The folks over at IMS have an industry blog, Continue The Ride. They feature the viewpoints of different industry personnel. They recently asked me to pen an article on anything that I thought would be useful to my fellow dealers. As our industry continues to evolve, I thought that Embracing Change was the perfect topic for these crazy times we are living in.
Now that I have hit the 50-year mark, I am embracing my crustiness. I look at the younger generation of workers and I worry about the future. I think back to how hard I worked to get to where I am now and wonder how the millennials are ever going to accomplish anything with their 30-hour work weeks (damn part timers). I take the discussion of minimum wage increases as a personal attack. Flipping burgers is not a career, it is a job. If people want to make more money, embrace a skill, and then go out and earn it. I am sure my grandparents had the same thoughts, the same concerns. Somehow, my generation pulled it off. Gen Y, Gen Z, they will probably also get it figured out (I hope so, my Social Security check is depending on them).
The Digital Age
As Owners and GMs, it is important that we adjust to the evolving trends of our customers. In today’s world, our customers have access to unlimited information. And it is not only the knowledge about the products that we sell, but ways that we sell it. We can no longer tell a customer that we will take better care of them than the competition, we must prove it, because Google places those reviews front and center.
If you are locked into the way you manage your business, then stop here. If you are adaptable, open to change, and willing to take some shots, then here are a few things to consider:
- The old school thought process of not displaying pricing so that you can get the customer in the door is dead. If you do not have prices on your website, there is a good chance that your competition does. And if your competition does not list pricing, then the OEM might. The data from Trader Interactive shows an exponential increase in customer click through rates on listings with prices. If you like leads, list prices.
- Stop spending all your time training the sales team for yesterday’s customer. For most dealers, more than 50% of today’s leads begin as an email or text from a customer. How you respond to these leads is different than how you respond to a customer who walks in the front door. If you have never trained your team on how to respond to digital leads (and you have not been copied on some of those responses) then I have no doubt that you are not closing those leads at the same level as some of the top dealers in the country.
- Learn how to use the reporting capabilities contained within your DMS. Computers do not make mistakes, people do. If the data in your DMS is not right, then it is your fault. Commit to being consistent with how you load vehicles, customers, parts, and any other entries that go into the DMS. Once you have good data, then learn how to build and run reports to analyze that information. I always like to back up my statements with data, it is the quickest and most effective way to end a debate.
- Do not just hire people who you like, hire individuals who have the skills that complement your own. One of my favorite quotes: “I don’t need to hire a team of managers who think like I do to tell me what I already know”. Be critical of yourself. Define your strengths and your weaknesses, and then hire the employees who will add to the collective knowledge of your organization. If you do not know how websites work, hire a marketing person. If your email never works and your internet is always on the fritz, hire a nerd. It takes a lot of skills to run a dealership in the 21st century, we cannot be a master of all those trades.
- Embrace technology. For the last five years, much of my focus has been on productivity and efficiency, and not just in the Service Department. Many dealers thought they were getting as much out of their employees as was possible, and then the pandemic came along and dealers across the country found out that they could do more (work) with less (employees). Do not be locked into the way you have always done things. Be open to change, willing to try new things. As a byproduct, once the productivity and efficiency of the machine (i.e., the business) has improved, a side benefit is that we can increase the compensation of our employees, while also taking more money to the bottom line.
- Rate your OEMs. Not every OEM is just a vendor, and not every OEM is your business partner. While a rep who comes by the dealership once a month and buys you lunch is nice, what is better is an OEM who has a long-term plan for their (and thus your) success. The OEMs who are willing to develop products people want and support dealers in the sales and service of those products, are the ones who should be rewarded. If an OEM is solely concerned about the price of their stock, and values it more than their customers, employees, and dealers, then they are just a vendor, and should be treated as such. That means that prior to every interaction with a vendor, you ask yourself one question: does what I am doing benefit my business more than it benefits their business? If the answer is that they benefit more, then step away from the pen.
If I have learned anything over the years, it is that to thrive, we must be adaptable. If we only look at the world through our personal set of lenses, then progress will pass us by. The quickest way to irrelevance and bankruptcy is by not embracing change.
#Powersports #Change #Motorcycles #Technology