Cure complacency culture and save your car dealership’s reputation — Jonathan Dawson

In some ways, the automotive industry saw some of the most amazing growth and profitability over the last two years. While this is an exciting time for car sales, savvy car dealers have started to pick up on the negative effects. On the latest episode of Mind Your Own Business, host Jonathan Dawson, founder of Sellchology Sales Training, discusses the pitfalls of complacency culture.

Dawson has started to notice some troubling discourse on social media from General Managers and other automotive retail professionals. He says the posts he sees are troubling and he is concerned about how dealership employees are treating customers.

For example, a sales manager’s post on Dawson’s feed recently lambasted a customer for not agreeing to place a hold deposit on a vehicle. That sentiment, by itself, is not that concerning. However, the thread below the post was filled with comments like “screw ’em”, “sell it out from under them”, and “I hope you rub it in their faces.”

This is a wake-up call to car dealers that some of their employees truly might not care about the customer. Here is a manager, in writing, on a public platform declaring that he doesn’t care about his customers.

Dawson wonders, if this mindset has become the norm, what are the long-term ramifications? What happens if you are not Minding Your Own Business? If you are a car dealer, you need to be actively paying attention to what’s going on in these online forums.

Dawson believes, some dealer groups, unknowingly, have a negative culture brewing that might be undermining your reputation. Some dealers have spent decades building up the value of customer relationships. This insidious attitude displayed on social media can tear all of that down.

Dawson understands that scarcity is your biggest closing tool right now, but does that means that your salespeople have to lose their empathy?