In his article Aspiring to Leadership: Technical Knowledge vs. People Skills, Dr. Jim Murray writes: “a twenty-year study of leadership effectiveness conducted by Stanford University’s School of Business concluded that about 15 percent of one’s success in leading organizations comes from technical skills and knowledge, while 85 percent comes from the ability to connect with people and engender trust and mutual understanding”
As a dealer principal does this apply to you? Would you agree that 85 percent of your success has been derived from your ability to connect with people and engender trust and mutual understanding? I believe most of you would agree.
Lets look at the circle of connections that impact the success of a dealer principal: managers, employees, the factory, local community, family and friends and yes, customers.
Relationships nothing new
Everyone says that customer relationships are all-important these days, as if this is something new. After all, dealers have been managing customers since the beginning of time. But tools, techniques and processes seem to come and go as new technologies are developed and new people churn through the turnstiles of our dealerships.
What follows may seem harsh and a generalization, but I have seen much lip service paid to customer relationships over the years. Many dealers simply view customers as wandering wallets and seem more concerned about maximizing today’s gross or the CP RO hours than building a trust bond with the customer to develop future business.
Personal Pride
Dealerships are an interesting model. At one time, the dealer principal was proud to hang his name on the front of the building. Not today, apprently. The vast majority of new dealerships seem to find their names from local geography and landmarks. It’s also interesting that most dealer principal’s offices are as far away from their customers as possible, protected by a filter of managers, executive secretaries and voicemail. Of the websites I reviewed to write this article, only about two percent provided a way to directly contact the dealer principal.
I have the opportunity to visit a number of dealerships as part of my consulting practice. I am also a vehicle consumer and get to see that side of things as well. I believe that, as a group, we do not do a great job at relationships. Most certainly there are many exceptions, and I applaud you.
It’s an impersonal world
One of the things that drives me crazy is the automated attendant. I know receptionists are expensive and to have a live person greet your live customer or prospect over the phone is an expense many believe is worth eliminating. I disagree.
People today are bombarded with technology and impersonal treatment. I know how I react when the automated attendant answers the phone, and I suspect many people feel the same way. I usually hit ‘0’ and if I get voicemail again I hang up and go somewhere else.
Relationships are very important to the success of our businesses. I believe that the only true way to successful customer relationships is through successful employee relationships. While dealer principals sit in their protected offices, someone has to be out glad-handing the customer; someone has to be converting those prospects to customers and keeping our fixed operations customers returning? We all seem to delegate this critical role to our employees.
Need to continually earn the business
I believe that each and every time a person visits our dealership, either in person, over the phone or through our website, they are prospects. We have to earn their business at each and every visit. If we do not, there will be no future visits, no matter how many campaigns you run or how often you call them or send them flyers and individual letters.
Making personal contact with people is a critical success factor for dealerships. In most stores, that contact is leveraged to sales staff and service advisors. Managers normally only get involved when there is a problem or, in the case of sales, when more gross is needed. Managers, it seems, like to hide in their offices, leaving customer interaction to others.
Where is the dealer in all of this?
Ask yourself honestly, when was the last time you spent a full day actually working on the floor in your dealership? I have a few suggestions for you. Put on the jump suit and work alongside your service technicians for a day, maybe two. It’s amazing the mileage you will get out of this. You get to see first hand how the department works, the good and the bad. You get closer to your technicians and service advisors and build an even stronger relationship than you currently have with them. Most importantly, they will increase their respect for you, believe more in the value and contribution of what they do and ultimately work harder for you.
Once you have done this, then be a service advisor for a day or two. Answer the phones, sell a few cars, work in the business office, and appraise a few used vehicle trade-ins, too. This will take a few weeks or set up a schedule where you devote two days per month to this exercise. But do it.
While you do all these things, you are building relationships with your employees. You are differentiating yourself from other dealers and dealerships. You are also talking with customers, and in the process building and maintaining relationships with them, well apart from leading by example.
For those of you that own more than one store, the above exercise is even more important. Usually we have our office at one store and spend the majority of our time there. We travel back and forth to attend meetings and deal with problems and issues at our other stores but very rarely take the time necessary to build meaningful relationships.
The role of technology
You’ll read elsewhere in this issue about CRM software tools. That ‘s a good thing. Technology can certainly help you stay in touch with your customers in ways that you need to in today’s competitive world. But technology only provides a tool. It needs a foundation of solid relationships in order to work effectively in your dealership. Technology alone is not the answer, because on its own without the proper support and reinforcement, it quickly becomes just another expense worthy of cutting.
Today’s environment is full of opportunity. Today’s environment is also full of sameness. Make your dealership different. Improve relationships with your employees and customers by building them yourself. This could be just the defining difference to make your dealership stand above all others in your community.
Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Comments