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John Stix, keynote speaker for the DrivingSales Canadian Dealer Forum 2018, speaks at the Human Capital Institute in Denver about passion, company values and how to drive engagement.

I’m on a mission to personally speak to leaders around the world, and to tell our story in the hopes that you’ll find inspiration.

Year 10- I walked in the door of the dream that I helped create.

Imagine- from a basement apartment we started with nothing. The dream that I helped create, and I didn’t want to be there anymore.

I lost my passion.

It was a very hopeless feeling.

I knew that this was not sustainable.

This was something that could tear us apart, and tear us down.

So I did what any entrepreneur would do.

I went into my office, closed the door, and said, “I have to fix myself.”

My staff could sense that I was disengaged, and I’m not being authentic.

I became engaged with what that meant.

I started reading ancient philosophies, and studied what made leaders back then.

How did they engage before the internet?

I realized that I found my purpose as a purpose again.

It wasn’t marketing, sales or being a president.

It was about caring for people.

I forgot that we really showed we cared at one point.

And at that moment in time, I started to look inward to me as a leader, and what I could do.

We created a brand new mantra, company purpose and a whole set of company values.

“I’m in” is an emotion that binds us all together.

Try to look inward. Try to be vulnerable, and look inside to find your authentic self as a leader.

Through that you will find passion, and from that passion you will find happiness and a purpose that comes with engagement.

DrivingSales Canadian Dealer Forum keynote Andrew Au spoke on the digital transformation that's taking place in today's economy, and I thought this talk would be of interest to Canadian dealers.

I started my career at Pepsi as a product marketer and so my perspective has been on how to manage channel and the different vendors, and now I sit on the agency side, and I help companies tell their digital transformation story.

So as we think about digital transformation, it’s much more than just digitizing paper-based processes. This is truly the fourth Industrial revolution, and it's changing how we communicate and innovate.

There's been a lot of change with technology, but the constant– the North Star–  always remains constant. How do you create new value for your business and for your customers, and how do you create a better customer experience? Although we stand on this brink of a technological revolution, we see that technology is outpacing the evolution of business processes. It's created this shift in how we create value and how we create customer experiences, and if we take a look at some of the market factors. we're seeing
we have access to more data than we ever had before. 

We have smarter analytics and access to cloud computing, and that's changing the consumer expectation.

There's now a higher consumer expectation.

We see the rise of this empowered consumer, and we're also seeing a shift in workplace demographics and how we manage our talent.

This requires us to reinvent our processes, and reinvent our business models.

There's never been a better time to take on Amazon, because we have access to technology that we don't need to build anymore– we can lease it!

Optimizing Your Dealership’s Most Important Asset
Tuesday, Oct 24 @ 9:50 a.m.
Jason Volny - National Training Manager, DrivingSales

Before I recap this breakout session at this year’s DrivingSales Executive Summit, let me pose a question. What would you say is your dealership’s most important asset?

The theme of this year’s DSES is people, and we saw that with the keynote topics this year….but we need something actionable that we can take home to our dealerships this week.

What Are The Outcomes That Dealers Are Looking For?

- Grow performance
- Engage employees
- Accelerate Advancement
- Reduce Turnover

If you invest into your people, you will have a competitive advantage.

Dealers spend close to $60 million on vendor products and services…but in order to get the value out of them, your people need to be optimized.

Are they ready to execute on your investment?

Why do we have hight turnover?
Your new employees look at the veterans, and there’s a huge chasm between where they are, and where they should be.

Case Studies

Costco - If you look at this company, the idea for paying to shop at a store was crazy at the beginning, but now if you compare Costco and Sam’s Club today, they’re completely different structures, and it all comes down to training employees.

Who has the higher labor expense? Costco.
Who has the higher labor cost? Sam’s Club.

Costco spends more than Sam’s Club on developing their employees, and yet has a lower turnover rate.

What is the true cost of turnover? The auto industry is at 70% turnover, which is $45,000 - 75,000 Cost Per Turnover. (Lost business) And that’s not including service, referrals lost, etc. (Acc’d to NADA)

Enterprise rent a car - They pay on average 20% less than their competitors, and they ask for a college degree. Yet they are successful and have lower turnover than their competitors by giving their employees a roadmap to success.

Processes For Success

Does your dealership have a process to develop your teams? This is something that is critical in the industry, yet most dealerships aren't spending time mapping out employee career paths.

Your dealership needs a structured process to advance employees’ careers while optimizing their performance.

There are 4 Factors to sales achievement:
-process
-skills
-product knowledge
-temperament