BG Products Industry News

The greatest challenge in the automotive industry today is finding leaders who will lead, managers who will manage, and directors who will provide direction. The centerpiece of effective leadership, management, and direction is accountability:

1. Personal Accountability—holding yourself accountable for the desired outcome
2. Top Down Accountability—holding others accountable to perform implemented processes

Service departments are famous for implementing processes and not holding employees accountable to consistently perform the task. For example:

• Advisors must do a walk-around on every vehicle that enters the service drive…with the owner present. They don’t, and there are no consequences.
• Every technician must do a comprehensive inspection on each vehicle. They don’t, and no one follows up to see why not.
• Advisors are required to follow up on declined work by calling the customers within 48 hours. They don’t, and management seems to have forgotten all about it.

Accountability isn’t a four-letter word. Dave Anderson says accountability is not something you do to somebody, it’s something you do for somebody. It’s management saying, “I care enough about you to hold you accountable. I care more about your future than your feelings. I’m hard on you because I know you can do it…and I believe in you.”

There is a common belief among service managers that techs and advisors don’t want to be held accountable. They have bought into a lie that says accountability is punitive—punishment, big brother, micro-managing—or something distasteful to employees. In fact, the opposite is true.

A few years ago I was consulting with a group of seven dealerships, and to say they were a dysfunctional family would be an understatement. There was drama and strife everywhere, and their business was in decline. I brought the techs and advisors together (without any managers) and simply asked them what was up. They listed a few minor issues and personality conflicts, but their main issue was lack of accountability. I was floored. This group of educated, professional adults wanted management to “inspect what they expected.”

Their frustration was centered around the fact that management demanded processes be followed, then didn’t correct, coach, mentor, and lead when employees didn’t follow the process. The message from management was “do it or else;” yet nothing happened to those who didn’t perform. The techs and advisors quickly learned that management didn’t really care and, therefore, they didn’t, either.

Quoting Dave Anderson again, “you will lose the respect of the best if you don’t deal with the worst!” Anderson goes on to say that leaders shouldn’t desire “to be liked” –their goal should center around “being respected.”

If you are respected, people will follow you—and ultimately like you. The leaders of the above dealer group lost all credibility because they failed to hold their team accountable. The net result was not just internal drama; it affected hours per RO, maintenance service sales, CSI, retention, and fixed ops profitability. All that could have been avoided by simply holding team members accountable. Surely, it can’t be that simple. Yes, it’s that simple.

The dealer saw what was happening and hired a new fixed ops director. Within 90 days things started to change, and six months later several of the service departments had record months. He didn’t come in and fire everyone, although some managers couldn’t be salvaged. He just laid out the expectation, provided clarity on how to meet his expectations, and did weekly follow-up (accountability) to make sure his processes were being followed.

His monthly service sales meetings are exciting, attitudes have improved, and everyone’s income has gone up! It’s a beautiful thing.

The primary reason the new fixed ops director made such a difference and turned seven dealerships around is because he practiced personal accountability. That means when he accepted the responsibility of being fixed ops director, he became accountable for the outcome.

Accepting responsibility for a task is meaningless and won’t produce any results if you don’t hold yourself personally accountable for the outcome.

Jeff Peevy, President of Automotive Management Institute, has written extensively about this topic. Peevy says:

• Personal accountability doesn’t require heavy supervision
• Personal accountability creates a thirst for knowledge
• Personal accountability pursues quality

It starts at the top. If the leader doesn’t accept personal accountability, then respect will be lost and the leader’s authority will evaporate…and you can forget about your team members ever practicing personal accountability.

Top down accountability—accountability to the manager—is important, but when your team members accept personal accountability, then you, as a leader, have hit the sweet spot. Your personal accountability has now replicated itself and now your team members have it in the fiber of their DNA.

So, what’s at stake?

The National Automobile Dealers Association put out a fascinating statistic that I had never seen before. According to NADA, 49% of total dealer gross came from fixed ops in 2017. That’s up from 45% in 2015. Of course, I’m sure you already know that most of the dealership’s net income comes from fixed ops gross.

The point is simply this: accountability increases revenue sales, gross profit, and net profit. There is a high price to pay for ignoring the impact of accountability throughout your dealership…and a huge reward for training your team to master the art of accountability!

This article is for leaders—dealers, general managers, and service managers—the men and women who have been given a sacred trust to shepherd their employees and the dealership to success.

Once you, as a leader, have embraced the message, then I think it would be a good idea to pass this article on to your employees.

Shakespeare wrote in “Hamlet” Act III Scene I “To be or not to be.” A motivational speaker and personal trainer that I know says, “What you be, they are becoming.” One of my favorite authors says it like this, “Your employees pay more attention to what you do than what you say.” Behavior is caught, not taught.

The Draconian parenting philosophy of “Do what I say not what I do” has never worked and it never will. Yet I see this happening every day in the business world; managers have one set of standards for their employees and a different set of standards for themselves. (Good heavens, I’m starting to sound like Dave Anderson!)

So, are you a student, a disciple, or a disciple-maker? Let’s start by defining each:

Student: A learner (a person who is trained but never produces)

Disciple: A learner and a doer (a person who applies what they have learned; result: increased revenue via addition.)

Disciple-Maker: A learner, a doer, a believer, and a teacher (a person who is held accountable by their superiors to continue applying what they have learned; result: increased revenue and exponential growth via multiplication.

Rather obviously, the goal of every owner and manager ought to be to become a disciple-maker—and to have teammates that share the passion. What you be, they are becoming. It starts at the top. Let’s look at some examples that better explain each category:

Student example: Management sends a service advisor to a sales training seminar. However, the manager does not attend. When the service advisor returns from the training, he immediately goes back to doing what he has always done. He never applies anything he has learned. The manager doesn’t know what the advisor learned, therefore he does not have the ability to hold the advisor accountable. Nothing changes. It was a total waste of time and money. Unfortunately, this is the pattern that happens most often in the automotive business. Management is under the mistaken belief that the key to success is having trained service advisors. It’s not. The key to success is having trained service advisors who are held accountable to sell maintenance service—who are held accountable to apply what they have learned.

Disciple example: In this scenario, again, the manager does not attend the training. However, the service advisor has enough drive, energy, and desire that he does apply what he has learned. However, after a few days or weeks, because there was no accountability and the manager doesn’t really know or understand what he’s doing or why it doesn’t take long for him to return to his old ways.  And even though he applied it for a short time, it didn’t become part of his DNA.

This is so tragic because the advisor is all fired up—ready, willing, and able to produce—yet due to a lack of support from the manager, everything fades away. This is one reason there is such a high turnover in the automotive industry. Weak managers who don’t believe in training now have a self-fulfilling prophecy: “See, I told you so. All this training gets us nowhere; it’s a waste of time and money.”

Disciple-Maker example: The manager and the advisor attend the training together. The general manager and the dealer go, also! It sends a message that training is important; that training matters. There’s going to be accountability to a standard. It’s a new day. Things are going to change. There’s a new sheriff in town. Now when the advisor returns from the training, management all the way up to ownership knows what is required of the advisor to succeed. Therefore, everyone is held accountable up and down the management chain. What’s the net result?

The sales training works because the advisors are held accountable. They now have become disciple-makers who teach and train customers, who themselves become disciple-makers with their friends and family. In other words, the service advisor’s sales presentation is so clear that not only do the customers buy the maintenance services, they “buy-in” to the concept that preventive maintenance saves them money. This is true success. This is what you’re looking for, isn’t it?

So managers, ask yourself, “Am I a student?” (Which doesn’t make me or the dealership any money), “Am I a Disciple?” (Which will add a little bit to the bottom line, but not much), or “Am I a disciple-maker?” (A game-changer, a guy who is out there getting it done and holding my people accountable to get it done.)

Excuses: These are some of the most common excuses for not becoming a disciple-maker:

1. Can’t afford the time “I’m too busy. We’re short-handed.”

Let’s take a reality check for just a minute. I understand the fact that a dealer can’t attend every training event for every department every time. And I understand that a service manager can’t attend every OEM technical training class that he sends his technicians to or every sales training class his advisors attend. But the more engaged you, as a leader, are in understanding what your people are learning, the more effective you’ll be at holding them accountable to do it.

At the very least attend one training event a month with them. Additionally, you could commit to being present at the beginning of most meetings held at your dealership, simply to welcome everyone, thank them for being on your team, and to let them know you support the processes and techniques they are learning.

2. Can’t afford the money “I hate to invest in people that I don’t think will be around very long. We have a high turn-over rate with our advisors and managers and we just don’t want to invest in them.”

It has been said that it is far better to train people and have them leave than it is to not train them and have them stay! If you invest in the training and hold them accountable to implement what they’ve learned, then your team will increase their production and give you a great return on investment.

3. Too lazy to do it; unmotivated “Quite frankly, I just don’t care.”

(Obviously, nobody is going to say this out loud but this is the attitude that many in management have.) Their thinking goes something like this: “I’m just not that passionate about it. I’m making an average salary, I have average personnel, we have an average dealership, things are going along pretty good. I just don’t want to put out the effort to get to that next level.” In other words, what you’re doing is “good enough” and you don’t want to invest the time, money, energy and effort to be great. By the way, you know the old saying, “the enemy of great is good.”

It’s easy to get worn out in the automotive service business. Long hours, customer expectations and demands, computer issues, technicians—it can suck the life out of the most optimistic among us.

That’s why we all need to be energized with fresh ideas. Just a reminder that I’m writing to managers and leaders—you are the folks that need refreshing the most. Attending training seminars with your service team will refresh you. If nothing else, do it for yourself.

In summary, if you’re looking for maximum return on the time and money you invest in having your people trained, this is the way to get it. Disciple-makers make disciples that go on to make disciples. This is contagious multiplication. What you be, they are becoming! “Go ye therefore and make disciples.”