Everyone gets a big laugh when we see merchandising go wrong.  The retailer in the picture must be remarketing knives as pencil sharpeners, because right below the "Back to School" sign is a giant display of cutlery.  Many times the message gone wrong isn't so obvious to our staff, and isn't humorous.

In a dealership we feel this immediately with an advertised sale price on the web that doesn't match quotes inside the store.  Customer complains, sales staff apologizes, and hopefully we correct the price and sell a car.  While customer complaints like this are difficult to deal with, they at least help the dealership correct course.

There is a quieter place where advertising fails happen all the time, and no one ever hears about it: automotive employment ads.

• Income claims of $100,000 per year, when a showroom only has one salesperson out of 20 making six figures.
• Advertising friendly atmosphere, and flexible schedule.  When a candidate arrives they see managers browbeating salespeople about needing to work more hours.
• Stating that you need to hire someone that attends to clients promptly, and then having a person wait for over an hour to be interviewed.

These are just a handful of things we see and hear regularly when surveying the 1000's of applicants we send for interviews.  The shame is applicants almost never share why they either decided to miss an interview or turn down a job they are offered.  It centers around finding inconsistent information about the dealership either on the web, or in person.

Take a few minutes and make sure you are putting out the right message.

H Gregory Gershman - Managing Partner - Recruitment HQ

One of the hottest topics in the Automotive Industry is compensation.  What promotes productivity and retention?  

Should it be a Tea Party approach of minimal government and complete free market, which is commission or flat rate only positions coupled with a completely open floor?  Many are advocating a left leaning socialist solution, with salary positions, closed rotating showroom floor traffic management, and managers finalizing all sales.  I think the former is actually the more dangerous of these options.

Don't let your dealership get sucked into becoming a welfare state!  There is a better answer.  It all revolves around a psychological truism for all people.

A person will be productive as long as they feel their energy will receive an acceptable immediate guaranteed return and they have a positive view of success in the future.  

Let's relate that to compensation.  An employee will not show the proper motivation to work without a guarantee of income.  The answer in the Automotive Industry has been a draw to protect a worker, and guarantee they have an earning for the time they work.  Giving an employee a draw does guarantee an income, but it lowers the perception of future success.  What happens when an employee has to take advantage of the draw?  They owe it back against future earnings.  This creates a cycle of poor sales, where an employee feels there is no point to attempting to succeed because they will only owe the employer their future gain anyway.  Here is a case of giving away welfare that creates a negative atmosphere.

There is the other end of the spectrum, giving an almost total salary based plan.  Some dealerships are adopting this, and you can find an article a day on social media claiming Millennials will be attracted to your store if you pay the majority of their income in salary.  This does give the employee a guarantee of pay for giving time.  There is a gigantic hole in the theory!  These primarily salary positions come with a reduction in financial responsibility to the store, most times a manager is both providing traffic and closing the deals.  The future available income is minimal.  You end up with a complacent employee, with no positive outlook on future income, and getting paid more than the employee with the draw to do less.  More welfare, more problems!

It is time for a true work and produce for pay solution.  Give your staff an hourly wage that pays them for what they do besides selling cars.  If your sales staff does nothing else, than you shouldn't have them working at your store!  They should merchandise, market, prospect for sales and service, spend time on product knowledge, and provide customer service to any and all clients that walk through your door.  Pay your staff the going rate in your market for a presentable person to perform those tasks.  If you can hire someone at $11 per hour for this job description then pay your sales staff that.  Don't turn your store into a welfare state, make your staff actually perform the work to get paid.

Now choose either a commission or flat bonus based plan to compensate for sales and follow up.  If you want your sales staff to have the eager edge to sell you need to have a reasonable carrot.  This can be 10% of the gross, or $175 per car.  Provide enough upside that an employee is excited about the future earning prospect.  Again make them earn it.  Have a set of standards that make a payable sale.  Having a salesperson give terrible customer service, never follow up, just happen to be the person on record and still paying them is giving welfare!

The more welfare your business doles out, the lower the production and morale of the staff.  We need to evolve to a compensation model that pays our workers for their time, effort, and production.  You will find engaged hard working employees, and the best talent in your market applying to work at your store.

H Gregory Gershman - Managing Partner - Recruitment HQ

The fastest path to increased sales is to match your sales staff to your clients.  All consumers want to do business with companies that most resemble their community.  A type of neighborhood feeling.

Matching to the community can be having someone on staff that speaks a second language for clients that are more comfortable using a native tongue.  Some dealers in very diverse cities have as many as 40 languages spoken in their showrooms.  Gender and racial diversity can also have a large impact on customer comfort level.  Potential clients that come in to your store may not need to specifically deal with a person of their race or gender, but they feel better about doing business with a company that employs people that are like them.  So a woman coming in to a showroom is fine being helped by a man, but would be more likely to purchase from a dealership that has a representation of women in its showroom floor.

With the obvious benefits of hiring diverse staff, why aren't dealers hiring from different community bases?  The answer is simple, we like candidates that are most like ourselves.  The same principal that makes selling easier with a diverse showroom, makes it harder to hire with diversity.

Here are three ways to break the cycle and get the new blood we need:

1. Use phone interviews to initially screen candidates. Remove appearance bias, by evaluating candidates on communication skills and previous experience first.  Face to face interviews happen after you like everything else.
2. Have standardized interview questions and objective scoring.  Keep interview sessions about the job with preset questions.  It is great to connect with candidates about outside interests after you know everything relating to job performance. For each question have a grading scale.  Numeric grading makes it easy to compare multiple candidates.
3. Every candidate gets a minimum of two interviews from different departments.  The best way to ensure you hiring with an open mind is to have more than one perspective viewing the applicant.  Use at least one person from sales to interview, and then someone from another department such as HR or fixed operations.

Talented diverse candidates are applying for our positions, it is time to start leveling the hiring field and turn up our profits.

Greg Gershman - Managing Partner - Recruitment HQ

There is a famous quote from Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, "They're single serving friends". If we are all honest with ourselves we like having them.

A single serving friend is one that is there for a small window filling a specific need. It is a very indulgent luxury that all of us can have, and that many times we go back to over and over again. I have more than a few in my life, like the server at Starbucks. I am an admitted coffee addict (there is a giant cup next to me now) and go in to Starbucks daily for a large black coffee. Each time I go in the same server is behind the counter, and we have what amounts to a 30 second exchange daily. When I get to the counter she smiles, most times already has my coffee order ready because she noticed me in line, asks how my day is going, and generally makes a comment about the weather, news etc. For my part I compliment her on remembering my order and being so quick, have some comment or another on the weather, work, etc, and then tell her to have a great day. The perfect single serving friend that I pick up when I want.

Most of us have a network of people like this that can be counted on to be a friendly face at the time of our choosing. The price of a cup of coffee is a small price to pay to have a friend any time I want. Social media is a this concept on a larger scale. How many accumulated followers/friends/connections do you have that are not actual friends, family, or associates? Like the rest of tons. We connect, play games online, chat to have a friend at the time and in the situation of our choosing.

Now how does this relate to being a professional sales representative? Simple, your potential clients coming in want a single serving friend. A person that is there strictly to be nice to them, listen to them, agree with them. When people feel this they keep coming back, it builds loyal clients. Consumers coming in to your business want to be able to have a relationship on their terms, as they want it. That could be anything from formal to extremely personal. A great salesperson adapts and allows the client to have this indulgent friendship.

P.S. If anyone would like to be my single serving friend I am always looking for one. Send me a connection request, or find me on twitter @hggershman

Gregory Gershman - Managing Partner - Recruitment HQ

Hiring in sales departments can be an exhausting and frustrating experience. Whether it is marketing for applicants, fielding resumes, or the actual interviews. Each of these are time consuming.

The biggest problem we find in our clients is that the job of handling all these time consuming activities falls to the sales manager. A typical hiring campaign can take upwards of 18 hours of real work to complete, and that does not take into account the need for training once a hire is made. Of course, who is responsible for training the newbie? Yep, the sales manager.

Most sales managers are both judged and compensated on production, and training takes away valuable time that could be dedicated to additional sales. So why strain the business? Why not just do what many sales organizations do and either farm out the entire training process or skip it all together?

There is one decisive answer, your manager needs the training. Who is keeping your sales manager sharp? When we get tunneled into simply reacting to sales on a daily basis the actual information and material we use to manage our sales staff and process falters. The act of training material is as much a sharpening tool for the manager training as it is for new sales staff.

One of the key things that drives increased sales after a hiring, is not only the added personnel serving clients, but management being refocused after being involved in training the staff. It may seem near impossible but it is necessary for your management to either conduct or be intimately involved with the training of your new staff. The hours will gain amazing results.

Gregory Gershman - Managing Partner - Recruitment HQ

The Federal Courts recently made an important decision concerning employee pay, while engaged in screening, or outside required activities.

Here is the case:

A warehouse required it's workers to undergo a security screening at the end of each day.  They would have to punch out and submit to screening, that would take approximately 25 minutes to go through the process.  The employees submitted a complaint to the Labor Department, stating that since the activity was strictly to the benefit to the employer that it must be compensated.

This is covered by the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act), which states that any activity that is an "intergral & indespensable" part of performing the principal work an employee is required to perform must be compensated.  The Court decided that screening does not fall under this, since it is not an actual part of performing ones job.

So, what is the upshot for a dealership?  First, this means that when a dealership asks an employee to go for drug test, as an example, even if it is outside of their scheduled hours this does not have to be paid.  On the other side, training would be required to be compensated, whether or not it was during normally scheduled hours.  Training is indespensable part of performing the job, so any training much be paid.

Follow my blog for more info on hiring, and managing your staff

You scour the web, searching for anything that even remotely asks for a skill you have (probably some you don't fit).  Next is obsessing over your resume like considering a dress before the prom; rummaging through how to websites, aimlessly walking up and down the paper aisle in Staples looking for the resume paper color that will speak to interviewers, and finally the great font debate.  Really what font says, "I am super talented", without being too cocky?  (btw, my vote is for NY Times)

Waiting, waiting, waiting and finally an email back.  IT IS GO TIME!  Take the long shower and recite the affirmation statements you learned on some motivational site or another, "I am a winner", "People like me", "I will not trip or stumble walking in for the interview".  Dress and spit polish yourself, and you are off.

You get to the office for the interview and fill out more paper that has the same information you sent in online, and fidget in your seat while you await your time in the interviewers office.  Take that last look at your resume; was I right on the font?  does ecru coarse paper send the right message?  Your thoughts are interrupted and your are called in.

You are razor sharp!  It is almost like the interviewer is purposely asking the questions you prepared for, this is going great.  You get to ask the questions you had ready, everything is just as you planned.  Then there is some silence, while the interviewer seems to be considering some information, and finally you are told that you are a great candidate and will be hearing back soon.

Why don't you have the job, after all that?

Interviews are a selling opportunity, and you never asked for the sale!

When you walked into that interview it was a sale presentation, and you are selling yourself.  I see some many applicants nail the product presentation, and client questions, only to never actually ask for commitment.  This happens on the sales floor, and the interview room.  It is particularly tough for people that work in positions that have never had to sell to the public.  At the end of the interview (sales presentation) take the opportunity to ask if you earned the position.  It isn't too forward, and the worst that can happen is the interviewer tells you they have a longer process and more candidates to consider.  The upside is earning the position right there and then, because interviewers are looking to end their search, give them the excuse to say yes by asking.

Gregory Gershman - Managing Partner - Recruitment HQ

The latest US job report is making its way around the web. Here is the long and short of it. Good news first:

The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that US employers added 252,000 jobs in December, better than expected.

Unemployment dropped to 5.6%, another good sign, the lowest unemployment percentage since June 2008.

Now some disappointing news for those that got hired, the average rate of pay actually dropped from November to December by .02%. Sounds like a small number, but considering that living costs always rise it is a tremendous drop for the actual buying power of the American workforce.

What does that mean for employers?

As unemployment rates drop, the available pool of active job seekers diminish, meaning online job boards have a shallower pool of applicants.

So if you need employees what is the answer?

When pay rates and unemployment is low the best answer is to resume database search to reach passive job seekers. People that are not willing to be unemployed in what is still a topsy-turvy economy, but have been under-employed for a long period of time now and have abandoned their active job search.

Gregory Gershman - Managing Partner - Recruitment HQ

All over the web there are articles about being a new you for the New Year, but how can you do that without the benefit of a new perspective?  

Interviewing and hiring new employees is the perfect time to gain insight into your business.  The longer we are inside a company the harder it is to be able to step back and see possible opportunities and improvements.  Time gives us the ability to master a process and invests us in it.  This investment in the company and its processes shields us from being able to see things that run on other directions.

You can get all the information you need in two easy steps.  Prepare a questionnaire about opinions of your business.  Just four or five simple questions that can give you the view of your customers.  Ask if they considered employment at a competitor, and how they decided which job to pursue.  Find out about ease of finding information about your business.  Were they able to easily learn about who you are as a company?

The second step is to ask new employees to prepare a competitive analysis of your company and a competitor.  This is commonly done in the finance industry, it is a great practice and should be done by every company.  Give a set of comparison points to your new hire and challenge them with gaining as much information as possible.  This can include market data, documentation of process in your company and a competitor through visits, comparison of website interface, stocking levels, etc.  Be sure to encourage the new employee to give an opinion with their information as to areas of critical improvement.  Tell them to be as impartial as possible, to get the most honest feedback.

Remember new year, new insight.  Have a prosperous New Year!

Gregory Gershman - Managing Partner

Time to start advertising for New Year staffing. Every year the period immediately after January 1st is a hiring frenzy. Do you have a plan for where to advertise?

This year commit to using PPC (pay per click) job board ads. The two largest job boards, Indeed & SimplyHired, use a system where you pay per applicant that clicks on your ad. This gives you complete control over your cost and number of resumes you receive. If an ad doesn't receive response, you don't have any expense. If you find the perfect hire early in the process simply cut the bid per click and your expense ends. Lastly if applicants pile up too fast to handle, just lower your bid per click and your ad will become less active and control the flow of inbound resumes.

The older model of flat fees for ads has a few disadvantages. First you have to pay a full amount even if an ad doesn't work, gaining little or no applicants. Next if you find your perfect hire in the beginning of a hiring campaign you are still stuck with paying for 30 days worth of advertisements. Lastly, if you are over-run with applications you cannot reduce your costs by cutting the ad.

As you get ready to place your ads, take a look at the pay per click method and get control of your employment spending.

Have a prosperous New Year :-)

Gregory Gershman - Managing Partner

http://RecruitmentHQ.com