Page 20 - GIADA-Sept-2018-Final

DEALER INSIGHT

Culture: You’ve got it all wrong and we

NEED to talk about it!

By Subi Ghosh, Senior Director of Dealer Marketing at Stream Companies
Let me explain. What do you think makes identified five areas where those internal and 3 pillars into engaging your community
up Company Culture? When you ask people external cultures focus into. through non-advertising means can take
how they experience culture (not define it), those grassroots efforts and magnify
you’ll get a varying degree of responses. A 1. Strategic Hiring and Placement – them! Creating opportunities to empower
majority of those responses will be focused Cultivating a specific set of steps for your team to become ambassadors of
on “having fun”, “easy to communicate with hiring will help clearly identify the best your brand can significantly increase
leadership”, or “free food”. Ultimately, these candidates. I have personally used four exposure. A social culture is not one
are responses you want to get, but culture stages: phone, in-person, a follow-up where individuals are simply posting on
is far more than the warm and fuzzies. email task, return in-person to meet with Social Media, but rather going out into the
There is a real tangible value of decreasing team members. Identifying skillsets for communities with pride and authorities
turnover, engaging sales staff to perform correct placement of employees is the as ambassadors of your organization.
higher, improving morale, and increasing biggest growth opportunity in dealerships Social policies and training are crucial to
sales from an intentionally placed structure from what I’ve experienced. Not only will igniting this strategy.
and an engaged community. How you interview and placement roadmaps make 5. Retention Marketing- We are so often
achieve this is through planning, structure, hiring easier on sales managers, but will focused on the in-market buyers that
and effective deployment. There are real also dramatically improve turnover. we forget the rest of the lifecycle of
steps and structures to put in place to 2. Internal Processes – The right structure, our customers. By creating a strategy,
properly achieve long-lasting growth with rules, guidelines, expectations, mission processes, and structure for all stages
culture success. statements, and consumer experience of our customers we can engage/
pathways makes all the difference to your communicate our culture, our missions,
A few things to get you started. team as well as to your customers. Most and sales opportunities more effectively.
Two halves that make a whole are employees “understand” the general
internal and external culture. They work processes, but will admit that they couldn’t In a hyper-connected, consumer experience
hand in hand but should be focused share the steps with a teammate or follow driven world, culture is crucial to attracting
on independently. Internally, you want them consistently. This is due mostly and retaining both your customers and
to focus on your employees, internal to a lack of written rules or handbooks. employees. Dealership culture seems to be
communication, structures, mission Defining the outlined items above will the most difficult to influence or course
statements, expectations meetings, defined give your team clear instructions on how correct. In large part due to the connotation
customer experience paths, defined to do their jobs, what is expected of them, of difficulty, most give up before they even
processes, bridging departments, improving what it means to be a team member, and try. I’m here to tell you it isn’t that difficult,
communication, breaking silos, and creating how to give a customer the best possible but it does take intention and buy-in.
value statements by departments as well as experience.
for the organization as a whole. 3. Websites – Taking what we’ve defined Culture has become an extremely hot topic
in the first two pillars, we now have a across all industries, especially in automotive
Externally, you want to address how the defined brand with incredible value that where customer experience is critical, and
community engages with your store. Areas helps your dealership stand out amongst those who fail to execute that struggle with
of focus that address external culture include competitors. We can now effectively turnover at a high rate. While I see that
social culture strategy, brand identity, value communicate that message to the increasingly more dealerships are embracing
propositions, consistent market research, community through creative placement “culture”, I find that it is quite misunderstood
social training for the team, consumer on the homepage, SRPs, and VDPs to and poorly structured which leads to
experience awareness, and defined consumer overcome objections (before they even continued turnover issues along with poor
experiences paths. They are important to become objections) along with convincing consumer experience. Solving this problem
discuss and illustrate to your team as well as them to engage the dealership. With only is my motivation for discussing this topic
the community. a 2-4% conversion from eyeballs on your at the upcoming Driving Sales Executive
website to leads, we have to get creative to Summit in Vegas this October. I hope you
5 pillars get those consumers wanting to engage join me at DSES so you can walk out with
In my experience of both being an Internet with us. a plan to conquer such an important and
Director and running an agency, I’ve 4. Social Culture – Incorporating the first misconstrued topic. n

18 | GIADA Independent Auto Dealer SEPTEMBER 2018