While We’re Talking About Good Managers

‘Bear’ Bryant gave you the biggest tip you need to succeed...

“I’m just a plow hand from Arkansas, but I’ve learned to hold a team together, how to lift some men up, how to calm others down, until finally they’ve got one heartbeat together - a team. There’s just three things I’d ever say...

1. If anything goes bad – I did it.

2. If anything goes semi-good – then we did it.

3. If anything goes real good – then they did it.

That’s all it takes for people to win football games for you.”

– ‘Bear’ Bryant, University of Alabama Football Coach

We all know you can’t win many games with a lousy team – so just about everybody agrees that 95% of your success depends on the people you hire.

On top of that, for any real chance of winning a game or succeeding in today’s market – common sense says you need skills and teamwork. Trying to succeed in this business, in this market, is no different than trying to get to the Super Bowl – without a skilled team that works together, it can’t happen.

We should all understand the 80/20 rule by now. The downside of this rule means you probably only have 20% of your salespeople working hard on their own to improve, and that means you can’t win or grow nearly as much as you’d like to.

Why? Because just like one or two football players, they’re just part of the team, and 20% of the salespeople you have are not able to put your dealership in the ‘Top 10’ by themselves.

Not even the ‘Bear’ could win many games if he relied on just two or three players who were willing to go the distance to improve on their own.

Most managers work real hard, but go home frustrated because when you look at a typical sales team in a dealership, this 80/20 rule stands firm.

Unfortunately, we aren’t ‘Bear’ Bryant!

Most of us aren’t a ‘Bear’ of a coach on our teams. Since we aren’t, how could we expect to win a game, much less make it to the Super Bowl in Sales, if 80% of our team is consistently playing at an average or below average level?

Even worse, that 80/20 rule applies to dealers and managers just like it does to doctors, accountants, and our salespeople. That means there’s an 80% probability that we learned way too much about managing people from one of those 80%’ers in management – not from the best managers in the car business.

That’s why instead of following the 3 rules in Bear’s quote (above), most managers were taught by the 80%’ers in management to reverse that list.

Most manager’s versions of the ‘Bear’s Three Rules’ are just the opposite...

1. If anything goes bad, it’s their fault (the salespeople, the market, the weather, the customers or advertisers). They did it!

2. If anything goes semi-good, it’s because of my incredible skills on the desk that weekend (aka: in real life, we caught a lucky break).

3. 3. If anything goes really good – please stand and give me a round applause because I pride myself on having to work with incompetent people but I was still able to pull this off completely by myself.

(I once worked for a GSM when I was a ‘30-car’ guy. He and the GM ran all of us good SP off because they honestly thought they didn’t need us. Oops! They went broke with the 6-car anchors who stayed.)

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With all of the bad news in the 80/20 rule, there’s always good news. And the positive side to this is that since 80% of the people and 80% of the dealerships function at this average or lower level and justify it every day, if you’re a 20%’er, this is all good news for you.

The real good news: If you train, manage and coach to improve your team and develop more good and great players, winning is even easier because you’ll be playing against teams with no offense or defense. They’re helpless – they just can’t win on purpose, because the only strategy they have is to try to steal a cheap deal now and then, and hope they get lucky.

You are always in the best market possible if you want to grow. It isn’t about the economy or the weather, it’s always only about you vs. your competition, and they don’t even think it’s possible to grow.

If you don’t believe what I just said, call a few of your buddies across town and ask, “How’s it going?” You’ll hear their version of #1 above repeated over and over again in different ways. If your dealership goal is to grow every year instead of explaining why you can’t, think of reaching more success as a game of tag, and ... Now You’re It!

Help your salespeople sell more cars with Joe Verde’s new book, “Earn Over $100,000 Selling Cars – Every Year.” Go to joeverde.com to get a free PDF or order a free soft cover book.