NCM Associates was on hand at NADA 2012 with the express purpose to open a dialogue with attending dealers and managers to listen to their issues, concerns, successes, and desires relative to their automotive dealership operations.  It was a great opportunity for us to connect with dealers inside and outside the NCM family and as always, the conversations were compelling in many ways.  In particular, one dealer told me about his vision for developing his future leaders, which I found to be quite progressive—and wise—in this time of cautious optimism in the automotive retail industry.

This particular dealer-operator has several stores in Canada.  He came into the booth with a purpose—he was there to get information about our management training programs.  He told me about his strategy to develop highly-skilled managers out of several very sharp, highly-skilled, but never-worked-in-the-car-business young professionals he’d recently hired.  His plan was to combine rigorous on-the-job training with formal automotive retail management training, turning them into the best management team possible.  He was absolutely convinced that with the right training program, combined with experience working in every department in the dealership, he would develop high-performing managers who would ensure his stores’ success and profitability for the long-term. 

There was no discussion of risk of turnover, no concern about the cost or the time it would take to achieve his objectives.  He truly felt that by committing to these young professionals, giving them the resources they would need to succeed in automotive retail management, the reward would far outweigh the costs.  And to top it all off, he was excited about the process he’d developed and now it was just a matter of finding the right training to complement his in-dealership development program! 

I was reminded of this conversation while attending training myself this past week.  I was speaking with an email optimization consultant.  He told me he finds his best, most promising employees working as servers in restaurants because they possess the qualities he looks for in raw talent:  motivated; intelligent; hard-working; conversational; and highly sensitive to the needs of their customers.  He can turn someone with these traits into a revenue-producing specialist with several weeks of intensive training, but it takes many months to undo the bad habits experienced candidates often bring to the job.  

While I'm not suggesting the restaurant industry is the place to go to find auto dealership talent, it's just another illustration of what that wise dealer had in mind:  it may be very profitable to step outside the realm of automotive retail to find that next great manager.  Just don't forget the all-important element of professional training to shape those promising candidates into true automotive retail management professionals.   

As you consider your hiring and management development plans for 2012, are you doing the same things you’ve always done and having the same results, or are you planning on doing something different?  We’d love to hear your plans, too.  Post a comment here, call 866.756.2620 or email us at ncmi@ncm20.com…we’re listening!    

Robin Keller is the Marketing Communications director for NCM Associates