The Automotive Industry is on fire, sales are up, profits streaming in, and there is only more growth on the horizon. Now is the time to capitalize!
Every Dealer is clamoring for more help. How do you separate from the market, and become the place to work?
As a National Leader with AutoMax Recruiting & Training I have the opportunity to speak with people from every corner of the country, and from every background, and the number one deciding factor for employment is SCHEDULE.
Dealerships are known for long hours, unforgiving schedules, and a lack of available balance with home and work life. This schedule concern keep some of the best help from ever considering this great career. Better question, how to fix it and still cover our showrooms?
The answer is true flex scheduling with required floor coverage times. It takes a little time and planning, but will bring in all the talent Dealerships have been longing for. Here is how it works:
Take the last 60 days of traffic logs, and create a traffic map for your store. Simply print each day’s traffic, print 7 full day blank calendar sheets, and ask a clerical staff person to place a tick mark in the hour slot for each person that has come in over the last 60 days. When the clerical person is done you should have an easy chart of high and low points for traffic by days and hours. If you want to get fancy create a color coded spreadsheet, just a fancier way to look at the same information.
Now to calculate how many people are needed and when. Ask the clerical person to take another set of blank daily calendars and divide each hourly total by 60, so now we will have the average number of people that walk in by hour. Plotting our busiest and slowest times of day, and busiest and slowest days.
Take the totals by hour and plot a schedule using the average traffic (always rounded up so 2.3 as an average becomes 3) and add either 1 or 2 to the number to allow for additional folks, phone ups, or internet requests to handle. This becomes the base requires Sales Consultants. Use this to create the base required schedule, this will create a minimal schedule to start, probably about 30 hours per Sales Consultant when slotted in. If you are over 30 hours per person to cover your traffic you CONSULTANTS!
Now take your staff, and based on seniority, allow them to create a prospecting and follow-up schedule for another 15 hours. They choose any they like, with approval from Management. You may have people that like mornings or evenings off, allow them the ability to tailor to their own lifestyle. For senior level staff, you may even allow some of the flex hours to be completed from home. Perfect for professionals that generate their own business, instead of relying on walk in traffic.
The last order of business are weekends. Allow one Saturday per month (except the last Saturday of the month) to be allowed as part of the flexed hours. So that week the Sales Consultant would have to complete the 45 hour schedule Monday through Friday.
Here we get the best of both worlds. Complete floor coverage when traffic is actually in your building, and set time to prospect and complete follow-up so business is being generated going forward.
How does this look in an employment ad:
ONLY DEALER WITH A TRUE FLEX SCHEDULE, INCLUDING A COMPLETE WEEKEND OFF PER MONTH! A CAREER AT ABC MOTORS MEANS HAVING TIME WITH YOUR FAMILY!
Now you can not only attract top talent from other sales industries, that have shying away over schedule, but you are now the most sought after position for experience Automotive Sales Consultants with the highest quality of living in town.
