PRINCIPAL ISSUES
Reaching New Horizons How are you going to get there? by: Ken Edmonds, Service Management Coach
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ast fall, I had the privilege of talking with dealers at conferences on both coasts about the future. The range of opinions I heard from them was interesting. On both coasts, I found dealers who believed that the status quo would last another five to 10 years and thought there was no immediate threat to the current business model. At the same conferences, I talked to dealers who believed there was a clear and present danger to the model. The initial version of this article was submitted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the current circumstances are different, I believe that, after the pandemic, the probability exists that as things return to normal, these behaviors may become common again. I think the principles outlined below are more critical than ever before. I would encourage dealerships to view this crisis as an opportunity to learn new behaviors and better understand how they can serve their clients. Look at what your clients wish they had done before the crisis started and identify opportunities where you can help them prepare for the next one. I will say that now is not the time to focus on sales. Instead, I strongly suggest that, as a company, focus on how you can serve your clients, how you can help them and how you can give to them — and I am not talking about giving away the products you sell. You can share your expertise and take time to help them research solutions. People will remember how you treat them. If your focus is on selling and another vendor is focused on helping and serving them, the other vendor is going to win 95% of the time. Sales Managers I asked two sales managers from one company how they thought the industry would change in the next five to 10 years. They thought that nothing would change. These managers are quite entrenched in the status-quo mentality. They are not looking at how the industry is going to change and, even worse, they are not starting to plan for what those changes will mean for their teams. Service Manager & Owner At a separate meeting a few weeks later, I visited with the owner and the service manager of the same company, and I asked them that same question. They both thought that the
industry and the product mix would change substantially. It amazed me that there was so much discongruity between the members of the management team. It shows a couple of things that are common in the industry. In too many companies, management team members are not sitting down at the table and coordinating plans for the future. Instead, each manager seems to operate autonomously from the others. Differing manager beliefs can result in a situation where everyone is heading in a different direction. The employees can then be working at odds with each other and the company stops making progress. It is much like a ship with more than one captain, and each is steering the ship in a different direction. The Dilemma There are a lot of conflicting views about the state of our industry. Some of them are quite different as to what the future looks like, but I can say that, almost unanimously, the experts agree that believing in the status quo is not going to work. What is the future going to look like? What is your product mix going to look like? What are customers and the buying process going to look like? These are questions that your management team members need to be discussing, and I recommend making sure that you all get on the same page so that, as a company, you can move forward. What is Real Change is inevitable and now is the time to start preparing for future changes. It takes time to change a business, much like turning an ocean liner. While an ocean liner can turn overnight, a business cannot change overnight; it takes months — and often longer — to implement enough change to affect the direction the company is heading. Management team members must be headed in the same direction, going to the same destination. Start Planning The first step is agreeing to what the future will look like as a team. I recommend that you regularly get your managers together and discuss the future. Discuss how they think the customer is going to change over the next five years and the next 10 years. What will customers want? How will they buy products and services? What will they want to buy? How can you position www.offi cetechnol ogyma g. c om | M a y 2020 | 27
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