Let’s say you’re in the grocery store. You ask the cashier to point you in the direction of the canned soup. Eager to help, he tells you where the frozen pies are. He responded quickly and was friendly, but you walk away thinking he’s got a screw loose. That scenario is no different than responding poorly to leads! If a customer asks you about the history of one of your used cars, are you going to respond by giving them a detailed description of the paint job? That doesn’t make any sense. It’s important to really listen to the customer. Don’t be in such a hurry to respond to leads that you miss your customers’ questions. You want to respond quickly and accurately with the information they request. Your customers ask questions about the things that are most important to them. Don’t overlook their needs by furnishing the information YOU think is most important. Go even further when responding; dig a little deeper in to your customers’ needs. For instance, if you receive a question about safety ratings, respond right away with the data, but also ask them questions to get more information. If the vehicle they’ve asked about doesn’t have the highest safety rating, include a couple of options that do. Statistics show that mothers tend to be the most concerned about safety, ask what the primary purpose of the car will be and begin building a relationship around what’s important to the consumer. Talk is cheap, but being a good listener pays.

We all agree that now is the time to dig deep into your accounting Dealers should determine what their expenditures are and how costs can be adapted to match the current economic climate. Just be sure that you measure based on performance as well as money. It’s easy to compare vendors based on up-front costs, but make sure you know who you’re dealing with when you prepare to make a switch. As cliché as it may sound, “You get what you pay for” rings true more often than not. Cheap materials and products make you and your dealership look cheap. It’s important to continue to make a good and lasting impression on consumers, so don’t compromise quality for the sake of a bill (and this is certainly true for your website!). For example, good printing companies are hard to come by. If you do direct mail pieces, flyers, coupons, anything printer related, make sure you’re working with a quality printer. Nothing says “unprofessional” like a poor print job. The last thing you want to do is pay for a print job that’s streaky, blurry, etc. You don’t save money if you print a job twice. It’s worth paying a little more to get it right the first time and make a good impression on your potential customers. Quality is valuable. It may not be as easy to measure as other aspects of your dealership, but spend some time figuring out what you can really afford to cut out.

Individual dealerships can take a lesson from current events. Everyone knows how violently the industry has been criticized recently. However fair or unfair this scrutinizing has been, we’ve been given some food for thought. The last thing you want to do is cut salaries and benefits. You want to keep employees on your side. But what about practices that are comparatively unsuccessful? Are you paying premium prices for average service? Take some time and review your monthly bills. Are you paying vendors more than they’re worth? Measurement becomes imperative in less-than-ideal economic climates. Tie all of your individual marketing efforts to the leads and conversions they’re bringing in. Make sure to use unique tracking numbers on advertisements. Which of your ads are performing well? Which needs to be retired? Look at your expenditures with a critical eye. Trimming the fat doesn’t necessarily mean tightening the belt, but it always means streamlining.

Before you decide to revamp your incentives process or pay plan, take a minute to look at your business with strategy in mind. Determine the strengths and weaknesses of your business. What aspect of your Dealership puts you ahead of the curve? Once you determine where that strength lies, focus your attention on all the components that make up that strength. Use your strategic business plan to help you focus on the right segment of your employees. Don't waste resources by implementing company wide changes when you can hone in on one particular area that will greatly increase your ROI. For example, the same incentives may not work across the board. Where are you doing the most business? What aspect of your dealership sells customers? Is it the excellent care they receive post purchase? If so, focus your attention on the shop. Offer incentives to your employees in the shop and think of additional incentives for your sales team to help focus attention on your shop. It's all about standards. Determine your strategy on a grand scale, then bring it down to each level.

As soon as you are getting 1,000 web leads every day, you can use automated response emails. Until then, you should be interacting with your customers! It may not be as black and white as that, but there are some best practices you should consider as you approach the idea of trigger emails and auto responses to submitted forms. Initially, these responses were created to immediately reach out to the customer and let them know someone would contact them shortly. This is acceptable when you’re dealing with leads that come in overnight or at some other time when an immediate personal response is not possible. However, an auto response should never allow your sales people to be lazy about reaching out to potential customers. It’s not appropriate to respond to all customers with the same information. You won’t know who is on the other side of your lead until you communicate with them person to person. There is no substitute for interacting with your customers, getting to know them and building trust. It may be just a car to you, but to them it’s a new addition to their family. They may live with that vehicle for 6 years, so it’s no small thing to most potential customers. Show them respect and look at these interactions from their perspective. When a user submits their contact information to you, it’s an expression of trust. They’re vulnerable. They’ve given you their info because they expect you to respond and help them find what they’re looking for. This is a golden opportunity to treat the customer well and gently walk them through the process of buying one of your vehicles. Don’t let auto responder madness take root in your dealership. Remember that individual human beings are at the other end of your leads and respond accordingly!

Trips to the dealership are not high on the average American’s list at present. People are beginning to view buying a new car as a luxury that can be put off. Here is a perfect opportunity to show potential customers how painless a purchase might actually be. The beauty of online advertising is that you can advertise immediately to people who are looking for a car – as they’re looking. Now, when fewer consumers are looking, find new and creative ways to meet them where they’re at. Create search engine marketing campaigns around popular searches that may not have a lot to do with buying a new car. If someone is online looking for ways to save gas or find public transportation, hit them with an ad that comments on those concerns. Mention that the cars on your lot all get at least 25 miles per gallon. Point out that particular specials at your dealership will keep consumers off of a crowded bus and still within their budget. A little strategy can go a long way. Using a consumer perspective may well be the key to staying busy in a slow spell.

Part of the nature of an investment is that investment's return. Avoid wasteful spending (and wasteful cutbacks) by recognizing what parts of your spending are true investments.

During times like these, cuts are inevitable. The important thing is to make sure you cut where you can afford to cut. Removing employee incentives, and other opportunities to encourage your dealership’s growth and bolster sales, can be like sealing the leaky dam with your thumb. It may work for a minute, but that dam is going to explode and guess who gets the first face full of cold water?

So before you start laying off good employees or cutting back on benefits and incentives, take a step back and look at the big picture. Your employees are an investment. Take the time to measure the results on all or your investments. Are you confident that your TV spot is bringing in the bulk of your sales? How about that full page, full color newspaper ad? As we’ve all heard before, “measure twice, cut once.”

Car buyers will be back. We don't know when, but they will. The simple fact is that people will still need vehicles in the future. In the mean time, are you doing anything to prepare? An old operations truism is: Do the right things and do things right. Is this happening at your dealership? Are you sure? Now might be the perfect time to take inventory of all the dealership's activities. Are you measuring the performance of employees and other investments including marketing? If not, then start. These days scarcely a penny should be spent if you don't have an idea of the return that you're getting from it. If you are using metrics to measure performance, are you sure you're using the right ones? It's very easy to measure the wrong thing. If what you're measuring doesn't tie directly into the larger dealership goals, then you probably shouldn't be measuring it. No person's goals or activities should even be set until the overall goals and strategy of the dealership are set. If everything doesn't tie together, then you're much less like to achieve major goals or strategic efforts. This might be a great time to re-access what you're measuring and why, or start measuring performance if you haven't been. It's entirely possible to be doing something right, that is not the right thing to be doing. Think about it…

Times are tough and we all know it. Along with other cuts, some jobs are being lost. For the employees that you do have, make sure you don't do anything to create perverse incentives during an already challenging period. By definition, perverse incentives create undesirable, unintended consequences. If you stop giving any real raises, for example, make sure to think through the possible consequences. You may think what you're doing is improving the bottom line, and it might in the short term, just make sure it's not going to hurt you in the longer term.

A client recently shared a cautionary tale about the unintended consequences of the elimination of any significant merit raises. The management at a large dealership decided to help combat declining sales by not allowing anyone, under any circumstances, to receive more than a 3% annual raise. They didn't communicate the policy to employees ahead of time and it wasn't clear if this policy would be applied to management. When the annual reviews began taking place, employees started talking. They quickly figured out that no one received a raise of any significance-- including the super stars. And still, there was no discussion from management about it.

Well, guess what started happening? Almost immediately, most people started performing at a lower level, not low enough to lose their jobs, but just doing what needed to be done and no more. And most of the dealership's rock stars started looking for jobs elsewhere. Instead of saving the dealership money, it cost them a fortune in lower productivity and job turn over. Within six months new management was brought in and the unspoken, unwritten policy was reversed.

A temporary tightening of the belt that is clearly articulated to everyone affected is one thing. "We're all in this together and the decrease has nothing to do with your overall performance and management is under the same policy as staff members." Most people can understand and accept a temporary policy in tough times, especially if it applies to management, too. And, be sure to let employees know about it ahead of time. This just goes back to eliminating "surprises" in performance reviews. Give people the time to understand and accept what's going to happen before it actually happens. Someone who did exceptional work and produced for the dealership should know that they will be rewarded in some other way for now, and also how you will reward them in the future when times are better.

Straight commission roles are easier: you sell, you make money. Positions that are a mix of salary and commission, or just salary can be trickier and you can more easily motivate people to behave undesirably. Just think seriously and critically about the consequences of financial policies changes before you enact them. Will they really save the dealership money, or are they merely a quick fix that will cost you in the end?

To accomplish organizational goals, three main steps are required: 1.) Process, 2.) Measurement and 3.) Accountability. (Of course these three steps must be attached to the right goals, but we will discuss that in other blogs). Using this method, any organization, especially a dealership, can achieve success. I know this because I've used these steps to accomplish success at numerous dealerships and dealer groups for years. And today in my consulting, I use these steps to help other dealerships be successful, even in today's economic environment. The process is the actions and specific steps individuals and groups take; what they do make things happen. The measurements are the agreed upon metrics, both quantitative and qualitative, that let you know what's (and who) working what's (and who) not. And that measurement must be tied to accountability with real consequences for success and for failure.

And in the absence of process, measurement and accountability, the larger the dealer group, the bigger the problems can be because nobody's "checking the checker" and there is so much going on that it's easy for items to get brushed aside or ignored. Management often doesn't understand and/or isn't directly involved in what line workers are doing, and this certainly applies in Internet departments across the country. And if you don't understand what the process is or should be, then you can't possibly know what to measure. And without measurement, accountability is impossible.

Use process, measurement and accountability to get systematic, get everyone involved, and get your dealership in the black! Please share your thoughts and other similar methods you have used for success.