I recently listened to an interview with an industry leader and one of the questions posed was “What can dealership leaders do with new hires that can help ensure a better rate of success and reduce turnover?” The answers from the industry expert to the question were have a manager stay full time with the new salesperson for 30 days, make sure the salesperson reads a lot and make sure the salesperson picks up all the trash and cigarette butts they see to ensure attention to detail and a caring attitude.
After hearing this, I thought I’d give you my answers to this question.
First of all, if you hire a monkey and you have that monkey stay with a manager for 30 days, six months or a year, read a hundred books and pick up all the trash he can find, at the end of the time spent, you will still have a monkey. The root of all problems and evils in the retail auto industry is, and always has been, in who, how and why we hire.
The vast majority of dealerships still hire the same way. See if this scenario sounds familiar: The manager wakes up and realizes that, all of sudden, he needs salespeople. Somebody quit or was fired and now the manager realizes he has a sale coming up and he is down one or more salespeople than what he needs. The manager calls the newspaper in a panic and asks to run the usual help wanted ad.
Who usually responds to the newspaper ad? Retreads, people who cannot find a job and lesser-qualified people. In the retail industry, we tend to have an image and self-confidence problem. Most dealership managers do not believe they can recruit high-caliber people. Most dealerships do not have a plan to continually recruit, hire, train and retain quality people; therefore, they act out of need. Needy people and needy businesses never get what they want.
If you are a dealership manager or leader, let me ask you a few questions:
- Do you have a written and executed plan to recruit team members every day?
- Does this plan include multiple channels to reach people, including newspaper, newspaper inserts, pay per click, Website, referrals, online recruiting sites, traditional recruiting services, on-campus college recruiting and more?
- Do you know what you are looking for? Have you created an “Ideal Employee Profile”? If you were to hire the perfect person for the position you are looking to fill, what would be the complete detail of that person? In other words, what do you want?
- Do you have at least 50 questions to ask that will allow you to get a complete picture of that candidate? Or, do you ask them if they like cars and people and then drool when they say “yes”?
- Do you utilize any logic-oriented tools to qualify candidates, such as personality profiles, sales success predictors, background checks and qualifying periods of employment?
- Do you have a complete introductory training program that includes classroom training, showroom floor training, department introductions, role-play and testing?
- Do you have ongoing training that includes classroom, online, video, audio, coaching, reading, mentors and outside sources?
- Is your new person given a work plan to follow that includes complete daily action plans on how to prospect, market, follow up and set appointments, along with phone skills and sales skills?
- Do you do daily one-on-one coaching sessions with this person to guide him or her?
- Do you have specific success measurables for new hires to let them know how they are progressing?
- Are you requiring new hires to set their own goals, and then guiding them on how to do that?
- Are you giving the new hire a period where they can concentrate on learning and growing without feeling intense pressure to make a sale to pay their bills?
- Do your managers or leaders have any skill sets or education around any of these functions?
Turnover in the auto industry is, and always has been, horrible. The reason is, as an industry, we do not have a plan to recruit, hire, train and retain people. We hire less-than-desirable people, give them little-to-no training and guidance, tell them to sink or swim, blame them when they don’t succeed and then fire them — if they haven’t quit already.
I strongly disagree with the industry leader and his answers. You can hire people using industry standards, have them shadow managers, read every day and pick up trash and they will still fail miserably.
We have not taken personal responsibility in this industry. This is our problem, not the potential salespeople. Stop making excuses that you can’t get good people. Stop saying that young people won’t work. Stop saying people no longer have good work ethic. Stop it! No excuses!