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I am not an attorney and my videos are not meant as legal advice

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When I read that average tenure at dealerships has steadily gone DOWN (sitting at 2.4 years for 2015) I decided to write this article.  Why?  Because I believe that there are simple and easy to implement ways to reducing turnover at dealerships.  I believe this because I have experienced it.  I’ve experienced working for a dealer as head of HR with an impressive 26% turnover rate across three stores.

When looking at turnover departmentally, sales has the highest turnover. NADA states that overall sales turnover is 67%!!!  (Luxury lines at 47% and non-luxury at a whopping 72%) We’ve all read the statistics about the thousands of dollars turnover costs an organization.  While these are all true there is another soft cost not as often talked about.  Loyalty.  Customer Loyalty is built upon relationships…if sales staff is turning over before they have the chance to reach maximum productivity (3 years if NADA is to be believed)…how are they building strong customer relationships for the dealership?  Why are they turning over?  Is it because they aren’t loyal to you, their employer?  Employee loyalty leads to customer loyalty.  Loyal employees lead to lower turnover.  Lower turnover leads to higher bottom line.

So, how can dealers effectively tackle turnover and begin making headway?  It can be done.

1.  Make the decision.  Sounds simple, right?  But all action begins with a decision, followed by the commitment to follow through.  So, make the decision to act for your organization.  Make the commitment to your decision.  That’s the easy part.
2.  Measure your turnover.  It’s a simple calculation and easy to analyze and annualize.  These numbers can be drilled down by department, position, voluntary termination, and involuntary termination with simple excel calculations.  I also like to add a calculation for length of service.  The patterns will emerge and tell the story of where your dealership needs to focus its program.
3.  Training for managers to slow down in the hiring process—hire for fit, aptitude, and past performance.  In our industry, often managers make a hiring decision based on the first interview and they seem to want that warm body on the floor or in the bay.  It’s been my experience that providing tools and training to assist managers in the interview process not only slows the process down, but allows them to delve deeper into the candidate’s past performance.  I’m a firm believer that past performane is the best indicator of future performance—teach your managers how to dig down with behavioral interviewing questions.  Hiring managers should also be well versed in your company’s culture, benefit offerings, and policies.  The interview is the first impression for a new candidate and the really good ones want to know these things and they want to know what to expect.  New employees are making a decision in the first few days after they are hired—Should I stay or should I go?  If they decide to go, they will be looking for the next gig immediately and be gone within 30-60 days.  What does your turnover report tell you?
4.  Create and implement a fantastic first day orientation for your new hires.  I like to call it the “day before the first day” because while it is their date of hire, a good orientation should take at least most of the new hire’s first day.  Be creative!  Be welcoming!  Heck, give them a company pen!  There is a lot that can and should be included in a new hire’s first day.  Get the some of the boring stuff out of the way—I9’s & W4’s for example.  Throw in a PowerPoint presentation that explains the company history, culture, core values, awards etc.  Does your dealership have a fabulous holiday party?  Talk about it or other fun events.  Talk about community involvement.  Talk about why it’s great to work for you!  Don’t forget handbook distribution, specific policy acknowledgements, and explanations.  Some dealers are paper based, some have electronic polices and some even have it all in a 3rd party software.  No matter the method, you can come up with a process that works for your company.  It’s also a great time for new hires to complete any mandatory trainings; for example, techs and lift training or sales and service safe driving training.   Since the implementation of Obamacare, many companies went to a 60 day wait period for benefits—the day before the first day is also a great time to explain the benefit options and enrollment method to new hires.  In the end, your new hire’s day before the first day, should be authentic, welcoming, a little boring, and very informative and given by someone enthusiastic about working for you.  A great first day goes a long way in turning that stay/go decision into YES, I am staying.
5.  Follow up with your new hires.  Don’t send them off after a great introduction to your company with just a good luck wish.   Introduce them to their new team (maybe even have employees lined up who will show them around) and take them to their manager for specifics on the next day.  Check in on them, see how they are acclimating, if they have questions etc.

Make a commitment to follow through with your new hires for at least their first 90 days—it will make a difference.

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There are a few things retailers can do to reduce this number and keep their people happy.

1. Attract and hire the right candidate

Attracting and hiring the right candidate is very important and requires a recruiting and hiring strategy. Getting the right person on the right seat on the bus is the a great first step to ensure the success of the employee and the dealership. 

2. Now that you’ve got them; retain them!

Having an employee engagement strategy should be top priority! Give your team members a reason to come to work every day. Curate a people first culture and be the best part of their day; after all, they spend more time with you than their own families. Check out last week’s blog post The Investment You Must Make to Survive for some great information in creating an employee engagement strategy. 

3. Get good at leading and seeing the warning signs

Develop your leaders, and ensure they are paying attention to the warning signs their team members are giving them! I am going to expand on this point. 

As important as attracting the right candidate is, and curating a world-class internal culture will aid in retention of your team members; it is the leader that impacts employee engagement. The leaders in your dealership should be able to tell if an employee is falling out of engagement with you.   

Time is no excuse

As leaders, we are always ‘busy’, to busy sometimes to see the warning signs that our team members give us- telling us they are falling out of engagement with us. We often don’t notice this until it’s too late and our team members are disgruntled, unmotivated, and their work is slipping in quality and accountability.

If you are reading this and you are a leader (pssst…we all lead in some way, form, or fashion) remember it is your job to PAY ATTENTION to your team and the warning signs they give you. “People work for people, not companies”, we MUST lead with a servant’s heart and take notice of the little things our people are telling us.

Be Present- a best practice.  

As I mentioned earlier, we all get busy! It is easy to miss those warning signs. As you climb the ‘corporate’ ladder, it is important to remember what you needed from your leader and learn from the mistakes of past leaders; these can be the best lessons! In my experiences, a common mistake made by most leaders is not being present in the moments they spend with their people. Because we are so busy, there are always meetings to run to and ‘to dos’ to check off that list, we forget to make time for the people making everything tick. 

As I have stumbled along the path towards becoming a leader those want to follow, I have learned that you can’t do it all, but we must make time to be there for our people to be successful. In the many leadership positions, I held I always did this; I arrived at the office at least two hours before my team arrived. Why do you ask? This allowed me to get all my nitty gritty ‘to dos’ done, organize my day, and set my daily priorities. The beauty of this is that once my team arrived, I was present for them, my day had been planned, and now my door was open; I was available to support my team in any way they needed. 

This did two things for my team’s engagement:

• The team felt supported and guided leaving me open time to coach on the fly and, 
• I was open to seeing the warning signs of slipping engagement, so I could ask probing questions to uncover ‘why’ before it’s too late; I was Present.

Did you know?

A study conducted by Gallup showed that although organizations with a high level of engagement do report 22% higher productivity, it yields so many more rewards. In the article, Employee Engagement Does More than Boost Productivity written by John Baldoni for the Harvard Business Review shows that “Strong employee engagement promotes a variety of outcomes that are good for employees and customers. For instance, highly engaged organizations have double the rate of success of lower engaged organizations.”

What to pay attention to

I can hear the little voice in your head as you read this… “What are the warning signs I should be looking for..” Great Question! 

If you are present and are paying attention, you will have a pulse on your team engagement at all times. However, there are a few telltale signs that a team member is falling out of engagement with you.

Warning signs to keep an eye on:

1. Team members disengage

Is a team member unusually quiet in meetings? When people are excited they want to talk about it; if you notice that a team member is less talkative or open to getting involved in a project or initiative, there is a good chance that something is going on. Team member disengagement can also show up as lateness or calling in sick more than usual. If you catch this early on you can pull the team member aside and ask him/her if there is anything you can help them with, probe and find out what is bothering them and then readjust their scope to reinvigorate them!

2. They start missing deadlines

Often if a team member starts missing deadlines, he or she is usually having trouble finding the purpose of being at work every day. They are not motivated to push through tasks or initiatives, and they lose interest which is often a sign that they are not excited about what they are working on. If we can pick up on this as leaders, we can often redirect team members focus towards something that excites them.

3. There is a lack of initiative

Those team members that stop taking the initiative on new assignments or stop sharing ideas and opinions are often burnt out or disinterested. Communication is essential here, find out how they are feeling, and ask questions. The solution could be as simple as ensuring they have some downtime or reallocation of tasks to lessen the workload.

4. They stop smiling

This is by far the most visible sign of a disgruntled employee. We are only human- if we are not happy we stop smiling. If you see this, act on it. Be present and lead with a servant’s heart, ask your team how they are and care enough to do something about it.

Internal culture is a direct reflection of its leaders.

If the engagement or moral is on a downward spiral on your team or in your dealership (which it is in the majority of dealerships across North America), the first place you should look is at yourself and the way you are leading your team. A mentor of mine once told me “You are a direct reflection of yourself, what you put out is what you get back”. That lesson struck me at the core. It is the leader’s fault if moral drops. As leaders, it is our responsibility to pay attention to the warning signs; take the time to listen and be present actively. You’ll be thankful in the long run when your team works with you towards success, and your turnover rate reduces, and there is more money in the bank to invest back into your team.

You can access me through any of these follow links:

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Communication and collaboration of 1,000 plus member teams is integral to success, as the team continually measures, analyzes, and evaluates every detail with a maniacal focus on how the slightest modification of any part affects all other aspects and the overall performance as it rebuilds and fine-tunes these cars for a race.

Does that sound familiar?

Within a dealership, there is a magnitude of customer touchpoints which produce an abundance of data points for each interaction telling you how your team is performing.

The Customer Service Index (CSI) is an ongoing discussion in dealerships, across all brands. With this focus, you know which metrics your team members ‘drop the ball’ leaving your customers dissatisfied. When reviewing your CSI scores, the most logical next step is to create a ‘policy’ or training program around that underperforming CSI metric. However, when we do this (and only this), your team misses the big picture, and the customer will suffer somewhere along the way as the CSI metrics are all connected and impact one another. Just like the F1 team, one small change affects the performance of the vehicle; each CSI metric affects the entire journey your customer has with your dealership.

What is a Brand Experience?

I define the Brand Experience (BX) as the sum of all interactions a customer has with a brand, across all touchpoints and all phases of the customer lifecycle, including how customers perceive these interactions.

I want you to think of each CSI metric as ‘touchpoint’, or moment, in your customer’s interaction with your brand. Each one of these touchpoints affects the other, and when combined they create a start to finish journey, “the sum of all interactions a customer has with a brand”.

Ask yourself, does my team have an understanding of how each person/department/touchpoint affects the other? If the answer is yes; Bravo! If you have answered no, then you have some work to do.

Focus on the complete journey

While it is essential to pay attention to the details (or the one touchpoint that doesn’t seem to be working) you also have to look at how those touchpoints work together and contribute to the overall customer journey.

A preview of Foresters annual production report warns that in 2018 “30% of companies will see further declines in Customer Experience (CX) performance, and those declines will translate into a net loss of a point of growth”. Why? CX initiatives tackled low-hanging fruit to put early points on the board.

You will lose every time by only focusing on the ‘low hanging fruit’ or the CSI metric that is not performing; this is a ‘band-aid’ solution. Smart Dealer Principals will make CX an integral part of their overall Brand Experience strategy and identify how each touchpoint impacts each other and the Brand Experience, inclusively.

How to start the change

If you want your Brand Experience performance to be top notch and noted in that regard by your customers, you will have to work hard to ensure a seamless experience throughout their entire journey.  Here are four things your dealership can do to start the change and improve your overall Brand Experience:

• Review (or create) a journey map; bridge the gap between individually focused CSI metrics and a holistic brand journey.
• Change the conversation; When sharing CSI results don’t focus on a single metric; change the language, talk about the impact each touchpoint has on the other, not just the one ‘problem area.’
• Empower your team to make it right: We all drop the ball sometimes, we are human after all! It’s how we recover from the situation that will make or break the customer’s overall experience. Empower your team to ‘pick the ball up’ and make it right at every touchpoint in the customer’s journey.
• Be consistent! No matter what touchpoint the customer interacts with your team, be consistent with the Brand Experience you deliver! Remember this mantra: Every Customer, Every Time.

Step out in front of the competition; look at your dealership’s overall journey from 30,000 feet and bridge the performance gaps between touchpoints. And like the 1,000 member team focused on how to improve the performance of a F1 car each year, your team needs the same focus to enhance the experience you provide your customers.

You can access me through any of these follow links:

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The definition of insanity is “to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome”.

If we were to put the automotive industry up against this definition, it is clear as day that we are insane!

No one is going to come with a magic wand and cast a spell that makes automotive dealers, and OEM’s the top place to work for females or a place where female consumers feel comfortable; we have to choose to do something different and action the changes necessary to see a different outcome.

GM is Breaking the Cycle

There is one brand that is taking a significant step in the right direction, and I wanted to take a moment to outline who it is and what they have done!

In a recent article The ‘Extra Oomph’ that changed GM, Auto News featured GM’s Mary Barra, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer who is the first female CEO of a major global automaker.

Barra states “Corporate culture doesn’t change quickly, but it’s critical to have a strong culture to motivate employees and to cultivate an environment that breeds success.”

In her effort to build a strong culture for females in automotive GM has established the GM’s Womens Retail Network.

Recently, GM has also developed three core values for the company: The Customer is our Compass, Relationships Matter, and Individual Excellence is Crucial.

Having core values like these is a step in the right direction to attracting female candidates and ultimately female consumers; these values outline that people come first, decisions are made with the individual in mind and culture matters.

I challenge you to think about this: If women don’t want to work for you, why would women want to buy from you?

GM seems to understand this and is breaking the script!

What Can We Learn From GM?

Create a network of tools, resources, and pathways that support women in the industry to grow without worrying about the glass ceiling that has been above their heads for decades.

Programs such as:

• Employee resource groups for women that support women in the current environment
• Female-driven 20 groups
• Education for personal development and succession and;
• Mentoring programs that connect other male and female executives with up and coming female team members

Programs like these will help bring more women into the workforce and keep them there.  “if you build it they will come”. Having more of a female presence at the dealership and executive levels will, without a doubt’, attract women consumers to your brand. It is in the best interest of the Auto Makers to build a culture that women can get behind; if you do this both female employees and consumers will take notice!

I will drive my point home by reiterating this “The purchase share of women around the world will continue to rise, and with the lack of women at the table, decisions will remain to be made by men, delivered by men, for men. Continuing to lead in this manner will proceed to affect dealerships lack of or decrease in loyalty, retention, referrals, and overall all top line dollar. It’s in your best interest to be ready to serve the women who are purchasing your vehicles; every day of the year!”

It’s time to take action. Let’s stop talking about all the incredible ways women can help move the automotive industry into the 21st century and start breaking the insanity cycle by doing what needs to be done to make it happen.

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