It seems like every week there is a new digital or Internet conference. Information is flowing and being digested at a pace never seen before in history. To go along with all the new information, there seems to be matching software, programs and gadgets that are supposed to streamline, make sense of and monetize all the information and change. Unfortunately, none of those programs or gadgets is the real answer to making money in today’s marketplace.
Every one of those new software programs and gadgets may be fantastic in their own right, but it’s how people use them in an effective process that makes the difference. More money has been wasted in the auto business on whizbang shiny new bullets than could ever be imagined. Magic bullet fixes leave big fat holes. You can pour big buckets of money into those holes and never sell one more car.
Don’t blame the gadgets or the vendors who sold them to you when they do not work. Go back to the basics of business, which are always the 4 P’s: People, Process, Product (inventory) and Positioning (advertising and marketing). Without the right mix of all of those 4 P’s, the best magic bullets will never work. The reason is that there is no such thing as a magic bullet.
When you are getting excited about magic bullets, ask yourself if you have the people and processes to make them work. I remember the professor in the first computer programming class I had taken saying always think manually first. Here was a professor with a doctorate from one of the most advanced universities in the world telling his students that a computer program does not necessarily improve or make better a strong manual system. Huh?
His teaching points were, first of all, to not forget that it is always “garbage in and garbage out.” Secondly, always think through the program manually first and see what you are trying to accomplish. Hands down, those simple points were some of the best learning moments from my college days.
Always think through the manual application of any new program first and how the people applying the program will do so. Answer the “who, what, when, where and why” questions. In other words, do not get so emotional about new gadgets that you lose track of what you are trying to accomplish.
In the car business, there is currently a huge disconnect between the new gadgets and the overall sales process. Always create visual flow charts that show all processes, connections and details from A to Z. New school without old school equals stupid. Don’t waste your money and buy shiny new objects that promise the moon without going over the complete integration of the tool.
The traditional road to the sale is forever changed. It’s way past time for every dealer to revisit and rework that road to the sale so that it is tailored for and fits his or her dealership. Do you have a routing process for everything and everyone in your dealership? Do you have black and white procedures? Black and white procedures are just that; they are black or white, but they are never grey. You do not ever deviate from these policies, procedures and functions. No exceptions and no excuses.
There are a ton of dealerships that have become a hodgepodge of programs and shiny objects, combined with no written or communicated procedures or expectations for those who are to use them, oversee them and why. The results always are always the same: The dealership experiences expense creep while the staff becomes disillusioned and eventually works around all the shiny objects and toys. All the while, the dealer wonders what happened to the new magic bullet and his sure-fire increase in sales and profits.
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