Pick Your Battles: How To Avoid The Greatest Mistake Of The Year

As the Holiday Season arrives in full force, Dealers around the country are pushing to close the year strong. At the same time they’re also planning for the next year. Of course, that means it’s time to pick your battles and strategize.

What is the biggest mistake that most Dealers make when planning for the next year? It’s not that they don’t know about the latest tech phenomenon, and it certainly isn’t because they don’t set lofty goals. In fact, I think the biggest mistake dealers make is setting goals that are too high and broad. Their goals are not focused or well thought out.

“Wait, I thought everyone says to set high goals,” you might say. You’re right, they do, but what they often fail to communicate is the difference between setting broad goals and setting focused goals. More focused goals are not necessarily smaller, they are simply more refined.

The problem with big, vague goals is that people don’t understand the commitment.

It’s like when you were in school and you tried to write a report on the subject of “Business,” which you thought was a great idea…until you started writing it. Then you realized it was impossible; there’s too much to cover! There was no possible way to write anything organized or effective without narrowing down what you wanted to cover, you needed a clear objective of the report. Just like your report needed to be focused, so do the goals for your business. Otherwise, your team will either be uncoordinated, or become frustrated because unclear direction results in failure.

So how do you know if your dealership’s goals are focused or not? Ask yourself these questions.

1. Can you explain it in detail, or do you speak about it in general terms?
It’s simple, if you can’t explain your goals to your team clearly and concisely then it won’t effectively motivate anyone. Your employees are the ones who grow your business, so it is key that they are motivated and understand the steps needed to achieve the goals that have been established. Everyone must be unified working towards a goal that makes sense.

2. Can you think of 100’s of ways to reach your goal?
For example, if your goal is simply to sell increasingly more units each month then that’s too broad. Why? Because there are too many ways to get there. You haven’t told your team how you want them to achieve that goal. Do you want to focus on having your sales team improve their time management, gain more control of your showroom floor (using an up system), or ensure that more test drives happen at your dealership? Surely you also want your managers to be more involved, right? There are nearly endless possibilities for improving your business, but you need to choose what to focus on and communicate it with your team.

It’s fine to tell your team that you want to aim for moving a certain number of units each month, but you also need to be able to tell them specifically what they need to do to reach that goal. Otherwise managers and team leads will take it upon themselves and go in every possible direction to reach that goal. If that happens, no one will be working together and you will probably not hit your goal. You’ll just be left wondering…what happened?