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The Automotive Software Jan 14th, 2021 Article

3 Signs You Are Working In The Right Dealership...

or maybe in the wrong one...

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By Philip Cheatham Jan 14th, 2021

If you have 3-6 months experience in auto sales, you should start to think about "picking where you want to work."

Once you have proved yourself for a quarter to a half year, mostly to yourself, you should develop the confidence to think this way. It will help propel you in every way possible, from your interview(s) to your promotion(s).

You should be able to ask yourself: "What dealership deserves my talents?" Then you should be able to choose exactly where you want to work and get hired in that exact dealership.

These are the 3 things I suggest you look for:

Signs of low turnover: This isn't that easy to spot. Growing stores and Top Performing Dealerships/Groups are usually hiring. I will show you how to tell the difference.
Difficult hiring process: If you can get hired without at least a couple interviews and your resume isn't a Grand Slam, this is a sign of an easy hiring process. Too easy of a hiring process is usually a sign of high-turnover and and a sink or swim culture without much training and much worse, a lack of processes.
Detailed On boarding & Training Processes: Are you being hired directly into a finance department without a scheduled time with a trainer? If you are being hired into any mid-level management position without some wort of scheduled integration/on boarding training process for your position, this is a sign of a chaotic store. When processes aren't in place, chaos reigns supreme.

Signs of low turnover: This isn't that easy to spot. Growing stores and Top Performing Dealerships/Groups are usually hiring. I will show you how to tell the difference. Always hiring is not a sign by itself of high turnover. It could be a sign of large growth. It could just be a large store that inevitably always has some open positions because of a large staff. To spot low-turnover, a rule of thumb I like, is to find out how long management has been with the company. Add them all up and figure for the average management position in the dealership. A GM thats been in the store for 10-30 years is a great start. A GSM that has been in the store for 10 years and started in sales, is another great example. Look for people in management positions, that have been with the company a long time and held a lot of different roles. A lot of portions from within is a great sign. Demotions by the same standard, are a bad sign. People leave dealerships that demote a lot. It shows a lack of patience and processes. This is the best way I have found to really see if a dealership has low turnover. Looking at just the sales staff to judge turnover, I believe to be a little deceiving. If you do see 25 salespeople and a dozen decade plus team members, then you can absolutely assume this store does have low turnover. You want to work in a store with low turnover because it shows that the store has a culture that can be tolerated. The store probably has a decent assembly of processes. The store has probably been under a consistent and non toxic management. Don't just look to sales. Look at the management in the service department and elsewhere as well. If managers can stay around for good portions of their entire careers, its a great sign. Ask more questions, if the dealership has only been open for a couple years, obviously you cannot use this metric to make an assessment. If it is in a dealer group, how many people did they move over? How long have they been with the company? Look for a lot of promotions. Look at management a lot more than sales. If they promote and grow, they will need a newer sales staff!
Difficult hiring process: If you can get hired without at least a couple interviews and your resume isn't a Unicorn Grand Slam, this is a sign of an easy hiring process. Too easy of a hiring process, is usually a sign of high-turnover, a sink or swim culture without much training and much worse, a lack of other important processes. If you are recruited, don't assume the dealership has an easy hiring process. You may still have to face a difficult hiring process. I would approach random people I saw as promising all the time and try to recruit them. Once I got them into an interview, I made them sell me. I told them it was going to be hard and I always made sure I wasn't the only one interviewing. I usually made the applicant think I was sleeping on it, even if I wasn't and planned on hiring them. If you have some level of organization in your organization and processes, both of which make you a lot less desperate to hire! hire!! hire!!!, then you will have patience and restraint to take your hiring seriously and not just hire people and throw them at H.R. If you are on the end of being hired very rapidly and the dealership doesn't make you sweat a little in their hiring process, its a sign you are being hired at a disorganized and desperate to hire dealership. If they are desperate to hire, their processes probably suck. This means its most likely a chaotic place to work. I have seen organized chaos, it will be chaos none the less. If its chaotic, the culture will usually be at best, a constant on and off toxic. The old saying of "if it's too easy", applies here. It's most likely not a good thing, if the dealership you are looking at doesn't have a difficult hiring process. The more interviews the better. That means once you are hired, you will work with people that also went through a difficult hiring process to attain their positions. I purposely create this perception in my hiring, even if in reality I was desperately recruiting you. It makes everybody believe their positions are highly selective. This creates great morale, teamwork and culture in a dealership. Hiring people and throwing them on the floor makes the staff you have feel like they work at a day labor facility. It demoralizes your staff that may be trying to take your dealership seriously. Look for the challenge, not the revolving door. And for managers, create some exclusivity in your hiring, even if its just perception for the moment! It's better for all of us.
Detailed On boarding & Training Processes: Are you being hired directly into a finance department without a scheduled time with a trainer? If you are being hired into any mid-level management position without some sort of scheduled integration/on boarding training process for your position, this is a sign of a chaotic store. When processes aren't in place, chaos reigns supreme. This is similar to the last point. Its just the next place to look to see how detailed processes are=how tight this ship is run. Now within this final point, I'd like to make an alternative argument for high level managers. If I was looking for a place to work, Id be looking for a promising dealership, suffering in all the places I just mentioned. I'd be looking to come in and create everything I just discussed. This is where the real money is for the biggest secret in this article. Work a pay-plan? How about "plan your pay-plan?" A great high level manager should be looking for a dealership they know they can add tons of value to by multiplying units and gross. The most important thing to negotiate is your pay-plan not changing. You go in selling with the store selling 100 units and keep the same pay plan, when the store is selling 300 units. This is exactly how I was able to make extraordinary money. I targeted dealerships that I knew were severely underperforming their in their PMA's, because they were lacking in everything I explained above and much more. If you want to do this, negotiate your pay plan not changing. It doesn't really matter what it is to begin with, if you find the right opportunity. You can 6x what you were supposed to make in 90 days, in many dealerships out there, I promise. Just bring in the Daily Desk Processes, seriously.

Bonus: I know most people in our business, put all their eggs into the pay-plan basket, heres why this is so silly:

I have seen people make great money on what I would call at first glance, terrible pay-plans. I have also seen people struggle immensely meeting below-average draws on what at first glance seem like incredibly strong pay-plans.

The first reasons for this are obviously volume, brand, city etc. It goes even deeper than just being at a 40 unit per month dealership or a 500 unit per month dealership. I do want to dive into this first though, because it is the most gleaming and top reason as to why just a pay-plan by itself means nothing. If you take a finance position for example in this 40 unit per month store as a 2nd finance guy, you will get 20 deals a month. If your average is $3,000, you will write up $60,000. You need to end up making around 15% just to break 5 figures a month. This is if you have a $3,000 PVR. If you have a $1,500 PVR, you need to end up around 30%. If you start at a volume dealer making 10% total with bonuses but can touch 70-80 deals, you can break this 5 figures much easier. This is just the first reason a pay-plan by itself is a small factor in determining how much money you can make. There are so much more.

The simple point is, a pay-plan is only 1 of many factors. A very aggressive pay-plan can always be a very bad sign. If you are blinded by numbers and don't ask questions, you will most definitely end up disappointed.

I wish and ask for everybody to please stop acting like its all your pay-plan. Hours? Time off? Management? Come on! it goes on and on. Knock it Off!