Featured image credit: Brian Kaldorf

Subaru of Moon Township is part of the Lithia Motors Inc. family,  one of the largest providers of personal transportation solutions in the U.S., and among the fastest-growing companies in the Fortune 500 (#265-2019). Consumers can buy, sell, and service vehicles digitally or through Lithia’s 189 coast to coast locations. Within their Lithia platform of 28 stores across Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, and Vermont, Subaru of Moon Township is ranked #1 in Sales Gross Profit. The store is a 2019 J.D. Power Dealer of Excellence Award winner, as well as a recent winner of the Subaru Love Promise Award for Customer and Community Commitment.

Maureen Bailey was recently promoted from General Sales Manager to Assistant General Manager at Subaru of Moon Township. Previously, she held executive and senior leadership positions at Autosoft, Inc. and Cochran Automotive Group. At Cochran, Maureen led the landmark opening of the company’s first BDC and developed and implemented an enterprise-wide Corporate Sales Transparency process, while serving as Director of Process Development. Before her tenure at Cochran, Maureen served as Sales Manager and F&I Manager for multiple dealerships. In 2014, Maureen received the Woman of the Year Award from the National Association of Professional Women for outstanding professional achievement.

Dealer Magazine: With 22 years in the industry, you’ve been very successful at selling a lot of cars. Today, you’re the Assistant General Manager at Subaru of Moon Township in the greater Pittsburgh area. Let’s start with your background. How and why did you get into sales?

Maureen: I’m 43. I went to college right after high school at 17, and like a lot of kids graduating high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My parents gave me the option to get a job and pay them rent so that I could continue living in their house or to go to college mostly on their dime.

College was the obvious choice. I liked writing and was good at it, so I started as a journalism major. But I ended up not identifying with any of it, and I left in the middle of my sophomore year, intending to take a small break and regroup to decide what I really wanted to do.

So, I got a small apartment outside of Pittsburgh and went to work at a record store where I made $5.15 an hour. When people would come into the store, I’d hang onto them and talk about music, and recommend albums that matched their taste. Customers always told me I’d be good at sales.

I got excited about that idea and started to look into it.

Dealer Magazine: How did you get from selling records to selling cars?

Maureen: My father, having worked outside B2B sales, did things that I’ve never been able to do, such as prospecting, making cold calls all day long, getting regularly rejected, and working on really long sales cycles of a year to three years. That, to me, was sales, and I couldn’t see myself doing that. He suggested – which turned out to be untrue – that I try car sales because I would probably get paid a salary.

At the time, I lived in a city-like neighborhood in a Pittsburgh suburb. I walked a few blocks from my apartment to a Saturn store and asked them if they were hiring salespeople. They hired me on the spot, and I wasn’t even 19 yet. For three months, I studied, but they never actually let me sell a car so eventually, I walked down to a Nissan dealership and got a job in sales there. I loved the Nissan store. Absolutely couldn’t get enough of it. It was very exciting, even the long hours. At that point, I was hooked. I tried to get out a couple of times over the years, but I always went back to selling cars.

Dealer Magazine: What do you like most about selling cars?

Maureen: Truth be told, I’m not really a car person. For me, selling a car has very little to do with cars aside from the type of purchase it is. And as a hiring manager, I worry when someone wants to sell based on their interest in cars. That’s always a red flag for me because if you’re doing this for the love of cars, you will likely end up talking more about cars than listening to the people buying them.

There’s a certain amount of pretense that goes along with being a customer. As soon as they enter your store, their defenses go up. No matter how you feel about yourself or how confident you are, when you walk into a dealership, all of that changes. There’s dread, and there’s fear. They hate this process.

What I like most is finding out what a customer’s pain points are and easing or solving that pain. I like to help customers find a way to solve these problems, to make them choose the right vehicle, and see them build an emotional attachment to their purchase.

The challenge is to take the most stand-offish, uncomfortable person, and get them to a point where they are asking for advice on what I would do in their shoes.

Dealer Magazine: Let’s shift gears for a moment. How do you define leadership?

Maureen: I don’t suppose my definition is likely much different than most other definitions of leadership. I believe it is important to have a very clear vision and a shared set of goals. As a leader, you must have the ability to define those goals and make them clear to everyone on your team. The only way to achieve those departmental goals is for each member of the team to meet their goals. We go out of our way to celebrate an individual’s success.

I try very hard to stay focused on activities that develop and inspire and motivate my people to become better at what they do. I’m very big on praise and high fives, but I’m also very direct. When working with someone and sharing ideas, I find it rewarding to watch them grow and succeed.

My team never has to wonder what I’m thinking about anything. I don’t want people to feel bad, but I’m going to call you out right away if you’ve slipped backward on something you were working on or if you need to take another look at something. If I’m involved in a situation with a team member, I always ask myself what I could have done differently, and then I ask the employee to reflect the same way.

Dealer Magazine: What steps do you take to improve staff performance?

Maureen: I think a lot of people in car sales do not necessarily grasp their skill set or master their craft. There’s a general lack of training in this business. My contribution is mastering my craft, and at the forefront, making sure everyone who works for me is as well. Mastering your craft requires having clearly defined goals. It’s very easy to say that you want to sell 150 cars, but to do that, you must know exactly how you’re going to get there. And it also has to feel doable.

When evaluating our success from the previous week or month, we consider more than just results. We focus heavily on what activities we need to do— monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, and with each customer. We work to improve our interactions with people. Then, we celebrate those wins in a big way.

And that’s across the entire team. I have 18 salespeople, four sales managers, a staff of three in F&I, and four BDC agents. It’s a fantastic team.

Dealer Magazine: You mentioned your BDC, what can you tell me about that department?

Maureen: I’m a big proponent of the value of a BDC. I know it works. They’re responsible for handling all of our lead chats, texts, phone calls, etc. Our sales department handles voice call overflow if needed. BDC agents will set appointments, pull quotes, greet customers, and introduce the customers to the appropriate salesperson. Our BDC follows prospects for 180 days to make sure they don’t fall out of sight or out of mind.

We’re bringing in BDC training over the next month or so to fine-tune our process because we firmly believe in its contribution and value.

Dealer Magazine: What separates Subaru of Moon Township in the marketplace?

Maureen: We were purchased, and in a good way, by Lithia Motors in 2018. Before the purchase, it was a family-run dealership.

From what I’ve experienced, our customer base is the most loyal. And we have the best team, including our service managers, technicians, salespeople, and F&I staff. Customers return to our dealership because they know their salesperson and their service adviser. It’s a strong, close-knit community. Even customers from outside of our local area, feel as if they’re part of the community, and they are repeat customers.

Dealer Magazine: Have you encountered any special challenges as a woman leader in a male-dominated business?

Maureen: Yes, countless. For example, some people are surprised I can do the work because I’m a woman, or they assume I attained my management position at the dealership because I’m related to the owner. I’ve been a general sales manager, meeting with customers all the time, and when walking out to talk to them, many would think I was a greeter or a receptionist or the dealer’s daughter, someone in the office. It never ends. The literal shock on someone’s face when they found out I was the GSM not by nepotism but by merit is, well, it’s bizarre.

Women are dismissed and discounted in dealerships all the time. The car business is so historically a male business that women still face big hurdles, whether real or perceptual. It can seem prehistoric at times. As a result, I have to demonstrate my ability harder, be more purposeful, and evident that I am capable.

When I asked our GM, Brad Pavlik, how the support he gave me as a GSM might have been different than with a male in the same role, at first, he said, “There is no difference between support given to males versus females. They are not different.” Then he amended this by telling me, “I think that it is harder for women to get respect from males and with that knowledge I wanted to make sure you had my full support and backing, I thought, ‘I have to completely empower this person and not manage around her. I have to reiterate to any of her employees who may come to me that she has autonomy, full empowerment.’”

My staff is pretty progressive, but they still might treat a female customer differently than a male or fail to recognize that a woman is a decision-maker. I remind them all the time that women make 85 percent of the purchasing decisions. They’ll argue with me in some scenarios and say that’s not true – the driver is the man. I tell them that if there is a woman there and you offend her or her children—children are absolutely included in that—if you don’t acknowledge them in a positive way, they will encourage the man to buy somewhere else. They’ll walk.

Dealer Magazine: What specific tactics have you found most useful in nurturing and supporting the rise of female executives in a dealership?

Maureen: There are many great reasons to hire more women, especially in car sales. You want a woman in sales perhaps because people associate with women some of the qualities that put us at ease: more understanding, more trustworthy, more able or willing to listen, and more tenacity. That’s not saying women are actually better at doing the work or even that they demonstrate these qualities more often than men, however, car shoppers most definitely feel more comfortable about a dealership when females are in these roles.

Women also tend to be extremely successful in automotive sales. But then we try to recruit and hire females by offering them reduced work schedules, 40-hour workweeks, salary-based, etc. The perception, right or wrong, is that women are going to want to spend more time at home to be with their children, want work schedule flexibility and paycheck stability. The big mistake in that is if you’re hiring that kind of person – not just a woman — you’re not going to find that truly hungry, driven leader, one that can make a difference, by offering things they won’t find beneficial. You’re going to end up with an average performer.

Women are very particular about what they want to do and where they want to work, the challenges they want to tackle. They’re very sensitive to being discounted or downplayed, so offer empowerment, advancement opportunities, and unlimited income potential. You might be lucky enough to find a strong woman to fill your opening.

I’ve been on a leadership team for a long time, and I’ve learned that the turnover process starts at the interview. Make sure you know who and why you want to hire before you say you want to hire a woman. It can be dangerous to define leadership roles by gender. I’m not good at what I do simply because I’m female.

Dealer Magazine: Which performance sales strategies have you implemented to meet the challenges of shifting consumer demands and reduced brand loyalty?

Maureen: Demands have shifted, yes. Consumers visit fewer dealerships, spend more time online, visit more websites, and want to spend less time in a showroom. But once they get to the showroom, it’s as much about a positive experience as it has ever been. A poor customer service experience, for example, can make someone rule out a brand. This is especially true for millennials, who expect a high level of customer service. That’s why we focus on the customer experience first and foremost, and we go pretty deep into it. It’s not just a matter of offering beverages and being friendly and giving information. All of those things are important, too.

But I try to teach my people to emulate what I’ve learned to be true about what it really means to provide customer service. And by providing that level of service, you can shift people to being brand loyal without having to affect their first vehicle choice.

You want your customers to feel important, that their concerns are valid, that you are listening. And they should feel this from everyone they interact with while in your store or online. They need to know the salesperson isn’t the only one who cares about their transaction or situation. Our sales strategy is to make it all about the customer.

Dealer Magazine: Could you give us an example of how your customer-first sales strategy works in practice?

Maureen: We like to be transparent. We want to have the customer tell us all about the information behind their decision, the information they collected before entering our store. Maybe 20 years ago, they might refer to a single source for their information, say Kelley Blue Book. Dealers would push back and say that’s just a guide and you can’t rely on that information. Today, you can’t do that—and it works in a dealer’s favor to know a customers’ trusted source of information.

People want to do as much research as they can before they enter the store. That’s why we turn it around and use it to our advantage. We ask them to tell us about all the information they’ve found. Let’s talk about it. What they’ve read doesn’t necessarily make them better informed, and it’s sometimes really, really difficult for customers to understand exactly how to apply that information to their transaction. It’s easy for them to get confused. So, we incorporate the information they’ve already collected and use it as a frame of reference that makes sense to them. We don’t hide anything. We work together and show them how to apply their information to make the best decision. We have to demonstrate that we care about the problem and that our priority is to help them solve it.

Dealer Magazine: What is your digital marketing strategy?

Maureen: We’re part of the Lithia Motors family, so the Lithia marketing team handles much of the marketing effort. Generally, we use a lot of different third-party solutions, such as Cars.com and Autotrader and so forth. In particular, the way we market our pre-owned vehicles has been a game-changer for us.

Overall, our digital marketing strategy is efficient. Typically, we do two to three email blasts to our customer base each month, in which we promote lease specials or special programs, whatever. We’ll send service offers. Mid-month, we’ll do a blast on pre-owned deals. For end of month, we might reiterate new offers and run an additional special. We spend a good deal of money targeting shoppers in our market, especially for vehicles not moving the way they should. We also promote a full digital retailing message. A customer can sell us their vehicle and buy one of ours and do the transaction entirely online.

Dealer Magazine: In what way is your pre-owned marketing strategy a game-changer?

Maureen: Our pre-owned pricing strategy is very systematic. We look at a market days supply pricing strategy versus an aging or cost-based one. We’ve learned we can literally pull any lever we want to generate the kind of traffic that we want to turn our used inventory.

We’re getting better at understanding how our inventory turns or becomes stagnant by looking at the bigger picture. I think the biggest mistake dealerships make when selling pre-owned inventory is looking at each vehicle that they’re purchasing or selling as one vehicle and not as a part of a bigger entity. Along those lines, Subaru of Moon Township uses vAuto more successfully than I’ve ever seen it used before.

Dealer Magazine: You’ve witnessed or participated in many industry changes over the years. In your opinion, what has been the single greatest change to the sales process?

Maureen: The internet, of course, the efficient market it has created. When I first started in 1996, we didn’t even an Internet person on staff at the time. It wasn’t until I was working at a dealership in Colorado that we had a dedicated person assigned to the Internet. At that time, nobody wanted to deal with anyone online. We thought the Internet for car sales was a fad, and it would never take off. It’s changed our business, obviously, and accelerated the sales process.

Consumers shop on more sites, they shop on mobile devices, they shop the competition on their phones while in your store. And we know people are buying cars entirely online, but it’s a small percentage that will take advantage of that process when it’s offered. Honestly, I started handling Internet leads on a large scale 12 years ago, and it’s pretty much the same process now.

People still want to come into the store, meet people, and see and drive the vehicle they’re buying. We offer a way for them to avoid coming into the store, where the transaction is totally online, and we deliver the car to them. Only one customer in the last 12 months took us up on our online retail offer, however.

People want transparency, yes, which the Internet can offer, but they still want to come into the store. We mostly use digital retailing tools to reduce the time customers have to spend in the store, not replace it.

Now, as far as the most useful technology, I believe our CRM is the best tool at our disposal. We use VinSolutions for CRM and it enables us to focus on and drive our metrics, as well as keep in touch with prospects and customers with chats and emails and so forth. It’s where we manage the whole customer experience. And I can’t say enough good things about vAuto. I don’t know what we’d do without it.

Dealer Magazine: What one word or expression best describes you?

Maureen: Energy.