One thing that dealers complain about more than “low car sales” is the quality of people they seem to attract in their detail department.

While they would like to have the department staffed with eagles instead of turkeys, the problem rests completely on their shoulders.

How so?

First of all you all have had enough experience with providing training for the people in your employ: salesmen; mechanics; body shop techs; and administrative staff, and you know that you have different levels of success with different people. You send two or three salespersons to a top quality sales training seminar and only one comes back and hits top sales figures. What this tells you is that maybe you are sending the wrong people to the right training.

To use an analogy, you send a turkey to an eagle school and what you get is a bored turkey and irritated eagles.

The turkey sits in the classes, rolling his eyes, telling others how stupid it is to even try to catch small birds in the air or to dive at 160 mph to snag a small mouse on the ground.

He is even so bold as to tell the instructor all the reasons why what he is proposing will not work.

At breaks, he argues with the eagles that none of this can be done, even if some of them are already doing it.

WE NEED ALL TYPES

God knows that we need both eagles, turkeys, and all types of birds; they all have their specific purpose and function, right?

They do different things and they do them differently.

So what I am saying is do not send a turkey to an eagle school and expect a different result.

You are looking for “good people” in your detailing department, but for the most part, if you are like other dealerships, you hire turkeys.

Why is that? Only you can answer that question. I have my opinions but will not share them here.

What you have to understand is that there are good people in the marketplace, people who would give anything to work for your dealership in any capacity. But you have to find them.

Anymore than you can change a turkey into an eagle you cannot make a bad person into a good person, you have to find the good person.

People can change themselves, but you cannot change them.

If you want good people in your detail department then you have to find them.

A turkey is a turkey, he knows it, and you know it, even if you do not admit it.

Sure, a well-trained turkey is better than one without training, but he is still a turkey.

But, an untrained eagle will come back from training school ready, willing, and able to fly higher than before because of the training.

Both the turkey and the eagle are better off with the training, but the eagle from the beginning would be able to do more than the turkey.

So, when the training you provide for your detail employees reaps no benefit, do not get mad at the turkey for failing to soar like an eagle, can’t happen, won’t happen.

HIRE GOOD PEOPLE

Often I ask dealers if they would hire the type of employee they hire in their detail department anywhere else in the dealership and I get an “are you crazy look”.

Of course, they would not. And I ask why then do they hire them for the detail department? No real answers.

If you want nice people, you have to hire nice people, simple as that.

ONLY THE MOTIVATED

I have done training seminars for dealership detail employees all over the country for the past 25 years; and some you can tell are really impressed and excited to try the new knowledge they have gained, even after years of detailing, while others could not wait to get out of the session. When they get out you hear them say to their buddies, “Yeah, I have heard all this stuff before, what I do works, why change?”

What is the difference? Why would every employee not want to be more healthy, wealthy, and happy? To get more and give more?

That is the way it is, some people are victims of their family of origin; some are just not smart enough to grasp the opportunity, who knows the reasons, but what I am saying here is that you cannot continue to waste your time trying to turn turkeys into eagles.

In other words, if you want a highly motivated, stable, and reliable detail employee you have to hire them, and then give them everything they need to soar.

Many dealers have good people but provide little for them to do the quality detail job that they are looking for on their used cars.

Links:
http://www.detailplus.com