Drive to Success is a weekly series capturing the most influential articles, tips, and tricks from industry experts and publication to help drive your dealership to success. Each week will focus on a specific key topic in the automotive industry.
Efficient and friendly dealership employees are critical to a dealer’s success. Make sure you hire the best staff possible and create a positive atmosphere for your employees. Turnover can result in an increase of costs to your dealership, while training and taking care of your staff will increase your returns.
1- Increase Staff Productivity by 50%… While Increasing Morale
Digital Dealer: The best leaders, whether knowingly or intuitively, inspire and cast vision. They create environments of self-direction and encouragement to do and be your best. As a result their people continuously offer up discretionary effort resulting in up to 50% greater productivity.
2- Why Dealership Employees Are Critical to the Car Buying Journey
Hireology: No matter how much research customers complete online or how many times they’re targeted by your dealership ads, they’ll still have to interact with your dealership employees in order to make a final purchase. And if they don’t have a great experience with your dealership employees, your prospective customers might bring their business to a competing dealership.
3- How the Right Employees Can Build Trust and Loyalty in Your Dealership Brand
DealerRefresh: According to a recent study, 81 percent of recent car buyers polled did not enjoy the car buying experience, with 29 percent indicating they do not trust salespeople. The car sales process can’t simply be about pushing cars off the lot if you want to remain competitive. Instead, you need to understand your buyer, address their needs and establish a personal connection with each customer.
4- To Reduce Burnout on Your Team, Give People a Sense of Control
Harvard Business Review: Team dynamics directly affect a whopping 92% of what causes the most stress. Being part of a team can be a quick road to disappointment, frustration, and burnout, especially when some team members work harder than others, when some are on time and others are consistently late, when there’s drama and tension resulting from gossip, and when team leaders play favorites.
5-7 Strategic Ways to Increase Employee Retention While Reducing Costs
Entrepreneur: If your business experiences any turnover, you already know about the crazy high time investment and increasing difficulty — of hiring the new right person. Experts estimate that replacement costs from 150 percent to 200 percent of an employee’s salary and turnover-related costs were equivalent to more than 12 percent of the average company’s pre-tax income.
Check back next week for another Drive to Success: F&I Trends. You will learn about how important new F&I trends are for success at your dealership.