Most dealerships are enjoying a tremendous amount of success, particularly financially. There is a lot that could be written about getting back to the basics and staying with your processes during a time where it’s tempting to shortcut, and success has been had, even with shortcuts in place.

But let’s talk about this from a different angle and look at management’s role. It’s easy to complain your people are taking shortcuts, and it’s easy to lament that it’s harder to find good people now more than ever. It’s also easy to kick back and enjoy these profitable times and not have great care about the future. Let the good times roll.

In the interest in long-term success and producing consistently excellent results — regardless of inventory levels or market conditions — I’d ask you to take a step back and look at how your management style might be contributing to some minor shortcomings today that could lead to a drop off when making money gets harder.

First, let’s start with the easy stuff. Do you set high expectations and communicate them to everyone? Does everyone — and I mean everyone — know what the goals are and how the team is progressing toward hitting those goals every day? Do you have the tracking and daily monitoring in place to accomplish this? Do you have a game plan for hitting these goals that includes training? Do your current pay plans support what you are asking people to do and drive the behavior that matches the culture of your store? Are you part of the complaining or the solution for your teammates, tearing down obstacles for success? One of the things that gets missed by so many managers is how much easier and more effective it is to hold people accountable after you’ve torn down every identifiable obstacle to success.

Now let’s get to the good stuff. It’s been said that management is like parenting: you must communicate what is expected. Be consistent with those things and have clear consequences. So, my question to you is: at your dealership, does everyone know what is expected of them and what the consequence would be if they didn’t follow the plan? This takes a lot of thought, work, and communication upfront and being consistent is hard work, just as it is at home. But ultimately, it’s less stressful and is far greater to produce the desired results. If you or your managers complain about a salesperson’s behavior, force yourself to take a step back and hear yourselves as parents complaining about not being able to get a kid to do their homework or stop playing video games.

Where do you start? Identify the activities that are non-negotiables for each position. Then for each activity, establish the consequences for not following the process. Take a simple example: we have a meeting every Saturday at 8:00 am. If someone is late or doesn’t show up, what are the consequences? They might look like this: first, if the door is closed, the meeting has started; the employee will wait in the hallway until the meeting is finished. If this is the first offense, have a conversation about the importance of being on time. This salesperson will be reminded of the importance. A second offense will be written up and placed in the employee file on the permanent record. A third offense means being sent home for the day, unable to sell cars on a Saturday. A fourth offense might be termination.

The managers don’t have to wonder what they are supposed to do. We don’t have frustrating interruptions once the meeting starts. The expectations are clear and easy to understand, and no one can claim injustice or being treated differently than anyone else. Now go back and identify the non-negotiables for each position and layout consequences for every task. Then get full management buy-in and communicate these non-negotiables to the entire team.

You see an interesting dynamic when you go from dealership to dealership. The bigger the dealership, the more likely it is to have consistency and non-negotiable processes. The question that might come to mind is, do they have consistent processes, and this very spelled-out way of doing business because they are high volume? Or do they have a high volume because they have consistent processes? Ask yourself if you think any of those 1000 car dealerships you hear about allow their salespeople to have their own processes, and if the managers do the job several different ways. I think you know the answer.

In these dealerships, no one person is bigger than the team.

Many years ago, I had a client dealer who consistently sold 180 — 200 cars per month. The dealer pulled his managers together and spent a great deal of time building a game plan around what it would take to sell 400 cars. This included staffing, advertising, and inventory. It also included process and payment plans. The truth is they never got to 400 vehicles in a month. But they also never sold under 300 again. This was a management-driven success, nothing to do with luck and for sure nothing to do with the market.