Lay your foundation to create a conducive sales environment. Protect and maintain this foundation. 
 
If you don't believe this is one of the primary responsibilities of a GM/ Owner/Manager, I bet know what type of sales environment you have created.
 
"Attitude is everything", "Your attitude determines your altitude", "Everything starts with attitude", slogans and banners and pictures are all over every auto dealership in the world. However who takes responsibility for mandating sales peoples attitudes? 
 
Do we just leave it to untrained salespeople to be responsible for having a positive attitude? Do we mention attitude in between butt chewings  in our weekly meeting?
 
Do we hang signs or banners pertaining to good attitudes in our dealerships and hope that the message jumps off our banners or signs and into our salesman's minds? 
 
What or who would be the enemies and destroyers of good attitudes?
 
How do we recognize or reward positive attitudes? Surely, not as quickly as we recognize the negative things that our sales people and managers do. Everyone would agree attitude is the most talked about yet least acted on function in the dealership. 
Would you agree with the fact that a positive sales environment will sell more cars, keep employees longer, and cause repeat and referral business ?
Who's job is it to mandate every employees attitude?
 Let's see how committed you are as a GM/Owner to having a positive sales environment. 
Would you terminate an employee for having a bad attitude? What if it was a relative? A comptroller? A manager?
Every dealership has an employee who everyone knows is "good at their job" but they complain too much and have a poor attitude, but it is tolerated because they would be difficult to replace. 
In one of my sales meetings I point to each individual in the room and ask them how they feel when someone around them complains. They always respond with "It brings me down", " it makes me tired', "it takes my ambition away", it makes me feel bad" etc.. then I ask them the obvious question--Then why do you all do it.--they all just shrug their shoulders. 
Anyone who does not have a good attitude is like a rotten apple on a tree, spreading their rottenness to everyone else.
Do not tolerate people with negative attitudes. One person selling 25 cars a month and negging 10 other sales people out of 3 cars per month is really a negative 5 isn't he or she? 
 
If the negative person  is not employed in sales, isolate that person away from the sales floor. Make as little interaction as possible for the negative person and sales. Sales people work on the center stage of the public, and they have so much to over come already, why let these negative people blow their brains out with their negativity? 
 
Receptionist, title clerks, parts, service, detail, data entry,--all employees with a rainy day, gloomy attitude must be terminated or removed from interaction with the salespeople immediately. Even a comptroller who is a downer must be quarantined from dealing with salespeople, let them deal with a certain few managers only. You can't afford to have people dragging your sales force down. 
Some say motivation doesn't last, well I say neither does bathing, that why it is recommended daily!!!
 
Play some music in your showroom. Keep a clean facility
 
Customers can feel a positive environment when they walk in the showroom door, just like they can feel a negative one. Who's responsibility is it to ensure that customers fell the positivity when they dawn our door? 

Every Dealer and every manager is like an elevator, they either lift their people up or they bring them down. Which do you do?

This is an excerpt from my recently released book "Synergistic Selling" to read more just go here 

 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DLA3F3Y

 Roger Williams

The AutoMotiveCoach