Facilitating 20 Groups for the last 6 years, two areas I always focused on were employee productivity and efficiency. I didn’t do this for all dealers, but it was an area of opportunity for most of them. While most dealers equate these terms to service technicians, they really apply to all of the employees in a dealership.
Many dealers would often tell me that they couldn’t do any more with the people we had. That was my cue to pull out one of my favorite Spader 20 Group reports, Employee Productivity. I’d then show dealers that they had peers who outpeformed them by 30%, 50%, and sometimes 100%. What’s interesting to me is that during the pandemic, many dealers made huge gains in these metrics. Many of the dealers who said they couldn’t do more, did more (and often with less employees).
While the numbers tell a story, they don’t always provide the direct solutions. Many dealers have been in the same dealership for decades, and whether we want to or not, everyone who spends enough time in one area will develop tunnel vision. What has become the standard background for an owner might not look right to an outsider. That’s why many of our 20 Group meetings include a dealer visit. You get 19 other successful business owners to poke around in your store, and they’ll find opportunities.
So what are some of the items driving these gains? Here is what we’ve identified so far.
- Employer’s raised their expectations, and employees stepped up to meet them
- Many powersports dealers stayed in front of their customers using Social Media
- Dealers made better use of technology including tools like Kenect, Lightspeed EVO, Simple Dealer, and Rollick
- Communication improved as management had to spend more time with the team discussing how they’d handle situations that arose during the pandemic
- Some employees stepped up and worked harder because they didn’t want to go looking for a job during the pandemic
- Many dealers improved their websites and how they interacted with digital leads
- Owners re-engaged with their dealerships
- Dealers became more adept at communicating with customers through email and texting
As I learned in the U.S. Army, for most people it’s not the physical strength that limits what we are capable of, it’s our mental strength. If we believe we can do something, then it’s a lot easier to make it happen. For many dealers, the pandemic forced their hand. It was either make it happen, or fail. Given that choice, dealerships and their employees stepped up.
Now that we are on the back side of the pandemic (hopeful, fingers crossed) my challenge to each dealer is to take some time, identify where the productivity and efficiency gains came from, and then come up with a plan to lock-in those gains.
I’m not talking about pushing employees to the breaking point, but we should make sure to optimize the production from each of our employees. And, to counter that, if we can do more with less people, then that means we can improve the compensation of the employees on the team. Payroll is like a pie, there is only so much to go around. If we can cut that pie into fewer pieces, then everyone gets a little bit more.
What are you doing to lock in your gains? Does your dealership provide careers for your employees, or is each position in your dealership just a job?
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