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Recently I sat down with Steve Stigliano, former General Manager of Gold Coast Cadillac in Eatontown NJ for his opinion on this question. What management skills are needed today that a General Manager of an automotive dealership did not need 10 years ago.
Here is Part One of our conversation.
GP: Steve, so how long were you a GM?
SS: I was a GM for the last 6 or so years. Prior to that I was a General Sales Manager and before that a Business Development Manager. I have been in the automotive business for over 13 years.
GP: So you were right around at the beginning of the Internet becoming a growing part of dealerships?
SS: Correct. When all the dealers were hoping the Internet was a passing fad. Remember everyone was fighting it and wanting it to go away, that’s when I began. Some industry friends suggested to me that I had to focus on “everything Internet” because that’s the way this industry is going, so I embraced it. This was at the time where the Internet manager was the person sitting in a corner with a computer answering leads because they knew how to type. I took over that job and then moved on to BDM in a bigger dealership and continued to move up.
GP: So fast-forward to today. In your opinion what are some of the management skills that general managers need to know that is different from the past in order for them to be successful? What is first?
SS: Truly understanding their marketing budget in regards to the digital side of it. I’ve spoken to a lot of other general managers at conferences and twenty groups and many know the right buzzwords but when you really drill down a little bit they have a glazed look in their eye like, “I’m not really sure about that.”
Second, you must combine the understanding of your digital marketing with really getting your entire staff to understand that people walking in the door are Internet shoppers, for both service and sales. Before these customers walk in they have done a lot of research and we can’t treat them like we did in the past. You have to continually train your staff properly to handle these customers in a new way.
GP: In my experience, most General Managers will focus on training their staff by sending them to a conference or bringing in a consultant to help train them on the new internet shopper but they don’t focus on their own education.
SS: If the general managers are truly invested in getting their people trained they have to understand that the first step in the process is getting themselves trained properly.
I just think they’ve gotten burned so often and spent so much money on training that yielded no results whatsoever that they tend not to go down that same road again. But then they feel obligated to send their Internet or digital manager to a conference because that’s what I’m supposed to do and that’s how they’re going to get trained. Maybe they will return with a nugget of great information for us.
We will continue our conversation in our next article. Focusing on training of their team.
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Glenn Pasch is the current CEO of PCG Companies as well as a father, husband, writer and part of the National Speaker Association.