Sean Kelley

Are you a Wonder Leader?

Leave a Comment / Sean Kelley Blog / By Sean Kelley

Take the “Wonder Leader” test!

When it comes to direct reports, many managers are constantly trying to figure things out. They question employee performance asking, “Why won’t my employees do what I tell them?” or “Why won’t they do what it takes to be successful?” Managers may also wonder, “Are my employees happy? What is going on in their heads right now?”

This purpose of this article is to help you identify if you are a Wonder Leader. A Wonder Leader is a manager who spends more time wondering about, than learning employees, mindsets, challenges, and opportunities that could help you better understand and improve your team.

Take the Wonder Leader Test below. Answer “True” to any of these questions if you catch yourself saying or thinking the statements that follow:

I am often frustrated my employees don’t do what I ask. “I wonder why they won’t…”

I don’t understand why we can’t achieve our goals: “I think my employees should work harder…”

I claim my employees are lazy, stupid, or insubordinate: “I think they are just…”

Employees quit and I don’t know the reason: “I wonder why they left…”

Employees quit and I assume I know the reason: “I think they quit because…”

I feel like my employees talk about me behind my back: “I wonder what they say after meetings when they huddle at the water cooler…”

Answer “yes” to at least 2 of those questions above, and you may be a Wonder Leader.

Being a Wonder Leader is very frustrating and downright dangerous to your career. Never really knowing what is going on can take its toll on you as a manager. In fact, some managers even quit, step down, or get fired due to the problems that arise from being a Wonder Leader.

This happens for three reasons:

1. You Make Costly Assumptions.

You should not act on an assumption. If you do the results could be devastating. You may be deciding that the worst-case scenario is happening. HINT: It’s probably not the case. You can’t treat the disease without knowing the illness. Making the wrong decision due to a false reality probably isn’t a good career move.

2. You Damage Your Brand.

Making a data-driven decision is critical in many areas and management is not exempt in this instance. Telling people what they’re thinking or presenting assumptions as facts lessens your credibility as a leader. When you don’t have the answers because you are wondering, you can appear incompetent or naive.

3. You Can’t Improve.

Growth occurs when you bring knowledge to the table. The Johari Window model states that bringing information into the arena makes something common knowledge for all involved parties to understand, and this is the point in which growth occurs. . When you withhold “facades,”pretending you know the answer, assuming you know, or not knowing and being ok with that, you never get the opportunity to improve, nor do other parties involved.

Now that we’ve helped you understand how to determine if you, or a colleague, is a Wonder Leader, and the dangers involved, I will let you in on the good news:There is a cure!

Stop Wondering and Assuming and START ASKING!

When coaching a Wonder Leader, I openly ask, “Why won’t you ask?” There are usually three reasons this doesn’t happen:

1. They fear a negative response.

2. They don’t believe it will make a difference.

3. They don’t know how to ask.

Here are a few tips for overcoming these three, growth hindering obstacles. First, let’s address number one. If you approach someone in the right way, recruit them to the cause by ensuring they know the benefit that can come out of a coaching conversation, they probably won’t respond negatively. Ensure they know the goal of the conversation up front, prior to laying the questions on them. You could recruit them by saying something like, “I want to ensure you are growing in your career, and as my direct report I feel it’s my responsibility to find ways to help you improve… Is now a good time to have a conversation about (insert what you are wondering about here)?”

Some people are too busy to slow down and try to explain something to someone, meaning you don’t believe you have the time to help. Other leaders may think that even if I tell them, they won’t change. Here’s the bottom line, and I quote Wayne Gretsky, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

You owe it to your direct reports to discover the problem through questioning. You took the job as their leader: No one put a gun to your head. You also owe it to your employees to help solve the problem after you understand the situation. Seek to understand, and help your direct reports create an action plans that will solve the issues. You won’t have to wonder anymore and things will improve. If they don’t improve, at a minimum, you’re now able to decide next steps with a clean conscious

Finally, to address the last reason, and in my opinion the easiest to address. Ask your employees how you should ask! When you address them from a place of care, with their improvement in mind and recruit them from that place, you can get them to tell you everything. You don’t even need to think of the question!

For Example: If you’re thinking, “I wonder why they left?” You could call your former employee and ask, “I want to improve the workplace and prevent losing more good employees like yourself. How could I ask you what happened in a way that you would be willing to help me understand what happened?”

When you stop wondering, stop assuming, and take the time to ask why in an open and respectful way, you can get to the bottom of almost any challenge. Only after deeper questioning can you really understand their mindset and help them overcome it.

This blog is an excerpt from Sean Kelley’s upcoming book on sales management.

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

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A Better Way To Effectively Train your Staff

Leave a Comment / Sean Kelley Blog / By Sean Kelley

Remember all the way back to high school or college. If you were like the vast majority of students, you excelled in the subjects that interested you the most. These are probably also the same subjects that you could answer questions from other students in. You may have been so good at said subject, you could even tutor someone who wasn’t as good. When you really enjoy a topic, you will utilize it more, study it more, and even be able to teach it. With this fact in mind, you can help all your employees grow faster, and become more skilled and knowledgeable than you ever thought was possible. In this article we will cover an effective way to leverage your employees best “subjects” to better train, support, and grow your staffs skills. If you follow the ideas outlined below, you as a leader, will be able to do this, with minimal time investment at no cost to your company.

Today’s company leaders and managers are faced with many obstacles that may prevent training. When asked, “Why don’t you conduct more training?” The same answers almost always pop up. “Not enough time!” How could you possibly dedicate 3, 5 or even 10 hours per week to training your employees? After all, you probably already work more hours than you had agreed to when you were hired. You couldn’t possibly stop what your doing for that many hours a week to train your staff. I know how many directions a manager is pulled in throughout the day.

Another common problem is, “My staff wont listen, half of them are seasoned veterans who know it all!” This is a common issue, trying to get the veteran who has seen and been through it all to pay attention in training is impossible. My top performers are always to “busy” to sit through a training class. These top performers consistently meet their quotas WITHOUT training, so why would they want to pay attention in a class? The one thing any manager will agree upon is; however, that even a top performing veteran can improve and grow if they choose. Thus, if they were “open” to training, they could hypothetically sell even more, and get even better at what they do.

Money can also be a hurtle for some companies. Many fortune 500 companies will invest millions in training and coaching their executives, managers, and employees, because they know how important training and coaching programs are. However, most companies are on a tight budget and don’t have these kind of financial options. Some managers want to train their staff but have NO budget, so hiring an outside company is not even an option.

Yet another challenge to regimented training that a manager may not admit too, or even be aware of, is that the sales people have heard the managers training spiel on each subject already. How many times do you read the same book? How many times do you watch the same movie? Probably not that many times, unless you really like it! I have news, they may not really like your training that much to do it over and over! (Sorry friends) Thus, to expect your employees who have been trained by you once, or twice on each topic already, to learn anything else from your repetitious training doesn’t make sense. In fact, if you did any training when they were on boarded, and now expect them to sit through regimented training from you over again, learn more, enjoy it and pay attention, your being unrealistic. Some employees may even be insulted that you would ask them to sit through training on something they feel they have already been taught, or mastered, or that they have learned early in their career. Imagine forcing Bill Gates to do a Windows PC 101 class?

This article is not to say that you shouldn’t train your staff due to the aforementioned hurtles that can prevent quality training. On the contrary, you should find ways to overcome these obstacles, and that’s just what this article is about. Companies with ongoing regimented training see massive results, and huge gains in profit. Client satisfaction, market share, and all the other goodies that come from this type of internal growth are abundant with a great training program. So the question now becomes, “How can we implement a training program that is low cost, low time investment, and extremely effective? How can we create training everyone from rookie to veteran can engage in and grow from. How can we stick to a training program without taking the manager or the entire staff off of their duties for long periods of time?”

It was these questions that led me to think long and hard about a way to accomplish this. The short answer to these questions is to ask your staff. That’s right, ask THEM! Step one, list every skill or subject your staff should be trained in or should be proficient at. Second, disseminate this list to your staff and have your employees rate themselves in each topic. I prefer a 1 – 10 scale for this. Make sure you let them know what each # means. A 1 means they need severe training in said subject, a 5 means they are proficient but could improve, and a 10 means they could easily train other people on each subject. You will find most of your veterans will give 10’s in many subjects. Guess what? You just found your company trainers!

The next step in this process is to create what I call a “Training Needs Matrix”. You can use Google sheets or excel for this. What I do is list the employees across the top of the columns. Each row on the left has all the potential subjects for each training session. If an employee is a 10 in a subject (and if I agree with their assessment of themselves) I will give them a green box. If they rated themselves between a 1 and a 6. I will give them a yellow mark. If they have never been trained on said subject I will give them a red box. Now I will take the green box employees (the people that fancy themselves a 10) and decide who will teach each class, this is based on who I deem is the best at each subject. I enroll them in doing this by letting them know, they are getting practice at being a manager. Also by helping out the team, there will be more company growth, which will benefit them long term.

Note: If an employee gives themselves a rating on a subject that contradicts what you think about their skill level, they may need coaching around this. I recommend a 1 on 1 coaching session for any employee that believes they are much better at a topic than you do. Furthermore, employees that give themselves a 7, 8, or 9, are also encouraged to attend the training sessions but are not required to go. Again going back to paragraph one, why force someone to attend a training session that may not interest them, that they will not pay attention too or grow from? Everyone who rates themselves 1 – 6 should attend the training session for that subject.

I also must mention, it is up to YOU as the manager, to ensure your “trainers” prepare for the class, and take teaching it seriously. Also you must make sure the training classes take place when they are supposed to, because your employee trainers will not force people into a class room or office to learn from them. Holding everyone accountable to attend the classes will be your job. That being said, all you have to do is make sure all the right people show up! The training will happen, you will be able to stay focused on steering the ship while your 1st mates conduct the classes. Your employees will hear an alternative perspective to the training topic, which will reinforce the things you have taught. This training regiment will not cost your company one dollar. Your employees have decided what they WANT training in, thus their learning will be far more effective. The seasoned veterans who “know everything” will now be teaching and teaching reinforces what they already know and builds more confidence. Confidence will help them sell more in the end and give them leadership skills they will need to get to the next level in their carriers. This also grows team cohesion and stickiness, since your veterans now have a vested interest in the newer employees. Since they have helped shape them, they will actually start to care about the success of their peers. You would be surprised at all the other benefits this type of in house training program has!

About Sean Kelley

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75 Easy Ways to Add Value to You!

Leave a Comment / Sean Kelley Blog / By Sean Kelley

We ALL want to make more sales, earn a promotion, make more commission, get more respect at work…etc. I want you to get those things as well, but you need to know, none of those things come free. The price you must pay for them? The time and effort it takes to add value to yourself. By adding value to yourself, you increase your value for others. Ultimately, this is how anyone, anywhere sells more, makes more money, earns promotions, earns respect, earns trust and more. Here are 75 easy ways to add value to you at your dealership to help you begin getting what you want most!

75 Ways to Add Value to YOU at Your Dealership:

1. Help someone new at your office.

2. Learn something new from a Youtube video.

3. Ask someone what they want most in their career.

4. Help someone get what they want from their career.

5. Share information that will benefit others.

6. Have a candid conversation with someone regarding their biggest blind spot.

7. Defend someone under “attack”.

8. Put your team before yourself.

9. Put your customers’ needs before yours.

10. Ask someone in a different department, what can I do to lend a helping hand?

11. Authentically smile at every single person you meet today.

12. Tip someone who isn’t supposed to get tipped.

13. Post your best piece of advice on social media.

14. Thank everyone who has positively impacted you at work.

15. Help a coworker clean their desk.

16. Schedule something fun for you and your team to do together.

17. Give someone a 5-star review online.

18. Share a facade and be vulnerable.

19. Apologize to someone who felt wronged by you.

20. Ask your customers, “What could I do better for the next customer?”

21. Ask your customers, “What should I continue to do that you enjoyed most?”

22. Ask your boss, “What expectations could I do a better job of meeting?”

23. Pray for someone you know who is going through a difficult time.

24. Open the door for someone.

25. Leave your office better off than when you got there.

26. Walk away from gossip.

27. Do every single daily task with 150% effort.

28. Forgive someone who has upset you.

29. Show someone how to work smarter.

30. Lead by example, do the right thing in front of peers.

31. Work with integrity, do the right thing when no one is looking.

32. Write down 3 assumptions you have made about a co-worker and ask forgiveness.

33. Ask every subordinate how they like to be recognized for a job well done.

34. Double your personal monthly goal, and double activities to reach the new goal.

35. Log every activity for the day, tomorrow remove the 2 most useless activities.

36. Spend 10 minutes planning your day before checking your email or voicemail.

37. Be humble, ask others where you can improve.

38. Write down your best idea and share it with others.

39. Ask others to share their best idea with you.

40. Ask the top performer in your office if you can shadow them for a day.

41. Organize your desk and help someone else organize theirs.

42. Park someone else’s car for them.

43. T.O. a deal and don’t ask for half.

44. Find a car with no gas, and put gas in it.

45. Come to work 30 minutes early, and bring donuts to service customers.

46. Call orphaned owners and ask if you can be their customer service agent.

47. Go visit a department (office, service, etc.) you don’t see often and show them appreciation for what they do.

48. Compliment 5 people on a personality trait you appreciate about them.

49. Decide how you will reward yourself for doing all this awesome stuff.

50. Bring Sean Kelley #thecarbizcoach a grande iced coffee with sugar free vanilla and half & half from Starbucks.

51. Show extreme enthusiasm the next time you demonstrate.

52. Ask, “Why is that important to you?” The next 10 times a customer asks a question.

53. Ask a team member, “What is your greatest challenge right now?”

54. Schedule lunch with your 5 favorite customers and invite them Monday – Friday next week.

55. Record your next walk around or demo, listen later and improve 1 thing.

56. Ask your coworkers, “Where can I improve most?”

57. Write down 3 great things that will happen for you if you reach your goal this year.

58. Ask your boss, “What are 3 great things that will happen for them if we hit our goals as a store this month?”

59. Send a 30 second video to your favorite 10 customers simply to say “Hi!”

60. Pick up trash and screws in customer parking

61. Ask your coworkers to give you a recommendation on LinkedIn.

62. Ask a customer to film a 30 second testimonial video about buying from you.

63. Learn every coworkers spouse and children’s names.

64. Ask a social media group how they would solve your greatest challenge.

65. Ask each sales person their most challenging objection and how they overcome it.

66. Suggest something better for your customer than what they selected on their own.

67. When asking for the sale, lock eyes and smile.

68. Read your company’s value statement three times.

69. Tell a customer WHY you do what you do.

70. Commit to everyone what you are going to accomplish this year at work.

71. Read a book on leadership.

72. Read a book on sales.

73. Read a book on customer satisfaction.

74. Subscribe to the DriveCoaching newsletter and blog HERE.

75. Hire yourself a DriveCoach HERE.

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11 Reasons You Need to Make Time for 1 on 1 Coaching

Leave a Comment / Sean Kelley Blog / By Sean Kelley

The Problem

Admitting a vulnerability can be downright uncomfortable to do as a manager. One reason I often discuss these issues openly is to help other managers see these potential blind spots. Another is to display humility and focus on self improvement. Today’s blog is no different: The goal in sharing this challenge is to help you, as a manager, realize the importance of having one-on-one coaching sessions with each member of your team. Also, to help you understand how these interactions will affect your employees, your company, and your career.

As a young sales manager I never had enough time to accomplish all the things I wanted to do on a daily basis. I wanted to sit down with each team member and allow time for feedback around their efforts. Ideally, I wanted to have time to discover their goals and focus on strategic business planning to achieve them. In my world this wasn’t possible. My intentions to do these things were there, but I had many reasons or excuses to not take action. I would run out of time because I was cleaning up after my employees, putting out fires, and solving problems for them. This was in addition to all the paperwork, reports, meetings, client interaction, tasks, and other activities that were required of anyone in an upper management role.

Eventually, my eyes were opened to the benefits of performance coaching. I realized how powerful the activity can be for both parties involved if done regularly and properly. I still had so much going on all the time, I couldn’t squeeze in these intimate meetings with everyone on my team. I downplayed its importance because I just had to get everything else done first.

In my opinion, I was doing a mediocre job of holding myself, and my team, accountable to meet regularly. Though, as my coach put it, I was “successful in spite of myself”, something else was missing. The missing factor was identified with a single sentence I read in a book. The name of the book was called, “The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results,” by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. The book asked, “What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

The Solution

It didn’t take long for me to connect the two, coaching and focused intention. After some deliberation around this question I made a decision. If I make coaching one-on-one with my entire team my “one thing” , everything else would be easier or unnecessary”. They would grow into the type of employees that could solve their own problems by thinking things through and taking ownership. My team would prevent fires from starting by developing their customer service and communication skills. They would develop business plans that would ensure they hit or exceed their goals. I would help them care for their plans long term, and be an accountability partner for them along the way. By making performance coaching my, one thing, I would improve my team, crush barriers to success, and help my company reach new heights. I made a decision, and committed to make the time for one-on-one development for myself and my team.

11 Positive Results from Our Time Spent Coaching

I started spending at least 15 plus hours each month coaching with my team. Here are some of the results, as stated by my employees themselves. These are just a few of the hundreds of remarks and coaching wins we have celebrated over the past couple years.

Coaching Creates Confidence: “It feels great to know that I am doing the activities that will lead to my success each week.” “I love being apart of the winning team!” and “It’s amazing being able to communicate effectively with my CEO. What a relief!”
Coaching Helps Employees Grow: “I know I’m moving my career in the right direction.” and “I’ve hit all my professional goals this year! I can’t wait to see where I end up next year!”
Coaching Fosters Accountability: “I did say I would do that moving forward and I didn’t this time. I own my mistake.” “I give myself a ten on staying accountable for my actions this month.”
Coaching Defines Purpose: “I used to sell for the money, now I realize there are so many more important things to sell for.”
Coaching Initiates Autonomy: “I don’t feel I need to ask you for every answer anymore, I know how to figure things out on my own and I ask myself WWSD (What Would Sean Do?).” This one got a chuckle out of me, as I have said the same thing about my coach.
Coaching Inspires Mastery: “I am getting better at my job. The book I just read helped me improve my internet sales process. I sold 7 more units this month than my best month ever!”
Coaching Generates Accomplishment: “I’ve never made this much money in my life. I’ll never go back to salary work again!” and “Thank you for helping me get to this point in my career. Its truly a pleasure working with you.”
Coaching Gives Fulfillment: “I sold 2 units today! I love my job.” and “Only in this office could we have this kind of fun! I really love coming to work each day.”
Coaching Lowers Turnover: When I spent time with my employees in a one-on-one environment, they see I care, which helps them feel appreciated. In addition, we solve problems together and make plans that help them reach their sales quotas which in turn help them hit personal financial goals. People meeting sales quotas feel more fulfilled and accomplished; thus, tend to stay on their job longer. Having less than three sales people quit, while promoting seven and hiring six in over a year at a top producing automotive dealership is quite a success story.
Coaching Increases Sales and Profit: Our employees are stepping out of their comfort zones to do things they may have never tried alone. They know their managers are here if they need us, but they can do what they need to achieve the results they desire. All the benefits my team sees, I see. As their leader, their success is my success. I feel their victories and wins, and they are addicting!
Coaching Lowers Leadership Stress: Since understanding and knowing each member of your team is synonymous with one-on-one coaching. Knowing what makes each member tick, and how to best motivate and inspire them takes a lot of stress off your plate. You will be able to effectively generate buy in around the activities which will help each team member be successful. Less repeating yourself or forcing your hand for action lowers your blood pressure! Maintaining a pulse on your employee’s satisfaction levels also comes with coaching. This awareness can prevent costly miscommunication and frustration among your team: also lowering stress.

Did regimented one-on-one coaching free up my time?

No, it sure didn’t! The ironic part of the entire shift in mindset and action, was in having regular one-on-one coaching sessions with my entire team, it didn’t free up my time at all. It did however, change the activities I was forced to partake in. I spend less time putting out fires and answering questions that someone could self discover. I don’t need to babysit simple processes as much. I don’t need to spend time replacing people that quit anymore, since very few people we coach regularly quit.

Instead of spending my time on these activities, I’ve replaced them with working out more deals for the increased sales. I spend more time chatting with the additional customers that my sales team brings in. I recruit, hire, and train new people in order to grow and keep up with the increase in sales. I enjoy spending more time cultivating leaders for my company. I spend time sourcing and managing a larger inventory for the increased sales volume.

In the end I learned a valuable lesson. No matter what, life in business and management is going to be crazy and challenging. You’re always going to be busy and will eternally have a full buffet of tasks and activities to dine on from bell-to-bell. The question is: Would you rather be proactive and spend your time doing the activities that help people grow, produce results, help your company succeed, and build a culture of employees that are drawn to their goals? Or, will you forgo the coaching and spend your time living in reactive mode? As a result you will spend more time cleaning up after mistakes, putting out fires, rebuilding after employees consistently quit, repeatedly need to fire people for under performance, push people to mediocrity, and watch your employees struggle to reach objectives, if you even know what those are with this choice. Both paths are busy, and contain some degree of stress. Either choice will require intense focused effort, and actions on your part to navigate. In contrast, one feels great and helps others, while the other may feel frustrating or even tumultuous at times. It’s a a choice between focused intention and growth versus random environmental reactivity.

Take a page from my book. Make the time for regular one-on-one coaching sessions with each member of your team. Learn how to do this effectively, make the appointments and stick to them. It will change your life and your team members lives. Every time you conduct this critical activity, you will learn something and grow from it. If you refuse, at the very least hire someone to coach your individual team members. In doing so, you will spend more time doing the activities that fulfill your career, create success, and energize you.

About Sean Kelley

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3 Steps to I.C.E. Your Managers

Leave a Comment / Sean Kelley Blog / By Sean Kelley

Don’t worry, I.C.E. is a positive thing! This month marked a huge benchmark to success for my company. For the first time in what may be our organizations history, we promoted seven people at one time, under one roof top! To see one of my core purposes fulfilled in such a way was extremely rewarding. Consistent business from great marketing, great products, customer satisfaction, and highly motivated purpose-driven employees created the perfect storm. This storm was the need for more leadership, management and sales staff. This need could only be fulfilled in one way: a massive promotion from within! A win for the company, a win for the employees and a win for our clients.

I am proud of our accomplishment, but this article is to help you with a simple process for crafting your very own, home-grown leaders. By following this simple 3 step strategy, I.C.E. we created to build and upgrade our management team, you too can discover and grow such leadership. With a large sales staff, all with their own unique abilities, individual strengths and weaknesses, how do you decide who is the right person for the job? How do you turn good followers into leaders? Follow the three steps below to answer these very critical questions and develop your company’s leadership of tomorrow, in other words Identify, Cultivate and Empower your managers.

Step 1: Identify the Potential Leaders

First, you must identify who could be potential leaders. Ask yourself, what qualities are most important for a leader in your organization? Who has the majority or all of the qualities you listed? Of the qualities the candidates are missing, can they be taught, trained or coached on these missing characteristics?

For my business, we wanted the following traits:

Understanding of the Sale Process
Five Star Customer Satisfaction
Clean, Correct and Timely Paperwork
Highly Trainable and Coachable
A Good Follower, yet Confident and Autonomous
Selfless Service: Putting Coworkers and Company Needs First

Once we identified who had the traits above and who didn’t, it was easy to determine who deserved the opportunities presented.

Step 2: Cultivate their Leadership Skills

Before your home-grown leader is ready to take charge, it is important you train and coach them first. Coach your would-be leaders, one on one, knee to knee. By doing this you will determine why they do what they do, and what gets them out of bed in the morning. Once you discover this, you can recruit them by aligning both your efforts.

Let them know, “Steve, what I want for you most, is to reach your desired level of career satisfaction. Based on what you told me in our coaching session, more responsibility and growth is important to you. I want to help you get there and there are some new opportunities on the horizon that will open up soon. Are you open to discussing these new roles and responsibilities now and how you can best serve your company?” For more information on this type of enrollment statement, read “Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions” by Keith Rosen.

We decided to utilize our in-house Training Program I had created and written about in an article this past September, to give the potential leaders practice at training peers. This is a volunteer program and no one was required to train their peers. However, the people that wanted to be leaders, stepped up and acted like leaders. The people we had identified above took the initiative and with little or no resistance, began training their peers to great effect!

Next, we allow them to shadow the manager in the role above them so they can follow a crawl, walk, run process to taking over the role in the future. Don’t make the mistake of promoting someone, then throw their unprepared mind to the wolves. Set them up for success by cultivating their job and leadership skills.

Lastly, ensure they are comfortable in their new role prior to starting. No new position is ever 100% easy and I believe you have to stretch people’s comfort zones to help them grow. However, ensure you build their confidence by testing their mettle, new skills and abilities. Are they proficient enough to do the job? Are they willing to do the job? Ask them how you may best support them in their new role. Ask their peers to show grace and understanding while they get their feet wet learning their new job.

Step 3: Empower Your New Leaders

Now that your budding, home-grown leader or leaders have been selected and carefully developed, it’s time to empower them. Let your staff know why they have been given this opportunity. This will create drive among your team members who did not get promoted this time. It will also let those team members know what expectations they may not have met in order to make the cut. This gives the unselected team members opportunity to improve and grow as well. Ensure everyone knows the expectations and job description of the new roles for each promoted staff member. People cannot meet expectations they do not know exist!

Let the promoted individuals speak in front of the team. Have them answer the following questions in front of everyone:

How will you try to best serve your team in your new role?
What expectations do you have of your new staff members?
What goals will you work to accomplish in your new role?
How can your team best support you in this?
How open to feedback, and constructive criticism from your team members are you?
How do you prefer to receive this feedback?

Ensure everyone knows the chain of command, pecking order and who answers to whom. Let your team know what’s in it for them in these new changes. This will alleviate fear and anxiety, as well as feelings of doubt or dissatisfaction among the entire team when changes like this occur.

You too have fresh, undiscovered leadership talent starting to sprout within your organization. The next great company leader or executive could be ready for photosynthesis right under your feet. Always be looking for the traits that matter for your company’s leaders in your direct reports. Once you find them, cultivate their leadership skills with training and coaching to help them grow and bud. Lastly, set them up for pure success by empowering them and enrolling your team in the changes. If you follow this three-step method, your company will be better off for it and your team will love you for it. You will make a positive change in the lives of your employees, while at the same time you will help your company grow! These are both very rewarding events for a leader, ones that you will be proud to have accomplished well into your golden years.

About Sean Kelley

#coachingthecarbusiness #drivecoaching #thisistraining #coachingexcellence #winningcultures

3 Behaviors That Could Be Limiting Your Ability to Communicate With Your Sales Team

Leave a Comment / Sean Kelley Blog / By Sean Kelley

PART 1 for Managers: Here are three behaviors that could be limiting your ability to communicate effectively with your sales team! (Stay tuned for part 2, geared for employees will come out in June!)

For the last year, I have been both lucky and blessed enough to spend my time coaching dozens of amazing dealers across the country and their observing their great people in action! I keep noticing a reoccurring theme happening among sales managers and their salespeople, regarding communication. It seems the ability to effectively communicate, be candid, add value to conversations and create clarity when speaking to each other continues to be a challenge for many of these professionals.

My colleagues and I believe there are four cylinder to a winning culture, and if all four function at a high capacity, make a dealership extremely successful. Effective communication happens to be one of them. When coaching these well intended people around these communication challenges, I always seek to understand the root cause of the problem. My belief is that both front line salespeople and managers need to take ownership in their ability to help create a winning culture through top notch communication.

This article will outline a few of the habits and behaviors that while are not the root cause, are warning signals of deeper communication issues. These three habits also may be hindering effective communication across every axis in your dealership. This can impact turn over, employee motivation, customer satisfaction, and sales. This article will also give you some actions that if followed through, can greatly impact your ability to be more effective in your communication.

I was sitting down in a small finance office with new contracts neatly stacked in a plastic package on one corner of the desk. I was behind the desk, sitting in the finance manager’s seat who happened to be off for the day. In our one-on-one coaching conversation, the manager whose back was to the glass door was discussing his frustration about several employees that work with him, and what he perceived as their inability to be honest with him about the entire situation each time they work a deal. After asking him several questions to understand the situation further, he surmised that it would be extremely beneficial for himself, his employees, and his dealership if there would be honest communication at the desk.

When asked what this would look like, he expressed that he wanted his people to share all of the information they had when working deals with him. He told me, “I think they don’t tell me things because they are trying to trick me into giving the deal away!” I asked if it was possible that he was making assumptions around the reasons his people wouldn’t tell him all that he needed to know. After a little more discussion, we realized that the lack of open communication was likely being caused by other things that maybe he hadn’t considered. We decided to ask the employees and approach them with the mindset of a coach to really determine what was going on.

We started conversation between each individual salesperson on the topic with the mindset of a coach. By that I mean no agenda, not on the attack, insatiably curious, and seeking only to understand the situation through the lens of the employee. In addition to the guidance that we ended up being able to provide to the salespeople, that ultimately has led to a massive improvement in communication for the management and sales team this blog discusses, we concluded: Stop shutting them down.

1. Don’t shut them down.

One salesperson felt that she was being shut down by managers. She would come to the desk with a challenge, problem, or question. She used to be open about these sort of things, but stopped bringing them up when working deals with the managers. This was because the last few times she had brought up these sales roadblocks at the desk, the manager/s had publicly addressed her lack of knowledge about how to deal with the situation. Not only was it done publicly, but it was done in a way that she deemed as disrespectful.

As a manager, when you respond to questions, challenges or objections an employee has when working with a client in a way that they deem as blatant disrespect or treat them as if they are being publicly shamed, ultimately you are shutting them down. They will become fearful of bringing up these challenges in the future. This will prevent employees from being open with you, and as a result, you will not get the honesty you need to be as successful as you could be.

Instead, ensure each employee is properly trained, and tested for competency. That will alleviate a tremendous amount of frustration. By training and testing for competency, you earn the right to question things that they should know, but don’t seem to have absorbed. When questioning these things do it in a respectful way. Ask each employee, “When you do make a mistake, or I need to help you grow and improve, how can I approach you in a way that you will know is aimed at helping you improve and that you find respectful?” Now, you can meet each employee where they are, treating them how they like to be treated vs treating everyone the exact same way.

2. Don’t tell them to “stay stupid”.

The next salesman had a thought provoking tale which made me think back to my tenure as a young used car manager. Reminiscing on some of the mistakes I had made, this was certainly one of them!

When asked why he wasn’t providing the information necessary, or asking the questions necessary to help close his deals, the salesperson said that he had been accused multiple times of trying to know too much.

He had asked the manager, “What type of payment was this customer looking at?” and been told to, “Stop asking questions for which you need not know the answers!” In addition, he had made statements, such as “We can’t put the customer on a specific car, because he couldn’t get the payments he wanted on it.” and again, had been told that he was trying to know too much, and that he needed to leave that part of the deal to the finance managers, and that he needed to “stay stupid”. Yes, too much information in the hands of someone who doesn’t know how to use it, and hasn’t been properly trained and coached can certainly be detrimental.

Therein lies the choice. Do we train and coach the people whose success and livelihood directly correlates with ours? Do we level up their skills enough to be able to leverage the knowledge for success? OR do we withhold all training and people development? Lead through blind obedience, creating robots that cannot think for themselves, solve problems, de-escalate angry customers and require significantly more maintenance long term?

At the very least, instead of telling them to stay stupid, I recommend asking them the following question, “In what way will having that information help you make this deal?” or “Why is that information important to you?”. Find out the reason behind the question, and learn that it may make sense to share the information with the salesperson. You may also uncover that this direct report is ready to start being educated for the next level in their career!

3. “Don’t come to me complaining about a problem without a solution”.

We’ve all heard this, or even said this at some point in our career. I’ve been told by business partners and co-workers, that it’s always 70 degrees and sunny in Sean land! I am the eternal optimist. In fact, one of my 5 core leadership strengths is team building through positivity. That being said, I believe our greatest strengths are often our biggest weaknesses. As such, I have tried to look at the other side and determine where these may hinder success.

If you are eternally optimistic, you may be averse to negative talk or attitudes. While being a positive leader is great, the double edge sword of this strength begs the following questions: Do you have blinders on that may be preventing you from truly understanding reality? Could your perception of attitudes cause your team to avoid bringing up their greatest challenges, concerns or fears? In your quest for a happy culture, could you be shutting down people attempting to share obstacles to success or even your blind spots? Does your team know how to approach you with these concerns in a way that you will not perceive as negativity? If they could solve the problem alone, would they be bringing the problem up at all?

Communication is key, we hear that way too often. However, excellent communication is something that needs to be strived for within your team and the key to that is coaching it! Instead of pushing salespeople away and keeping them “stupid”, understand that wanting to do that means that there is a problem and address it before moving on. Knowing the individuals of your team and how to do this in a way that benefits everyone is crucial to the success of your business!

Sean Kelley #thecarbizcoach CEO of Car Motivators in Arnold Missouri helps sales leaders achieve great results through their people and technology, with a unique approach to coaching and people development. His dealers are his partners and working with Car Motivators have helped his dealers see amazing results like, lower turnover for some by over 60%, increased sales volume by over 100 units per month, dealer principals enjoying more time off, manager stress levels decreasing, 40% increase in customer loyalty, dozens of salespeople executing on personal brand and dealership brand development campaigns on social media…etc If you are interested in achieving these same results, email Sean@CarMotivators.com

#communication #thecarbizcoach #coachingthecarbusiness #coachingexcellence #winningcultures #leadershipdevelopment

3 Behaviors That Could Be Limiting Your Ability to Communicate With Your Boss

Leave a Comment / Sean Kelley Blog / By Sean Kelley

This is PART 2 or a two part blog on communication, for Salespeople: Here are three behaviors that could be limiting your ability to communicate effectively with your boss! Click HERE for PART 1: Three behaviors that could be limiting your ability to communicate with your sales team.

I know this is going to be hard to believe, but across the country there are both managers and salespeople that have a hard time communicating with each other! Last month’s blog discussed 3 ways managers may be limiting their ability to effectively communicate with their sales team. Because I get to coach both managers and employees around this challenge, I am lucky enough to uncover both sides of the coin. This blog aims to help employees communicate more effectively with their leaders!

If you are perceived as doing any of the following communication hindering actions by your manager… you are hindering your ability to communicate with them! As a result, you may be creating a situation where your manager begins ignoring what you bring up, dismisses you, or even worse… avoids communicating with you at all costs. If this has already occurred, don’t fret. Not only will I shed light on the potential hurdles you may be putting up for yourself, and how to avoid them, but I will also give you tactical methods for bringing down those barriers that already exist.

Your interactions come across as negative or “whiny”

A strong leader knows that great morale and positive attitudes are key when it comes to an effective sales team. These amazing leaders are constantly trying to lift salespeople up after a challenging close, a lost sale, or even personal challenges. As such, this never-ending battle against low morale can wear on a manager. The pressure to keep the team motivated and high functioning can be surreal, and as a salesperson – you may not understand it yet. I am not saying to avoid approaching your manager. When you bring something to their attention, do so in a mood neutral way.

Let’s use the common complaint that it takes too long to get someone into finance. A negative approach usually goes along the lines of “Boss, my surveys are suffering because it takes too long to get customers into finance! My customers are in a hurry and they can’t wait this long.” First, kudos to you for being direct. However, the approach can certainly come across whiny or negative. If you complain about it to the other salespeople or finance managers, you can believe that it will get back to your leadership. This can cause you to be perceived as negative, whiny or even toxic to the work environment.

How can you as an employee, get this frustration off your chest, not be perceived as negative, and potentially help the situation get better? Let’s discuss a way we can recruit your manager to the conversation. Remember, you can’t win a battle with a one-man army. You need to recruit people to your cause! What makes people want to join you? There must be little or no barriers or resistance, and they must understand what they get out of the deal. The next question becomes, “What does my manager get out of the deal?” In this case, if customers were to go into finance faster, the benefits for your manager and dealership would be… Higher survey scores for the entire dealership, happier customers, more referrals and customer retention, the ability for you to spend more time prospecting to find more customers,and more money for finance as speed into the box can help them earn more profit.

Now that we know the gains for the manager, we need to start with that as a recruitment statement. “Boss, my goal is to help our store receive high CSI, more referrals, more finance profit, and more sales when I do more of the right activities. I believe there are some opportunities to improve the situation and I would like to discuss ways to improve them…” I will guide more on the recruitment statement later. Let’s say this works, and your manager agrees to a discussion around this challenge.

The next thing we need to do is take ownership by showing your manager that you are open to learning about what you personally can do to improve the situation. Imagine your manager agrees to the sit down, and the entire conversation is finger pointing by you. “Finance does this, the managers do that, etc.” Finger pointing almost always comes across as negative. Instead, a different perception can be created if you approach your manager in this way – “Boss, I am sure that I can play a part in improving the situation. Before we talk about what others can do to improve, I would appreciate your opinion and ideas about what I can do to improve the situation on my end. I believe that I am as responsible for the customer experience as anyone else at the dealership.” After taking ownership, receiving coaching from your manager, and creating a game plan on what you can do to improve; you have earned the right to ask your manager what can be done about the others, if anything.

In short, if you want to have good engagements with your manager and maintain your brand as someone who is positive, but honest – Follow these steps:

Ensure your approach is not stating the problem and walking away.
Avoid tri-angular communication, only approach the person who can help improve the situation.
Ask yourself, what does my manager get out of the deal? Approach them with those things first.
Take ownership and look in the mirror before pointing the finger at others.

You are randomly always asking for something

A homeless man stopped by our dealership one day. My manager asked me for my wallet. Me being the army special ops soldier who lived by blind obedience, and trusting my boss with my job skills and career, I did as he asked. He proceeded to pull three twenty dollar bills out of my wallet and handed it to the homeless person, who was later named, “The Good Luck Bum” by one of the salesman. Within an hour of the generous donation my boss was kind enough to make on my dime, then telling me, “Something good will happen to you now.”

I ended up selling a car and having one of the best deals of my career soon after. As a result, everyone, including myself decided to give this fella lots of money whenever he would visit, for a few days. His once sporadic monthly visit quickly turned into a daily drop in. He even came in two times in a day at one point! After about a week of this, people started avoiding him.

After two weeks, salespeople started running from him. After three weeks, the charity and novelty wore off, and someone even asked him to leave the dealership. Moral of the story, if you constantly have your hand out, asking for something randomly, you will drive away those willing to help you.

There are a few core employee engagement needs that are tied directly to a manager or senior manager’s ability to have regular ongoing interactions with their employees. Care being one, recognition and appreciation being the others. When employees feel undervalued or under appreciated, this erodes a teams’ ability to function at a high level.

Sometimes, it’s my job to uncover what is preventing this type of interaction to help improve engagement to in turn impact productivity! There are several reasons I’ve found this occurs, one of which happens to be the following: After asking a dealer, “What prevents you from providing the face time and conversation your employees expect from you?”

“Every time I start a discussion with X, Y or Z employee, or even walk by them, they randomly ask me for something that they want. This makes me want to avoid them because I didn’t plan for the discussion. Also, they don’t have supporting info or data to explain why this would help. I feel bad if and when I have to say no, which I usually do because of their approach.” The dealer explained this to me.

Your managers and dealers are very busy people. Every minute of their time spent has an extremely high value on it. Most everyone wants to improve their situation, and as hard as we work as salespeople in the auto industry, I know we earn every cent of that paycheck. That being said, just randomly asking for things will simply annoy and drive away your leadership from communicating with you.

If you believe something will improve your situation, do research to back up your claim before your meeting with the manager.
Ask yourself and have supporting data answer these three questions, “How does this benefit myself, my team, and my entire dealership?” If it benefits all 3, and you can explain how, you won’t come across as selfish.
Make deposits before you make a withdrawal. Asking over and over without giving is the equivalent of overdrawing your bank account. You can’t take out what you haven’t put in. Have you earned the right to ask for something? Have you had enough good interactions where you didn’t ask for things or is your hand always out?
Schedule the meeting. Instead of randomly throwing your wants or ideas against the wall when the boss walks by, hoping they will stick, reach out to them and schedule the meeting. Find out when is convenient for them. Go in with a meeting objective, benefits for all involved, research, and an agenda. This will help you be taken more seriously and earn respect.

You lack credibility and have damaged trust.

“You can trust me, I’m a car salesman!” is one of my favorite one liners. It almost always gets a laugh. While this joke is great, lack of trust between manager and salesperson is no laughing matter. Salespeople often withhold facades. A façade being information the salesperson possesses about themselves or their deal, which the manager does not have. Interestingly enough, because of the close proximity leadership in the auto industry has to their employees, and the high level of visibility and customer interaction these managers have with each deal and salesperson… these facades are often exposed at some point during or after the sale. When this happens, you can rest assured your credibility takes a hit.

When looking inward, and not blaming our managers, what prevents salespeople from being able to give all the open and honest answers that ensure trust and credibility remain strong? Here are some of the answers coaching front line salespeople has uncovered.

1) “I’m fearful of what the managers decision will be if I give them that piece of information.”

2) “I am concerned about being yelled at when I approach them when this happens.”

3) “I didn’t think they wanted or cared about that information.”

4) “I don’t want to let my boss down.”

All of these communication challenges are caused from a lack of knowledge, clarity and understanding. You need the knowledge to know how your manager’s decisions are impacted by each situation. We need to create clarity around the correct information that the manager wants to receive in each interaction. Finally, we need understanding of the consequences of withholding information and to weigh the potential outcomes of doing such things.

Sit down with your manager when you’re not in the game, playing to win and ask “why?” Prior to money being on the line while working a deal, seek to gain the knowledge of why certain information changes a manager’s decision. By understanding these decisions, it will help you be a more effective salesperson.
Discuss what information the manager does and doesn’t want during interactions at each stage in the selling cycle. I promise, by having this discussion you will uncover what is important to each manager. When you know what’s important to each manager, they will help you sell more! You will come to them more prepared which lowers stress levels.
Let your manager know how they should approach you, if and when you let them down, in a respectful and positive way. How should they explain what you can do better?

Imagine if you came to a mutual agreement with your company leaders. If you always knew what information they were looking for and why they wanted that information and how it affected your deal. What would it mean for you if your manager knew how to approach you and handle a challenge in a positive and respectful way every time that they had a concern? How would that grow the trust between you both, and what impact would it have on your results and career over time?

These are all coaching questions I ask the most communication-ally challenged salespeople. They are then able to overcome their fears and anxiety, approach their managers like a true professional. Respect, trust and growth occur at this moment! This growth happens on both a personal and professional level.

In hopes that you can communicate better with your manager and enjoy your career and succeed even more, I have shared some of the primary communication challenges with you. You now have some actionable methods for taking down these barriers which will ultimately help you achieve even more!

Know that I am always here to support your efforts for work satisfaction, winning cultures and career success. Feel free to reach out anytime if you need coaching around these challenges!

#communication #thecarbizcoach #coachingthecarbusiness #coachingexcellence #winningcultures #sales

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