What do you have in common with the 2007 New England Patriots?

Are you too good?
Right now the 2007 New England Patriots are 8-0 and called by some the greatest team to have ever played the game. In their recent game with the Washington Redskins the Patriots came out on top 52-7. The critics have come out.

“Do they need to run up the score?”
“What are they trying to prove?”
“The Patriots and their coach are classless.”

The object of the game is to score points. Can we expect finely tuned athletes to go on the field and not do what they have trained for years to do? Should the Patriots not make an interception? Not get the first down? Not score the touchdown? No. They are doing what they are designed to do.

What does this have to do with you?

We recently were reminded of the occasional absurdity in our business.

A person (humility almost keeps me from saying this; … a person whom has attended our programs!) went back to their dealership and started to sell everything in sight.

Revenue was up, customers were happy, and this dealership sales professional was deliriously happy with his role in the dealership.

This is a win for customers, a win for the dealer owner, and a win for the salesperson right? You’d think so.

If you are a Harley-Davidson Dealer, e-mail Amy@PeakDealershipPerformance.com for your access code for even more dealership tools.  Be sure to include your name, dealership name and dealer number in the e-mail request.

Not so fast.

We recently found out that the person was reprimanded by the dealer principal.

For what?, you may be thinking.

They were told they WERE SELLING TOO MUCH!

No, I’m not making this up. No, this is not the plot of some twisted sales horror novel.

In disbelief I tried to find out more. Was this person using high pressure tactics? No. Were customers complaining about feeling unfairly pressured to buy? No. Did the store’s management not know how to deal with a high performing sales person? Yep.

(I know most dealer owners reading this right now would say “Try me.”)

This is phenomenon has been know to occur between co-workers. “Hey kid, you’re workin’ too hard and making the rest of us look bad,” is a comment many have heard. There’s even a Chinese saying that speaks to this issue: The nail that sticks up, get hammered down.

Maybe there is more to the story. Maybe there is some aspect of this dealer situation we don’t know about. I hope so.

Instead of accepting the mediocre and the average, maybe what we should do is strive to be the best. Strive to continually get better.

In the Washington game mentioned above, late in the second half, New England was up by five touchdowns and on the five yard line and pushing for another. An offensive lineman moved incurring a penalty, only to be chewed out by Tom Brady.

Why? Couldn’t he just shrug it off and relax knowing they had such a significant lead? Nope. Why? Because in the next game they may not be up by five touch downs and that penalty may be the difference between winning and losing. This exchange personifies the ever present quest for this team to achieve peak performance.

Are the Patriots trying to “right the wrong” they perpetrated earlier this year with the infamous taping incident? I hope so.

As long as you are providing value for your customers, doing so in a legal, ethical and moral manner, I say “play on.” Is there such a thing as performing too well? I don’t think so.

Let’s all get better at what we do. Instead of chastising those who are doing extra and having success, maybe we should all use the exceptional performance of the New England Patriots as inspiration to be excellent.
Will the Pats run the table this year? No one knows. But I do know we can use the Patriots performance so far this year to our advantage.

For those of you who follow our column in the trade magazine Motorcycle Product News what follows is the information from our last two column installments tackling the topic above. If you’d like copies of this article series e-mail us and we’ll make them available.

More practices to avoid …

Self Publishing

No we’re not talking about your next novel; we’re talking about the practice of fulfilling loan stipulations with dealership computer generated forms.

Sometimes lenders will ask for proof of employment or proof of income. And sometimes it’s apparently too much trouble to get these items legitimately or they don’t exist.

So what’s a poor dealer to do? That’s right….. They fire up the old computer, download some free shareware form software and start generating the documents themselves.

This takes the art of bank fraud to a new level. Whether it’s generating forms to verify employment, something as simple as a letter from the “employer” with generic letterhead to something more elaborate like a payroll print out, these actions are illegal, and spell bad news for dealers, consumers and the industry as a whole.

What can you do? 

•  Verify employment legitimately
•  Verify proof of income legitimately
• Never falsify documents
• Never accept documents from applicants that you know or suspect not to be legitimate; that’s right, doing so makes you an “accomplice” in the fraud scheme being perpetrated against the financial institution!

Although perhaps less problematic than the practices we just illustrated, here are some additional tactics to avoid if you want to make sure that our industry is not painted with the same negative brush that paints much of the car business.

• On the selling floor it’s not group think its “groups stink”:
  
  Have you ever pulled onto a car lot to see six or seven salespeople standing near the entrance “smokin’ and jokin’?” This is one of the best ways to make customers feel uncomfortable. It’s like trying to sit at the cool table in high school. When customers are uncomfortable, they don’t buy: period.

·     “If I could, would you …”

This hackneyed close is almost unbearable to even write. It perpetuates the cat and mouse stereotype negative dynamic between customers and salespeople. Avoid this by using more professional approaches.

• Empty threats
  
  Sometimes manipulative people will use false threats to keep a deal together or to sell more. Threats like, “You’ve already been approved, if you don’t buy now, it will ruin your credit.” Or “You’ll more likely be approved if you have credit life protection included.” Neither statement is true; instead, both attempt to coerce the sale leaving a negative impression with the customer.

If you are a Harley-Davidson Dealer, be sure to visit www.ComplianceCoach.com for dealership tools to help you manage Regulatory and Compliance issues.

Hasty Generalizations

Yes, there have always been nefarious car dealers and motorcycle dealers. Yet motorcycle salespeople and motorcycle dealerships do not yet top the list of unethical professions the way car salespeople and car dealerships do.

Should we embrace some of the positive aspects of the auto business? We certainly would be foolish not to: controls, processes, and technology are just a few of those positive lessons we can learn from the auto industry. As a matter of fact I asked customers to compare and contrast their car dealership experiences with their motorcycle dealership experiences. What did I find out?

Some customers wished that their motorcycle dealer experience was more like their car dealership experience. How? Their service departments are better.

One customer commented, “I drop my truck off in the morning, I know what it’s going to cost, I get a loaner vehicle and when I come back at the end of the day it’s ready to go as promised. I wish my motorcycle service experience was the same way.”

Ok so neither business is perfect. But the motorcycle business can be a place that is different, unique and positive.

In the past year, 32 percent of workers called in sick with phony excuses, according to an annual survey by Career Builder conducted by Harris Interactive. About one in three admitted to lying about being sick to their bosses once a year, one in 10 admitted to doing so three times or more.

Most managers admitted that they didn’t question most excuses. However, workers should be cautious, as 27 percent of managers said they had fired an employee for calling in sick without a good reason. The survey questioned 1,650 workers and 1,150 hiring managers.

Workers said they lied about being sick mostly because they wanted to relax (48 percent). Twenty-four percent said they needed to catch up on some sleep, while 20 percent said they used the time to run personal errands. Sixteen percent said they spent time with friends and family, and 16 percent said they cleaned the house.

One in four workers said they feel that sick days are the same as vacation days and they treat them as such.

Forty-five percent of hiring managers have caught employees giving fake excuses. Rosemary Haefner, vice president of Human Resources at Career Builder, says “This begs two questions: Do you have the right employees working for your organization and do you have the right employee management practices in place for your staff?”

Forty-one percent of hiring managers said they had received what they thought were fishy excuses. Here are some of the most unusual excuses they reported:

• Employee was poisoned by his mother in law.

• A buffalo escaped from the game reserve and kept charging the employee every time she tried to go to her car from her house.

• Employee was feeling all the same symptoms as his pregnant wife.

• Employee called from his cell phone saying he was locked in a bathroom stall and there was no one to let him out.

• Employee broke his leg while snowboarding on his roof while he was drunk.

• A skunk got into an employee’s house and sprayed all his uniforms.

• An employee blew his nose so hard he threw his back out.

• An employee’s dog swallowed her bus pass.

1. What do you have in common with the New England Patriots?
2. What do I have to do to put you in this van today?
3. Excuses, Excuses, Excuses.