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Sean Kelley

Sales Managers: Shoot the Messenger, Shoot Yourself In the Foot!

If you’re a sales manager, every day your sales staff line up to bring you news of their success, failures, conquests, and exploits. Sometimes they bring great news, excitedly proclaiming,”The clients just signed, we made a deal!” High fives, words of affirmation and celebration, everyone rejoices in the success of the moment. It is simple to react in the proper way when everything is going your way.

On the contrary, there are times when the message from your sales representative is less than favorable, “Boss I can’t get them to sign, they are going to walk away from the deal.” Certainly, news like this can be frustrating for a sales manager. After spending so much time helping to manage the deal, then to have your sales person lose control like this? Getting angry or frustrated with your salesperson may be your first instinct; however, you need to know that your gut reaction to say something rude, sarcastic or angry, can cost you a lot more than one lost sale. So in situations like this, what is the best thing to do? How do you work to save the deal, correct the issues at hand without brow beating your employees?

Put yourself in the shoes of your salesperson. They probably wanted the sale as much if not more than you! Even top notch sales people with the best attitudes may feel down and out when the loss of a sale occurs. Do you think your sales person wanted to let you, their sales manager, down intentionally? Did they want to look bad in the eyes of their peers by losing a sale? Did they want to flush that commission down the toilet intentionally? Ask yourself this, how do YOU feel when you let your boss down? When you make a mistake, how do you want to be treated by your supervisor? More on this later, for now, bite your tongue!

First things first, attempt to save the deal. You probably need time to cool off before correcting your sales person properly. Speaking with the would be client will allow you this time. Also, more importantly, you can NOT correct your staff member and coach them if you don’t know WHY the potential buyer is backing out. At this point in the deal, you may believe you know why the customer is leaving without buying. In reality, until you ask the client, your only making an assumption. Corrective action based on emotion and assumptions? Sounds like a recipe for a frustrated sales person, who doesn’t learn what they need in order to improve, as well as a loss of respect to their manager to me!

Go talk to the client or customers without your sales person present, this will allow them an easier time opening up or giving you feedback on your staff member. Ask them how their experience was right off the bat. They may give you subtle clues about what went wrong, or why they are leaving. Pay close attention to their body language. Are they actually listening and providing honest feedback or are they just running out the door? Ask permission to follow up with them, find out how and when they prefer to be contacted. This will cause them to not feel as if you are holding them hostage as well as give you a time frame on their purchase. If they don’t want you to reach out to them, something may have gone seriously wrong. If they won’t provide any real reasons or objections for you to work with, ask permission to probe deeper. Something along the lines of, “Mr Customer, at the risk of sounding pushy or high pressure, may I ask you a serious question?” Once they say yes, throw it out there, “What is the ONE thing keeping you from making a decision today?” In this way you may uncover the main objection without making the client angry at you for being nosy. They did after all, give you permission to ask the question! Once you have tried your best to overcome the objections, save the sale, and you have cooled off you can move forward. Now that you know the REAL reason the customer did not buy, and your customer is not present, NOW is the time to coach and train your salesperson.

Again, don’t shoot the messenger, your employee was just relaying the clients message. This message is probably an answer to your associates presentation or the manner in which you directed the sale as the manager. You did in fact train your sales person to sell for you right? You as the manager, must accept some responsibility for what has happens in a sale, both good or bad! Let your sales person know that you are on their team, that you want them to sell too as many clients as possible because their success is your success. In this way they will not put up a defensive barrier which will limit their listening. Next, ask your sales person if THEY know why the customer had left. There is no point in “beating a dead horse.” Your employee may already know the mistakes that were made, if they hit the nail on the head and tell you the correct reason the sale was lost, then kudos to them. Your next question should be, “What will you do next time to produce a better result?” Then hold them accountable for their commitment the next time they are in a similar situation so history does not repeat itself. If their “reason” for the lost sale is not the actual reason the customer left, now it’s your turn to point out what they missed, the opportunity lost, and what it would mean for them if they correct the shortcoming moving forward. If as a sales manager you adopt this method of personnel development, your staff will respect you for such resolve. They will always seek to grow with you, and will believe that you really do have their backs.

In review, the short term damage to you, your client, and team member for “shooting the messenger.” Are very serious and destructive. First and foremost you look insecure, weak and unconfident: all poor leadership qualities. If the customer hears what’s going on you may easily offend them and will have no hope of saving the deal. Second, you do not find out what the sales associate needs actual training or coaching on, so they never get better at selling. You create a fear in your employee to approach their manager in any undesirable situation, which is when they need you the most. The next time something’s going south, do you think they are going to tell you about it? Even IF you know the real reason the sale was lost, your behavior will have caused your staff member to shut down and not listen to you and improvement cannot take place.

Long term damage of shooting the messenger, is high employee turnover. The only sales people that will stick around to work with you are ones that like abuse. More unnecessary lost sales will occur, due to the assumptive corrective action that isn’t solving the real gap in the salespersons behaviors, attitudes or presentation. As well as you gaining a reputation for leading by irrationality and emotion, which is not a reputation you want in a leadership role. A true test of a leader is the ability to stay cool and react appropriately, especially when things don’t go your way. Stay calm, talk to the client, and lastly coach your staff member. Always remember, if you’re a shoot the messenger type of leader, your shooting yourself in the foot!

About Sean Kelley

Sean works with car dealers to achieve great results through their people and technology. Sean has extensive diversity in leadership ranging from Special Ops combat veteran, general sales manager, company owner, and a tech company executive. Sean will help your people find purpose, create a growth mindset, improve self-accountability and effectively develop your teams through his unique, customized approach to coaching. If you are interested in exceeding your goals and building an inspirational leadership team, email Sean directly: Sean@carmotivators.com or Get Started For FREE With Coach Chat

#coachingthecarbusiness #drivecoaching #thisistraining #coachingexcellence #winningcultures

Redefined Company Values

When you surround yourself with the right people, with the right values, you can reach your destination a heck of a lot quicker and have more fun doing it. Over the past few months, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the people on my team, and what I love most about each of them. “What really makes them the right people?”, I asked. I also had them do the same activity. Then it hit me, I only spend half my life with my team… What about my clients, my Facebook group, my LinkedIn followers, my family. Maybe I’m selfish, maybe I’m eccentric, but since I only get to live once I want to spend the precious time I do have left on this earth surrounded by amazing people who share similar core values and beliefs. After all, it’s the only way I can come close to accomplishing my vision, of impacting the leadership landscape of the entire auto industry by bringing coaching to the car business. #coachingthecarbusiness After much deliberation, analysis of words, discussion with team members, family, friends, clients…etc. I have redefined my company core values and what it takes to be a #CarMotivator. Did I make up the words? Yes. Do they have deep meaning to everyone who I want to partner with, hire, surround myself with, coach, develop, promote, and share in my success with? Absolutely! Are you a #CarMotivator? What does it take to be a #CarMotivator? Here are our core values!
  1. Posiastic – We lift others up, help them see the silver lining in every challenge and help them understand when the positive possibilities outweigh the negative outcomes. We are excited about any opportunity to make a positive impact in the lives of others: our customers, each other, our clients, and our supervisors!
  2. Growfective – We are thirsty for knowledge, always wanting to achieve more, willing to learn, accept coaching, want to develop others and are always seeking continuous improvement. A #CarMotivator is always looking to master each thing we do and do it to the best of our ability. We know that our personal brands, the lives of our families, friends, and companies DEPEND on us being the BEST that we can be. We plan, execute, improve and persist! We educate ourselves so we can have the knowledge necessary to improve others. We always aim to help others grow as a person, in their careers, and in their business!
  3. Honitiative – Painfully honest. We caringly tell people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear and we do it even when it’s uncomfortable for us. We engage others, take ownership, and interact with each other in a thoughtful way, seek opportunities to help others, step up when a leader is needed, take ACTION and don’t WAIT for success, we move towards success every minute of the day possible. We don’t understand the word “wait”. When we see others aren’t on the same page, or something his holding them back, we confront the challenge directly in an attempt to help!
  4. Insportive – Inspire people to stretch their comfort zones, do more, and reach their fullest potential! People will be up, people will be down: We will ALWAYS be there to help lift others up when in need. We help others think bigger, set goals, create visions for success and ultimately support their efforts along their journey!
  5. Teamership – We work together to accomplish more together. There are too many lone wolves in the car business, out for #1 and we tend to put others first. We believe ANYONE regardless of position, title, salary, experience, OR age can be a leader. I’ve seen 19-year-olds in charge of people’s lives in combat, with no official management title or salary. Stepping up is the RIGHT thing to do, and a Motivator ALWAYS leads when it’s necessary. We lead by example and don’t ask people to go where we haven’t gone before. Motivators are people of character who always try to do the right thing, and when we don’t (because we’re human) we are humble enough to own our mistakes. We stay competent and able to transfer skills to others because we have mastered them ourselves. We don’t easily give up on people, we give others a chance to improve and grow before throwing in the towel!
  6. Awariosity – We are aware of ourselves, our weaknesses, our strengths, and the people we surround ourselves with. We take time to ASK, pause, reflect, discuss, and as such, people are drawn to us because of this high level of insatiable curiosity and understanding. We ask and listen first, then ask and listen more before assuming and talking, because we understand the mother of ALL lost sales is an unasked question. We live in the moment and make the person in front of us our greatest priority. Every interaction is a dialog, and a collaborative effort to understand the situation and work out a win/win situation!
Re-defining my company’s core values has been a liberating experience. Now I can give others more clarity to understand the mindsets, and belief systems it takes to be part of my company and my life. I have the tools to help others decide if they want to be along with me for the ride. It’s easier to prevent the wrong person from getting on the bus or get the wrong person off the bus. I challenge you to do the same for your business, my friends! If you are interested in teaming up with Car Motivators, whether it’s for your own personal development, developing your team, a strategic business partnership, or something else please email me anytime at Sean@CarMotivators.com or call me at 1-888-921-0221 Sincerely, Sean Kelley

Preparation Sells

     Over the weekend, I was reminiscing with some of my old Army friends. We decided to bust out the photo library we built during our 14 months in the middle east in 2003 and 2004 during Operation Iraqi Freedom 1.

     The photo we came across, which you can see above, I want to be a valuable lesson for you, when it comes to sales and management. The picture happened to be one of me cleaning my M249 SAW. I carried this 30 pound fully automatic machine gun around for over a year. It literally became a part of my wardrobe, no different than how you put on a pair of shoes every day. I lugged that thing around everywhere I went… First off, because those were the force protection rules, also, because I didn’t want to fall under attack, and not be ready.

    There I was at 20 years old, uniform covered in salt stains from sweating in the 120+ degree heat, my stylish high and tight haircut, face sunburn thanks to the Iraqi desert sun. Focused like a laser on scrubbing the dust and sand out of every crevasse in my weapon.

Those weapons that the Army supplied us with could be extremely finicky. They must be properly maintained to ensure proper functionality. The last thing you want to do is enter an ambush, or any other sort of gun fight for that matter, and not be able to defend yourself due to a weapon jam. When that happens, you must perform “SPORTS”. That’s when you “Slap, Pull, Observe, Release, Tap, Shoot” to clear the weapon to try and get it firing again. This takes precious seconds that could mean the difference between life and death.

The time spent preparing for battle versus actually in combat was probably a million to one, but every time combat happened, I was ready. It was a matter of life and death and I took myself and my team coming home, very seriously.

    What if you as a sales manager, or salesperson, applied this same dedication in preparation for the sale? When you have a customer working with your sales people, on the phone, or in front of you, the combat has begun. If you haven’t prepared, there will be missed opportunities when the right questions aren’t asked and we fail to handle objections. That is the sales equivalent of a weapon jam mid combat. Lives won’t be lost, but in this case, the customer walks out on you, and buys from your competition. In sales, your weapons are your attitude, skills, routine, interpersonal skills and product knowledge. How much time do you spend honing those skills before an engagement? Managers, are your salespeople so prepared for opportunity that they cannot fail, or are you training during the fight in hopes they learn then?

Make time every day for doing one of the most critical activities to sales and leadership success: Clean your weapon… Train, coach, role play, study, practice, to ensure every possible victory in sales. Stop training during the fight and be ready for battle, preparation sells!

Partnerships Add Massive Value

One of the most effective ways to grow your business is through partnerships. It doesn’t matter if you are in sales, management, a business owner, or a stay at home mom. Partnerships may add massive value to business by expanding your capabilities, augmenting your product, or increasing your client base.

My wife partnered with some mothers in our subdivision to be partners for morning walks. As a result, she almost always accomplishes this healthy morning activity. Thanks to her accountability partners, everyone wins.

A sales person wanted to ensure his customers were taken care of on his day off. He also wanted to enjoy his day off without working. He partnered with a co worker, and now the other handles sales and service for the other. In this way, the customer always has support, and each professional enjoys their work free day off! Through this partnership they both come out ahead, as do their customers.

A used car manager we coach partnered with other local businesses to send referrals back and forth. One great result was seen when the manager partnered with a detail shop. The detail company recommends customers to the dealership by giving each customer a $500 off coupon to the dealership, if they trade in their car within a week of their detail. The dealership does all its clean ups at the detail shop. It’s a win/win/win.

DriveCentric, the auto industries best CRM provider, has been a loyal client of ours and has experienced the benefits of coaching. Kelley Coaching has also gained from the experience of coaching their team, and working with their dealerships. Now, a partnership between the two companies has been built to bring massive value to all our car dealers.

Kelley Coaching and DriveCentric, aim to coach excellence into each employee. We will forge a team of unstoppable sales and leadership champions for our dealers across the country! Together we will provide the best employee development your dealership has seen. Through a laser focused, customized approach to coaching each store, we will help you develop a winning culture for each dealership. DriveCoaching has been born and we are #coachingthecarbusiness

The DriveCoaching opportunity is rooted in the metrics provided by the automotive industries latest technology in sales, DriveCentric. The DriveCoaching team is powered by top notch Carden Group, automotive consultants. Bringing years of automotive success, experience and leading-edge management techniques such as our D.R.I.V.E.C3 methodology: our mission. “Ensure automotive leaders achieve great results through their people and technology!”

What this means for you…

As a Kelley Coaching client, you have been invaluable to our success. As such, I want you to come on this journey with me. I will still provide you the services you have come to expect under the Kelley Coaching umbrella. Your wins have inspired this change and I want to thank you for continuing with me down the path to excellence in your lives, and careers. We will still coach you, and ensure you move toward your desired destination. My promise to you is that our relationship will continue to grow. Only our website and Facebook landing pages will change. DriveCoaching is where all blogs, contacts, and communication will now take place.

Friends, please join the DriveCoaching Facebook page, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram page of your choice by clicking on the icon on our new website! DriveCoaching.us We look forward to coaching your continued success, wherever your ambitions are, through DriveCoaching!

My question to you, “Who could you partner with that would be a win/win/win, and add value to your business?”

Out of Sight Teams Driving You Out of Your Mind?

Remote offices, national sales teams, overseas projects, multi-state company mergers, centralized departments separated from the main office, outsourced responsibilities: What do all these organizational groups have in common? The necessity for “virtual teams” of employees, of course.

I’ve consulted for many companies that utilize various, virtual team compositions in many different scenarios. I have identified several challenges that, regardless of the location or type of business, they all face. After hearing the anguish from both leaders and their team members from these companies, I want to help! In order to reduce of the stress and anxiety caused by the adoption of the modern virtual team, here are some ideas to minimize these challenges for your company. 

First, let’s look at the most common challenges I’ve seen:

  • People don’t get the “why”. According to Simon Sinek in his book Start With Why, he identifies research that proves the part of your brain that is based on emotion, not language or logic, is what leads us to make decisions. We effectively communicate our “why” much better in person due to body language, facial expressions showing passion, and tone of voice. Virtual teams are often working without real understanding of the reason they are working on a project, a task, an objective or goal. As a result, these team members do not understand the “why” or develop the passion behind the work they are doing. This may lead to a severe loss in productivity or even worse: an undesired outcome. 
  • Mixed messages. Virtual teams often have an off site leader and an onsite manager. If there is no official onsite manager you better believe one has stepped up as a “de-facto leader.” When two or more people are calling the shots and don’t have consistent access to each other, often the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. This often creates situations where mixed messages are being communicated to the team. When clear direction is not given, the team will individually decide which route to take. In addition, it also breeds potential for triangular communication or “mommy vs. daddy” upward communication scenarios causing severe, unwanted drama. Drama the cripples virtual team and sows dissension among the ranks.
  • Lack of clarity around expectations. We all have expectations of our direct reports and supervisors. In fact, with each new project or client, new expectations often exist. When expectations aren’t met it leads to resentment. We take those resentments from missed expectations and throw them in the mental trash can. when that can starts to overflow we break, leading to untimely blow ups or passive aggressive behavior that undermines the health of our organization. Expectations are extremely hard to communicate between employees that aren’t physically present among each other. 
  • Wins are not celebrated on one end. On either side of a virtual team you have varying responsibilities and roles. One side may be customer facing the other may be internal. One side may be strategic the other is tactical. In situations like this, one side may experience the victory of accomplishment where the other side did the lion’s share of the work. When this happens repeatedly over a long period of time, the side without the sense of accomplishment begins to wonder, “Are we doing it right?” As moral on this side declines as does their ability to work together or take direction.
  • Leading with a “one size fits all” mentality. A favorite leadership quote of mine is, “My job is to find 40 different ways to move 40 different men.” Tapping into an employee’s individuality to understand what they want most to help them succeed can help mediocre teams become great, or great teams set records. Most managers put this priority somewhere between grabbing an after lunch Starbucks and finding a good parking spot at the office. Maybe they want to do it, but finding time is a challenge. Either way, when it comes to virtual teams, managers find it’s much easier to lead with group virtual meetings, group memos and group emails. This one size fits all mentality never affords each team member the chance to live up to expectations. 
  • Lack of accountability measurement. Telling a bunch of people “Hey go do this!” is one thing. Inspecting what you expect along the way is what ensures success. (Along with helping leaders sleep at night knowing the job will get done on time!) With virtual teams it’s a challenge for managers to regularly check on the progress of a job. This unknown causes leaders to be on edge, and virtual teams to walk on eggshells. 
  • Misunderstanding the intent of a message. WHY ARE YOU READING THIS? I bet with all those caps you thought I was yelling at you. Have you ever gotten a text from your boss, one of your direct reports, or a spouse and misunderstood it? Have you ever accidentally sent the wrong message because of voice texting or a typo? Messages sent with the best of intentions may still be received with the worst of dissension. This can be a particular issue with international teams who do not all speak the same native language. Always remember, the person receiving the message will interpret it through their lens, not yours!

Failing to address the challenges above and not taking specific measures to compensate will erode trust, lower employee engagement, and lead to severe problems on both sides of the team. How can we, as virtual teams, work better together to ensure a healthy organization? To come up with real and relevant solutions for your unique virtual teams to function better, deeper analysis would be required. However, here are just a few of the solutions that have helped my clients. My hopes are that they point you in the right direction!

  • Go full teenager. What do teens do when they first get their phones and start communicating with each other? Nothing else! Keep the communication going. Text, email, Skype, Google Hangouts…etc. Whatever the form, stay in touch and keep cultivating those relationships via technology. Update each other all the time! Thank each other all the time! Keeping in touch will ensure everyone is on the same page, and wins are reaching both sides of the virtual team! Getting to know one another via relationship building will lessen the amount of messages that miss their mark or are ill received.
  • Coach them over the phone. In addition to your group digital meetings, have regimented, one on one performance coaching sessions to help your virtual employees develop their careers. This will have a great impact on your virtual teams performance. Ensure they know you care by giving them the gift of coaching. If you don’t know how or aren’t confident in your coaching ability (some leaders need help learning to do this remotely) reach out for professional assistance.
  • Discuss vision, goals and expectations openly. Collaboration is the key to success. One sided expectations and “telling” will not lead to success. Both parties must come to agreements on the rules of engagement. Make sure to put everything in the arena so that everyone can work together to come up with the best processes, and methods for working together moving forward.
  • Fake face-to-face communication. Video conferencing, either professionally or even FaceTime, helps bring back aspects of communication you lose being remote. Facial reactions and body language can be observed more easily with video based communication.
  • Provide written correspondence with verbal. Consistency in messaging or the ability to quickly clarify a message is harder with virtual teams. Providing reinforcement of a message in writing, ideally in advance, and after a verbal discussion, helps ensure that a message sticks. This is particularly powerful with teams that do not all speak English as a native language. If the meeting is more formal, use an agenda or slides. Send in advance so your team members can be prepared and also know what to expect. Recap your virtual meetings in a follow up email just after the meeting. Include what you covered, commitments, and action plans to create true clarity and alignment.
  • Manage as one team. Regardless of location, ensure you schedule time to talk with all employees together on a call. It helps promote the feeling of inclusion if you allow equal talking time for all members. Ideally, try and do these regularly and keep the agenda similar so teams know what to expect and come engaged and prepared. Any opportunity you have to encourage participate in projects, initiatives, etc across locations with members from all teams, the better!
  • While not always possible, do try and meet at least once in person. If budgets and logistics allow, providing for at least one face-to-face meeting, annually, is assuredly worth the return on investment. Yes, while most business could have been done on the phone, forming an in person relationship almost always helps for teamwork down the line.

While working with virtual teams can be extremely challenging, implementing these few steps can make your life a lot easier. Build trust, foster healthy communication, and show them you care and before you know it, you and your virtual team on both sides will be firing on all cylinders. Out of sight, doesn’t have to drive you out of your mind!

About Sean Kelley

Sean works with car dealers to achieve great results through their people and technology. Sean has extensive diversity in leadership ranging from Special Ops combat veteran, general sales manager, company owner, and a tech company executive. Sean will help your people find purpose, create a growth mindset, improve self-accountability and effectively develop your teams through his unique, customized approach to coaching. If you are interested in exceeding your goals and building an inspirational leadership team, email Sean directly: Sean@carmotivators.com or Get Started For FREE With Coach Chat

#coachingthecarbusiness #drivecoaching #thisistraining #coachingexcellence #winningcultures

Motivate Your Millenials: 3 Mindsets to Help You Better Understand and Lead Your Team

When we ask most managers what they want more of from their team, it’s often motivation. When we leverage some strong coaching questions aimed to uncover the root of the motivation challenge we come to some interesting conclusions. While anemic motivation can be caused by many factors, frequently the challenge stems from managers methods for leading millennials. There can be vast differences in the thought process of how a millennial wants to be led and the leadership mindset of other generations. Once these differences are uncovered in our coaching sessions, and action plans are created to address them, they help managers lead and motivate their millennials. This article contains some of the insights and key differentiators we’ve coached managers through when it comes to, gen x (like myself), gen y, and baby boomers leading millennials in the workforce. We want to share them with you in hopes of helping you motivate your team of millennial employees and ultimately keeping these great players on your team longer, and helping them achieve even more!

Millennials like to think for themselves!

“I’ve told them to do it 1,000 times but they won’t because they’re lazy, I’m tired of asking, I’m tired of telling, I’m sick of yelling.” The frustrated manager complained after I asked him, “What has caused you to give up on asking them to do what needs to be done here?”

After my tenure as an NCO in the Army, I dove head first into the auto industry. One of the reasons it was such a smooth transition for me, was the similarity of how one leads people in both industries. In both the military and car business there is a clear hierarchy, managers lead by title, give explicit instructions, and expect the employee to do what they say out of sheer blind obedience. From the action or activity to the message being communicated, it’s a do as I say the world in both industries. This works great when the leader is extremely competent, and the follower is both trusting, precise, and compliant. Yet, the model has massive limitations because people become reliant on one person, the manager, to handle all challenges. Take the boss out of the equation after a long stint with this style of leadership, and employees often become unable to solve even the most simplistic challenge. No manager equals no crutch for the employee, and no problems get solved. This is one of the downfalls of blind obedience management, it’s not scalable.

Millennials have been taught to think for themselves. They solve problems well and often enjoy doing so. If you rob them of their ability to do just that by leading them through blind obedience then you steal one of the key factors that help them enjoy work! Adding value by problem-solving. To effectively lead millennials managers need to let go of their desire to be the hero and save everyone. Managers must free themselves of the need to constantly involve themselves in the tactical actions of the day-to-day and trust your team to handle problems. Do this by asking them for their ideas implementing them and reviewing their results together. Have them come up with new ways to solve old problems. Instead of explicit instructions, give them direction and advice based on their game plan. This keeps your millennials engaged and helps them be part of the solution. This helps reassure them that they are making an impact. If they feel they are making an impact, they will enjoy their job that much more. These different generations have a powerful resource in navigating today’s business challenges in millennials. That is, only if your ego is small enough to invite them to the table of leadership and value their input.

Millennials don’t just do it for the money!

The GM frustratingly and rhetorically posed this statement/question in the sales meeting, “There were 15,000 dollars in bonuses on the table this month and NO ONE even tried! Do you not care about money?!” He clearly wanted them to be motivated by the fiscal opportunity. I remember thinking, “Eureka! You figured it out.” After having conducted a cultural assessment for this store, Car Motivators had already uncovered money was NOT they the key motivating force for this primarily millennial sales team.

Gen-x and older, on the other hand, grew up in a financially motivated workplace. It was and still is for many in these generations, all about the money. I fell into this trap, and as a high paid sales manager in the auto space, found myself operating at a lower capacity than I wanted. My motivation level as driven by income had diminishing returns. Then one day I promoted my first few employees. One employee had worked hard for me for several years and had gone from entitled riff-raff to telling me, “I’ll do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes to move up under you.” and he did just that. He had earned his promotion! It gave me great pleasure to promote this lad. This became a new purpose for me, after uncovering this by accident I had a new reason to lead: Help others move up in their career! This new purpose drove me, drove my results, and inspired me to inspire those that worked for me for years to come. Significantly more than any additional money could have motivated me.

Millennials are no different. They desire to derive true meaning and purpose in what they do. If the carrot on the end of your stick isn’t the carrot they want to digest, it will not motivate them! If your chief method for driving results and people is pushing the paycheck, don’t plan on motivating many millennials for very long. You can read more about finding a better reason to sell than money in my article: “Selling for the Money is Weaker Than Circus Lemonade”. One of my favorite documented coaching wins was when a single coaching conversation doubled a salesperson’s results almost overnight. He went from selling 10 cars a month for almost 3 years to 20 cars per month. We helped him uncover a deeper reason for selling, which was to donate to cancer research. After losing a parent and both grandparents to cancer, that was something that would inspire him. What a worthy cause! Help your millennials uncover what drives them, because they may not know how their career can help them impact what they want most. If you do help them find a deeper and more motivating reason to do what they do, you will earn their loyalty and provide the inspiration it takes to motivate your employee for years to come.

They appreciate and are inspired by recognition!

“Is it wrong that I just want them to do their jobs? I do mine all day and don’t expect any praise!” The General Sales Manager questioned in our leadership workshop while we were discussing the requirements to generate motivation and desired behaviors. The answer to that is, “Yes, it’s wrong.” Here are several reasons why.

Do you consider doing your job to its fullest capacity, with complete competence, and always giving 150% no matter who is paying attention the only way to work? If so, you are like me. As a manager, then you also need to know that by not giving praise you simply are not operating at full capacity. This is because of the psychological principle of positive reinforcement. Give something for the desired behavior and that behavior is much more likely to be repeated than taking something away for an undesired behavior.

Sure many employees, not just millennials, appreciate great praise for a job well done. Beyond that, when you give them specific feedback as to what they did well, how what they are doing is positively impacting their company, and what happens if they keep it up, you are inspiring them to do it again, and again. Saying nothing at all and expecting them to continue doing what worked for them, is a management mistake. Saying “good job” isn’t enough, and doesn’t have the same effects on behaviors. As much as I love to joke with many of the amazing millennials I coach about them getting trophies even if they miss a goal, they know darn well I will always tell them what they do right. I want them to know which desired behaviors are impacting their results!

Regardless of the generation, you come from, if you are in leadership, a great quote from an amazing coach applies: “My job is to find 40 different ways to move 40 different men.” – Vince Lombardi

This quote couldn’t apply more than it does to leading millennials! Let them be involved in your company and it’s challenges by asking their opinions. Allow them to solve problems for themselves and follow up by providing wisdom and guidance on their action plans. Help them discover a deeper reason to do what they do, other than money. Finally, recognize them and spotlight them when they do what’s right. Trade in the old way of blind obedience management for these powerful new leadership strategies, just as you would an old car that’s starting to break down. If you do this, you can retain more employees, develop and motivate your millennials to another level. This will take a massive leadership burden off your shoulders and help you grow your department. This will ultimately make you the hero as your companies results improve. Here’s to leading millennials, what a great blessing and responsibility!

This is an excerpt in an upcoming book in sales and leadership by Sean Kelley CEO of Car Motivators. Car Motivators helps auto industry leaders achieve great results through their people and their technology. We believe training should be tailored individually to be real and relevant to your business. By coaching excellence into every member of your team together, we can create winning cultures of unstoppable champions at each layer in your dealership that will exceed expectations, communicate effectively, and are aligned to the direction you are taking your company. We would be honored to learn more about you and your unique challenges to determine if we could help you strengthen your culture and improve your results! Please email Sean@carmotivators.com or Get Started For FREE With Coach Chat to achieve greater results through your people and technology! Sean also has a featured VLOG on http://www.dealershipnews.com and speaks for automotive conferences across the country such as Digital Dealer, Rockstar Auto Conference, and Automotive Game Changer!

#coachingthecarbusiness #thecarbizcoach #thisistraining #coachingexcellence #winningcultures

Myth: The Key to Employee Growth is Through a Promotion

Employees all over America feel they have hit a ceiling at their current employer. Once this feeling has set in, unless turned around, these employees often find themselves in search of a new job. A job where they may move up in their career. As a result, human resource people or managers find themselves looking for a new employee, to replace the skilled professional that left.  

Whether the ceiling they feel they’ve hit is perceived or real, this poses a challenge for employers who depend on tenure and experience as a building block to company success.  

As a manager, when faced with the question, “Why don’t you do something to prevent this tenured employee from leaving?” Most employers reply, “We simply can’t “promote” everyone!” They use this as an excuse to live with the problem. 

Instead of living with this problem, knowing full well we can’t promote everyone, let’s talk about 5 ways to solve this challenge. The key objective being to give your employees the feeling that they are moving up regardless of their duration in their current job role. In doing this, you will help your team improve and stay engaged, even if they are locked in their current role for the time being.

  1. Questioning what strengths your employees are not utilizing in their current role. This will shed light on what potential responsibilities you could give a particular employee to help them feel they are growing in their career. Allowing them to start unlocking their strengths to help impact your organization positively and will help meet this crucial growth need.

  2. Create an Opportunity: After discovering which employees feel they are not moving upward you can further discover ways you could better utilize their skills. Is there potential to give them more responsibility or more duties that would allow them to showcase their talents and also help your organization? Can you work out a win/win/win where the employee, the business and the customer all benefit from the move?

  3. Set realistic expectations with them on what the new role entails. Often people want to move up but aren’t capable of taking on a new role. The disconnect stems from blind spots or being unaware of exactly what the new role entails. Sitting down and reviewing what skills are necessary, what the expectations would be to move up, and what it takes to succeed in that next role are extremely important. Many times you can set them on the right path to reach their goal. Or, they may decide moving up doesn’t seem as appealing anymore. Either way, once they understand the real responsibilities they will have to face down you will discover if you are grooming the right person for the next level in your organization. The key is the employee knowing they are moving towards their goal, even if the position is not available yet.

  4. Show them another way to measure career improvement by proving to them they are moving in the right direction! Again, since career improvement is not always measured by promotions or pay raises: we can capitalize with other means. What areas of development could you track to help the employee grow that could ultimately impact their pay, their skills and the success of the company? The key being regular ongoing aspiration coaching, proving to them regularly that they are moving forward by uncovering, acknowledging, and celebrating their wins.

  5. Ensure other employee engagement needs are met or exceeded! Have you ever heard an employee say, “You know, even though I don’t get X or Y at my employer… I stay because of Z!” I’m not giving you a license to ignore the lack of development and career growth problem. I’m just adding that there are many other needs employees have to feel engaged. If you are able to meet those needs, you can keep employees engaged and essentially create an environment that is “good enough” which could prevent much of the unnecessary turnover. A great book on this topic that outlines employee engagement needs is “Nine Minutes on Monday”, by James Robbins.

These 5 key tactics can certainly help meet the employee career advancement need without actually needing to promote someone. This will help you lower turn over, increase tenure, create employees that will do what it takes to succeed, and make you a hero of a leader for your organization!

There are many other ways to accomplish this that are not posted in this blog. How do you, as a leader, fill this important need, even when the structure of the organization doesn’t allow for a promotion? What tactics, skills, or means do you use to keep employees engaged who may otherwise feel frozen in their current roles?

About Sean Kelley

Sean works with car dealers to achieve great results through their people and technology. Sean has extensive diversity in leadership ranging from Special Ops combat veteran, general sales manager, company owner, and a tech company executive. Sean will help your people find purpose, create a growth mindset, improve self-accountability and effectively develop your teams through his unique, customized approach to coaching. If you are interested in exceeding your goals and building an inspirational leadership team, email Sean directly: Sean@carmotivators.com or Get Started For FREE With Coach Chat

#coachingthecarbusiness #drivecoaching #thisistraining #coachingexcellence #winningcultures

Mending the Broken Team

Team cohesion, sounds easy to create, right? Yet, if it were easy, it wouldn’t be one of the greatest challenges for car dealers cross functioning departments and managers I coach across the country! In our Car Motivators Inspired Satisfaction(tm) survey, team cohesion problems are the #2 cultural challenge of all time. (Only second to having a lack of career growth opportunity, but I tackle that in another article HERE)

After serving on special ops teams for over two years in combat, and leading top-producing sales teams for over a decade, I learned a little about team unity. Then having led both a sales and account executive team as a C-suite level executive of a CRM software company, I learned a lot more. Now, after facilitating hundreds of coaching conversations with executives to mend broken sales teams, I want to help you improve your team cohesion by challenging you with five coaching questions and giving you some simple actionable items that can help you mend your broken team.

How is being the perfect manager, salesperson, or employee who can do no wrong, damaging your reputation and eroding your team?

Trust is the foundation of success for any team and business. Some of the more insidious ways of eroding trust are when you aren’t open to criticism, have all the answers, hide from feedback, and avoid being coached because of ego. No one on this planet is perfect and everyone knows this, thus when you try to be perfect, you may be perceived as a liar.

Instead, honor your humanity, give yourself a chance for improvement, and strengthen the foundation of trust among your team by doing the following:

  1. Ask others where you can improve!

  2. Admit your mistakes and share how you learned from them.

  3. Apologize when you know you’ve wronged someone, even if they didn’t approach you about it.

  4. After you improve from someone’s feedback, thank them for helping you!

  5. When you don’t know the answer, admit it, and commit to learning the answer, then check back in with them later to share what you learned.

Where are your career blind spot detectors?

We all have those pesky blind spots, and we all know what happens if we change lanes at 80 MPH on the highway with someone in our blind spot… We crash! Candid, direct, positive, impactful communication is the only blind spot detector for your career. 

Without candor, your best blind spot detectors (your co-workers/people) can’t/won’t save you! To protect your ass(ets) and surround yourself with people who will protect you, take the following actions:

  1. Tell everyone you want your blind spots presented to you asap!

  2. Give them instructions on how they can share them positively and constructively.

  3. Be willing to grow by addressing the blind spots or risk losing the value of approaching you when you aren’t willing to change.

This process will earn trust, which will help you achieve the next level of team cohesion!

How can you win the game if you don’t know the rules?

After conducting thousands of coaching conversations, I’ve found most people want to exceed expectations, and everyone wants MORE of something! More time off, more money, more vacations, more financial stability, more job security, more confidence, more trust from leaders…etc. A big reason they aren’t getting more of what they want is because of unknown expectations.

Now that you’re communicating effectively because of our last coaching question around candor, it’s time to put that communication to good use.

  1. Share with your employee or manager precisely what it takes to get what THEY want!

  2. Create an airtight plan by asking, “How will you get that done? What will you have to do? When will you get started? How can I support you?” (If the plan won’t work, be direct with your newly found candor and address it now)

  3. Give recognition when people exceed these expectations to reinforce the positive and ensure they know WHY they succeeded!

Give me the rules to the game, and I will find a way to win every time!

When did your accountability go bad?

People fear the word accountability like its the coronavirus. We say that “A” word and think of stressful conversations, demotions, docked wages, write-ups, PIP’s, and termination… In reality, accountability isn’t something negative you do to someone (or that someone does to you) at all!

Change your lens, and you change your reality. What if you look at accountability as a way to increase your standards on yourself? People who want growth value accountability!

  1. Ask for accountability from your peers, your manager, your coach, and anyone else who is willing to make you better.

  2. Schedule check-ins on specific action items to ensure everyone’s getting it done.

  3. Give yourself and other consequences for failing! It doesn’t have to be ruthless, I have one dealership that does push-ups when they are late or when they forget their culture card (Not my idea for the record even though I am ex-army).

If someone holds you to a high standard, it’s because of the VALUE YOU! If you have a mindset of accountability, it’s because you VALUE YOURSELF! I think you deserve more, so adopt that accountability mindset.

You’re not an ostrich, so why are you burying your head in the sand?

When you avoid dealing with bad results, it doesn’t make them go away. If ONLY it were that easy! The three E’s will eat away at your profit and success: Ego, Extrospection, and Excuses. Does it sting to fail? Absolutely. Does failure teach us our most valuable lessons and help us get a better result next time? ONLY under one condition, you pull your head out of the sand and face the music.

Instead of puffing out your chest and getting defensive, blaming others, and complaining about your environment for low results, try this instead:

  1. Objectively look at your results and ask yourself, what could I do more of, and less of to get a better result next time?

  2. How can you do what you did even better?

  3. If you cant answer the questions above, who will you reach out to and share your undesired results with that can/will help you?

Car Dealerships across the country are getting massive results through their people by building #winningcultures with the Car Motivators Inspired Satisfaction survey. We can help you predict and prevent employee turnover and save hundreds of thousands of dollars in new hire profit loss each year with Car Motivators D.R.I.V.E.C3(tm) coaching. Call 1-888-921-0221 or book a FREE 30-minute strategy call HERE and we can determine if a cultural assessment could mend your team.

Sincerely,

Sean Kelley

#thecarbizcoach

Managers: Stop Butting Heads With Your Staff!

AAt companies all over the globe you often see front-line managers butting heads with their employees. I hear leaders and managers say it all the time, “I’m tired of babysitting my staff. Why won’t my team do this? I wish my employees would just (insert productive habit here)!” Or even something as harsh as, “These employees shouldn’t be making what they make for the sub par work they do!” Employees say things like, “My boss never listens to me!” and “I’m sick of working for this *&@#%!”

OUCH! I, myself used to struggle with some of these same thoughts. Until through some hard lessons, and a little coaching, I came to some realizations that have changed the way I lead forever. In this article, I would like to share these coaching insights with you to help you better lead your team! You deserve to manage stress free and enjoy the presence and support of your direct reports without the need to fight for compliance and accountability!

If you’re a manager or leader struggling with your whole team, part of your team, or perhaps you just know someone else who could use some help in this area, please read on. Even if you are a master of self control and hold in all this anger without any sort of passive aggression, this frustration will undoubtedly cause you to reach your maximum B.S. limit and you will eventually snap!

When you unleash your frustrations on them, regardless of how you butt heads with your staff, nothing good will come of it. Your employees walk away from the conversation feeling deflated and beat down. Sure, you may feel a temporary high as you have asserted your dominance, but this buzz is quickly lost when the employee you lost your cool with continues the undesired behavior even after your argument with them! This creates a “Groundhog Day” type effect where you relive the same frustrating moments week after week. Another even more severe potential negative outcome is if one of your valued team members quits their job due to this constant demoralizing behavior.

How do we, as leaders, communicate with our team in a way that creates desired change in behavior and relieves us of all anger and frustration?

First, you must understand a few things about your employees:

They have good intentions, and want to please you.

Chances are, your employees actually care about pleasing you. If you truly believe in others good intentions, in turn, it will bring the best intentions out of them. All people want to appear confident and proficient in their work. Screwing up and being yelled at does not benefit them. When an employee makes a mistake, doesn’t follow a process, or isn’t performing how you want, they are not necessarily targeting you in an attempt to be insubordinate. Before you snap, remember the saying, “You get more with honey than you do vinegar.” Ask yourself, was this an honest mistake that anyone could have made? How bad is this situation? Have I ever made a mistake similar to this? How can the punishment fit the crime?

If you’re a parent raising a young child, you expect that your child will mess something up. It’s a given that your kid is going to color on the walls in crayon. He may find a pair of scissors and decide to give the dog a haircut. If you’re really lucky, your kid even might put a wet roll of toilet paper into the microwave for 10 minutes to dry out! Regardless of these childhood atrocities, you still love your kid unconditionally, right? You don’t assume they are evil and out to get you, then send them away to boarding school! Perhaps they were trying to draw a pretty picture on the wall just for you. Just maybe your child thought the dog looked hot because he was panting and needed a haircut to cool off. Did you consider he felt bad for dropping the T.P. in the toilet bowl, and he wanted to dry it off so you wouldn’t need to buy more? (You can tell my parents had a rough time raising me!) That being said, the intentions were good and the motives were pure. Love your employees like you love your kids, with unconditional care and love, and expect mistakes. Truly believe that they have the best of intentions and mean well. You will harbor a lot less anger this way. Just be there to guide them and help them learn from the errors so they don’t keep “shaving the dog” their entire career.

Something is preventing them from behaving how you want.

If you’re butting heads with team members because they just won’t do what you want them to do, many managers take the “they are lazy” stance. This is a costly assumption. In order to positively alter an employee’s behavior the leader must uncover exactly WHAT limiting belief or “SCAM” is preventing them from acting. In the book, “Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions,“Keith Rosen, Master Certified Coach (MCC), describes a “SCAM” as a Story, Con, Assumption, or Mindset, that employees create that prevent them from taking action in a way that will better their situation. The only way to help your stray staff members is to coach them around their “SCAM” to uncover these crippling mental barriers. In a non biased, or confrontational way ask “Why?” “What’s getting in the way?” “What’s preventing you from…?”. These discovery questions will show you that “laziness” or “insubordination” are NOT the real problem. Once you unearth the real limiting belief you must help them see what might be possible if they changed their way of thinking or try a new approach to the situation.

For years I stood on my soapbox and preached, “Call your past customers and ask for referrals to sell more and hit your objectives!” Yet, no matter the intensity or frequency of my commands I would see very limited action taken by the sales team. Enter one-on-one coaching.

First, knowing Susan likes customers that are fun and easy to work with, enroll her in the behavioral change, “Susan, what I want for you is to bring in as many referrals in as possible, that way you need not rely on the market, economy and floor traffic your entire career. Wouldn’t it be great and rewarding if you could hang out with buyers that already like you and trust you?”

“So, Susan, what’s keeping you from calling your sold customers for referrals?”

Susan replied, “Well, I don’t have that many to call and when I do call them, I’m scared they will be mad that I’m bothering them. I don’t want to annoy my customers.”

The SCAM’s Mary had created around prospecting to her customers were that she had no one to call, a story she made up, because in reality she had over 300 customers in her sold database. The assumption she had convinced herself of, was that they would be annoyed if she called them.

“I’ve seen your great online reviews from your clients Susan.”, I replied, “Of your 300+ customers, how many of them really enjoyed working with you?”

“Probably at least 250 of them,” she said.

“Do you mind receiving a call from someone you really enjoy working with?” I asked.

“I suppose not, no, I don’t mind.” Susan said.

I probed deeper, “How many of your customers have asked you not to call them because you were annoying them?”

She thought for a few seconds, “Well no one’s really told me they were annoyed…” I could see Susan was starting to realize she hadn’t really TRIED to call them yet, and her assumption was unraveling.

“So what specifically would you be comfortable saying to your most satisfied group of 250 clients, that wouldn’t annoy them or bother them when you call?”

From there, Susan and I crafted a wonderful message that she could deliver to her most satisfied customer base and ask for referrals. Which she has since been doing to great effect. Susan was not lazy or insubordinate, nor was she trying to avoid selling and making money, she just needed her SCAM uncovered and addressed in a supportive way. Don’t ASSUME people are lazy or insubordinate, seek to understand the real barriers to behavior and your life as a leader will be a lot less frustrating, and extremely fulfilling.

They may not understand your expectations.

Many times you’re not seeing eye to eye with members of your team, it’s a simple situation of lack of clear expectations. I recommend you review expectations with any applicant before you hire them, again after you hire them, and then quarterly. You should also update your expectations as things change, because they always will. If your team member doesn’t know what you expect of them, or what you want them to do as your direct report, whose fault is it if they don’t act accordingly? It’s been said many different ways by many different leaders, “People cannot live up to expectations they do not know exist.”

While coaching with one of my fellow managers, “John” we came to the root of some deep-seated frustration he held with a sales representative, “Bob”. It all boiled down to expectations. John felt his expectations were continually not being met by Bob. After we both sat with Bob, clearly reviewed John’s expectations in detail, it became clear that we had a disconnect. We expected to see that Bob didn’t care, or had no concern that he had not met his objectives. However, instead, Bob clearly felt guilty once realization set in that he had let us down. Bob needed his manager’s expectations refreshed because too much time had gone by since these had been covered. Bob then put together a plan to remedy his shortcomings, and has since worked hard to fix the issues. There was a weight lifted off my frustrated manager and team member’s shoulders that day. Communicating expectations makes everyone’s job easier, and will help you avoid butting heads.

Their proficiency may not have been tested after training.

It’s easy to assume someone knows what they should be doing once they complete a training course. We provide training classes, watch our employees go through these, and just because they didn’t fall asleep during the class, we believe they must know exactly what’s going on… If ONLY it were that easy! Have you ever failed to absorb something from training or do you pick up everything the first time, every time? We must test proficiency prior to turning our employees loose on the job. Simply put, if we don’t find out the training wasn’t absorbed early, we will find out the hard way later. Would you want a pilot that had not been tested for proficiency to fly you and your family across the country? Would you want a heart surgeon to operate on you after one class but without passing a test? You bet not! Test your team AFTER the training to ensure they have absorbed it or blame yourself when they falter.

One sales representative “Steve” worked at another one of our dealer groups lots for nearly a year before transferring to our store. Since he had been in the car business before, and at one of our stores, we assumed he knew how to do the proper paperwork when delivering a vehicle. After a very frustrating first month of constant paperwork mishaps costing himself, the company and his customers time and money, we decided to “test” Steve on his competence regarding delivery paperwork. We discovered that at the store where he worked before the finance department did most of the paperwork, so he didn’t really understand it. Even though he had a basic knowledge of what was needed, enough to be dangerous, Steve needed training and testing prior to turning him loose. Had we tested his proficiency initially, we would have saved more than a few headaches! Was he tested at all? Sure he was, he had to “Sell his boss a car” but he sure wasn’t tested on paperwork. Test your staff members on all aspects of their job, if you want to ensure they are proficient at all aspects of their job.

How to avoid your initial angry reaction and make positive lasting change.

Now let’s get something straight here, I am not saying we are always going to get along with our staff. Also, no one can keep their cool 100 percent of the time. Nor am I saying to let them get away with murder. There must be a hierarchy and someone to answer to for any organization to be successful. I just want you to understand some of the problem could be on us as leaders. After all, it’s our job, as the people leading the charge, to use coaching to help them correct the situation in a way that fosters a supportive, positive environment. The alternative isn’t pretty, it’s a passive aggressive, cancerous environment where repeated unfavorable actions cause a boss to snap, over and over, and over and over again! This can’t be good for your blood pressure, let alone career satisfaction for you and your employees.

If you’ve been managing in this manner, let me ask you a few loaded questions: Has holding in your frustration, or yelling at your team repeatedly changed anything in a positive way? What favorable results have you seen from this? Does this build trust or degrade it? Do you want sustainable growth for your team members, or a never ending cycle of new hires as you replace the people that leave you? Are you sick and tired of butting heads with your employees?

Before you start ranting and raving at your team member, or say something snide and hostile, there is a very powerful question you should ask yourself. In the book, “Triggers” by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, he asks, “Am I willing, at this time, to make the investment required, to make a positive difference on this topic?” Prior to reacting to an unfavorable situation in your environment in an unfavorable way, asking this question will allow you to slow down. Now you may cool off, and contribute to the situation as opposed to make a bad situation worse. Being willing to invest the energy to contribute to the conversation in a positive way, will be the first key in creating positive change. If you can’t invest the energy at the time, then just stay quiet and cool off.

Hold your team members accountable in a supportive, positive way.

Let’s revisit our coachee’s stories. Now that we’ve clearly discussed our expectations, and have a new starting point. In the end, if Bob doesn’t follow the newly communicated expectations, then leadership follows the, “Am I willing…” question, mentioned above, before freaking out, then there will be consequences. If Susan doesn’t follow the prospecting plan we created, we will not be passive aggressive toward her. Holding in our frustration and allowing her to get away without the follow up calls will only create the problem we’re trying to avoid. We now sit her down and ask again, “Now what’s preventing you from calling your customers?”. If one of our employees makes a mistake that a bit of common sense should have prevented, they will be held accountable. However, we will know they did not foster any ill will in their mistake, so there is no need to become angry with them or mistrust their intentions. If Steve continues to screw up his paperwork after his training and measurement of his competence has been completed, we will address the issue.

In each case we will follow the advice of Theodore Roosevelt when he said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Meaning, we will be polite and respectful, will not snap to anger and stress, but there will be consequences in order to hold our team members accountable. Being a manager who has the “stick”, or method of accountability, prevents you from flipping out. Now as you may have inferred, using consequences does not give you permission to regress back to yelling. Instead, it should be a series of clear, direct feedback that escalate to more, depending on the severity. In Bob’s particular case, both parties agreed to consequences that begin with extra hours until set guidelines are met. Further offenses or failure to meet commitments would lead to monetary punishment and documented reprimand. In Susan’s case, if she doesn’t want to service her existing customers, they will be distributed among other sales associates who are willing and able to call on them.

It can be as simple as a clear message to an employee that they’ve not met your expectations. This message should be delivered in person if minor, or in writing if more serious. It can be direct such as, “Bob, you agreed last month to deliver your paperwork by the 30th of each month. It is now the 5th and I still do not have your paperwork. When can I expect to have it? What got in the way? Do you need my assistance in revising your plan?” This type of feedback is still calm, collected, respectful but clearly conveys the expectation was not met.

If an offense occurs again, or the severity of the missed expectation is more grave, you should escalate the message to call for either a clear corrective action within a specific timeframe, or even a warning for termination (or termination in some instances). Just remember, this consequence should still always clearly convey the expectation, the miss of the expectation and be calm, collected and respectful.

Your employees will be better off for it, and their behavior will be conducive to your aligned efforts. Stop butting heads with your team. Put away the boxing gloves. Lead your team in the way they deserve. Believe in their best intentions, lead with a calm, collected head and coaching mentality. Create a plan for holding them accountable to your clear-cut, well communicated expectations. As a result your work environment will improve for you and your team. Your employees will gain trust in you and your turnover will drop! Best of luck to you and your team!

About Sean Kelley

Sean works with car dealers to achieve great results through their people and technology. Sean has extensive diversity in leadership ranging from Special Ops combat veteran, general sales manager, company owner, and a tech company executive. Sean will help your people find purpose, create a growth mindset, improve self-accountability and effectively develop your teams through his unique, customized approach to coaching. If you are interested in exceeding your goals and building an inspirational leadership team, email Sean directly: Sean@carmotivators.com or Get Started For FREE With Coach Chat

#coachingthecarbusiness #drivecoaching #thisistraining #coachingexcellence #winningcultures

t companies all over the globe you often see front-line managers butting heads with their employees. I hear leaders and managers say it all the time, “I’m tired of babysitting my staff. Why won’t my team do this? I wish my employees would just (insert productive habit here)!” Or even something as harsh as, “These employees shouldn’t be making what they make for the sub par work they do!” Employees say things like, “My boss never listens to me!” and “I’m sick of working for this *&@#%!”

OUCH! I, myself used to struggle with some of these same thoughts. Until through some hard lessons, and a little coaching, I came to some realizations that have changed the way I lead forever. In this article, I would like to share these coaching insights with you to help you better lead your team! You deserve to manage stress free and enjoy the presence and support of your direct reports without the need to fight for compliance and accountability!

If you’re a manager or leader struggling with your whole team, part of your team, or perhaps you just know someone else who could use some help in this area, please read on. Even if you are a master of self control and hold in all this anger without any sort of passive aggression, this frustration will undoubtedly cause you to reach your maximum B.S. limit and you will eventually snap!

When you unleash your frustrations on them, regardless of how you butt heads with your staff, nothing good will come of it. Your employees walk away from the conversation feeling deflated and beat down. Sure, you may feel a temporary high as you have asserted your dominance, but this buzz is quickly lost when the employee you lost your cool with continues the undesired behavior even after your argument with them! This creates a “Groundhog Day” type effect where you relive the same frustrating moments week after week. Another even more severe potential negative outcome is if one of your valued team members quits their job due to this constant demoralizing behavior.

How do we, as leaders, communicate with our team in a way that creates desired change in behavior and relieves us of all anger and frustration?

First, you must understand a few things about your employees:

They have good intentions, and want to please you.

Chances are, your employees actually care about pleasing you. If you truly believe in others good intentions, in turn, it will bring the best intentions out of them. All people want to appear confident and proficient in their work. Screwing up and being yelled at does not benefit them. When an employee makes a mistake, doesn’t follow a process, or isn’t performing how you want, they are not necessarily targeting you in an attempt to be insubordinate. Before you snap, remember the saying, “You get more with honey than you do vinegar.” Ask yourself, was this an honest mistake that anyone could have made? How bad is this situation? Have I ever made a mistake similar to this? How can the punishment fit the crime?

If you’re a parent raising a young child, you expect that your child will mess something up. It’s a given that your kid is going to color on the walls in crayon. He may find a pair of scissors and decide to give the dog a haircut. If you’re really lucky, your kid even might put a wet roll of toilet paper into the microwave for 10 minutes to dry out! Regardless of these childhood atrocities, you still love your kid unconditionally, right? You don’t assume they are evil and out to get you, then send them away to boarding school! Perhaps they were trying to draw a pretty picture on the wall just for you. Just maybe your child thought the dog looked hot because he was panting and needed a haircut to cool off. Did you consider he felt bad for dropping the T.P. in the toilet bowl, and he wanted to dry it off so you wouldn’t need to buy more? (You can tell my parents had a rough time raising me!) That being said, the intentions were good and the motives were pure. Love your employees like you love your kids, with unconditional care and love, and expect mistakes. Truly believe that they have the best of intentions and mean well. You will harbor a lot less anger this way. Just be there to guide them and help them learn from the errors so they don’t keep “shaving the dog” their entire career.

Something is preventing them from behaving how you want.

If you’re butting heads with team members because they just won’t do what you want them to do, many managers take the “they are lazy” stance. This is a costly assumption. In order to positively alter an employee’s behavior the leader must uncover exactly WHAT limiting belief or “SCAM” is preventing them from acting. In the book, “Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions,“Keith Rosen, Master Certified Coach (MCC), describes a “SCAM” as a Story, Con, Assumption, or Mindset, that employees create that prevent them from taking action in a way that will better their situation. The only way to help your stray staff members is to coach them around their “SCAM” to uncover these crippling mental barriers. In a non biased, or confrontational way ask “Why?” “What’s getting in the way?” “What’s preventing you from…?”. These discovery questions will show you that “laziness” or “insubordination” are NOT the real problem. Once you unearth the real limiting belief you must help them see what might be possible if they changed their way of thinking or try a new approach to the situation.

For years I stood on my soapbox and preached, “Call your past customers and ask for referrals to sell more and hit your objectives!” Yet, no matter the intensity or frequency of my commands I would see very limited action taken by the sales team. Enter one-on-one coaching.

First, knowing Susan likes customers that are fun and easy to work with, enroll her in the behavioral change, “Susan, what I want for you is to bring in as many referrals in as possible, that way you need not rely on the market, economy and floor traffic your entire career. Wouldn’t it be great and rewarding if you could hang out with buyers that already like you and trust you?”

“So, Susan, what’s keeping you from calling your sold customers for referrals?”

Susan replied, “Well, I don’t have that many to call and when I do call them, I’m scared they will be mad that I’m bothering them. I don’t want to annoy my customers.”

The SCAM’s Mary had created around prospecting to her customers were that she had no one to call, a story she made up, because in reality she had over 300 customers in her sold database. The assumption she had convinced herself of, was that they would be annoyed if she called them.

“I’ve seen your great online reviews from your clients Susan.”, I replied, “Of your 300+ customers, how many of them really enjoyed working with you?”

“Probably at least 250 of them,” she said.

“Do you mind receiving a call from someone you really enjoy working with?” I asked.

“I suppose not, no, I don’t mind.” Susan said.

I probed deeper, “How many of your customers have asked you not to call them because you were annoying them?”

She thought for a few seconds, “Well no one’s really told me they were annoyed…” I could see Susan was starting to realize she hadn’t really TRIED to call them yet, and her assumption was unraveling.

“So what specifically would you be comfortable saying to your most satisfied group of 250 clients, that wouldn’t annoy them or bother them when you call?”

From there, Susan and I crafted a wonderful message that she could deliver to her most satisfied customer base and ask for referrals. Which she has since been doing to great effect. Susan was not lazy or insubordinate, nor was she trying to avoid selling and making money, she just needed her SCAM uncovered and addressed in a supportive way. Don’t ASSUME people are lazy or insubordinate, seek to understand the real barriers to behavior and your life as a leader will be a lot less frustrating, and extremely fulfilling.

They may not understand your expectations.

Many times you’re not seeing eye to eye with members of your team, it’s a simple situation of lack of clear expectations. I recommend you review expectations with any applicant before you hire them, again after you hire them, and then quarterly. You should also update your expectations as things change, because they always will. If your team member doesn’t know what you expect of them, or what you want them to do as your direct report, whose fault is it if they don’t act accordingly? It’s been said many different ways by many different leaders, “People cannot live up to expectations they do not know exist.”

While coaching with one of my fellow managers, “John” we came to the root of some deep-seated frustration he held with a sales representative, “Bob”. It all boiled down to expectations. John felt his expectations were continually not being met by Bob. After we both sat with Bob, clearly reviewed John’s expectations in detail, it became clear that we had a disconnect. We expected to see that Bob didn’t care, or had no concern that he had not met his objectives. However, instead, Bob clearly felt guilty once realization set in that he had let us down. Bob needed his manager’s expectations refreshed because too much time had gone by since these had been covered. Bob then put together a plan to remedy his shortcomings, and has since worked hard to fix the issues. There was a weight lifted off my frustrated manager and team member’s shoulders that day. Communicating expectations makes everyone’s job easier, and will help you avoid butting heads.

Their proficiency may not have been tested after training.

It’s easy to assume someone knows what they should be doing once they complete a training course. We provide training classes, watch our employees go through these, and just because they didn’t fall asleep during the class, we believe they must know exactly what’s going on… If ONLY it were that easy! Have you ever failed to absorb something from training or do you pick up everything the first time, every time? We must test proficiency prior to turning our employees loose on the job. Simply put, if we don’t find out the training wasn’t absorbed early, we will find out the hard way later. Would you want a pilot that had not been tested for proficiency to fly you and your family across the country? Would you want a heart surgeon to operate on you after one class but without passing a test? You bet not! Test your team AFTER the training to ensure they have absorbed it or blame yourself when they falter.

One sales representative “Steve” worked at another one of our dealer groups lots for nearly a year before transferring to our store. Since he had been in the car business before, and at one of our stores, we assumed he knew how to do the proper paperwork when delivering a vehicle. After a very frustrating first month of constant paperwork mishaps costing himself, the company and his customers time and money, we decided to “test” Steve on his competence regarding delivery paperwork. We discovered that at the store where he worked before the finance department did most of the paperwork, so he didn’t really understand it. Even though he had a basic knowledge of what was needed, enough to be dangerous, Steve needed training and testing prior to turning him loose. Had we tested his proficiency initially, we would have saved more than a few headaches! Was he tested at all? Sure he was, he had to “Sell his boss a car” but he sure wasn’t tested on paperwork. Test your staff members on all aspects of their job, if you want to ensure they are proficient at all aspects of their job.

How to avoid your initial angry reaction and make positive lasting change.

Now let’s get something straight here, I am not saying we are always going to get along with our staff. Also, no one can keep their cool 100 percent of the time. Nor am I saying to let them get away with murder. There must be a hierarchy and someone to answer to for any organization to be successful. I just want you to understand some of the problem could be on us as leaders. After all, it’s our job, as the people leading the charge, to use coaching to help them correct the situation in a way that fosters a supportive, positive environment. The alternative isn’t pretty, it’s a passive aggressive, cancerous environment where repeated unfavorable actions cause a boss to snap, over and over, and over and over again! This can’t be good for your blood pressure, let alone career satisfaction for you and your employees.

If you’ve been managing in this manner, let me ask you a few loaded questions: Has holding in your frustration, or yelling at your team repeatedly changed anything in a positive way? What favorable results have you seen from this? Does this build trust or degrade it? Do you want sustainable growth for your team members, or a never ending cycle of new hires as you replace the people that leave you? Are you sick and tired of butting heads with your employees?

Before you start ranting and raving at your team member, or say something snide and hostile, there is a very powerful question you should ask yourself. In the book, “Triggers” by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, he asks, “Am I willing, at this time, to make the investment required, to make a positive difference on this topic?” Prior to reacting to an unfavorable situation in your environment in an unfavorable way, asking this question will allow you to slow down. Now you may cool off, and contribute to the situation as opposed to make a bad situation worse. Being willing to invest the energy to contribute to the conversation in a positive way, will be the first key in creating positive change. If you can’t invest the energy at the time, then just stay quiet and cool off.

Hold your team members accountable in a supportive, positive way.

Let’s revisit our coachee’s stories. Now that we’ve clearly discussed our expectations, and have a new starting point. In the end, if Bob doesn’t follow the newly communicated expectations, then leadership follows the, “Am I willing…” question, mentioned above, before freaking out, then there will be consequences. If Susan doesn’t follow the prospecting plan we created, we will not be passive aggressive toward her. Holding in our frustration and allowing her to get away without the follow up calls will only create the problem we’re trying to avoid. We now sit her down and ask again, “Now what’s preventing you from calling your customers?”. If one of our employees makes a mistake that a bit of common sense should have prevented, they will be held accountable. However, we will know they did not foster any ill will in their mistake, so there is no need to become angry with them or mistrust their intentions. If Steve continues to screw up his paperwork after his training and measurement of his competence has been completed, we will address the issue.

In each case we will follow the advice of Theodore Roosevelt when he said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Meaning, we will be polite and respectful, will not snap to anger and stress, but there will be consequences in order to hold our team members accountable. Being a manager who has the “stick”, or method of accountability, prevents you from flipping out. Now as you may have inferred, using consequences does not give you permission to regress back to yelling. Instead, it should be a series of clear, direct feedback that escalate to more, depending on the severity. In Bob’s particular case, both parties agreed to consequences that begin with extra hours until set guidelines are met. Further offenses or failure to meet commitments would lead to monetary punishment and documented reprimand. In Susan’s case, if she doesn’t want to service her existing customers, they will be distributed among other sales associates who are willing and able to call on them.

It can be as simple as a clear message to an employee that they’ve not met your expectations. This message should be delivered in person if minor, or in writing if more serious. It can be direct such as, “Bob, you agreed last month to deliver your paperwork by the 30th of each month. It is now the 5th and I still do not have your paperwork. When can I expect to have it? What got in the way? Do you need my assistance in revising your plan?” This type of feedback is still calm, collected, respectful but clearly conveys the expectation was not met.

If an offense occurs again, or the severity of the missed expectation is more grave, you should escalate the message to call for either a clear corrective action within a specific timeframe, or even a warning for termination (or termination in some instances). Just remember, this consequence should still always clearly convey the expectation, the miss of the expectation and be calm, collected and respectful.

Your employees will be better off for it, and their behavior will be conducive to your aligned efforts. Stop butting heads with your team. Put away the boxing gloves. Lead your team in the way they deserve. Believe in their best intentions, lead with a calm, collected head and coaching mentality. Create a plan for holding them accountable to your clear-cut, well communicated expectations. As a result your work environment will improve for you and your team. Your employees will gain trust in you and your turnover will drop! Best of luck to you and your team!

About Sean Kelley

Sean works with car dealers to achieve great results through their people and technology. Sean has extensive diversity in leadership ranging from Special Ops combat veteran, general sales manager, company owner, and a tech company executive. Sean will help your people find purpose, create a growth mindset, improve self-accountability and effectively develop your teams through his unique, customized approach to coaching. If you are interested in exceeding your goals and building an inspirational leadership team, email Sean directly: Sean@carmotivators.com or Get Started For FREE With Coach Chat

#coachingthecarbusiness #drivecoaching #thisistraining #coachingexcellence #winningcultures

It’s Time to Lead Follow or Get Out of the Way

Are you giving your leadership the grace they need to lead you through the struggle?

Company owners and managers have the hardest jobs in the world right now. Leaders are damned if they do, damned if they don’t!

Owners whom I coach face a divided team: Some employees want to close to avoid getting sick. Others want to work and feed their families. Only owners know how hard it is to build a business and a team! Most care about their people’s health yet feel that shutting down the company is giving up to the virus without a fight!

Managers I coach are the glue keeping the stressed-out employees and customers together! They are adapting quickly, but constant high tension situations wear on them. As does the question always on their mind, “How can we produce enough to keep our jobs?”

These are no doubt, challenging times, and here are some ways to make things a little easier.

Owners: The only poor decision in a time like this is indecision. Remove the whispers and morale erosion by scheduling time to listen to employees’ opinions. Soon after, make a decision and take a stand! Communicate the “why” behind your decision to your team. In this way, you can align your team to the direction you are leading them. This will eliminate much of the fear of the unknown. When your employees know where you stand, why it’s important, and have clarity around your plan, they can take decisive action. Simply put, rip the band-aid off. You may lose someone who isn’t a good fit. That’s better than losing people who are! Owners, remember three things. First, it’s your job to set the direction of your company, even when the decision sucks. Second, you can’t saw wood without sawdust. All decisions have a downside in a time like this, it’s not your fault. Finally, Winston Churchill’s quote, “You have enemies? Good, that means you stood for something in your life!”

Managers: Maintain a united front with your owner! Leadership must maintain a united front, and if you sew seeds of doubt, you are making your team ineffective a critical moment in your business’s history. You may need to have difficult conversations with your company owner if more communication and direction is needed from the top. Tell them what you need to get the job done, and remember you cant get it if you don’t ask for it. Stay healthy and manage your stress; you can’t center your team if you’re not focused and centered yourself. You can’t predict the outcome, but you CAN stay positive and communicate positive intent. You will give it your all to ensure the best possible outcome, so there’s no point in amplifying negativity! You are a leader if this is going to make us fail, fail giving it 150% effort. It’s time to step up, even MORE.

Employees: You are entitled to your opinion, but spreading negativity and “shoulding” all over your owners and managers isn’t right. “We should be closed.”, is a toxic statement that is likely designed to indirectly influence the company’s direction. Be understanding, knowing they have a lot more than you to worry about! They have their family, their employee’s families and their business! Does the situation suck? Yup! Is it a good idea to make it suck more by sewing seeds of contention and doubt? Nope! “Heavy is the head that wears the crown.” So don’t add dead weight to your already stressed-out leaders. Instead, add value and find ways to be productive! The way you react to this situation could be your one chance to prove how valuable an asset you are! If you can’t say anything nice, don’t talk.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way!

Sincerely,

Sean Kelley

#thecarbizcoach

Prior to entering the car business, Sean believed leadership was the key to ensure his Special Operations team would survive two combat deployments. Sean Kelley #TheCarBizCoach has since applied those same leadership principles to automotive management, and successfully lead dealers for a decade: lowering turnover, increasing profit, customer retention, customer satisfaction, and setting first-time regional records. Sean Kelley has built a massive following with thousands of coaching clients on Linkedin, his Facebook group, and has become a featured writer and vlogger for www.dealershipnews.com. Sean’s passion for coaching and people development led him to become Chief Business Development Officer of DriveCentric CRM where he helped them double their annual revenue in just months. Now, as CEO of Car Motivators and President of Next Sale App for Missouri, Sean and his coaches work with dozens of dealer groups, and automotive tech companies coaching hundreds of sales managers across the country. This is why Dealership News voted Sean Kelley consultant of the year in 2018. Sean was also ranked #10 in Ambition.com top 100 sales coaches to follow. Sean’s passion is for helping automotive leaders achieve great results through their people and technology. Due to Sean’s enthusiasm, sense of humor, knowledge, and engaging presentations, he has keynoted or spoken for multiple conferences like: Digital Dealer, Automotive Game Changers, Rockstar Automotive Events, Canadian Game Changer Seminars, St Louis Auto Dealer Association, Texas Independent Automotive Dealer Association and more. Sean helps those with a growth mindset create winning cultures with his unique self-developed approach to coaching and people development called D.R.I.V.E.C3™. Sean’s vision is to positively impact the leadership landscape of the automotive industry and its people by living out his mission of bringing coaching to the car business.