4 ways to create better team cooperation in your car dealership

Like every other type of business, dealerships need great communication and team cooperation. Dealership teams, in particular, need excellent communication on both the front and back ends to succeed. With the right strategies and solutions, dealerships can facilitate consistently great communication between departments. This will then improve the dealership's daily operations as it continues to grow.

To give you some direction as you work on improving communication between dealership teams, the following are some tips for great team cooperation.

1. Team meetings

Every dealership should ensure everyone is on the same page with team meetings. Regular meetings will allow for enhanced team cooperation as staff members review goals and the tasks needed to complete them.

Morning stand-ups offer a means for everyone to share their priorities and potential blockers. For example, one sales team member may have specific sales targets to reach but find that certain bottlenecks in the sales process make this difficult. From there, other sales team members and other departments, including leaders, can explore these blocks. In the process, they can begin developing a truly working solution.
Over time, meetings can focus on different issues to continually streamline various processes.

2. Productivity tools

You also need the right technology behind your business to further improve team cooperation and communication. There are plenty of tools out there that dealership teams can use across all departments to increase productivity.

For instance, Slack is a great communication platform, enabling individuals and teams to delegate tasks and track progress. Email communication offers another channel to keep teams on the right track.

Many types of mobile apps can boost productivity for employees, whether they’re at the worksite or working remotely. These apps allow employees to access them at any time and any place, and they can be updated automatically as staff make changes or updates. They can also include daily reminders, customer notes, daily workflows, and appointment scheduling. Additionally, certain apps can serve as a reliable communications hub, keeping all phone calls and text messages in one location.

Also, consider offering some training for these tools. You can share guides or specific tips with employees, which could help them get the most from these tools. You may even make these a part of your stand-up meetings whenever you introduce a new tool.

3. Digital systems

Another technology that can help your business improve communications is a comprehensive digital system. A reliable digital system will streamline the sales process and allow cross-team communication and data transfer.

A complete system will include a variety of tools to manage nearly every element of your dealership. For example, you will need a:

• Dealership management system (DMS)
• Customer relationship management (CRM) system
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system
• And more

You should also look for solutions that cater to dealerships rather than other types of businesses.
For example, SalesLogs is a platform specifically designed for dealerships. A solution like this will give your business what it needs to optimise the efficiency of most operations. You can benefit from a clear view of all deal pipelines, which will help determine if any issues are causing friction along the way to a deal. The right tool also helps:

• Simplify data entry
• Keep information consistently up to date
• Share actionable insights

In addition, you can track performance via key performance indicators (KPIs) based on your goals. To help encourage healthy cooperation and competition, a good digital system could also include a digital leaderboard that tracks each salesperson's progress.

Ultimately, a dependable digital system could supplement all of your efforts and communications as you benefit from complete transparency and control over your operations.

4. Team training/development

Having team meetings, coupled with the right technology, can help with communications throughout your organisation. But staff development and training are equally important. Otherwise, your teams may grow stagnant, and certain team members may not grow via better communication over time.
To help lift your staff up, you should develop specific training programs around communications. During these training sessions, employees can learn all types of communication skills. Some of these skills could include how to:

• Give and receive feedback
• Have difficult conversations
• Properly notify others of certain issues or ask questions
• These skills are just as important as knowing how to make a sale.

As your teams engage with these programs, they'll begin to enhance their skill sets. Apart from helping staff develop professionally, it could even help with their personal growth through improved general communication. This would make your training programs invaluable assets for your employees.

Implement the right strategies and tools for great communication

You need to give your teams the resources required for effective communication and team cooperation. Without these assets, your teams may struggle to connect both internally and externally, which could hurt your bottom line and hinder your staff's growth. The key is to use the right combination of strategies and technology to fully equip your employees and leadership. From weekly or even daily stand-up meetings and training programs to productivity tools and digital systems, there's no shortage of solutions available to assist with communication.

Want some more ideas for improving communications across your teams? Check out our post on how to boost sales through improved team cooperation.