Plans are nothing without actions

SalesMinded dealers know that real change is the key to execution

By: Doug Trenary

Many years ago, I read a cover article in Fortune magazine titled, “Why do companies fail?” The article had huge depth of research and many examples — and these examples of companies who went by the wayside in some cases were titans at the time like Eastern Airlines — remember them? The organizations noted covered many different industries and even different time frames and economic conditions at the respective time.

The moral to the article: All of these companies had very detailed plans on how to operate and press forward. What did they all lack? Execution of their own plan.

What about your tire dealership? Do you have game plan? I know you do or you wouldn’t be in operation. And you might be very successful. Do you as an owner or manager feel good after each team meeting that the key issues for operations, sales and service got up onto the table? Do you spend money on training and then hope the training gets put into action? Do you have store or division managers and associates that nod their head in agreement when asked to do something new but they won’t do it? Are your sales, service efforts, collections and profits suffering because they won’t?

 If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you’re in common company – you notice I didn’t say good company — because it’s not a good condition. But it is a common condition — a common and very costly problem.

What’s the problem? Very simply, human beings resist change. Yet change is the key ingredient needed to raise the bar, to lead at new levels, to gain new skills, and to sell more tires, add-ons and service in this tight economy. Even more specifically, it is personal change in one person — one of your employees at a time, that makes all the difference.

So what can you do as a leader? Let’s start with defining the challenge.

Challenge: Lack of execution, taking action and following through because an employee does not want to change to do the new behavior.

 I see this all the time with tire dealers. A manager is fired up after a training or coaching session — they’re loaded with new sales knowledge or how to more effectively communicate with their team. They agree in a meeting to tighten their follow-up and hold their store team associates more accountable. But the test comes in a couple weeks — maybe 30 days — after these commitments. All you have to do is ask them, “How are the changes you agreed to make coming? How are they working with your store?” Then comes the answer: “Well, I got so busy, I haven’t been able to do that yet... but I will though when things slow down and I can get my head above water.” Slow down? Who wants their retail dealership or commercial operation to slow down? I’m sure you don’t.

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Related Topics: Doug Trenary, SalesMind

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