There are two aspects to taking today’s successful automobile dealership into a profitable tomorrow:
- Keep your finger on the pulse of today’s rapidly changing market.
- Coach your frontline employees and middle managers to grow with the changing needs of your unique marketplace.
Keeping your finger on pulse of the evolving car dealership market
Times are always changing and that includes how cars sell. Deeply listening to customers and understanding their core issues allows your dealership to continue to grow and expand to meet the needs of your market tomorrow. Most service providers aren’t truly listening; they assume they know what’s going on because they’ve dealt with similar issues before. It’s easy for them to become complacent in their daily routine.
The truth is the market is always changing and it’s up to you, the leadership team, to change in order to continue to meet the needs of your market tomorrow. Managers develop leadership habits based on experience and what’s worked for them in the past.
Strong managers need to keep their focus and attention on what’s changing in their market, both in hiring practices and in marketing to the next generation of car purchasers.
Coaching and training front-line employees
In periods of growth we often hire our employees based on experience, qualifications and their personality. As far as current employees, most managers do the best they can with what they’ve got. Often using the same principles and practices they used ten, twenty, often 30 years ago.
Front-line managers and middle managers often silently struggle because they are afraid to ask for help. They may be afraid of more work being added to their plate, afraid of being let go, afraid of losing respect from leaders in the company.
The leadership team can’t let this happen!
The fact is most people want to do a good job. At the end of the day they want to go home feeling good about themselves and the work they did.
What’s being measured matters
What’s often going on in struggling companies is what is being measured and what employees are held accountable to is wrong. It’s outdated or hasn’t changed with the needs of the marketplace.
In the automobile industry changing results starts with training our managers to manage differently. Often leaders think they don’t have the time to coach and train their managers. The fact is they often don’t have the skill to coach or train. Just because they were good at something, such as car sales or building close relationships with clients doesn’t mean they can coach or train another on the same thing.
Similarly, simply because you are a skilled musician doesn’t mean you can be a skilled conductor. It’s a different job requiring a different skillset.
And yet, many leaders in the automobile industry expect their musicians to also be conductors. They expect star employees to be stellar managers.
Leading your car dealership to a profitable and successful tomorrow may mean managing differently. From the way you hire to very metrics you run use to run the company, the ability to read and understand the market of tomorrow is essential to today’s success.
If you can use some help in updating your metrics or coaching your management team reach out today…