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The Auto Dealership Business Case for the Company of Good People

Posted by Tom Lombardo | Mon, Jan 12, 2015 @ 03:47 PM

As A Man Thinketh James AllenHow can a vendor help your business? If you’re like most owners and managers, you reflexively answer “reduce cost,” but then all sorts of caveats start to arise in your mind because you’ve hired cheap vendors before and you’ve probably lost a small fortune to their errors and failures.

The caveats change everything, and the more closely we look at them the more clearly we see that that’s where success arises.

In fact, the entire history of self-improvement literature begins with these deeper thoughts about the real-world consequences of our actions. James Allen’s brief classic As A Man Thinketh, in print since 1902, is widely considered the “source text” for the entire genera, and cause-and-effect is the only thing he talks about:

As the plant springs from…the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them.

If that’s true, then it might benefit you to consider the “seeds” in the mind of the person (and the company) you’re considering hiring – especially if your “self” and your “business” are completely intertwined, as is usually the case with successful entrepreneurs and managers.

The vendor you choose might impact you just as much as it impacts your business. So with that in mind, here’s what one of our largest auto dealership clients has to say about our Senior VP of Sales, Charles Dortch:

“What’s really cool about him is that once a year, maybe twice a year, he would inquire, ‘Hey, how ya doin?’ He never lost touch with me and that is the reason we chose CrossCheck.

“Your rates are good, but we could have gotten better. But I told the owner that Charles reached out all throughout the years just to keep in touch and to see how we were doing and to tell me that he wanted our business."

“And that unto itself…he truly understands what a customer is about. And I could tell that it filters down.”

This says more about our client than it does about our Senior VP. She understands that the seeds matter most, and she didn’t make a move until she was certain that her vendor was as committed to her well-being as she was.

In fact, 85% of senior business leaders agree that differentiating solely on price fails to create sustainable business development, but that an excellent customer experience will.

The Mental Ripple Effect

That only matters if the customer experience continues to be excellent after you’ve signed on the dotted line. Will the vendor “walk the talk” or will you feel that you’ve been duped?

A study done by American Express and Neruosense proved that this part of the experience measurably affects your mental health.

Their Professor Gemma Calvert explains, “Great service [activates] chemicals in your brain involved in trust. This is oxytocin, the brain’s ‘trust hormone.’ It not only makes you feel good, it impacts making others feel good with a sort of ripple effect.”

Now our client’s real intention comes into focus: She’s after that “ripple effect,” because she knows that if her employees work with a competent, caring vendor, they are far more likely to provide competent, caring service to her customers.

We provide service to the F&I department at over ten thousand auto dealerships nationwide, and as you know that’s a very intense part of the business because that’s where the money changes hands.

When these people call us, they are usually under a lot of pressure, and here’s what another one of our biggest auto dealerships had to say about our customer service:

“Ronald – awesome. Michele, Jennifer, Linda and Vicki, also awesome. Thank god for Rachel because I would lose my marbles without her. She is the best thing that ever happened. I think we were separated at birth.”

That’s the sort of ripple you want your vendors to start, because you know full well that when it flows through your customers it literally drops to your bottom line.

The Physical Ripple Effect

Excellent managers and entrepreneurs know exactly what they’re up to, as Allen explains:

A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it…It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought-forces upon the objective…he has set before him.

People doing that prefer the company of other people doing it too, and successful businesses include their vendors in that group.

A focused vendor isn’t just working for you, and he’s not just working for himself, either. He’s consciously trying to use his business to create a material ripple effect that will benefit everyone.

In fact, another study done at Stanford University found that people receiving material benefits are far more likely to “pay it forward” by providing material benefits to others, and the more business contributes to that general phenomenon, the more likely it is that all involved will accomplish their “legitimate purpose.”

Here’s a dealership Controller explaining how one of our services helps her keep that ripple flowing:

“If a customer has an issue, like they don’t have the down payment…because they’re waiting on, let’s say, their tax refund or…something like that, you know they don’t want to wait for the car. They want to buy it now."

“In that instance it definitely helps to utilize the hold check system to give the customer the peace of mind that he can still leave with the car, and that we’ll honor that he’ll have the money in their account when he says.”

“And then they leave happy… that’s why the multiple check service is absolutely phenomenal.”

It’s worth noting that we bring another aspect to that flow by guaranteeing the checks the buyer writes to the dealership, which, we believe, helps to enable the whole process.

So then, how can a vendor help your business?

Clearly, in a great many ways. There’s no reason to expect any less, and when considering which vendors you wish to employ, it may be wise to take the whole spectrum of the relationship into consideration. Because you’re not just making sales. You’re making yourself:

Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself.

 

choosing check service

Topics: Auto Dealerships

Written by Tom Lombardo