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The Dealership Environment: Inspired By Everything, Motivated By Nothing

Face it: You’re whipped. Which way is up? Which way is down? Is flat the new growth? Is the shiny object the new thing keeping you from the golf course of from your sales course? Fact: the dealership environment is as fragile and unsteady as it’s ever been. Yet there are more opportunities than ever.

Look around for a little while at any dealership and on the surface it looks functionally no different than it did just a few years ago. Dig a little bit and everything changes. But you already know this. You’re obviously more progressive or being informed by someone who is because you won’t find the sports score ticker or a reality show recap here. It’s all business. But is it new business?

With more advice than ever, including a massive dose of simply republished (or regurgitated) articles and data, and more tools than ever, including predominantly recreated, re-skinned and relicensed  products, it easy to get inspired by everything while ultimately motivated by nothing. So how do you stop the regression and inevitable redirection?

Have a plan. Plan your work. Work your plan.

More than ever, and especially with the speed of all things “new”, it is critical to write everything down, have a plan (including accountability for yourself), build support and see things through. Anything less is simply “blocking and tackling”, which is crap. Is this advice sage? Not at all!

In order to succeed you’re likely doing a number of the things listed above anyway. But are you doing it for everything, every day and do you have a plan of action? Can you get uncomfortable long enough to become perpetually motivated? Can you create the buy-in needed for at least a year? Two?

With the level of community support available, on DrivingSales for example, it’s easier than ever to get the motivation necessary. Remember, the platforms are for sharing and doing. DrivingSales and the other networks are some of the most underused resources! They are not supposed to be selling platforms. Simply reading and not sharing is akin to watching an accident unfold in front of you and not helping. Considering most dealerships are not the most positive environments around why, aside from the ego and time excuses, would you not go to where you can participate, learn, ask and excel?

While there are some great people sharing and answering questions, the purpose of the forums is to engage. The challenge ahead of us is not the economy (national or fuel) or the products. Our collective Achilles heel is not process or response times or the OEMs enforcing programs they don’t understand. Our greatest faults are relaxing, waiting for things to automatically happen for us and not participating. Not asking more questions and letting go of our egos. Not taking more responsibility for our staffs, interactions and brands. Being in the store but not being aware or active. Like most dealers in social media, we might be inspired but by not listening, involving and really trying, we are limiting our success. All of us.

1,000 people at the largest events for dealers, vendors and the OEMs? If those in attendance were just dealer staff, that would represent only 0.0005% of the retail industry. 50 people involved in a community with 50,000+ that touch the content? That’s a slightly better 0.001% involvement.

How can we motivate an industry? It’s not a CRM. It’s not going to happen with a DMS. And it’s surely not going to be spurred by a dealership website (have you actually looked at yours? Really?!) We must be motivated by what can move or change things for the better. We must be motivated by those things that last longer than 30 days. We must be motivated by how much more we can do. We must be motivated and then validate those that did the motivating, then motivate others.

Our industry does have more leaders than are presently obvious. It’s just not obvious. Not for now.

Businesses, already challenged, are going to be challenged more in the foreseeable future. Do you want to go into that future armed with only a pea shooter? Why not an arsenal? Why not a team? We are better than that. An industry that represents the largest part of our (shrinking) GDP deserves to be better, not lethargic!

Take the challenge and get a plan together with solid fundamentals and a road map. Let your inspiration without action turn into something greater.  What would happen if 2,000 people were active on communities? What if 3,000 showed up at the best events? We don’t know.

Best practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

 

The Shortest Distance Between Two Lines Is A Straight Point

Another day has gone by in our industry and where are we? Did we break a record? Did we start a trend? Did we figure something out? Chances are we're in the same place we were 48 hours ago. While we'll leave the guessing how much other businesses out there have changed to the "experts" (yeah, we've got more of those today than we had yesterday!) but know for the most part we didn't blaze any new paths.

Another month has gone by and another interesting declination from a dealer that needs help (no, not the same one as one of our last posts):

"It's (so and so) from (such and such), is this a good time for you?"

"Uh, no. I'm working on ads for this weekend and Ive got a lot of other stuff to get done. You're either buying something from me or trying to sell me something. If you're trying to sell me something, it's the wrong time."

"That's completely understood."

"You'll have to call me back."

"Considering how busy you are, will you take my name and number?"

"No"

"OK, good bye"

While the distance continues to grow between the dealers that are moving forward and those that aren't grows, it's important to remind ourselves of where we're heading. You know, the road map. Goals set at the beginning of the year rather than two weeks ago. We all have them memorized now:

  • Regular review of website performance, stats, leads, etc
  • Weekly lead status and management
  • Complete (aka 100%) CRM use/integration for all departments
  • Updating of templates and scripts for all customer communication
  • Social media game plan
  • Reputation management
  • Vendor accountability
  • Read and participate more at events and online communities
  • Getting outside help occasionally because you can't staff for everything

It's not easy to look at all of the things thought or talked about considering everything that has to be done just to sell and service cars. Right?!?! Let alone add them to the heaping pile of responsibility that everyone has in automotive retail. Right?!?! Besides, it's hard selling cars today. Right?!?!

Wrong!!!! As Andy Dufresne put so well in Shawshank Redemption: Get busy living or get busy dying. Sure, you can bury your head deeper in the sand St. Diggerstein, or you can get real and get in business.

The shortest distance between two lines is a straight point. In other words one line is where you're at, the other is where you want to be. And the point is…go get after it. Quit stalling!! Besides, you said you're not going to fall for the banana-in-the-tailpipe.

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

What Do You Think It Will Take To Change? Hello?

Sometimes it helps being a cynic and a pessimist, or at least devil's advocate but at the end of the day you're either your own worst enemy or best ding-dang advocate.  It is always beneficial to see things with a different perspective but critically important to maintain your identity and job jump in the pool for the sake of it, no matter how fun the party.

Recently I've read two good articles. One by Joe Webb (President of Dealer Knows) in Digital Dealer Magazine. The other a blog post by Matt Watson (VIN Solutions) on AutomotiveDigitalMarketing.com. Both deal with perception versus reality, pitch versus practice and simply understanding what you have and need before you're had.  Two common carriers of bias at the dealership level: a rep and an excited, overzealous  employee. Both are doing their job but if you to change anything you've got to address everything.

While results typically flow bottom up, change is managed top down. Changing your online results will not come from some videos on YouTube and some 'vSEO' on your website. Update all of your touch-points, become contextually relevant and timely, make sure your brand connects and apply process consistently. Changing how your employees act will not come from a new company policy solely either.

SEO and SEM are hot topics…and should be managed in tandem with your website and CRM. Having a bunch of disparate systems and efforts out there is like fishing with two poles…3,000 miles apart from each other. It just doesn't make sense!

Search engine optimization is an ongoing task with great opportunity, not a "got it with my website two years ago" item. When was the last time you looked closely at your analytics or, better yet, looked at your site with an overlay so you can see real numbers and statistics against what you think your consumers see. That's always an interesting meeting with my clients.

Change is never done. If you don't continue to change because you need to, because your competition is or because you can and make the right changes…you lose. The change everyone has been talking about for months is cutting everything and everywhere with very little regard. You see, that's not a change from troubled times in the past, especially for dealers and OEMs.

Our greatest changes are still in front of us. Are you ready? And what do you think it will take to change? Think about it and do it.

Best practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

The Step You Cut Out In 2009…Might Be You

Fact is, more often than not, when you cut corners in sales the one that is affected most is you.  It is also a fact of business life that we're replaceable, as I've experienced myself. Why is it then that most people don't typically go the extra mile, especially when it is so needed?

This is not to say that there are not plenty of go-getters out there. Today it is critically important to think about making the most of every opportunity, especially with fewer prospects and less marketing dollars. Here is a list of common mistakes when it comes to achieving sales success in a down market:

1. Customer assumptions (examples: won't qualify, didn't want the aftermarket wheels, etc)
2. Market assumptions (examples: should call prospects less, nobody will buy when stocks are down, etc)
3. Other assumptions (examples: every lead will be for the unit we don't have, every customer is a jack, etc)

Taking out critical steps and not following sounds processes is what leads to failure. It's not the lead, not the market, not the model and not the customer. Successful sales people always do more than it takes and live by process. Take the time to build for your success by taking every step necessary. Some ideas you may want to consider for a successful 2009:

1. Create a set of tasks that you achieve every day and make them habit
    Set 1: start of day list (nothing else gets done before this does)
    Set 2: process on every sale with a required sign off or completion checklist
    Set 3: accountability checks throughout the day (follow ups, contacts, management)
    Set 4: end of day list (prepare for the next sales day before you leave and have tasks written down)
2. State, write down and maintain goals
    A. Make them visible and be accountable to them daily, weekly and monthly
    B. Track so you're not surprised
    C. Have others challenge you and check on you (do this with those who are more successful)
3. Learn, learn, learn
    A. Pick up something new as often as possible, even daily (task, idea, expert advice, etc)
    B. Apply sound principals
    C. Check for success, if it's not working…drop it

If you can do at least the above items and don't cut out any steps, you'll not only likely be successful but chances are you'll have saved your own job. In working with dealers last year, at least one sales person at every client didn't know how to work their compensation backwards. In other words, they had no idea how to make the $5,000, $7,500, $10,000 a month they said they wanted to based on more than a simple desire and some idea of units. To top it off, they usually had very little to none of the steps above to guide them.

If you're ready to reinvest in yourself as well as reinvent yourself, the time is now, the reason is you, the purpose is to do what needs to be done and the end game is success.  If you don't want to be in sales, clearly don't want to work Internet
leads and have no desire to do anything but 'wait', you're definitely looking at one clear outcome.

Little steps lead to bigger ones. You learned that as a child and then lost it in the hustle-and-bustle of our world. Remember that walking is controlled falling, that's all. You can fall without failing. Do what it takes to do what you do better. Make 2009 a great year of successes…starting now. Go out there and be great!

Best practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results