency and rid your people of notions they can go through the motions, schedule and hold one-on-ones with your key players, pass on a factory trip now and then (and make sure everyone knows you are) so you can spend more time doing your real job. Start attending and holding more sales and training meetings and make sure other top managers are involved as well. Polish up your work ethic, bring and eat lunch in your office or in the lunch room with others. Spend more time connecting with employees at all levels. Get your "ivory tower" work done earlier or later so you can spend more time leading from the front during the day. Ditch your over-dependence on memos, voicemails and emails and start communicating effectively again.
It's time for many dealers and managers to get back to work: to return to the basics of coaching, strategizing, mentoring, focusing, vision-casting and just plain paying the price again because you can impress people from a distance but you can only impact them up close. The areas listed aren't the only indicators or cures for complacency. You'll have to customize the methods that best fit your company. You can't take a casual approach to complacency. And if your organization is complacent, or becomes complacent, don't blame the followers. Complacency is a reflection of you and your leaders. Poor leadership causes it; good leaders cure it.
Dave Anderson is president of The Dave Anderson Corporation, a sales, management and leadership training concern. Dave conducts "Leading At The Next Level" workshops and publishes "Leading At The Next Level" newsletter. He is the author of Selling Above The Crowd: 365 Strategies For Sales Excellence and his Web site, www.learntolead.com, has free training articles and materials updated weekly. Dave is a member of The National Speaker's Association and conducts workshops and keynotes worldwide. danderson@dealeronline.com
