Sending an e-mail is one of the quickest, easiest ways to get a consistent message to everyone in your organization. It doesn’t take much to craft and can have a positive impact on communicating and reaching goals.
While they work for any size dealership, dealer principals with multiple locations or large staff tend to favor e-mail communication as a way to reach everyone with a consistent message. I reached out to Jeff Strong of Strong’s Marine to share some of the messages he considers important to share company-wide:
1) Profit or loss by department and company expressed in percentage rather than actual dollars. The percentage is usually much lower than employees think.
2) Educational milestones – We track education and training for all team members. Sharing and celebrating their success with all is an encouragement for others to learn more.
3) Shortfalls – I believe it is important to share when we fell short as well as our successes. It seems to add to the feeling of trust. Receiving honest feedback adds to our long-term credibility and desire to consistently improve. When we went through our last downturn this was extremely important because the team could trust what we were sharing with them.
4) Catch someone doing something amazing – Share it! Recently I got a great letter from a customer who had left his convertible top open. He rushed back when a storm suddenly hit and found our team had already carefully tarped his car. You can’t teach that sort of thing but you can certainly celebrate and encourage that level of caring.
5) Spiritual notes – I do share these as well when it moves me as I believe it helps us all keep our problems (both work and personal) in perspective.
Getting a clear message to every one of your team members does a world of good. It can help them make better decisions that are more in line with the over dealership objectives, it can dispel rumors and drama and more.