Can you see yourself buying a higher end car from a folksy salesperson with a southern accent? Or purchasing a vehicle from a bargain automotive brands with the salesperson decked out in custom couture? It just seems highly unlikely, doesn’t it? Salespeople are some of the first contacts that current and prospective have with your brand. In order to ensure optimal success, your salespeople have to be plausible representatives for your dealerships key attributes and exude the dealership’s brand. Companies and organizations are not usually the ones that lack strategies, objectives, or goals. Instead, the main issue is usually getting the entire organization to be aligned with those strategies. If or when the employees’ behaviors or image does not match with ones of the brand, it can tarnish the dealership, creating cognitive dissonance that the customer views as incongruent behavior. This, in turn, can reduce sales and revenue, as well as weaken the trust in the dealership which lowers the integrity scores. Why Is Alignment Important? There have been countless studies that show alignment to be one of the essential ingredients to reach the company goals. Studies have shown that organizations who are completely aligned in their strategy, teams are able to create successful projects 90% of the time. Those who neglect strategic alignment are seen to only be successful 34% of the time.
In simpler terms, when alignment is not a focus point in the organization, roughly two-thirds of the projects are wasted, including any and all resources involved. There are countless advantages to engaged and aligned employees in an organization. These include:
- Engaged employees are likely to stay with the company
- They are likely to be more motivated and perform better
- There is a significant link between profitability and employee engagement
- It increases employees trust in the organization
- It creates a sense of loyalty in an otherwise competitive environment
- It boosts business growth
- It creatives a high-energy environment
- It ensures that your employees are effective brand ambassadors
How To Align Your Staff Around Your Dealership’ Purpose? So, once you know how important it is, how can you align your staff to one purpose? There are actually several different reasons. In this article, we’ll be going through the top __ techniques to align your staff.
- Three Star Employees Will Not Give You Five Star Service
It’s important for your dealership managers to hire with care. It’s equally as important to treat your employees the same way that you want them to treat the customers. If an employee is mistreated then they will not feel inclined to represent your dealership very well. The higher the amount of interaction and engagements that the company has with their goals, the easier it will be to ensure that all employees stay committed. This can be done through companywide strategies that help employees to visualize the goals.
- Design To Win
There can never be enough engagement to overcome structures and policies that are incongruent with your dealership. Just imagine some well-known brands in the U.S., such as Best Buy or Nordstrom, suddenly not honoring their return policies. There is no amount of employee engagement that could overcome already existing policies. So, the structure and policies of your dealership’s sales and customer service need to match the company promise at all time.
- Top To Bottom Organizational Engagement
It is not enough if only your marketing team carries out the message of your dealership. Everyone, from the customer service employees to the top executives, needs to be fully committed to the vision in order for everyone to be effective representatives. There should also transparency throughout the company so leaders are able to see the employees productivity and ensure that all individuals are working towards the same goal. Transparency also moves towards a more efficient and healthier work environment.
- Be A Two-Way Dealership
One of the easiest ways to increase brand alignment is to ensure that you’re listening to employees and customers at all times. It can make it a little easier and more rewarding for employees to let the managers know what they think. Outside of the organization, alignment makes it easier with your social media engagement. This way, they’ll be the first to inform you about their opinions regarding your service or product in regards to the promise that you’ve made.
- Link Every Day Efforts To Overall Goals
This enables employees and managers to visualize how individuals and teams work to contribute towards the larger company success and strategies.
- Consistent Communication
One of the many virtues of public relations is consistent communication. Your brand’s attributes won’t matter if you are not communicating them effectively to the world and your employees. The message needs to be consistent and communicated frequently. All the tactics that you employ need to reinforce a consistent message.
- Recognize and Reward
There are studies that have found that strength-based employee feedback results in 12.5% productivity increase. By understanding what the strengths of your employees are, you are able to utilize them to ensure that everyone is aligned with the company’s goals. When everyone is done just right, employee alignment can be the defining factor of success for your dealership. It can help you to adjust your focus in aligning your employees and getting them to stay committed. Being transparent and committing to your company goals, will help your employees to feel more motivated and engaged in the success of your dealership. It might seem pointless to focus on how your employees represent your brand, but in actuality, it can make or break your brand. The marketing team can only do so much if your employees are not expressing the same message. The discrepancy can cause confusion for your consumers who will then assume that your business is not running too smoothly. If your dealership is struggling with being ‘stuck’ in the connection from vision to employee, then brand alignment should be one of the first places for you to focus improvements on. The steps that we’ve provided above will help you with the aligning your employees to the dealerships purpose.
