The most important process COACHING

More Important than the latest greatest technology, the right inventory, advertising, hottest brand, and most importantly, the key to sustained long term growth in today's competitve market.

*Coaching = A training or development process

*5 Point Strategy to grow your own coaches

    At virtually every dealership in America we routinely promote our top sales associates into management. We promoted them because they demonstrated the ability to sell cars at a high level.

Selling cars at a high level as an individual is a totally different skill set than coaching a team to perform at a high level. The two skills are actually quite opposite.

Typically two failures are about to take place:

1)  We fail them because we haven’t developed them. Typically they receive little if any coaching or leadership training. We offer no development, strategy, or any process to identify potential coaching candidates.

 2)  They are virtually assured of failing us due to their lack of preparedness combined with our lack of commitment to developing them as a leader of people.

-Rather than invest in developing our people we simply hope-

After the promotion we hope. We hope the other managers will show them the ropes of sales management, deal structure, appraising etc. We hope this new promotion is the one who will grow our business.

 We hope he or she doesn’t get immersed in emails, frazzled by phone calls, dazed by data, pulverized by pressure, or even worse entitled by a new title. We hope the lack of leadership skills won’t breed stress, poor attitude, excuses, blaming, and ineffectiveness.

History has taught us an onslaught of these plagues will soon stymie our new manager. Our hope soon resembles a man drinking from a fire hydrant.

The excuse for such a flawed business practice is, “It’s the way we’ve always done it.”  This begs the question-How could a such a production oriented business repeatedley practice such a flawed method continually resulting in such a high rate of failure? This is our fallback answer-"That's the way we've alway's done it"....

Lacking vision to invest in growing our people is much more expensive than investing in growing them. Not merely monetarily, consider our time and energy investments as well. Continually starting over has a high cost in customer service, sales, litigation, gross, CSI etc.

What is the cost of poor or selfish management, high turn over, inconsistency, lack of inspiration, stress, poor leadership, under achievers, and bad attitudes?

Confident, inspired, well-trained associates produce better results than beat down, stressed, over whelmed associates. Seems like common sense, however, as Will Rogers stated, “The problem with common sense is it isn’t so common.”

Do not fall into excuses. “There aren’t any good people out there” or “why develop them they are going to leave anyway.” This is a loser’s mantra to be avoided. Get started today developing your coaching tree!

*Magic Johnson seemed to have all the leadership and charisma in the world as an NCAA champion, 5 time NBA champion, gold medalist, and MVP. He won thirty one percent of his games as the Lakers coach.

 *Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time, has struggled to even make the playoffs as an executive with Washington and Charlotte.

 *Bart Star won 5 Championships (2 Super Bowls) as Green Bay’s QB, but as a coach he had a record of 52 wins and 76 losses. Bart was quoted saying “Coaching was the greatest mistake I made.”

 The examples are many. Being productive at playing ball or selling cars does not translate to coaching others.

 Peyton Manning’s father is a former NFL Quarterback. His Brother is an NFL Quarterback. He is the all time touchdown passer in NFL history. He employs a quarterback coach.

 Tiger Woods has earned more money than any golfer who ever swung a club. Tiger employs a swing coach.

 Makes one wonder how we can be deceived into believing our guys are so good they do not need coaching. 

-A Marine Corps friend of mine always says "The more you train and sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war"

             -The future is going to be here whether you are prepared for it or not-

If you have done this more than just a little while you know good economic times when are when poor business habits are formed. Ah, we are great because sales plentiful. We are record setters. During these good economic times the little things are thrown out the window. Our rationale is we are doing just fine without learning to improve the skill set of our people.

However, when times tighten up as they always do, many of us seem surprisingly unprepared. During tougher economic times we must depend on our people being better than the competition down the street. Survival won’t come down to our brand, or location, but our people being better than the competition. This is when some businesses are forced to sell to competitors and some are forced to close their doors.

 Why wait until the wolf is at the door, why not have the best team in good and bad economic times?

Coach’s 5-point strategy

1) START RIGHT NOW making a plan to identify, hire, and promote coaches.  They are easily recognizable communicators and team players who encourage others to be the best they can be. Employing the old fashioned managers who's primary skill is pointing out what’s wrong, criticizing, taking credit for success, and blaming others for failures will kill you in today's market. They typically have limited coaching skills and are a dime a dozen. If they aren't improving your people they must go. We have an industry crowded with selfish "me first" people who haven't a clue about team growing. A coach deeply cares for others, it's a sacrifice to coach and grow people, but when people grow, production grows exponentially. Every dealership needs a top official (Dealer, GM, GSM) to be proficient at coaching.

 2) Implement daily training focusing on developing ,leadership, teamwork, communication, and attitude. Eighty percent of our success is attitude right? Doesn’t it make sense to nurture it? By investing in developing your people via print, on line training, seminars, and daily in-house training you are securing your own future. Leadership is as much learned as it is taught so be sure you have coaches in management. When the 2nd shift arrives is a great time for a 20 minute session.

*Caution- No brow beating, negative or “how great I was when I sold” training meetings allowed, these are strategically planned, purposeful, 20 minute DAILY sessions designed to grow the skill set of your sales team. Coaches remember it's their training not your training, make the training about them.

3) Team leader/liner-closer systems promote growth. Watching people grow as leaders is a beautiful thing. If you are not currently doing so implement a team leader/liner-closer system now. Results are positive as each deal is given more attention. Monitor for TLs for indicators of leadership ability. Some people have a God given gift for inspiring others and getting the best out of them, look for those people, as they are like finding diamonds or gold. The pay is minimal, a small salary and a 5 to 7.5% commission per deal (if your pay plan is 25% the sales associate gets 20% the TL 5% or if you pay 30% the split is 22.5% and 7.5%) The only true cost incurred is the small salary. Even if you don't go liner/closer please structure a sales pay plan that rewards achievers, where you payout commissions weekly. Insure the finance department and office process deals quickly, let the sales staff know how important their timely accurate pay is to you.

4) Eliminate selfish team members, regardless of their perceived irreplaceable skill set. The "me first" and "that's not my job" people are easily replaced and the team always rises when selfish "stars" are cut. Avoid excuses such as "We can't replace him, he is the best (salesman, paper hanger, desk man, closer) we have"/ “That’s the way we’ve always done it.” / “I can’t afford to invest in people who aren’t going to stay anyway.”/“We just don’t have time for training everyday” These excuses can not be tolerated and will run you out of business.

5) Commit to the process of coaching right now! Go all in, be prepared to place the people with true coaching skills above all others. Remember coaching is defined as “a training or development process.” Doesn't common sense tell us the more developed our sales team's skills are the more successful we are going to be? Then why wouldn't we INSIST on developing them? If you have to hire an outside coach to start the process of teaching your potential coaches by all means get the process started!

When you find a good coach they will improve and inspire the team to achieve their highest level of production. They lift the spirits and confidence level of the entire dealership. They make EVERYONE better. What is that worth? They are constantly developing people. Better people produce better results. Good pencil/desk people, strong closers, and finance people are so much easier to find or replace than a good coach. Start your coaching search RIGHT NOW.

The choice is yours, get serious about developing your people or begin looking for a buyer while you still have value. Stop waiting for what you want and start working with what you have.

Roger Williams

“The Automotive Coach”

Corporate Sales Manager

Fletcher Auto Group