An analysis by call tracking and analytics platform CallRail has revealed that call volume to businesses on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday more than doubled year-over-year across all industries, including automotive. Most surprisingly, though, was Green Monday, where call volume increased nearly 10 times year-over-year. To make the most of the 2017 holiday season, dealerships must prepare for a rise in inbound call volume. With such a steep increase in calls from 2015 to 2016, we can only expect an even bigger jump from 2016 to 2017.

 
Here's your rundown of October's most popular DrivingSales blog posts:
 

written by Jonathan Dawson, Founder & President at Sellchology Sales Training
 

Are you a manager? Do you feel frustrated that you keep asking your sales team to do the simplest things but they can’t or won’t do them?

Motivating their people is a common area of struggle for managers. I want to help you by sharing an effective coaching and motivational technique with you.

The technique is conducting one-on-one coaching sessions. It means setting aside time to spend with each one of your team members.

In Part One of this article, How One-on-One Coaching Sessions Will Help Your Motivate Your Team, I discussed that there are 2 types of one-on-one coaching sessions: production-based and psychology-based. I also provided a structure and outline for the production-based meeting.

Let’s examine what a psychology-based coaching session is about.

In a psychology-based coaching session, you help your salespeople discover their motivation and what drives them. You also discuss specific strategies to help them grow personally.

Some of you might be thinking, “That sounds great, but how do I do that?” Others might be wondering, “Why would I spend my time talking about these things? Why can’t I just tell them to sell more cars?”

Fair questions! A short answer is investing your time into and learning how to do this type of coaching will help you understand your team. Understanding them will help you motivate them. And effectively motivating them will help you increase their production levels.

So, what happens in a psychology-based coaching session?

Here are some of the core topics I recommend when I teach management teams how to do effective coaching.


Structure of Psychology-Based Coaching Sessions

1. Your level of leadership with them
   People follow you for different reasons and you need to understand what those reasons are. It will help you grow as a leader and use the right motivational techniques. Some people on your team will do things just because you’re the boss and you said so, while others will only follow you if you make a significant impact on their lives. Do you know why your people follow you? This is one of the topics you should address in your individual coaching sessions.
    
2. Their skill levels in different areas
   There are 4 primary skills a sales professional must master to be effective: sales, marketing, people and life skills. When you sit down with a team member, spend time assessing their skills in each of these core areas. You also need to help them come up with a plan to maintain or improve those skills.
    
3. Their needs
   I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to a sales person who’s under severe financial stress, is dealing with a family tragedy or has even become homeless, but their managers are not aware of it. Talking with a person about their needs means understanding where they are in their life or business. If someone’s primary concern is not losing their house, he won’t be able to relate to your pep talk to become the top sales person.
   
   Another type of need to discover is what type of environment they function best in. For example, some people need to have structure and certainty in their lives: they like things organized and like to know the schedule of upcoming events. Other people strive in an environment where things are more fluid and spontaneous. If you don’t know which type they are, your leadership and motivational approach could fail.
    
4. How they prefer being appreciated

   Have you ever taken a moment to think about what makes you feel appreciated at work? If your boss wanted to make you feel valued, what would they need to do? Is it to give you public recognition? Or would they need to take time to go to lunch with you and listen to your ideas? Or is it a simple gesture of a token gift, such as getting you your favorite Starbucks drink? Just like you have a preference for what makes you feel appreciated, so does your team.

   Understanding their language of appreciation will help you become a better leader and a better motivator. Spend a part of your one-on-ones discussing how you can show your appreciation in a way that will be received by your team.

What should you expect as outcomes of these sessions?

Spending dedicated one-on-one time with each of your team members will set you up for long-term success. If you do these sessions well and consistently, you will see the following results:

• You will become more effective at motivating your people
• Your ability to keep them focused on what’s important will increase
• You will form strong team bonds, which will lead to greater loyalty and less turnover

Please remember that as a manager and a leader, you should invest time in doing both types of individual coaching: production-based and psychology-based.

If you want to stop feeling frustrated with your team and see them improve, invest into your personal leadership skills and start doing one-on-one coaching sessions.

Do you do this type of coaching at your store? If not, has this article given you ideas on how to get started? Let me know your thoughts!

Earlier this year, Brad’s wife got fired from Cracker Barrel. You probably heard about it.

In case you’re one of the few who didn’t already know that Cracker Barrel terminated Brad's wife for apparently no good reason, here’s what happened:

Bradley Byrd’s wife (she has a name, by the way -- it’s Nanette) was a retail manager at her local Cracker Barrel in Indiana. She had worked there for eleven years, right up until this past March, when she got fired. We don’t know why she got fired. Neither did Bradley, her husband -- which is why he posted this simple query to Cracker Barrel’s corporate Facebook page: “Why did you fire my wife?” And lo, a social media firestorm was born. 

Fast-forward one week later: Cracker Barrel’s social media pages were pretty much hi-jacked by complete strangers demanding answers and justice for Nanette, who became widely known as  simply #bradswife (the other viral hashtag that arose from this situation: #justiceforbradswife). According to AdWeek, Cracker Barrel’s social media engagement increased by a whopping 226% after Bradley posted his question, and 90% of Cracker Barrel’s digital engagement between March 22 and March 27 was “Brad’s Wife-related.” Basically, the whole world was up in arms about Brad’s wife getting fired -- everyone, that is, except Cracker Barrel itself, which decided the proper course of action was not to so much as acknowledge that anything was amiss.

While we may not know what causes a single, seemingly insignificant social media post to become a global sensation, we can definitely take this as an opportunity to talk about some best practices on how to respond and bounce back in the event your dealership ever experiences something like this (it doesn't have to be global, either. Local disasters happen, too).

Acknowledge the situation.
Whether it’s a product issue, an employee misstep, or a seemingly insignificant post gone rogue, it is absolutely critical to acknowledge the situation immediately. In the case of #bradswife, Cracker Barrel showed us exactly what not to do. The company offered zero comment on the situation; in fact, it continued to update its social media sites with its normal marketing campaigns and advertisements, as if nothing ever happened. This, of course, made things exponentially worse. By ignoring the whole debacle, “Cracker Barrel [came] across as uncaring, unresponsive, and ridiculous, all at the same time. Consumers [we]re angry at a lack of any response or acknowledgement from the company, which result[ed] in even more outraged posts.”



Even if the problem at hand can’t be rectified or addressed right away, it’s important to at least acknowledge that the problem exists. When it came to #bradswife, Cracker Barrel failed to so much as comment that they refused to comment. By flagrantly continuing to post photos of new products and the like, Cracker Barrel gave a virtual middle finger to its customers and what may have been future customers, sending the message that it didn't care what they had to say.


Find the opportunity.
Imagine if Cracker Barrel had made amends with Nanette Byrd and brought her back onto their team. She becomes a celebrity of sorts, and all the supporters who sought #justiceforbradswife become brand ambassadors for the restaurant chain. With the right marketing team and strategy (and, of course, the initial problem having been properly addressed and rectified), it’s a golden opportunity for a whole lot of (free) positive publicity.


Develop a strategy.
Every brand should have a crisis management strategy in place from the get-go. It's kind of like having car insurance: hopefully you’ll never need it, but you don't want to be without it if the need arises. It’s a good idea to put together a "frontline social media team" -- a committee of a few people who are fully invested in the company and are authorized to speak on the dealership's behalf. Make sure those on the committee are empowered and well-informed, so that they can respond as effectively and as quickly as possible. Firebrand suggests starting with these questions as you build your social media crisis response strategy:

• How can the frontline social media team reach the crisis team—especially if a situation arises after normal business hours?

• Once the crisis team has been notified, who will craft the response?

• Who has final approval?

• Who will actually respond to the commenter?

Once you've taken this first step of forming the response team, consider investing in training for them. It doesn't have to be a massive undertaking -- an hour or two of training a few times a year can usually provide enough insight and skills to deal with a negative situation, should one arise. (If this type of publicity firestorm happens to your dealership on a regular basis, your team might need to do a little more than read this article and take a few hours of social media management training).
 

It doesn't have to be this way.
The bottom line is that what seems like a crisis initially doesn’t have to remain a crisis; it all depends on how your dealership responds to the situation. With a little preparation and a well-thought-out response strategy, you can turn a potential disaster into a business-driving asset (or, at the very least, stop it from poisoning your customer base and destroying your reputation and your brand).

The most popular blog posts this week were (drumroll, please!)... 

#5. Customer Experience on Dealer Websites        40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.        What does this mean for auto dealers?

#4. Customer Acquisition Can be More Effective When You Spend $0       What if I told you there's a customer acquisition strategy that costs ZERO dollars?

#3. It's Time to Address the 10,000-Ton Elephant in the Room       Why are you paying Google to drive traffic to your site?

#2. 50 Creative Ways to Increase Sales       These 50 things can help you make it happen in sales.

#1. The Truth About CarGurus       CarGurus' founder wants to clear up a few things.

Where have all the good techs gone?

It’s a question that many, if not most, dealerships are all too familiar with right now. Ask any fixed ops director, and they’ll sigh as they tell you that yes, it’s true – there’s a shortage of (good!) service technicians. It’s unfortunate and frustrating, especially as it coincides with the fact that cars are now more complex and sophisticated than ever. Aside from that, the new car market is slated to see another drop in the coming year, so service departments are becoming an even more critical revenue source for dealerships.

So, why is it that a good tech is so hard to find these days, and what can you do find more and better trained, motivated service technicians?

Nationwide Shortage

Many of the more experienced techs in the industry today are members of the Baby Boomer generation – and they’re retiring at unprecedented rates, leaving dealerships struggling to replenish and keep up. But experienced technicians aren’t the only ones in short supply; even entry-level candidates are scarce. This is due in part to the fact that there is an actual shortage of training schools across the U.S., but it begins even earlier than that: high school vocational programs are few and far between. When financial crisis hit the country at full force in 2008, these programs were among the first victims of budget cuts. Even as the economy improves, their return has been almost non-existent.  

Seek and Find

Despite all these factors contributing to a perfect storm of technician shortages, there are still strong candidates out there – you just have to find them. And therein lies the glitch.

If you’re like most of your counterparts, you’re probably utilizing typical resources such as Craigslist and Indeed as you attempt to fill these positions. Unfortunately, says Tim Dalton at Autodealer Monthly, while you may occasionally get lucky with these, they’re more likely to lead you to applicants “who are disgruntled, have developed bad habits, and are just looking for higher pay.

To expand your pool of quality applicants, try these 3 tips for finding good service technicians:


Buddy Up.  Building and fostering relationships with local and regional tech schools is a great way to find solid job candidates. If you can partner up with their career office, for example, you can offer apprenticeships and credit-earning internships. The huge bonus here is that applicants who have taken the time and effort to go to school and perform well there will often prove to be more motivated than someone you might find on Craigslist.

Penske, a 22-rooftop dealer group in Arizona, has been wildly successful with this strategy:

"Penske prefers to go right to Universal Technical Institute’s (UTI) Phoenix campus and invite a select group of students to come and work part-time to get their foot in the door for about $10 an hour. While they’re still doing coursework, students get a chance to see automotive work from the real-world perspective of a money-making shop while the auto group has a chance to observe which of the students they want to hire full-time."

It’s a win-win situation.


Be Social.  It may seem obvious, but too many dealerships are not utilizing the invaluable recruiting tool that is social media. According to a study conducted by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), 71% of job recruiters who use social media for recruiting purposes find it to be an effective tool “to decrease time to fill non-management, salaried positions.” And while you might and should include professional networks such as LinkedIn, even simply using Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram can be tremendously successful. You can reach potential applicants directly, but you can also reach their friends and family – you know, the people who know they’re looking for a job as an auto tech.


Offer Opportunity.  Motivated, dedicated job applicants will be drawn to the opportunity to further their training and certifications while on the job. And a dealership that is willing to pay to have their techs educated and certified makes a clear statement that it’s invested in the growth of its employees. If you work for an OE dealership, your OEM more than likely has a training program set up or in the works. OE-certifications have multiple benefits: they come with bragging rights for the certified technician, and they offer more retention value than other certifications, because an OEM-certified tech is more likely to remain with the brand for which they are certified. But even if you’re an independent shop, it’s worth considering footing the bill for your techs to get ASE or similar certifications. If you do decide to offer these types of continuing education opportunities, be sure to shout it from the rooftops in your job listings – and then watch the quality of your applicant pool soar.

Bad News, Good News

Good employees are your dealership’s most valuable assets, but the wrong employees can be among its riskiest liabilities. Interviewing candidates and training new employees costs time and money. All of these things mean it’s critical to ensure you hire the best people for your dealership, right from the get-go. A 2002 study suggests that “the organizations with the more effective hiring systems ranked higher in financial performance, productivity, quality, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction and retention. ‘This is . . . proof of what HR professionals have long said: Success is based on finding the right people for the right jobs.’” Below are three keys to effective hiring.

Assess Their Motivation.

When assessing a candidate’s motivation, interviewers frequently focus solely on the amount or level of motivation a potential employee demonstrates. But quantity is only half of the equation: Quality is an equally important consideration – in other words, not simply how motivated someone is, but what motivates them. Is the candidate motivated by the factors associated with a particular job, or by a dealership’s mission, culture, and other overarching ways of conducting operations? The ideal candidate is motivated by a balance of these things. Someone who is motivated by individual success in their position may do a good job, but if they aren’t on board with the mission of the dealership as a whole, they won’t be the right fit. “[T]he key in your job interview is to identify what motivates your candidate. Then, decide whether those qualities, characteristics, behaviors, values, and approaches exist in your workplace. If they do, you’ve found a dynamite employee from your job interview match dance.”


Do Your Research.

To find the right person for the job, you must have a thorough understanding of the job itself. “Have a job description for each position to be filled. Job descriptions should be specific, concise, and clearly understood.” They should also evolve with the dealership. Merely having a standard job description thrown together that an interviewer pulls out any time the position needs filled suppresses the opportunity for growth and learning. “The basis for future performance is a thorough study of what has been done in the past.” Thus, each time a position opens up (or is added), it’s important to spend some time assessing or reassessing what does and does not seem to work, or what did and did not work in the past. “If the previous person was promoted, what can they or their manager tell you about necessary skills for the position? If the last person in the position was not a good fit, find out what mistakes not to repeat.”


Hone Your Questioning Skills.

To get the best answers, ask the best questions. Tonja Wheatley, for buildaninterview.com, suggests asking open-ended questions, using follow-up questions to get beneath the surface of a response, and controlling the interview with redirecting questions. She also advises focusing each question on a specific skill or trait – and knowing the difference between the two.

Skills-related questions regard a candidate’s “developed or learned abilities necessary to do the job. Skills are measurable and should be the focus of the initial interview.” Asking skills-related questions tells you whether the candidate, if given the position, has the actual ability to do the job. For example, are they proficient with the types of computer programs the job uses? Are they able to work overtime or abnormal hours if the position in question requires it (and in the car business, it usually does!)? The answers to these questions will determine whether a follow-up interview is warranted.

Once you’ve determined, through the initial interview, that a candidate does in fact possess the skills necessary to perform the job, it’s time for the secondary, or follow-up interview. This is where you start to dig a little deeper: Just because a person is technically qualified to do the job doesn’t necessarily mean they are the right fit. To get a feel for whether a job candidate is a good fit for the position, ask what Wheatley refers to as traits-related questions. “Traits are natural abilities that would help a candidate succeed in a job. They are measured by a person’s pattern of behavior. . . . Trait related questions would include areas such as organization, initiative, creativity, integrity, and decision-making. Hiring a person with the traits to excel in a job can be the difference between a good hire and a great hire.”

For job candidates, the most important thing when interviewing is to be prepared. For the interviewer, the most important thing is, also, to be prepared. Being thoroughly prepared for interviews, through research, assessment, and quality of questioning, will allow you to make the absolute most of your hiring process so you can hire the right people the first time around. Especially in this business, where employees tend to come and go, you may be hesitant to spend so much time preparing to interview job candidates. But hiring effectively from the get-go will reduce turnover rates, which will save you loads of time and money in the long run and allow your dealership to truly flourish.

You walk into a department store. The first thing you notice is a stack of bracelets, in four colors. The yellow bracelets say, “Just browsing.” The pink ones read, “Time is of the essence.” The red ones say, “Please assist me” and the orange ones say, “I’ve got time.” Each customer who enters the store selects one or two bracelets that apply to them, and wear them while they shop to let the store associates know whether or know they wish to be approached.

You leave the store and hail a cab. As soon as one pulls up, the driver jumps out to help you load your bags. He then opens and closes your door for you. When you arrive at your destination, the driver again gets out immediately so as to open your door for you. He helps you unload your bags, and even offers to carry them to the door for you. He does all of this, for each and every person who patronizes his taxi service, with no expectation or even hope of receiving a tip.

If this sounds a bit foreign, that’s probably because it is. These scenarios are examples of the Japanese concept of “omotenashi.” I first heard about omotenashi from Tonya, an owner loyalty manager at a Nissan dealership in Mississippi. Omotenashi “is our new Golden Rule,” says Tonya. 

So what, you ask, is omotenashi? Jeffrey Spivock, writing for Spafax Content Marketing, explains:

[L]oosely defined as the act of selfless hospitality, [omotenashi] is a cornerstone of Japanese culture. To welcome someone into your home or establishment and be able to anticipate their every need is seen as a privilege for the host, and working in a service industry is regarded with the utmost seriousness and respect. There are no menial tasks if the result ensures a great experience for a guest.

The spirit of omotenashi goes beyond typical customer service, as illustrated in the examples above. It’s all about a selfless anticipation of the needs of your guest, whether they are a visitor to your home or business. The idea is that your guest should never have to ask for anything, because it should already be available to them. The Japanese culture blog Kitsune Journey notes that for a guest to have to ask for anything, even something as seemingly minor as a cup of tea, would be embarrassing for the host, “who is expected to have everything arranged and organized.”

But there’s another, even more charming aspect to the Japanese art of omotenashi: it’s very frequently shrouded in subtlety. The Japanese won’t make a big show of their humility and service. The idea is for the customer or guest only to notice the result of the hospitality, and not what goes into making that result happen. As Dominic Carter of BCCJ Acumen puts it, “If, in the course of a service encounter in Japan, you’ve ever been left thinking, ‘How did they think of that?’, you’ve probably been omotenashi’d.”

Returning to the example of the taxi driver, an important aspect of omotenashi is that it is done with no expectation of  reward or favor in return. The very presence of the customer is considered gift enough.

When it comes to omotenashi at her Nissan store, here's what Tonya has to say: 

I take [the concept of omotenashi] very seriously. At Paul Barnett Nissan, "we don’t just sell cars, we build relationships”. We treat our customers like family: They are greeted with a smile, a warm welcome, and a friendly, “How may we help you?” Our service customers who choose to wait on their vehicle here at dealership have a choice of hot coffee, hot chocolate, hot apple cider, tea, or bottled water. We have breakfast snacks as well as evening snacks, which are changed out throughout the day. 

Our sales customers are also offered refreshments while they wait on approval for their purchase . After financing is complete, I introduce myself as their OLM and give them my business card and let them know if they need anything and can’t get in touch with their salesperson, they are more than welcome to give me a call. 

We try to anticipate our customers' needs. If you choose to wait on a service repair that might take a while, you are offered a loaner car to go to lunch. If you prefer, we will pick something up for you. We have a complimentary charging station for mobile devices, both iPhone and Android. We also offer complimentary Wifi. 

We are there for our customers no matter how big or small the need might be. We had a customer who realized that her doctor appointment was scheduled an hour earlier than she thought it was; her car was already in the service bay, so I personally drove her to her doctor appointment and picked her up when her appointment was done. Developing a relationship with our customers and updating them on their vehicle status gives us the opportunity to serve them better. 

On another occasion, one of our elderly customers was at the local hospital and when they went out to the parking lot, one of their tires was flat. The customer called our service department and spoke with our service advisor, who sent a technician out.  The technician inflated the tire and followed the customer back to our dealership, where we repaired the tire at no cost to customer. She called us because she trusted that we would help her in her time of need, and we stood by our pledge that those who do business with us will "experience the difference."

When our service customers come to the dealership and they don’t see me, they come find me; they just want to say hello and tell me how they love coming here and how much they appreciate how well we take care of them.  A customer once informed me that she told her daughter she was going to have her car serviced and visit her other family at Nissan. I have, hands down, the best job ever!

Whether you’re in sales, service, the BDC, or any other department in your store how might you apply the concept of omotenashi throughout your day and during the course of your relationship with your customers?

What do you wish you had known when you were brand new to the automotive industry? Post your best advice for newbies here, whether it's related to sales, service, customer relationships, or anything else relevant to our business!