Dealer Solutions Magazine January 2015 by Dealer Solutions Magazine

VOL. 8 | ISSUE 1 | JANUARY 2015

A Division of IPD

ALAN RAM Thinks

YOUR

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

CENTER

MIGHT BE KILLING YOUR BUSINESS PG: 7

Communicating Effectively IN TIMES

OF CHANGE PG: 18

THE

STAGGERING COST of Poor Performance PG: 22

Inside Feature

Principal’s Office with

Brett Oubre

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CONTENTS Editor-In-Chief Michael Oquendo

Articles

7. Business Development or Detriment? You Decide. By Alan Ram 10. Beat the Winter Sales Slowdown with Effective Training By Carey Fried 13. Graduate from the Kiddie Pool By Laura Madison 15. Do You Control Your Showroom? By Clint Burns 16. The Myths of Writing Service - Part 1 By Jeff Cowan 18. Communicating Effectively in Times of Change By David Villa 20. Do You Have JUST A BUSINESS or Do You Have A REAL COMPANY? By Matt Manero 22. The Staggering Cost of Poor Performance By Dave Anderson 24. The Principal’s Office with Brett Oubre 27. The One Trait That Separates The Best From The Rest By Mark Tewart 30. What do Bob Dylan, an IPAD, The CFPB and a Social Security Number Have in Common? By Don O’Neill

Authors DavidContributing Villa Michael Oquendo Don O’Neill

Laura Madison

Editor David Villa

Mark Tewart

Carey Fried

Creative Director Austin Janowsky

Dave Anderson

Alan Ram

Matt Manero

Clint Burns

Marketing Director Jason Yamnitz

Featured In This Issue...

Jeff Cowan

Copyright ©2015 all rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part is prohibited unless expressly authorized by editor or publisher. The views expressed in the articles or advertisements are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the magazine or its staff. Editorial inquiries, questions or comments can be made to the Editor-In-Chief at moquendo@ipdmail.com Advertising Sales: Please call 813-630-5888 ext 523 or 561 or email moquendo@ipdmail.com

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BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT OR DETRIMENT? YOU DECIDE. By: Alan Ram

Let’s face it; as I write this article, as many Business Development Centers are failing as are succeeding to the tune of countless dollars lost. That’s a fact. I heard another trainer say that there are as many funerals occurring for BDCs right now as there are births. There’s actually a cottage industry in the car business built on convincing dealers that salespeople cannot be trained to handle the telephone, which could not be further from the truth. Let me say this at the outset; your people don’t suck on the telephone because you don’t have a BDC. They suck because you haven’t trained them properly. If you had done a proper job of training in the first place, you wouldn’t think that the solution to many of your ills is to subject your customers to discussing the second biggest purchase most of them will ever make with what is basically a telemarketer, or even worse, forwarding your valuable customers to some 19 year-old kids in a “virtual BDC” three time zones away. With statistics showing that customers only shop 1.3 dealerships in person these days, opt-

ing instead to decide where they’re going to buy online and on the telephone, I am openly questioning who many of you are choosing to entrust your financial futures to. Now, don’t take this to mean that I am anti-BDC. I am no more anti-BDC than I am anti-restaurant. It’s just that there are good restaurants as well as bad restaurants and there are good BDC models as well as bad BDC models. The way many dealerships are “attacking” their phone problem would be the equivalent of someone grossly out of shape and overweight immediately opting for a risky gastric bypass surgery without first addressing the fact that they have never exercised and that their diet consists entirely of junk food and soda pop. An intelligent person might first want to address the underlying condition. Let’s put the whole BDC on hold for a minute and focus on the foundation of dealership productivity. That foundation needs to be training, supported by processes and accountability. That might not sound all that sexy or Con’t on pg 8

be what’s trending, but it is the truth. You need to have the proper foundation in place otherwise nothing you implement will succeed long term. If your BDC is reflective of nothing more than a failure to properly train, all you will end up doing in the end is changing the location and source of where you’re losing your customers while spending exponentially more to do it! It all starts with real training as I outlined in the November edition of Dealer Solutions magazine. Please feel free to go back and reference that article. You have to recognize that there’s a difference between thinking you “trained” your people and really training and maintaining your people. You support training with the right processes, and then you hold your people accountable. What many of you are looking for whether you know it or not is a culture change. You want a CULTURE of business development at your dealership. You want your inbound sales calls and Internet leads converted to customers on the showroom floor. You want your unsold customers followed up professionally and consistently. You want your sold customers followed up and valued as a source of repeat and referral business. I get that. The reason that doesn’t happen in many sales departments is because salespeople and managers have not been properly trained in these areas and they don’t have a game plan that they are comfortable with and confident in executing. With proper training comes confidence. With confidence comes results. When results are achieved, your people start doing things not just because you’re making them, but because they want to. When results are multiplied, momentum is created and now you are seeing a culture change. Doing the right things, you can expect to realistically see significant change and strong results almost immediately. Instead of adding tens of thousands of dollars per month of bottom line personnel expense to your statement in an attempt address your deficiencies, invest LESS THAN 10% of what you were going to spend and address the underlying issues causing these deficiencies with effective training and implementation of some common sense processes. The results might amaze you. Understanding that this is an article written to encourage thought (and an attempt to stop some of you from making a very expensive mistake) versus a complete game plan for a dealership, let me share a couple examples of high return processes that any dealership should implement to change the culture. As a dealership in 2015, I’m sure you have call monitoring. Can you honestly say that every inbound sales call is listened to by a manager? Many of you will say “we listen to some, but not all”. In the prioritization of management activities, what in the world is more

important than listening to your salespeople talking to customers that just called your dealership who want to buy cars today? Too many dealerships view call monitoring as an accountability tool when they should also be using it as a save a customer tool! As a substitute for actually listening to calls, some dealers will subscribe to services that “critique” or score sales calls. These services are not a solution but are instead a weak alternative that allow dealers to think they are doing something to address the problem. Here’s what I mean; you subscribe to one of these services with the result now being that your managers don’t feel they need to listen to your calls because it is being done for them. Days later you might receive a summary of your calls complete with scoring and critiques. The only problem with that is that most of these customers have already gone on to purchase vehicles elsewhere! You know a week later that Tommy missed an opportunity to ask a customer that already bought a car from your competitor four days ago for their phone number. Really?! As an owner or General Manager, I don’t need to hire a company to evaluate sales calls after the fact. I need my managers listening to EVERY call throughout the day and recovering missed opportunities to sell cars. That customer who called in on a specific preowned vehicle at 10 AM today will be out somewhere buying a car at 6 PM tonight. If we listen to that call at 8 PM tonight, it’s too late! That’s why, throughout the day (hourly) your managers HAVE TO listen to calls and quickly resolve missed opportunities to do business. What activity is more vital for your managers to be spending their time on? This is an invaluable process that incorporates ultimate accountability. If 18 sales calls came in today, your managers need to be listening to 18 conversations. That is NON- NEGOTIABLE. They then have the opportunity to constructively coach your staff while saving opportunities. If your managers don’t think they have time to do this, you need to reprioritize their day. What is another benefit to this? When sales people know they are being held accountable, they naturally tend to take every call more seriously. You will find that taking these common sense steps will tend to eliminate your urge to take on the enormous pure expense in the form of a second group of people hired to do what the first group should be doing! (Aka most BDC models being pushed today) Many of the issues we see at dealerships are also the result of managers who don’t necessarily know how to manage. While many dealerships might employ good “desk” people and “closers”, they don’t all have managers with good management skills. We see that because of the way we tend to select our next manager.

One of the main criteria seems to be an ability to simply sell a lot of cars as a salesperson. Picking managers that way would be the NFL equivalent of taking the best player on the team and making them the coach. The best coaches in NFL history were not necessarily the best players. Why? Because it is a completely different skill set. Yet, what do we tend to consistently do as an industry? We take our best players, we give them very little if any training in how to actually manage, and then we’re surprised when they fail. The time has come when managers actually need to know how to manage. When I conduct one of my 3-day “Management by Fire” events around the country, I am shocked by how many people we have in management positions who have received absolutely no real quantifiable training in how to manage. That might be one reason you have five salespeople standing around outside talking about the most recent public sex scandal for two hours while waiting for one fresh up while your managers sit inside and hope someone brings them a deal today. No meaningful change will ever happen at your dealership despite poor management. Either your managers are good or you need to get them the proper training to make them good. Here’s another high return process. You want your salespeople focused on generating repeat and referral business yet your pay plan might reward them equally for standing by the front door and selling floor ups that were coming in anyway. That might be why you have a culture of those same five salespeople standing around

and waiting for hours on end. Gear your pay plans to reward individual business development. In other words, compensate your staff additionally for generating and selling actual tracked referrals as well as cultivating their own repeat business. Again, none of this will happen without proper training. When salespeople realize that they earn more by generating and selling repeat and referral clients, and they have a plan for accomplishing that, they shift their efforts to those activities. This is very similar to the phenomenon seen when you put a big flat commission on an aged unit. They may have been walking around that car for the past six months, but the day after you incentivize it, it’s gone. Why? Because they’re working the pay plan. You want them working the pay plan in a way that generates additional traffic while at the same time reinforcing the culture you want to see. These are just a few things you can do to create and reinforce a CULTURE of business development. Rest assured there are many more. Before doing ANYTHING else you need to address the underlying conditions that got you to this point. At the end of the day, you will almost certainly find that you don’t need more people. You simply need the people you have doing a little bit more. Think about it. Alan Ram is the President & Founder of Proactive Training Solutions Inc. For specific questions contact him via - twitter:@TheAlanRam or by e-mail at alan@dealersolutions.info.

Beat the WINTER SALES SLOWDOWN

with Effective Training Winter can be a slow time for auto dealers. Holiday activity and inclement weather in much of the country combine to keep people out of showrooms. Historically, call volumes drop. Now is a great time to implement a training strategy than helps you develop more business in the first quarter. If you have been considering training for your call handlers, the slow season is a great time to do it. For one thing, you need to make the most out of the calls you do receive and convert as many of them to store visits as possible. For another, you likely won’t need to pull people away from active selling to participate in training. To maximize the value of training, it must become an integral part of your company’s culture. Companies where training impacts behavior are those where the learning culture starts at the top. If you want to make a fundamental change in the way your people learn and behave, it has to be something that you are fully behind in words and actions. In a learning culture, training obstacles are removed, employees are given enough time for training and the transfer of training is supported back at work. If you pull someone out of a training session to work on the sales floor, or allow someone to skip the training, you undermine the training’s effectiveness. It is crucial for ownership and management to agree on the training goals and set expectations for the results. Consider such important questions as “Do we churn through inbound phone calls or do we systematically manage opportunities? Do we recognize call handlers’ performance improvements or are they ignored? Do we incent people to improve their performance or is it just status quo?” The next step is to provide your team with proper training. It’s important to select a provider who can help you create a

By Carey Fried

program that suits your goals and your staff. The best providers use programs and materials created by both subject matter experts and instructional designers that foster effective, longterm learning. A first-class provider will offer flexible course options that allow for different learning styles, because adults learn in different ways. That will include use of technology to provide a variety of ways to access training, from facilitated Webinars to self-paced online lessons to work-related games, all designed to improve your staff’s skills at converting callers to appointments. It’s also important to measure training’s impact. A 2010 report in McKinsey Quarterly stated that only 50 percent of organizations track participant feedback about training programs, and only 30 percent use any kind of metric. Without tracking, training effectiveness cannot be determined and steps cannot be taken to improve program effectiveness. Make sure to give your staff feedback on their post-training performance. Put in place processes that ensure that your staff put their new learning to work immediately, while it is still fresh and before key lessons are forgotten. Performance support is especially important when people are trying to master new skills. And when that training kicks into gear and your people start booking more appointments and closing more deals? Heap the praise on them. Positive feedback goes a long way towards reinforcing the training and instilling confidence in future training.

Carey Fried is the Director of Marketing & Training at CallSource. For specific questions contact him via twitter - @careyfried or by e-mail at carey@dealersolutions.info.

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Graduate from the Kiddie Pool:

3 Ways to Hit the Social Media Reset Button for 2015 by: Laura Madison

2015 is already proving to be a transformative year for social marketers. Dealerships and sales people alike have recognized social as an important connection and recognition tool. Many brands have already filmed product videos, shared customer photos, and promoted themselves online to try and get more business. But how can your efforts be more effective in 2015? Whether you have seen some success on social or have bumbled around guessing without any clear social media goals or tangible ROI, here are three tips to hit the reset button for 2015 and catapult your brand out of the kiddie pool.

Turn It Up (Commit) The most powerful thing a marketer can do for 2015 is turn up the effort. So many brands are still dipping their toes in the kiddie pool, gazing over to the wildly successful crowd diving into the deep-end, but remain unwilling to take big action to get there themselves. Once you resolve to make a bigger commitment to social an interesting thing happens; momentum builds. Filming videos suddenly becomes easier, blog post ideas appear everywhere, and social following starts to grow rapidly. Begin 2015 by committing more time and energy to social. An extra half hour or hour may be enough to make a difference. Reserve an uninterrupted block on your calendar, and make the time allocated to social count, by doing

research, reading helpful articles, and taking more chances.

Think Value (Connect) The social tides are changing for 2015; social media users are demanding engaging, interesting content窶馬ot advertisements. Facebook has echoed this movement by implementing a new policy January 1st on what posts will be visible to fans. The gist of the change: promotional posts have no place.* This

RESET BUTTON means the dealerships sharing new car reviews, technology tutorials, buying advice, and powerful customer images will be favored over the dealers only advertising lease and inventory specials. Begin 2015 by setting clear social media goals. Focus goals around generating content that provides insight, context, and guidance. The more you can position yourself as an expert, the better the chance of connecting with, and becoming more visible to, prospective customers.

Tune In (Catch on) To successful marketers. There is a lot to learn by listening to the marketers who do it right. Take the time to watch what they share and how they interact. What are they doing that you may be able to emulate? What types of posts do they seem to favor? Are they uploading video native to Facebook? Are they tweeting the most in the evenings? Be sure to also notice what they are not doing. To online resources. The amount of free online tools to help bloggers, online marketers, and social media novices is truly astounding. Take advantage! Read and absorb everything possible, perhaps in the extra time you have allocated to social marketing in 2015. Begin 2015 by tuning in to the vast resources available. The Internet is full of helpful articles covering everything from how to best title a blog post to which hashtags are most effective. Dive in and spend some time to educate yourself as well as listen and catch on to successful marketers are doing. Hit reset and commit to social marketing this year. Remember: stop wading and dive in to make 2015 your best social media year ever! Laura Madison is a Sales Consultant for Toyota of Bozeman. For specific questions contact her via - twitter:@lauradrives or by e-mail at laura@dealersolutions.info.

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Do You Control Your Showroom? By Clint Burns

There is a great deal of talk about creating a unique “customer experience” at dealerships today. A huge push towards transparency, trust, and cooperation between dealerships and consumers has pressured dealerships into quite a lot of change. In 2015 many dealerships will have already invested ample dollars to renovate their showroom floor, yet have no real strategy with what to do with that shiny new floor. The real question is, do you actually control your showroom? After all, if you can’t manage a floor, what makes you think you can handle your customers? At least your janitor can handle the floor, perhaps he deserves a promotion! All humor aside, it is genuinely necessary to have a solid foundation upon which to build a strategy for handling customers. That foundation needs to include the control of your showroom. In short, managers should NOT be asking their team if a customer has been approached. That should be a known, well-established fact. If your leadership knows exactly what is happening, then guess what? They are free to do their job, which, in case you’ve forgotten, is to lead. Specifically, they can lead their team to ensure that every customer receives a universally top-notch quality of service. So how do you take control of your showroom? You need to implement a Closed Floor. For those who are unfamiliar with the idea of a Closed Floor, don’t worry it’s simple. From a sales perspective, a Closed Floor organizes every potential customer into a very understandable, clearly defined workflow. Everyone knows which customers have been helped, and which haven’t. Managers know what salesperson is occupied, and which is free to take walk-ins. Plus, the customer tends to feel more comfortable when they don’t feel that they are being ganged up on, or worse, neglected.

If you honestly want to have a top-notch customer experience, then how can you not have a defined process for handling customers? Nothing makes a customer uncomfortable like seeing a disorganized group of people glance at one another before fighting to greet them first, all in an effort to claim the customer like some sort of commodity. It’s unprofessional to the customer, can frustrate your sales team, and potentially reduce your total number of sales in the long term. However, for a Closed Floor to be successful you will need to ensure that it is very clearly defined. Your leadership must communicate the guidelines of your Closed Floor effectively enough that every customer related situation could be understood in the context of the process. There should be no question as to how to handle an appointment, or how to handle a customer that asks for another salesperson. The only reason for a Closed Floor to result in failure, is a lack of clarity. Just as it is necessary to take control of your showroom, you must ensure that your leadership team does not let established Closed Floor rules become lost in translation. To diffuse any confusion from misinterpretation, managers must emphasize exactly how the Closed Floor works and the benefits. More importantly, do NOT make the rules solely verbal. Write them down! Everyone should be accountable to the Closed Floor, as it works only if every manager is truly on board. If done correctly, your customers, salespeople and your bank account will thank you. Clint Burns is the CEO/Chairman of theNextUp. For specific questions contact him via - twitter:@@TheNextUp or by e-mail at clint@dealersolutions.info.

THE MYTHS WRITING SERVICE Part 1

BY JEFF COWAN

Myths are dangerous things. They are invented from misinformation and the unknown. For example, only a few thousand years ago it was generally believed that if you sailed too far out to sea, you would fall off the end of the earth. It was only when man dared to sail out beyond where they had previously sailed that they proved the myth wrong. There was a time when people actually believed that the moon was made of cheese. That was disproven with the aid of powerful telescopes. Or how about that myth that if your wife is happy, everyone is happy - wait a minute… that last one is not a myth, or at least that is what my wife tells me. In the automotive industry, there are myths that exist today regarding service writing, even though they have been disproven many times over by actual service writers themselves. Although they have been disproven, many still hang on to these myths. Why? I believe it is because by allowing the myth to exist, it can remain an excuse not to change; an excuse that allows many to be lazy and not acknowledge problems (which may require change or simply some sweat equity), or it could be that the myth has such strong reasoning behind it, that we just accept it as truth. Today I list some of the most common myths surrounding the writing of service and hopefully, once and for all, make the many believers of these myths see otherwise. Myth: If you write service and have a high closing ratio and high customer paid repair order average, then it is impossible to have high survey scores and/or high customer retention. Fact: I know hundreds of service writers who complete the trifecta month after month, year after year. The difference is how hard you are willing to train a person and hold them accountable. If you expect and allow the myth to come true, it will - but it doesn’t have to. Think high-end restaurant here. If you visit a five star restaurant like Ruth’s Chris, you will experience servers that please people, sell plenty of appetizers, desserts and drinks and have people return in the future requesting them. As a matter of fact, if they cannot do those things, their service will not be retained and they will be let go. They accomplish the trifecta because they are trained to, and then held accountable to.

Myth: It takes at least a year before a service advisor can be a top producer. Fact: If it takes that long, you simply hired the wrong person, did not train the person to be successful, or the person has no goals and desire to perform. If a new service writer is not meeting or exceeding your minimum standards within ninety days of their start date, it is likely they never will. If this is a concern for you, change your interview practices and/or your training program. Myth: Finding a great service advisor is next to impossible. Fact: The average service writer makes $65,000 annually, gets two weeks paid vacation, and has a benefit package that rivals some of the largest industries. An employment package like this puts them in the top twenty-five to thirty percent of income earners in the country. It allows them to have a house that will average 2300 square feet, and drive a new vehicle in the thirty-five thousand dollar range; and if they have a spouse that works, add in another vehicle, and another eight hundred square feet of house. With all that said, you can’t find these employees? You need help with your ads, your interviewing techniques, and help in knowing how to sell a marvelous, highly satisfying and rewarding career like service writing. Myth: A great service writer rarely makes a great manager. Fact: You’re right! Not if you pull them out of their job writing service one day, and throw them in the manager’s chair the next without any coaching. The mistake I see here is we constantly put people in management because they understand the technical side of the business, are well liked, and appear to want to go the extra mile. The first and most important things to look for in a new manager are their ability to lead, make decisions, and make those who surround them better. These are things, just like on the technical side of the business, that can be taught and learned by a willing student. To develop tomorrow’s leaders from today’s service writers, you have to teach them how to lead and make good decisions as they perform today’s job. Teach them to prepare for the next step up the ladder while they occupy their current step.

and command respect. Think of your service writers as vendors. It is a business deal. You require them to do what you ask and they either do it and get to remain on your preferred vendors list, or they do not do what you require and you find a new vendor. Easy to do. Read the third myth again. Myth: It takes a special service writer to be able to handle high line vehicles, because high end customers are different.

Myth: Service writers can handle more than fifteen customers a day. Fact: Not if you want to have high survey scores, high customer retention, high closing ratios, high customer paid sales and maximum profits. I say this in nearly every meeting I conduct and have said so for years. If you allow your service writers to write more then fifteen repair orders a day, then forget about the high numbers in the fore mentioned areas. If you choose that path, you are now limiting your service writers to be high volume clerks. Yes, you can and will make some profits off the high volume sales template as that is the very way most dealerships allow their service writers to work. However, the other numbers simply will not be there - for one reason: lack of time. If you want to have high survey scores, customer retention, closing ratios, hours per repair order and maximum profits, you must give your writers the time to sell and work with the customers. You only have the right, in my mind, to expect high numbers in all categories if you limit and control the number of tickets written in a day to fifteen or less.

Fact: High line customers are rarely different than the nonhigh line customer. As a matter of fact, they many times are the same exact customer. Literally. For example, I drive a Mercedes, my wife drives a Ford. Furthermore, look at the very street I live on. There are fifteen houses. Each driveway has either a Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Porche, Tesla or Lexus in it. In addition, on each of those driveways is Ford, Chevy, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai or Honda. Regardless of which vehicle we drive, we simply want to go to a place where they are enthusiastic, caring, honest, can get the job done, and through their skill and approach, make us want to return for future visits. My CFO is a perfect example. She drives past her Infinity dealership when she needs service to do business with the Toyota dealership simply because, in her words, “I get better service at the Toyota dealership.” As I have noted many times, I am a student of history. In studying history, I have seen time and time again that once a myth is dispelled great advances routinely follow. In the future, whenever you hear something that sounds like a myth, or hear an excuse from your staff and those in the business that impedes your ability to advance, question it, challenge it and test it before succumbing to its restraints. Then you will be poised to break free from the myth’s chains that bind, and achieve advances that will make your Dealer Principle happy. Because in the end, it gets down to one simple fact, like being married: if the Dealer is happy, everyone is happy – and that ain’t no myth.

Jeff Cowan is the CEO of Pro Talk. For specific questions contact him via twitter - @JCowansProTalk or by e-mail at jeff@dealersolutions.info.

Myth: Service writers will not do what is asked of them, like walk around vehicles and memorize word tracks, nor do they respond well to authority. Fact: No, they do not respond to weak leaders and weak leadership. If that is your problem, then your problem is clearly a question of you or your manager’s ability to lead

COMMUNICATING EFFECTIVELY

IN TIMES OF CHANGE By David Villa

Change is unavoidable — it’s part of life. People see the benefits for it, yet organizations often become hijacked by themselves in trying to “manage” change. As leaders, we must embrace change as an opportunity for growth. Your staff, however, may not see it that way — at least not at first. Change is messy and it’s unsettling. It is often even fearevoking among those who are asked to go along for the ride. Again, as leaders, our influence has enormous impact on how smoothly, or how roughly, a change occurs within your organization. When it comes to “managing change,” what not to do is try to control it. That is a one-dimensional approach, and control begets resistance. So instead, “lead rationally.” This is a more effective scenario and endorses open communication with staff and allows you to get buy-in through your influence. To do this, we must first understand ourselves and our roles. Great leaders possess: 1. The ability to observe their own behavior 2. An awareness of their own actions 3. An awareness of their own thoughts and feelings 4. An ability to lead from the inside out Self-awareness also enhances the way you communicate, which hinges largely on how you are as a leader, rather than merely the information you tell your staff. 18

Being multi-directional is a great way to communicate. Our communication style — our “being” — comes more fully to life when we approach communication as a multi-layered relational process, rather than a mono directional process. If we, for instance, send a memo or make an announcement at a staff meeting, this is an example of monodirectional communication, and leaves little space for the staff to become part of the process. It is important to involve your team in conversations regarding change. Here are some things to keep in mind to increase staff involvement — and even their enthusiasm — during times of change within our organizations: 1. More is more (don’t keep them in the dark) 2. Feel their fears (use empathy to see it from their perspective) 3. Silence is not acceptance (just because someone isn’t voicing their objections doesn’t mean they don’t have them) 4. Turn your communications into conversations 5. Reframe the change as a process, rather than an event. 6. Go low-tech (as best you can, frame the discussion in e eryday, easy-to-follow ways, so everyone understands what’s going on) 7. Show appreciation (change can be hard for everyone — recognize their efforts) Finally here are some key techniques for any leader using communication:

Integrity — Integrity means alignment of words and actions with inner values. It means sticking to these values even when an alternative path may be easier or more advantageous. A leader with integrity can be trusted and will be admired for sticking to strong values. They also act as a powerful model for people to copy, thus building an entire organization with powerful and effective cultural values. Dedication — Dedication means spending whatever time and energy on a task is required to get the job done, rather than giving it whatever time you have available. The work of most leadership positions is not something to do “if there’s time.” It means giving your whole self to the task, dedicating yourself to success and to leading others with you. Nobility — A magnanimous person gives credit where it is due. It also means being gracious in defeat and allowing others who are defeated to retain their dignity. Magnanimity in leadership includes crediting the people with success and accepting personal responsibility for failures. Humility — Humility is the opposite of arrogance and narcissism. It means recognizing that you are not inherently superior to others and, consequently, that they are not inferior to you. It does not mean diminishing yourself, nor

does it mean exalting yourself. Humble leaders do not debase themselves, neither falsely nor due to low self-esteem. They simply recognize all people as equal in value and know that their position does not make them a god. Openness — Openness means being able to listen to ideas that are outside one’s current mental models, being able to suspend judgment until after one has heard someone else’s ideas. An open leader listens to their people without trying to shut them down early, which at least demonstrates care and builds trust. Openness also treats other ideas as potentially better than one’s own ideas. In the uncertain world of new territory, being able to openly consider alternatives is an important skill. Creativity — Creativity means thinking differently, being able to get “outside the box” and take a new and different viewpoint on things. Creativity provides the ability for leaders to think differently and see things that others have not when leading them towards a new future, and thus giving reason for followers to follow. David Villa is the President & CEO of IPD. For specific questions contact him via - twitter:@ipdmail or by e-mail at davidv@dealersolutions.info.

Do You Have JUST A BUSINESS or Do You Have

A REAL COMPANY? By Matt Manero

Think of it like this… “NO COMPANY CULTURE…NO COMPANY” By Matt Manero

Yes, you have employees, customers, revenue and expenses, but do you just have business or do you have company? For the first 10 years of our 20 year history, I was just running a business, and although I thought we were a company we were not. We made the change 10 years ago to develop a real company culture and it has made all the difference. It is with great pleasure that I provide you with 4 quick tips that you can use to do the same thing within your organization. FIRE THE PR FIRM: A great company culture comes from the top down, end of story. You, your partners and your managers set the tone, so fire the PR firm and figure this one out on your own. Sit down with a pen and paper, and get really serious about how you want to design or redesign your company culture. Ask yourself these questions: • What do we stand for?

• What is the personality of our most successful employees and customers?

• Why would someone want to work for us vs. our competitors?

• What do we want our employee’s to tell their families and friends about our organization and where they work?

GET OUT OF YOUR OFFICE: Harvey Mackay, the great author of How to swim with the sharks without getting eaten alive said it best. “You have to walk the factory floor daily”. Your employees’ need to see you walking around and paying attention. IMPORTANT: Don’t use your daily walk around the office as a time in which you point out PROBLEMS. Use this time to only point out SUCCESSES. You want your employee’s to start saying…”wow, the big boss just took the time to talk to me and that was an awesome experience. I’m actually starting to like it here!” SCHEDULE A DAILY “SCRUM” MEETING TO KEEP EVERYONE ON THE SAME PAGE Every working day at CFF, we have a companywide meeting that we call our “scrum”. The phones go to voice mail, the

outbound calls stop, and we discuss our results from the previous day and determine what we should expect from each other for today. Often we play a quick motivational video (2 minute “Grant Rants” on Youtube are great), and the meetings never run more than 10 minutes. You might say, “It’s impossible for us to do a daily “scrum” but if I told you that sales could double in the next 12 months because of a 10 min. per day meeting, would you find a way to make it happen? That is exactly what happened at CFF in 2014. Our annual business went from $50,000,000 to almost $100,000,000 and I believe it has everything to do with our daily scrum. If you are convinced that you can’t do a companywide meeting, then think about a daily department meeting. Suggestion…maybe you could attend each one! Remember, culture comes from the top down. UNDERSTAND THE FUTURE EMPLOYEE… MILLENIALS. Defined as born between 1980 and 2000, these 20 somethings are now entering the workforce and they are looking for more than just a job. Jarrod Glandt, host of Young Hustlers on WIT Network suggests the following: “You need to understand that millennials have all sorts of information at their fingertips and they use it to make career decisions. You don’t need to change your company culture to be kinder more gentle organization as many people think. However, you do need to define your culture so that you attract millennials WHO WANT THE CULTURE THAT YOU OFFER” Don’t get caught pushing a false company culture just to attract employees of all shapes and sizes. If your culture is sales oriented, push that company culture and you will attract that type of millennial.

Matt Manero is the President and Founder of Commercial Fleet Financing, Inc. For specific questions contact him via - twitter:@MattManero or by e-mail at mattm@dealersolutions.info.

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The

Cost of Poor Performance By Dave Anderson

In nearly every workshop I ask the question: How many of you would agree that most organizations tend to keep performers too long? Every time, hordes of hands shoot up. While it’s difficult to precisely quantify the cost of just a single poor performer---some researchers have attempted to—I feel safe in asserting that if managers considered the following costs they’d be inclined to more quickly prioritize either getting the person better, or getting a better person:

1. Lost production: This factor may be the easiest

to quantify by comparing the production difference between a top and bottom performer. The fact that this cost is incurred month-in and month-out causes the penalty for delayed action in turning around or removing poor performers to escalate in a hurry.

2. Broken or lost momentum: How can one possibly quantify the cost of broken or lost momentum caused by

someone who needs continual reprimands, creates mess after mess, or whose behavior brings about emergenciesof-the-moment others must stop to solve or repair. To exacerbate this factor, consider that it always hurts more to lose momentum when things are rolling along; which is, ironically, the time a manager is least likely to confront or remove a poor performer. After all, when business is good and all the seas appear calm, complacency entices managers to stay the course and maintain rather than make the tough decisions they’re being paid to execute concerning poor performance.

3. Lower morale: Most would agree that a poor per-

former diminishes the collective self-esteem of an entire group. Most everyone, especially top producers, feel at least slightly cheapened and depleted working with those who don’t contribute towards the organization’s goals, and make the workplace feel less special.

4. Your credibility: This one really stings, because credibility takes enormous time and effort to build, and is even more difficult to regain once you’ve lost it. It’s sad to hear managers boast about how they’re “number one”, and have built a “special place to work”, and how “not everyone can be one of us”, and then see disillusioned teammates peruse the dealership with an inner dialogue that sounds something like this: “Number one? Special place to work? Not everyone can be one of us? Really? And Fred is still here? And Suzy? And Carl? Hmmm, the boss is talking right and walking left again. Does he really think we haven’t noticed what’s really going on here?” To compound the credibility dilemma consider this: you will lose the respect of the best when you fail to deal effectively with the worst. Guaranteed. I’ve not the space in this piece to delve into additional costs poor performers inflict on your brand, culture, customer experience, wasted training dollars and manpower hours invested in an a low return, or no-return project. It would be easier if the cost just a single poor performer caused you was a one time, lump sum payment, but it’s not. Rather, they create an ongoing misery on the installment plan that persists in picking your pocket daily. The purpose of this message has been to create a clearer perspective of the staggering costs of poor performance so you begin dealing with it faster. My past article, “How to Find the Great People You’re Looking For!” outlines steps to create the conditions for each team member’s success and potentially turn around poor performers, so I won’t cover that ground again here. Instead, I’ll close with final thoughts I hope will add more insight to this topic. 1. A key cause of poor performance is hiring the wrong person to begin with. The fastest way to prevent future poor performers is to dramatically improve your recruiting, interviewing and assessment strategies. 2. Keeping a poor performer simply because you’re shorthanded poses the question: what are your plans to create a recruiting process to build a pipeline of talented people so you’re not held hostage by people who shouldn’t even be on your team in the first place?

3. Your solid performers would rather be strategically short-staffed than foolishly filled up because you keep unfit people on your payroll. They’d much rather carry a bigger load personally, than their load and someone’s who shouldn’t be on the team in the first place. 4. A poor performer isn’t always a low producer; he or she could be a top producer with serious character flaws who mocks your values and undermines the performance of the team overall. 5. The costs you pay in unemployment or other benefits that result from terminations pale when compared to the penalties you incur by keeping someone who continues to affect production, momentum, morale, your credibility, the brand, culture, customer experience and more. 6. A poor performing manager should be given less rope, and less time to get it together than a poor performing subordinate. The stakes are considerably higher when the leaders are poor performers, because of the many others they negatively impact and hold back every day. 7. If you have a manager who must continually fire poor performers, he or she is the problem. They’re either hiring recklessly, haven’t created a high performing culture where great people are attracted to and can prosper, have failed to set clear expectations, train and/or hold accountable the people who are failing. 8. The role of H.R. is to facilitate the removal of poor performers, not to block it. 9. Mediocrity is dangerously seductive. When what used to cause your organization pain, starts to feel normal, something must change; in most cases that something will involve the leaders getting better at doing their job.

David Anderson is the President of Learn to Lead. For specific questions contact him via twitter:@daveanderson100 or by e-mail at davida@dealersolutions.info.

THE PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE BRETT OUBRE

Selling through the clutter…. How do I get to the prospect???

By Brett Oubre

Today the world is cluttered with many different outlets to get our information. We have the nostalgic media of TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazines, etc. Included with that is the modern media outlets including email, Twitter, Facebook, Google +, Pinterest, LinkedIn…. STOP! How many more sources of information can we handle? So how do we as professional sales people decipher the different outlets to get the prospects attention? What is the magic formula to get the meeting with your prospective client? Do you send him/her an email request? Do you message them on Facebook? Do you tweet them, yes I know that will work right? What is your response to an uninvited connection request? Are you quick to hit the accept or reply button? Does the thought race through your mind “I can’t wait to meet this person?”

you have to ring the doorbell like traveling vacuum salesperson, throwing dirt on the floor so they have to watch your product in action. I am talking about the timeless value of face to face connection, which can be achieved using the following tactics:

If your prospects are like the majority of the world, and I can assure you they probably are, their initial response to you will be something like, “Who is this weirdo?” So if that is the case how do we successfully connect with our prospects? Do we just give up because the world has changed? How many people believe that while technology is an incredibly productive tool, too many sales people hide behind it as a crutch because the timeless power of FEAR (false expectations appearing real) has reared its ugly head? Yes, we can utilize the technology tools of today to be more productive, follow up with clients, prospect current clients’ friends, and research the prospect more effectively before the initial face to face!

4. Attend a club or civic organization where they are connected.

But let me share with you the most effective prospecting tool in the modern era…FIGURE OUT A WAY TO GET IN FRONT OF THEM THE VERY FIRST TIME. A revolutionary concept isn’t it? Now, the skeptics are all saying “wait a minute Brett, that may work in your field but mine is a professional field. We don’t show up anywhere uninvited!” I am not saying

1. Find out their social patterns, then be there for an introduction. 2. Use technology to find someone who is connected that can set the face to face meeting. 3. Send them correspondence through traditional mail. The volume of mail is down so it’s easier to connect today

5. Use an existing customer for an introduction. 6. Finally, my personal favorite is to just show up asking for a few minutes. Not many people do this anymore. It will surprise you how well it works. Technology is a great addition to the sales profession as it allows us to cover more ground, increase production, and follow up instantaneously. However, please don’t let it be a crutch. We can learn to leverage technology, while maintaining a simple, personal approach for handling our prospects. If we do that, we will surely convert them to long term customers. Brett Oubre is the President Lakeside Ford & Winnsboro Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram. For specific questions contact him via - twitter:@boubre or by e-mail at brett@dealersolutions.info.

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The One Trait That Separates The Best From The Rest By Mark Tewart

Are you making excuses? Are you blaming where you are vs. where you want to be on things like location, brand, budget, facility, your area or any other convenient excuse? If you are making excuses you have made a decision to subjugate your power to those excuses. What separates the best from the rest, the successful and happy vs. those that are not, are decisions. First of all, do you make decisions or do you put things off? Successful people not only make decisions but lots of them. Unsuccessful people put things off in hopes that somehow the issues will just go away. The feeling is if they don’t make decisions then they can’t make a mistake. Decisions force you to be judged. Decisions force you to take a position that might not be liked or agreed with. Making decisions forces you to make mistakes and, if you are smart, to admit those mistakes. If you are smart those mistakes will be worth more than any degree could provide. My question is this, what decisions are you putting off and or have shelved altogether? Stop kidding yourself. Be honest and confront why you are not making the decision necessary. Each issue you have not made a decision about stays with you as unfinished business. Unfinished business depletes your energy. Eventually, it detracts from and drains you. Successful and happy people inform themselves about with the best information they can find. They use logic to form educated viewpoints. Next, those viewpoints are mixed with intuition. Yes, success depends partially on being able to tap into and listen to what the universe is trying to tell you. If you think back to almost every bad decision you have ever made, there was a feeling in your gut, a tug at your heart that was saying, “This is a mistake!” Successful and happy people use bad decisions and mistakes as education. Sometimes the way to learn the right thing is to unfortunately do the wrong thing. Most of you have heard the example of Thomas Edison making 10,000 attempts to invent the light bulb. The first 9,999 failed attempts were necessary for a positive result.

er venturing into the area where the bad decision was made. Every unsuccessful person says the following as a badge of protection, “I tried that once!” Successful and happy people realize everybody will make bad decisions but that those decisions do not define you forever unless you allow them and never learn from them. Decisions and how you handle the results of those decisions are choice. You choose to win or you choose to lose but the choice is always yours. How you process events is the power of becoming a winner or an excuse making, blaming loser wrapped up in the comfort of victimhood. Are you a professional victim or a decision maker? The root of the word decide means, “To cut off.” You must be willing to cut off from other possibilities to make a commitment. A commitment moves your body, mind and soul towards a destination. That alone will often propel you towards success even where failure could easily happen. When I hear people comment that they will “Check it out” I know that they most likely will “check out.” The reason they will “check out” is the lack of commitment created through decision. Successful and happy people realize that things change and through change and adaptation you grow. Changing is a decision. Committing to one single path and idea forever when those ideas and philosophies are no longer working leads to stagnation and death. To be successful you must commit to things and also be willing to change when the evidence is large enough to support the change. Decisions and change are constant. Ego is also constant. The question is, “will your ego be bigger than the evidence for the decision to change?” As you look back on your life and your career, your success and happiness will be defined by the quality of your decisions and personal responsibility you take in handling the results of those decisions. So, how are you doing so far? Mark Tewart is the President of Tewart Enterprises Inc. For specific questions contact him via - twitter:@marktewart or by e-mail at markt@dealersolutions.info.

Unsuccessful people emotionally internalize every bad decision as an open wound. They use this open wound to protect themselves from future harm by making less decisions and nev-

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What do Bob Dylan, an IPAD, The CFPB and a Social Security Number Have in Common? by Don O’Neill

NADA is upon us, and what better time to write an article about the changing business model in our vertical? Well my friends, as Bob Dylan so eloquently put: “Times they are a changin’.” By that, I mean the very model by which we do business is changing. The interaction with our consumers, the profit model, marketing, digital, HR, it all is coming to a bright white head in our industry. I am here to tell you that if you are watching, grab a great seat early, because this is a game in which playing catch-up will be a near impossibility over the next couple of years. If you can catch up, it certainly will cost a heck of a lot of money. It would be like watching Carl Lewis race William “the Fridge” Perry. I guess the Fridge winning is possible, but not really probable. So too, is the race for technology in our market space. Consumer engagement will be led by those who are willing to provide the information that the consumer desires. Readily available, easy to access, and seamless in its delivery. I meet with dealers and Dealer groups most days of the week. I hear some amazing things form dealers each and every day. “That will never happen,” and, “customers still want the touch and feel of the car buying experience,” and my favorite, “this is too big an item to purchase solely on the web.” I always reserve the chuckle, as not to offend. But let me refresh your memory to 2005, even 2008. Would any of you have purchased a 65 inch television online then? Would you now? Not so funny, is it? The reality is that the number one change in our game is that consumers are preparing themselves, training as if it were battle, to fight the dealer for every penny. They know how much you pay, they understand what hold back means, and they certainly don’t mind if you don’t profit on their transaction. TrueCar proved the model that people will drive 75 mile to save 150 bucks. Yet here we are, the same worn out battle weary soldiers fighting with the same weapons, same forma-

tions, and wondering why we keep getting crushed. So what, you ask, is the answer? Embrace. Embrace technology that does something none of your competitors do. Embrace technology that makes your first thought say, “that’s crazy.” Einstein once said, “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” I am going to take you one step down the garden of insanity, all I ask is that you simply imagine. Imagine a technology that allows the consumer to get pre-approved from any and all of the lenders in a dealer’s portfolio. A rate and term, along with max PTI and max LTV, where you, the dealer, can simply enter the income and back into a car deal. Imagine if that same technology allowed lenders to change their parameters on the fly, to adjust for what is happening in their portfolio today, and to approve your customers before they even step foot on your lot. More importantly, imagine this were transparent with the consumer, knowing the banks that want the loan, and share with the consumer the rate and term, (with markup or flat) and the consumer comes on to the lot ready to buy, financing questions out of the way. Imagine that your dealership was the only place these rates and calls were honored at. Imagine if the buyer came in with certificate in hand, ready to buy a car from you, that very day. Now imagine that once you are ready to contract and deliver the car to the consumer, you never have to ask for their social security or date of birth again. Ever. I’ll repeat that, you never have to ask for social security or date of birth again. Vehicle delivered, loan funded, and you never got past a driver’s license. Would that speed up your buying process? Would it give your consumer comfort knowing their secure data could never be breached on your watch? Right now about half of you are laughing. Welcome to the next generation. As of 1/23/2015, this technology will launch in a market near you. It’s called BASIS₂, and frankly, it’s a game changer. With the abil-

ity to provide complete transparency between the dealer, the lender, and the consumer, you the dealer take on the role of consultative F&I. Maybe that low rate carries a much lower LTV, maybe the highest gives the best advance…either way, this product was geared to providing all three parties in the transaction with a seamless, profitable and fast way to consummate a vehicle loan. The bonus? You still have the loan, the rate or flat, but are providing an experience that the consumer wants, quick and transparent. Now I have heard all of the arguments, it limits our reserve, we can no longer make the two point’s markup. Well, my answer is simple. First, the average markup of franchise dealers F&I nationwide is 92 basis points. The same people who argue to hold the rate option, are the same dealers who penalize their F&I department for allowing markup account for more than 25% of the F&I gross profit. Let’s be honest, any of us who believe we will roll into 2016 with dealer discretionary markup intact, has not been following a little group called the CFPB. They want it abolished, and are subpoenaing their way to completion of their initiative. With or without you, the model is changing. Customer needs and desires have made the huge changes a reality thus far. Are you really willing to bet it all on red, and spin that wheel that it won’t happen in finance? “Black 23,” dealer rakes, every time. This time the CFPB is the house, and the house always wins. So, let’s just imagine, if you will, that we all embrace the changing technology and sales environment we call Retail Automotive, and smile. Some of you will make the cut, some of you won’t, but either way Bob is singing away “Times, they are a changin’.”

Don O’Neill is the V.P. of Sales and Marketing of CreditMiner. For specific questions contact him via - twitter:@CreditMiner or by e-mail at don@dealersolutions.info.

Every Dealership Needs a White House By David Cribbs

It was the beginning of August at Ft. Benning, Georgia. The feels-like temperature on that first day of Airborne school was well over a hundred degrees. For safety reasons the class had to be run through the outdoor showers every hour or so as a precaution for heat exhaustion. The first day we went over “break procedures.” It was an instructional drill on how we were to be released to break and how we were to respond when called to return from break. We quickly found out that it was really just an opportunity for the cadre to “break” us as we failed the drill practice of “break procedures,” and were punished with physical exercise and criticism that had no immediate end in sight. We were in full uniform and worn down in the sawdust pits while trying to distinguish between what was water from the outdoor showers and what was the natural sweat pouring off of us. Hot, sticky and exhausted, we were soon given our first opportunity to quit. It was then that we learned of the White House. You see, there was a little white house at the edge of the grounds where the out-processing took place for those who quit. They would be returned to the unit that they came from or reassigned to a new non-jumping unit. The cool thing about the White House was that it was literally cool. It was also filled with coffee, doughnuts, milk, cookies and sodas. All of those things would have fetched a premium

on those grounds. There was a standing open invitation to enjoy the comfort of the White House with no judgment. In fact, it was extremely encouraged. The class initially began with over 600 students, but a little over half of the students surrendered to the little White House over the first two weeks. Going into the third week (jump week) we had our real company of Airborne soldiers. Everyone was exactly where they were supposed to be by design. The paratroopers were there and the others had moved on, courtesy of the White House. Many times over the years I wished that we had a White House at the dealership. I knew we couldn’t really build a White House in the showroom, but why not fill the conference room with coffee, doughnuts, milk, cookies and soda. There would be no judgment, just a friendly place to out-process for those who just refuse to get on the same page. After all, we all need to be where we should be by design. David Cribbs is Lead Trainer at IPD. For specific questions contact him via - twitter:@DeskingDeals or by e-mail at davidc@dealersolutions.info.

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