First, You Must Do This…

Now and then, I meet a dealership’s leadership team that resonates a solid understanding of what leadership/business know-how is all about. For those of you who feel a little (or a lot) of tweaking in your store could manifest into a stronger overall business unit, then this article is for you.

J.W Marriott, Jr. is chairman and CEO of Marriott International, Inc., one of the world’s largest lodging companies. The successor of the highly successful hotel chain is a brilliant leader who understands what it is that makes them so successful. His leadership spans more than 50 years, and he has taken Marriott from a family restaurant business to a global lodging company with more than 3,700 properties in over 73 countries and territories.

Known throughout the industry for his hands-on management style, Mr. Marriott has built a highly regarded culture that emphasizes the importance of Marriott’s people and recognizes the value they bring to the organization. Today, approximately 300,000 people wearing Marriott International name badges are serving guests in Marriott managed and franchised properties throughout the world.

Marriott International is also well known as a great place to work and for its commitment to diversity, social responsibility, and community engagement. It has consistently been named to Fortune’s lists of most admired companies and best places to work. Why? What makes Marriott such a great place to work and experience?

I feel any dealership could receive (albeit not quite the scale) a similar success story and report card if they would operate utilizing Bill’s rules of success listed below. If followed, a dealership might just find that their organization has become a better place for people to work and for people to purchase vehicles, and as a consequence, begin growing their business to unexpected increases.

Bill Marriott’s 12 Rules of Success

1. Continually challenge your team to do better.

2. Take good care of your employees, and they’ll take good care of your customers, and the customers will come back.

3. Celebrate your people’s success, not your own.

4. Know what you’re good at and then use those competencies for all you’re worth.

5. Do it and do it now. Err on the side of taking action.

6. Communicate. Listen to your customers, associates, and competitors.

7. See and be seen. Get out of your office, walk around, make yourself visible and accessible.

8. Success is in the details.

9. It’s more important to hire people with the right qualities than with specific experience.

10. Customer needs may vary but their bias for quality never does.

11. Eliminate the cause of a mistake. Don’t just clean it up.

12. View every problem as an opportunity to grow.

These are such great line items, but they are just that, line items sitting on a page in a latent form. To give them life, apply “action” towards making them happen. How do we do that? We have to design and implement a plan. I guarantee that the Marriott corporation had and has a continuing strategic plan to make sure these line items come to life in their properties. Ask 50 dealers this question; “What does your three to five-year marketing and business plan look like?” and see how many have one. Do you? Odds are high that few have taken the time to fully initialize any plan at all, and that is no way to run a business. Develop a professional plan and watch what happens.

However, as Dave Anderson quotes, “A brilliant plan not followed by consistent action isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” I agree with Dave on this wholeheartedly.

Wouldn’t you be interested in renovating new energy and business gains into your dealership? If so, then a terrific place to start is in the direction of a strategic sales and marketing plan, which will lead to better focus and positive growth results.

Getting started

Take a breath and plan a couple of well thought out meetings with your management team. Mix all department managers together when doing this because in doing so, you will yield cross-boundary suggestions to allow everyone to step out of their departmental paradigms and hear maybe a new way of conducting their business.

Here are the first steps to getting control of your growth and developing leaders, not just managers, to get you there. Adjust them to fit any particular needs you may have, then print them to pass out at your first meeting.

Start with the easy stuff then ramp up to the meat which will drive the processes and inspire your people. Here is the first simple three-question template (see chart 1) to use whereby everyone in attendance gets a copy as their personal worksheet.

Chuck’s 12 Rules of “Total Team” Management Guidelines:

1. Team Support: Maintaining it for the long haul.

2. Diversity: Using it to benefit the whole team.

3. Communication: Improving skills for team efficiency.

4. Change: Breaking way to new opportunities.

5. Trust: Building and maintaining it.

6. Creativity: Use it in solving complex problems.

7. Decision Making: Process Improvement.

8. Leadership: The power of flexibility and adaptability.

9. Positive Options: Resolves team conflict.

10. Team Success: Recognition and celebration; the greatest motivators.

11. On Track: Follow-up strategies for continuous improvement.

12. Technology: What technology elements will facilitate the aforementioned?

Perhaps you could consider improvement in the direction of managing group dynamics, running more productive meetings, a well thought out on-boarding process, facilitate joint decision-making and unify individuals into a single-minded cohesive team. Our duties should include leading, coaching, teaching, training, mentoring, advising, reinforcing, and recognizing our team; and not directing, pushing around or dictating. Strive towards the implementation of a total “Consensus Style Leadership” vs. Bureaucratic. This approach will get folks on board and engaged with the plan to draw out strong opinions and effectively funnel them into equally strong collective “buy-ins.” The real name of the game is your people. Develop them into one strong team, and you will find that a variety of problems vanish. And, if someone doesn’t comply, then replace.

On the subject of replacing, my friend Dan Kommeth, managing partner for Lexus of Milwaukee (Dealer Magazine cover story January 2019) is one leader everyone could take a page from. Dan has an uncanny ability to build teams and then keep those employees engaged for long-term employment. He excels in interviewing/hiring (properly), developing, grooming, communicating, training, and caring for all his employees. His tenure with Lexus over the years has been recognized as one of those leaders who make it happen. But then comes the hard part. Dan, like the rest, has to come to terms with the fact that occasionally an employee is just not working out. The interesting thing to note is the process by which Dan goes about addressing this problem.

Dan’s Firing Process:

Why is it so (seemingly) hard to do? There are multiple reasons, but one of the most telling is what it says about us; if you hired the person, firing them means you made a mistake. No one likes to admit they made a mistake, so the act of letting someone go makes them feel like a failure.

Some managers, rather than facing the facts and cutting ties, make excuses so they don’t have to let the person go. The manager doesn’t coach the employee to improve or provide any training, rather they hope the person improves and the situation resolves itself (note: it never resolves itself).

As a manager, you have to check your ego, take a step back, and look at the situation from an unbiased perspective.

1) Does the employee know what is expected of him/her in their job functions? Is everything laid out clearly in the job description? When they were hired, were the supervisor’s expectations outlined and agreed upon between employee and employer? Too many times, an employee will say, “No one ever told me I had to do (insert performance metric).” If the answer to the original question is yes, then I can proceed to the next step. If the answer is no, I have to stop, go back, and counsel with the employee and lay these expectations out. It’s like telling a football player to go score a touchdown, but you don’t tell them where the goal line is!

2) Does the person have all the tools and training to accomplish what is expected of them? This is another one that I learned the hard way. To expect someone to get hired and just “get it” from day one is rather foolish. People want to be led, and part of leadership is providing training and tools to get the job done! I can’t expect a technician to perform a four-wheel alignment if we don’t have an alignment rack, right? So why do we (wrongly) assume that other employees will just figure out how to sell a car, desk a deal or sell products in the finance department? We need to have our processes written down, documented, and trained. If not, failure is imminent because you’re not likely to attract a bunch of people who just automatically “get it.”

3) Has the person been counseled with about their performance? If the first time they’re hearing that they’re not meeting performance standards is when you’re firing them, you’ve done a poor job (tough to hear, I know). Go back to question one and outline what is expected of them. Have regular meetings (whatever the cadence is) to help them get and stay on track. You or their immediate supervisor is responsible for coaching them up and keeping them as part of the team. If multiple sessions have been held and the employee still isn’t able to keep up, then letting them go may be in the cards.

Only after going through all of these steps should you proceed with the difficult conversation ahead. Have another manager present with you, just to make sure nothing is misconstrued or misunderstood. Rather than just firing them, however, I learned a technique from an acquaintance at Procter & Gamble a few years ago. During their annual reviews, when they look to replace people at the bottom of their performance ladder, they tell them that they have a specific amount of time to go out and find another job before they are replaced. It allows them to “save face” and put a more positive spin on it.

Does this work all of the time? No. Most of the time the employee is still in shock but giving them a ‘heads up’ to look for something else, works out better in the long run (I think).

There you go, some good heads up from Dan. 

By following most of the aforementioned guidelines to strengthen your dealership, you will engage your management team into a new way of thinking. And, you just might rouse some of those latent ideas stuck deep in the minds of your team. Communications is a wonderful thing and can launch you towards a more productive and growth-oriented pathway. Good fortunes can come your way by strengthening your team. Remember, both faith and fear demand that you believe in something you can’t see. Choose wisely.

If you’re interested in taking this business concept to the next level, email [email protected], and I’ll send you a document that can help. Of course, you don’t have to accept these ideas, but at the least, get some help from somewhere.