Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/752766
www.PowersportsBusiness.com SOLUTIONS Powersports Business • November 28, 2016 • 31 On the heels of my last installment, we got a lot of feedback on the transactional data. The feedback is some version of, "You got my attention. Now what do I do?" In other words, recognizing the transactional ratios isn't a matter of just tracking it. That simply let's you know where the problem is. Actualizing the delivery ratios involves a three-step process. STEP ONE Once a dealer decides to buy into the ratios, the first step is embracing the amount of staff needed. This is, and has always been, the big- gest hurdle for the dealer. Usually this number is 50-100 percent more employees than he or she is currently running. Unfortunately, most dealers con- sider the employee the biggest expense. I consider the employee to be the biggest asset, provided they are actually producing. We have come up with many scenarios as to how many unit sales employees are necessary for every customer to have an amazing experi- ence, all of which exceed most dealers' "lean and mean" philosophy. One such way is to think about your ser- vice department. It's staffed by demand, right? In other words, you start entertaining another technician when the work is pushed too far out. Imagine how many unit sales employees you'd have if you treated the "just looker" in the sales department as a demand. The answer is you'd have at least a 1:1 ratio of total sales employees to total service employees. Now add them up in your store and tell me do they match, or does sales have more? I didn't think so. We don't expect a service technician to produce quality work, while he's generating 100 hours per week, do we? Then why would we think sales staff would engage 10 customers per day, giving all of them an amazing experience? It's not going to happen. Can they "clerk" 10 customers/day? Sure. But you will never get to these transactional ratios until you staff to the benchmark. STEP TWO The second step in this process is education. One of the bigger "ah-ha" moments your team will have is realizing they are not currently get- ting everyone on to the log. Ask a sales manager, and he we swear that he is getting everyone who entered the unit sales department on the log. But it's the guy who is here for a part that didn't make it. It's the gal here for her first service that got missed, etc. It's the customers in the other departments who never had a chance to see the new mod- els, or get excited about a bike they didn't yet know existed. Yes, they all go on the log. Why wouldn't you put them on the log? They are part of the 2.8 percent who play in our industry, just not yet at the point of looking at a new unit. Isn't it our job to get them to that point? We also need to train team members in the other depart- ments that their job is to sell motorcycles as well. It's everyone's job! The next step is to train them how to turn that deal over to the sales department. "This is such a great jacket. What are you currently riding? Oh wow … you've got to let me get Matt and have him show you the new one of those that just came in!" It's simple, but it rarely gets done. In the service department many people would rather not fix the broken bike. They would rather put that money down on a new one, but it just hadn't crossed their mind yet. Education is the key for your dealer- ship to get the buy-in needed. STEP THREE Lastly, we must inspect what we expect. The biggest factor here is getting the staff emotion- ally vested in the game being played. We do this with a scoreboard. The score- board is simply tracking the ratios between the three pieces of information relative to the transactions. Greets: Transactions, Sits: Trans- actions, and Deliveries: Transactions. Most managers are reviewing this data every two hours on a simple white board or shared Google Doc. Some, however, go all in with a flat-screen monitor in the sales man- ager's office. That screen is running, in real time, the transactional ratios throughout the day, and some that we've seen are as big as a 60-inch television. That one in particular has a split screen where CRM data shows on the right hand side, and the transactional ratios are showing on the left (via shared Google Doc). The receptionist updates it every 10 minutes, so team members can watch "the game of transactions" play out in real time. Think about it: No coach waits until the game is over to coach the players, do they? And here's another piece to consider: How many times do you look at the scoreboard during a professional sporting event? Why wouldn't you want that same level of buy-in (emotional investment) from your team to hit these ratios? I know looking at these ratios every two hours, or in real time for that matter, is not why you get into this industry. Neither is figur- ing out the new labor laws, being legally com- pliant in F&I and having to deal with flooring costs from OEMs. But it is what is required to be a powersports dealer in today's day and age. Les Miles got fired as the head coach of LSU as he simply couldn't (or didn't) choose to run the new style of offense dominating college football. It didn't make him a bad coach, but it did make him unemployed. Your call. PSB Sam Dantzler is the founder of the training site Sam's Powersports Garage and the president of Garage Composites. He can be reached at sam@garagecomposites.com. 3 steps to embracing transactional ratios HEADROOM "I consider the employee to be the biggest asset, provided they are actually producing." SAM DANTZLER