F&I and Showroom, September 2018

www fi magazine com 18 F I and Showroom September 2018 Expecting a finished product right out of the gate means you place more emphasis on skills rather than character Skills can be taught character cannot A better approach is to hire people who make good employees in general and that share the following character traits Positive attitude Purpose and passion Integrity High energy Team player Hire someone with those traits and teach them sales skills and your process They will likely deliver better results than an experienced salesperson looking to make his or her third or fourth career change 2 PET RACEHORSES KICK THE PONIES When building a sales team the more the better has been the traditional approach as in the more salespeople you have the more cars they will sell Unfortunately thats just not true A smaller team of high performers will always outdo a large team of mediocre performers and theyll be much happier because theyll be making more money Managing a small team is also easier It means getting fewer people to buy into your philosophy and processes It also means avoiding that one problem child who doesnt follow a process doesnt buy in and causes morale problems Pet your racehorses kick your ponies refers to a management technique that focuses on getting a higher level of production out of a smaller team This philosophy recommends spending 80 of your time managing your top producing salespeople This is opposite of what many managers believe and practice as they spend most of their time with the struggling salespeople Think about it If you spend time with a salesperson who sells 10 cars a month and you get a 10 increase thats one more car per month If you spend that same amount of time with a salesperson selling 20 cars per month and you get a 10 increase thats two cars per month Thats literally double the results I should make it clear that I am in no way advocating kicking the ponies or salespeople What I do recommend is building a smaller team with all racehorses 3 CREATE A CULTURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY One of the most challenging aspects of a managers job is to hold the team accountable Your salespeople know your process and whats expected on a daily basis Yet for some reason they always find new ways to skirt the process and look for shortcuts Thats why process trumps the outcome If the goal is simply to sell a car a salesperson will feel justified by the result regardless of which process he followed If following the process is the goal selling more cars will still be the result However your team will learn to be accountable The key is to keep it simple Today there are so many KPIs to measure and so many activities to track Sometimes with so many people involved the process can become overcomplicated The most successful dealerships have very simple sales processes as they know the fewer steps and people involved the better Choose five top KPIs or activities that are most critical to your sales process Set a benchmark for each activity and start holding your team accountable for each one on a daily basis And make sure your sales team is required to report their own individual KPIs to the manager This is how they become more accountable Traditionally managers will print a report and tell each salesperson the results and what they need to do to improve This top down approach is not very effective because salespeople never truly own the consequences of their actions But if you have your sales team set their own goals report their own KPIs and explain why they didnt achieve a certain outcome they will quickly see the correlation between their activities and results 4 COACH THE TEAM Every team has a manager but only successful teams have a coach Coaching and counseling are almost a lost art these days but its worth learning how and doing it when you have Coaching requires you to lead inspire and walk the talk Never ask a salesperson to do something youre not willing to do yourself Get to know your employees learn how to relate to them and find common ground so you can be relevant A great coaching technique is to create a feedback loop Providing and receiving feedback needs to happen quickly Dont say things like You said this wrong or You shouldnt have done that Go back and do it this way A different approach would be saying We didnt get the outcome we wanted What would you do differently Involve the salesperson make it interactive and support their solution within reason of course Building a high performance sales team takes time and thought It requires a hands on approach Traditional management models in dealerships are outdated and ineffective for todays workforce Hire based on character produce more with less hold your team accountable and learn how to coach them to success ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bill Wittenmyer serves as a partner and vice president of sales and operations of ELEAD1ONE provider of automotive software solutions Email him at bill wittenmyer@ bobit com SHOWROOM