Saturday I made three decisions I felt were critical to our team.
1. I decided not to allow a salesperson that put in their notice to stay. This is normal in the car industry, but typically not my approach. Heck, I once let a salesperson that we were letting go work in detail for a little while so that they could find a new job without having to worry about not having any income. I understand the reasons for moving on from a salesperson that puts in their notice, but I have always felt it was essentially telling your remaining staff that you don’t care about their livelihoods and only about the business. In this case, I felt like we were simply too early in this experiment to have someone who was exiting stay. We need to focus or time, energy, and training on our people while enforcing new standards and policies. It would have been hard to hold this employee who was leaving accountable to process and policy and allowing them not to wouldn’t have been acceptable either. I made it a point to sit down with the staff and explain my reasons and give them an opportunity to give input and ask me questions.
2. We sat down as a team and made the decision whether or not to replace this person together. I have always tried to create a culture where the staff felt like they were part of the decision making and that things didn’t happen to them that was beyond their control. I also feel like doing so this early would help establish in our team’s mind that we ARE, in fact, a team fighting in the trenches together. I gave them both the pros and cons of either side of the decision and let them give their input on what they thought was best. We talked about how this might affect them negatively such as having to do more of the work keeping the lot and showroom organized and standing tall. We discussed how they may have to be called in on their days off to cover for someone who might have to call in sick. Then we discussed the positive of having more opportunities available to them and how it would allow us to focus on the remaining group more.
3. I asked the remaining salespeople to do their fellow salesperson a favor if we decided not to add someone. I asked that, if they decided at any point that this wasn’t a good opportunity that they let us know to allow time to get someone else in quickly so that they weren’t leaving everything to the last two salespeople. I brought this up because I want them to start thinking about how what they do impacts those around them. Again, this is about creating a culture of teamwork. I also promised that anyone providing notice would not be let go immediately and that they would be able to see through their notice.
Ultimately, we decided to move forward for now with the three salespeople and that we would reevaluate as we go together. I let them know that I won’t surprise them by interviewing people out of the blue and that I would let them know if I decided to add someone.
Thoughts on the 3 of these things?
