Do your awesome ideas and new products consistently fail?  Lots of ideas sound amazing in theory, but it's important to remember that you first have to identify if making a change will actually work for your store, your management, your team, and your current processes.  This is known as evaluating your dealership’s DNA.

All too often in the dealership, changes are made to processes, people, products, services and rules far too quickly.  Why is that?  Are you in the habit of rapid change, just for the sake of change?  Could it be that when you make your decisions like this, the resulting idea or product just doesn't stick? 

Not every product or hot trend will work for every store.  Dealerships often try to incorporate what worked well for another store down the street or what they saw in a magazine, but they don't experience the same success.  The reality is that the other dealership's structure, culture or even current management, might be the real reason it stuck and did well.

The very first thing you have to do to implement a successful change is identify and truly understand your DNA.  Ask yourself questions like: What makes our dealership run? What are the strengths and weaknesses of our management, culture, people and current processes?  What kind of support would we need for our new idea, process or product?  Do we take the time to plan and cultivate a strategy when the change takes place?  Is there a centralized place or person that employees can turn-to when they have questions?  Who monitors the processes and services and how often? How often does training take place? How do concerns get raised and how quickly and easily do they get resolved?  These are all incredibly important questions to ask when defining your DNA.

Steps to make sure changes stick, by evaluating your dealership’s DNA

1. Answer the above questions
2. Identify who you are as a dealership innately.
3. Evaluate the team and store’s strengths and weaknesses
4. Understand limitations and only choose ideas and products that WILL STICK
5. Clearly define processes, communication paths, and responsibilities
6. Identify a clear plan for evaluating success and ROI
7. HOLD EVERYONE ACCOUNTABLE
8. If you see success, act quickly to move the plan forward.  If you see failure, act quickly stop it.

We don’t always need the latest technology or to incorporate the hottest trend. Ask your friends how many of them assembled incredibly expensive BDC departments, only to have them dismantled within a couple months!  If you don’t have the right people, in the right spots, prepared to take an idea to fruition or make a plan successful, it will not work. The reality is that we often ignore the key factor that makes changes stick...your dealership’s DNA.

*The image is one I created for my NADA presentation last January, but it helps to illustrate what makes up your Dealership's DNA: It's people, processes, personality, and unique quality held together by culture as the backbone and departmental bridges to make sure everyone is working towards the same goal.