The eight traits that separate championship football teams from their competition are synonymous with the eight traits that distinguish great dealerships from everyone else. Whether you’re a diehard fan, occasional watcher, or someone happy to do without, there’s a lot to be learned from the structure of a championship level football team.

In honor of football season, we compiled a list of strategies championship football teams implement to become champions and stay at the top. Some may be a bit obvious and others are a little less known. However, when combined and practiced with regularity, energy, and passion, they are extremely powerful tools to create a winning organization day in and day out and season after season.

Without any further ado, here’s eight unmistakable traits of championship teams:

1. Championship teams have several small goals to support one big goal

Championship teams aren’t out there playing just to play. Playing for the love of the game is important, but champions train and play for something big by striving to achieve smaller supporting goals. Divisional champions. Conference champions. League champions. By breaking down the ultimate goal into smaller pieces they build on top of each other. The accomplishment of one propelling them to the next.

At the dealership level it’s the same way. Daily wins. Weekly wins. Monthly wins. Yearly wins. By breaking each win into a smaller category, they all build on each other to propel a store towards the big picture goal it set out to do.

2. Championship teams create a specific plan to reach their goals

There’s multiple ways to win a championship, but one thing all championship teams possess is their specific way to win it. What does the offensive scheme look like? What is the defensive scheme? What type of players best fit those schemes and what does it take to train those players be successful?

Dealerships are the same way. What type of inventory, pricing, sales team, and marketing & advertising strategies does it take to help your dealership reach its goals and full potential in your market?

3. Championship teams tactically develop a system for fulfilling their plans

Having a specific and actionable plan is 100% necessary to reach their goals. But, championship teams dive into the minutiae of their plans at a tactical level. What’s the prototype player for each position? What is the development of each player during the pre-season, season, and post season? What will the training sessions be? How much film do they need to watch? What is their nutrition plan? What type of on the field coaches are needed? What support staff is needed? Mentally, how are they trained to handle the pressures and length of the season?

The team at your dealership can benefit from those same types of questions. What traits does the ideal person have for each position at the store? How is each team member properly trained from a sales and customer service perspective? What does the routine of a highly successful salesperson look like? How can they continue to grow their skills and earning potential? How does the dealership support them to be great individuals, team players, and leaders in the organization? What are the processes they follow to have the best chance to succeed?

4. Championship teams make sure everyone in the organization understands their role

Creating a championship team means taking a bunch of individuals and combining each of their talents to create a group that achieves an actionable result. What sets the champions apart from everyone else is their ability to effectively communicate how the role of each individual supports the team and the big picture. Then, they keep communicating it to everyone, constantly. Everyone must do their job, do it well, and no one is bigger than the team.

Similarly, at a dealership, everyone from the porter to the service tech to the GM know exactly how fulfilling their role on the team supports the team goals. Anyone who falls short or is focused on their individual performance affects the overall ability of the team to perform and achieve what their after.

5. Championship teams focus on the small things day by day

It’s not about trying to eat an elephant in one bite. Championship teams don’t let the big things get distracting. Instead, they minimize the distractions and focus on the small things that allow them to be the best they can be in each and every moment. Once a moment is over, they move on to next moment. They proceed at working to be the best they can be in thousands of tiny moments until the end result is achieved.

At a dealership it’s exactly the same way. For example, the ultimate goal on the showroom floor is a sale. However, each individual moment needs to be maximized to its fullest potential to move to the next moment and the end result. If one thing is skipped or not done well, the next moment may not matter because it may not happen.

6. Championship teams celebrate victories but don’t linger on them

With the right plan in place, becoming a champion may take some time but ultimately is accomplishable. Remaining a champion is quite a bit harder. Once a goal is achieved, complacency can start to set in and can be a bear to overcome. Championship teams avoid complacency by celebrating victories in a small window. Once that window is up, they’re right back to doing the same things it took to get them there in the first place. They always maintain their edge.

Dealerships can practice the same strategy. Celebrate your wins and accomplishments.  They’re awesome! However, don’t ever get complacent and stop practicing what it took to accomplish those wins. It takes less work to maintain an edge than it does to create one. Don’t miss an opportunity in front of you because you were too busy looking backwards while patting yourself on the back.

7. Championship teams think different than everyone else

If you think like everyone else, you’re going to be like everyone else. Championship teams constantly think about what they can do to create a competitive advantage. How can they train harder and smarter? How can they play faster? How can they perform more efficiently? How can they attract better talent? How can they separate themselves from their competition? How can they win more aggressively and keep their players healthy? How can they be better than their competition in every way and do it consistently?

Dealerships have to think differently than their competition as well. How can you get more of the inventory that’s selling? How can you price it attractively and still make a profit? How do you offer the best customer experience that no one else can deliver? How can you advertise differently than everyone else to attract the number of car buyers it takes to help you reach your goals?

8. Championship teams learn from their losses and their wins

Losing is a great learning tool. And, so is winning. Just because a team won doesn’t mean they can’t do things better? Maybe the offense was really good but the defense stunk. Or, maybe the game plan worked but the other team would have pulled out the victory if there was just one minute on the clock. Championship teams look at every win, loss, and play in the game and find what they can do better.

At the dealership level, it can be easy to see why you didn’t win a deal. The price was too high. You didn’t have a vehicle in stock. Maybe the person couldn’t get financed? The list goes on and on. However, championship dealerships evaluate everything. Even the wins. They strive to continue to grow, to get bigger, better, and faster with each and every vehicle sold. They know that each win and loss is an opportunity to get better than their competition and that getting better will continue to breed more success.

The difference between winning and winning consistently enough to be a champion is in the details. Everyone wants to win but only a select few have what it takes to go out and do what needs to be done to make it happen. What will your season be like? It’s the start of a new year? Do you have what it takes to be a champion?

Have you ever paid attention to how something new and different seemingly comes out of nowhere and suddenly disrupts everything overnight? For businesses it can feel like a sucker punch.

Here are some quick historic examples. The introduction of the telephone to homes and businesses demolished the need for telegraphs. The television quickly disrupted radio listenership. The internet killed the need for most people to read newspapers. Email significantly impacted the postal system. Online movie streaming knocked businesses like Blockbuster into extinction. And now, the continuous evolution of smartphones and apps is turning multiple industries on their heads.

Everyone of those disruptors can be viewed as an overnight success. Or, were they?

The telegraph took nearly 60 years to invent. The telephone took about 35 years to come around. The television took over 20 years to get into the first living rooms. The internet has been slowly developed since the 1960s. It’s chronicled that email first began 40 years ago, and smartphones are over a decade old.

What all seemed to be overnight successes actually took quite a while to engineer, scale, and gain traction. When each finally reached a tipping point they seemed to spread like wildfire. The problem for the entities they disrupted was those competitors probably didn’t take them very seriously. In addition, they didn’t plan for the possible change until it was too late. They lacked foresight, creative thinking, and strategic thinking.

That brings us to the massive sports giant ESPN and the incredibly valuable lesson that can be learned from them. The lesson is: Don’t underestimate the power of technology and how one thing can disrupt everything. Even if you don’t see the impact right now, what may only be a small insignificant spark can become a raging fire if unattended and not planned for.

ESPN recently laid off around 100 people. What’s significant about it, in a company of thousands, was many of them were popular on-air personalities with big contracts that had no idea the layoff was coming.

The reasons are varied but many conclude the layoffs were a result of two reasons. Around 2012 ESPN spent billions of dollars scooping up contracts for the broadcast rights to many popular leagues like the NFL, NBA, and college football. It appeared to be an awesome investment at the time. Cable subscriber levels were incredibly strong and the financial gain projected to be even stronger.

Around the same time there was an emerging trend called cord cutters – people who decided to cut cable to stream their video content online. At the time, the technology was a little clunky to easily cut the cable cord but it was still possible and a few hundred thousand households gave it a shot. What was a small number of early adopters has now turned into a big problem.

Fast forward to 2017 and that little cord cutting spark is massive. Media companies like ESPN failed to see what something small with unbridled potential to grow could do. What was a few hundred thousand attempting to do something 5 years ago is now over 12,000,000 people who have figured it out. Technology evolved and so did the masses.

It’s currently estimated ESPN is losing billions of dollars in revenue from the mass exodus of the cord cutting population while still having to pay for massive contracts that aren’t going away any time soon.  Even worse, the bleeding isn’t expected to end immediately. It will take a massive strategic change to get back on track.

Cord cutters happened quickly but they certainly didn’t happen overnight either. The signs were there from the beginning years ago. Many just failed to acknowledge them and plan accordingly for the worst case scenario.

So what does it mean for automotive marketers? For decades, dealerships have been able to rely primarily on several key channels to drive traffic: print media, radio, television, and direct mail as well as some digital sources sprinkled in. Today they all still work but each one is facing challenges as well. The question is, what will happen when one or all of them are no longer effective at reaching who you need to reach efficiently and cost effectively?

What’s the plan once that happens? It’s not a matter of if change will happen, it’s a matter of when change will happen. How prepared will you be? Will you have seen the signs and explored ways to evolve? Or, will you act like ESPN and ignore them and be blindsided with your guard down when the tipping point occurs?

The invention of new technology can appear to massively disrupt the world overnight. Those with the foresight to be aware of emerging trends early and plan for how they can drastically change everything will have a leg up on overcoming the challenge. There’s usually plenty of time to do it if you know what to look for. And, if you think not doing it isn’t a big deal, just ask ESPN what the consequences can be.