Don Forman

A third of your life is spent at work. For business owners, that percentage is likely even higher. With that much of a time commitment, it’s crucial that you and your team feel empowered in the workplace. 

Let’s be honest; we’ve all checked out at some point in our careers. When we feel unappreciated or unheard, we check out sometimes without even realizing it. Maybe we stop putting in as much effort, or perhaps we act out in ways that don’t align with our company’s objectives. These silent aversions manifest in ways where productivity tanks, team morale becomes blurred, and ultimately, people start to feel disdain for their work. 

Great leaders prioritize the well-being of their team and, in doing so, prevent these checkouts altogether. In my decades of managing, I’ve learned three basic principles that have helped bring out the best in my team members:

1. Genuine and transparent communication 

When we discuss workplace motivation, communication is usually where it is lost. Although a buzzword touted in many business coaching workshops, communication is a tool few actually utilize effectively. To understand how to motivate your team, you first need to get to know them. Unfortunately, many workplace conversations are limited to disingenuous office small talk. “Did you get that email,” “What time are you leaving for lunch,” and “Did you finish this?” Those all have their purpose, but if it makes up a majority of daily interactions, your team will never feel connected. 

People don’t want to be badgered on performance all the time, nor do they want to feel like a means to an end. A genuine interest in the lives of your team members goes a long way. Something as simple as a newsletter that recognizes their accomplishments – professionally or personally, like welcoming a new family member or getting married– can do wonders for creating bonds. 

The other side to communication is transparency. In business, this can feel like walking a tightrope because there are some exceptions, such as income. I once made the mistake of announcing overall sales from the previous year in front of a team of 170 people. A quarter of them, although well-meaning, believed that’s what we earned in profit and wanted a raise afterwards. I eventually had to go back and explain. So while it’s vital to be clear, direct, and transparent, there does need to be a line in the sand. 

2. Build trust through actions

To be a great leader, you have to go out there and touch them. Not just with words, but you have to show your team that they can trust you through your actions. My group has developed a strategy that allows this philosophy to flourish. Our “Team Trust” meetings give me, the owner, an opportunity to directly connect with the team members and offer a safe space where they can truthfully express their concerns. When we conduct these meetings, we have two objectives: 1) everything said in the room is sacred, and 2) we commit to listening to everything that our team believes needs to be fixed in order to make it a better place to work – but that doesn’t mean we will always do it.

The trust is built by making a fine distinction between “valid” and “realistic.” Our team members’ thoughts and concerns will always be valid, but my role as a leader and owner is to navigate the business in a realistic way. The team must trust me that while certain things are great ideas, they might not be best for the company. The juice might not be worth the squeeze, so to speak. 

When somebody believes that you’re listening and that you have their best interest in heart, in many ways, it’s more important than giving a $1/hour raise. After our “Team Trust” meetings, we have a follow-up meeting 30 days later. The guarantee is that we’re going to get results. Whatever we commit to and say we’re going to get done, we do. In these meetings, we have learned incredible things that may not have come to light otherwise. And based on reactions I’ve received from team members, they are truly grateful for having a space where they can express their concerns.

3. Inspire through competition

The bottom ring on the motivation scale is financial. It’s not everything, but there are a few factors that, most people would agree, make a job worthwhile: autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward. Sometimes those rewards can be recognition or praise, and other times it’s financial. While not the most important factor, the results of financial incentives cannot be ignored. 

In the automotive industry, competition drives results. However, the biggest problem I see when it comes to competition and financial rewards is the lack of creativity. I see many managers trying to motivate their team with the same boring spiffs that didn’t drive results last time. Being creative doesn’t mean you have to give out a ton of money, but it means you have to know what motivates your team. 

Another consideration: what is important to you as an owner? Incentivize people on things that will drive your company’s objectives, whether volume, gross, warranties, etc. And lastly, change by season so there is always something new. At the end of the day, it’s not about the bonus, but how you present it. 

Financial incentives will harness results. But ultimately, it’s not about how much money we make between nine and five that makes us happy. It’s if our work fulfills us. No amount of money can outpace an environment that doesn’t fulfill your team.

In the car industry, I have built a reputation for being “Mr. Fix It.” In other terms, I have been recognized for my ability to turnaround struggling businesses.  I didn’t start off that way, but once I learned the ropes of managing a team and I became an expert in my craft, the sales followed suit. 

This skill set eventually granted me the opportunity to own my first dealership, United Nissan. In 2000, I was offered a position running the store, which has been failing miserably. At the time, the store was $400,000 in the hole and was averaging roughly 150 cars a month. Knowing this was the path to advancing my career, I left my current position, took a considerable pay cut, and went to work on April 1, 2000. 

In just 45 days, the store was back to making a profit. In June, just three months later, the store had doubled its numbers. That year, I was awarded the “Fastest Turnaround” award — something the group had never done before. In total, it was a $1.8 million dollar turnaround.

Fast forward over 20 years and United Nissan is still thriving, even post-COVID. In today’s market, the value of assets like this has skyrocketed. And because of that, today’s entrepreneurs are met with the choice between either spending tremendous capital buying a high-performing asset or searching for opportunities in “undesirable” ones. For me, I prefer the latter. As they say, “The bigger the challenge, the bigger the reward.” 

United Nissan was the first of many opportunities where I’ve taken an underperforming business and turned it into something more valuable, and the following steps I still utilize today with new business ventures. 

1. Find the baseline.

The first thing I do when scouting underperforming businesses is I evaluate how the company is managed. What my team and I find most with dealerships is how little they measure. They may measure services and parts because that is primarily handled through the manufacturer, but they have no performance metrics to determine the state of sales. So, the first thing we establish is the natural traffic.

It’s crucial we understand the baseline. We need to know how it’s performing and unless we know the absolute bottom, then we cannot determine the next level. Before adding marketing campaigns or a top-selling sales team, we need to know where the store lives naturally. From there, we can draft a plan to improve it. 

2. Build your team.

The most important asset in any store is your team. In the case of United Nissan, they had a good team that was misdirected by a very poor General Manager. This manager was not of the opinion that selling cars was a top priority – which, I’ve stressed before the importance of avoiding crab mentality in my post about planning your life. 

Unfortunately, we had to relieve some of the team because they were already tainted. They thought the store sucked! However, we kept the good leaders, which worked to our benefit, such as in the case of Nick Voss who now is our General Manager at United Nissan Reno. We also brought team members who knew how to sell, and for the ones who didn’t, we trained them thoroughly. 

When building a team, especially when you have multiple locations, you need to look for leaders. You cannot be at each store all the time, so you need people there that you can trust and who can manage. To put it simply, they have to be good with people and processes. It’s the responsibility of both your team and you as the leaders to orchestrate a superstar team. I know very well that it’s not an easy task, and many dealers today struggle with the outdated mentality that for your team you “chew them up and spit them out.” That attitude is long gone.

3. Maintain longevity by maintaining your team. 

As mentioned in the last point, your people are the most important thing in the store. To maintain longevity and ensure your store is performing at its best, you need to keep your team. You do that by training them well and most importantly, listening to their needs. At my businesses, we do team trust meetings for this exact purpose. We get incredibly useful data and we’re able to let our teams know that what’s important to them is important to us. In the most recent round with our team trust meetings, we learned so much and now we have an action plan to fix it. That is proactive leadership and management. And while I follow this religiously now, I admit this isn’t how I always managed teams.

Years ago, I was the opposite. I was in the mindset that if I fired and replaced enough people, I’d find the right fit. To some extent I did, but I also lost a lot of great people and damaged my relationship with my team in the process. 

When I acquired United Nissan Reno nearly two years ago, it was of the utmost importance to keep everyone intact at that store. A majority of the leadership team at that store has been with the company for decades. By doing so, we’ve been able to boost our numbers up by 70% on some metrics. 

A happy team that feels supported will perform better. And in the case of dealerships, stores that sell better have higher-producing service departments. Sales are leading the train, while the other departments are the caboose. Once you start selling cars, the faster the other departments start moving.