Getting your staff to WANT to work for your business long term is the holy grail for every dealership.  There is a key difference between want to be a part of your store, and feel like your store happens to be the best option.  You can make this happen for your staff.

Every day I speak to employees that not only perform their job, but have become ambassdors for the business.  The key ingredient to corporate structure is culture, and the way we express culture to our leadership, staff, and clients is through a clear mission statement.

A mission statement is the banner in front of the marching army, a symbol of the future vision and values that we work together for as a group.  Before you can ask your staff to commit to your dealership, ask yourself have I given them anything to commit to?

Here are some guidelines for creating the mission statement you can put forward for your store:

1) Keep it short and concise.  Stay on a very specific point.  You cannot be all things to all people.

2) Use brainstorming sessions with your entire staff to get a list of keywords that they feel are important to them.  Use these basic words as a framework to build the statement.  The more of our staff that is involved in the process of building the mission statement the greater the buy-in down the road.

3) Consider the three perspectives on your statement.  Can executive management lead this way; can the staff treat everyone they meet this way; will clients identify with my business in an environment built this way?  So, something like "The cheapest cars in town" is a poor mission statement.  Would you as an employee want to identify with that?  Can a leader use cheapest as his/her guiding principal?

4) When you decide on a mission statement proudly place it everywhere.  A banner in the showroom and service, every desk, on your cards, in your ads, on your website, etc...  Statements of culture need to be everywhere, because you want every employee and manager to be accountable to it everywhere.

These are just some basic guidelines to get you started creating your own culture banner.  Feel free to contact me if you need help with how to conduct a meeting to get the ideas together, or if you already have a bunch of ideas and just need a fresh perspective on putting all this into a statement I am happy to help.

Have a prosperous day :-)

Here is the daily hiring and getting hired tip:

Employers it is time to get bang for your buck in the job board market. Here are a few suggestions on getting your employment ad in front of the maximum number of people for minimum dollars.

1) Use pay per click job boards. Many of the sites that businesses use to advertise their jobs are flat fee. You pay one amount and no matter the result or exposure pay one fee. The most successful boards, like Indeed, have moved to a bid for clicks on your ad. This allows you the ability to either raise or lower your expense depending on the number of applicants coming in to your job. Even better, when you fill a position you can stop your expense even if you are only a couple days into a campaign.

2) Post your job socially. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are a terrific resource for sharing your need for a new employee. Facebook and Twitter are tremendously under utilized for this. With a minimal ad budget you can share your ad with targeted people in your market.

3) Use an aggregated sharing tool to reach all the free job boards. ZipRecruiter is a tool that does this. You may ask, why pay to post on free job boards? The time it will take you place your ad one by one and format it will cost you much more than the fee to one of the posting sites that spider out to dozens of boards.

If you have any questions about how to do this for your store inbox us, we are happy to help

I have been writing a lot about how employers can find employees in the hiring stage, and recently had a few comments about the difficulty in keeping  quality staff once they are found.

For the next few days there will be a series of posts about creating the environment and culture that helps retain employees.  This post is a frame work and in the subsequent days there will be a more in depth blog post for each individual piece of the puzzle.

Retention is all about one thing, relationship.  Relationships are all built on one foundation, shared commitment.  Commitment happens when people share a vision of acting together in the future.  Communicating a clear vision to share with your employees is the key to creating this lasting bond.

Here are the elements and topics of communication:

Mission Statement – This is your opportunity to define the overarching path for the dealership.  The best mission statements include; what it does for the clients, what it does for employees, and what it does for ownership.  This can be stated in one up to a couple of sentences that define a topline business strategy.

Core Values – These values are the foundation on which we perform all work and tasks within the dealership.  While tasks and products may change for a company, core values are a constant that guides all our activities.  These values are the basic elements of how we go about completing our mission.

Job Responsibility Guidelines – Job responsibility guidelines are the tasks, skills, needed equipment, knowledge, and relationships necessary for a position to fulfill their individual part of a mission statement.  Core values govern the way we go about putting the job responsibilities into action.  These should be living documents that meant to challenge employees.

Compensation Plans – This follows the old axiom, “You get what you pay for”.  Compensation should be designed to encourage employees to excel in the company’s mission, values, and their own job description.  Match bonus programs up with your true stated goals.

Business Plans with Evaluations – Success happens when planning meets energy.  Business plans are a quarterly road map of not only what is going to be produced, but also how we are going to attain our goals and vision.  Employees should generate their own plan, otherwise they will never take true ownership of enacting it.  The evaluation is a quarterly review of this plan that allows management to give insight as to possible improvements, suggestions on actions to take to achieve the quarterly plan, and a look at the previous quarter for learning moments.

Each of the days going forward I will post a detail on creating and communicating each of these elements.  

Feel free to connect with me for more personal direction, and definitely comment if you can share and help others :-)

Here is the daily hiring and getting hired tip:

It is always hard to know when to reach out to an interviewer after an interview. You don't want to seem too desperate for the position, but also want to show that you are interested. The last thing we want is a hiring manager avoiding our call because we start to seem clingy. What is the happy medium?

Here are the three communications that you can send to keep in touch without overwhelming the hiring manger.

1) Ask the interviewer to connect on LinkedIn towards the end of the interview. Tell them it will give them a chance to see more about you than is on your resume. That same day send a request to connect with a short message thanking them for the connection.

2) One day after the interview send over an email to your interviewer. Begin by thanking them and letting them know you are available at their discretion for additional questions they may have. You can try for a little engagement by asking a short question about the company. A busy hiring manager may not take the time to respond to an email, so do not read anything into it if you do not hear anything back immediately.

3) Unless the interviewer states otherwise, one week after your interview give a call to ask the next steps in the process. Tell them you enjoyed the meeting and want to make sure you are keeping up with what needs to be done on your end to move the process forward.

This will keep your name in front of the interviewer, and ensure you do not get lost in the shuffle as the company meets new candidates.

Here is the daily hiring and getting hired tip:

One of the hardest decisions a business can make is how many people to hire. With the high expense of turning over an employee, averagely $30,000, the choice of how much staff to add or replace can completely control your profitability for the year.

Most stores base this solely around how many cars they want to sell, or even worse the eye test when they see a client not being attended to at some random time. Using either of these methods can lead to over-population of the sales floor, because we are basing the amount of staff around one small instance; or just as bad is being understaffed because we only sell "fill in the blank". Maybe you don't sell more due to the limit in staff?

For dealership sales departments I use the client base as a measuring stick. For each 500 clean contacts in your dealership client base (including gained prospects) your store needs one employee engaged in marketing to them. This includes floor sales, internet sales, and business development.

500 engaged clients is the total amount any one employee can effectively market to on behalf of the dealership. Any more and it gets overwhelming and people slip through the cracks; any less and you have salespeople sharing stories all day with nothing to do.

Here is the daily hiring and getting hired tip:

LOVE YOURSELF, WHO YOU ARE, AND WHAT YOU DO.

THE MORE YOU SEEK THIS FROM OTHERS, THE LESS HAPPY YOU WILL BE.

This is more of a life tip for relationships, career, everything.

Self-Esteem is the greatest tool you can bring to any interaction

Here are two easy things to do during the interview process to build a relationship. One is having a handout for every applicant with why the dealership and its culture are great. Have a listing of employee benefits, ways you serve the community, and most importantly compliments for your staff. Descriptions of ways you reward the best employees.

The second way to turn, what can be a very nerve wracking experience, into a positive is a small gift for every applicant that interviews in person. A simple one is a free oil change. Tell the interviewee that you want them to fall in love with the dealership experience before they even come to work there. Even if they don't end up joining your team, they will be ambassadors for you in the community.

Here is the daily hiring and getting hired tip:

Get social to find your next dream job.  In today's connected world many of the best positions are filled before they ever get advertised.  Social media is not just a place to catch up with friends, business owners and managers are connecting with potential candidates.

The best place to find these hidden opportunities are in groups on Facebook and LinkedIn.  Join five or six groups specific to your industry and contribute.  Comment when there is a topic you have an opinion on, or pose a question to the group.  These groups are one of the first places management goes to hunt for fresh talent.  Sometimes they will even post right in the group that they need a new employee and ask who knows someone.

Most importantly start engaging in groups now.  It can take time to be noticed as a contributor, and you want to build those connections before you need to use them to find an employer.

If your business is seeking the best candidates in the market you are going to have a lot of competition, especially in sales.  So what are these talented people looking for in choosing their next employer?

Two things a base salary and flexibility of schedule to fit family needs.  75% of present sales people surveyed cited these two issues and being the most important in selecting their next employer.  These even were ranked higher than income potential.

If you are looking out at your sales floor and thinking how do I get the best in my community to work here, consider staffing to a level that lets you cover your business and give time off and implementing a base salary with bonus.

Here is the daily hiring and getting hired tip:

When it is time to find a new job start early and get help. You are most marketable when you are already working. So always be seeking your next dream job. 

How can you do that, while you are already working full time? Get signed up with a recruitment firm in your field. Make sure they have experience in your industry. Good firms do not charge workers for placement in positions, and will know about job opportunities that aren't even advertised. When you give your information to a recruitment firm they keep it confidential until there is a serious intention to take a job, even from potential employers. You can work at trying to be as successful as possible in your current job, and have a team of professionals marketing your skills to other employers.