It doesn’t. And lack of motivation and employee turnover in the car business is a chronic problem, despite the pay plans that are largely based on incentives.
The reason is that people eventually turn a deaf ear to all that motivational talk. Especially vulnerable are people who answer to a manager for their performance or lack thereof- they grow numb to all the managers’ efforts to ‘motivate them.’ Why is that?
It happens because your people are already motivated. Treating them like they are not motivated to be successful breeds resentment. Long ago a scientist named Maslow showed us that all humans are born with three basic lifelong motivations:
Here’s where things backfire. Your efforts to give employees what they already have does what? It demotivates them. They see all the incentives as insulting. That’s because, by offering rewards for production or by threatening punishments for lack thereof, you are giving your people the message that they are lazy.
That’s how they interpret incentives; to adegree,they see them as derogatory and as manipulative. And if you project to your people the message that they are lazy, that is exactly how they will act.
After World War II, the prevalent management theory was that workers were basically lazy. Therefore, managers thought the only way to get people to work was to offer rewards for performance and to threaten them with punishments for under-achieving. That’s what managers believed, and that’s the message they sent their people.
It’s no wonder that workers reacted to all those motivational perks by:
Is that what you are experiencing in your dealership? To some degree it happens everywhere people are paid on commission.
Look at it like this. Imagine a family that had several children. To motivate the children to excel, the parents pitted them against each other. Only the ones who had achieved something very recently got praised. The others were treated as less valuable, in the hopes of goading them on to do better and to win recognition, at the other sibling’s expense.
What do you think would happen over time? The children would withdraw from the parents, grow distant from them and from each other, and lose interest in helping each other. That sounds like the typical problems we experience at work.
When workers are constantly compared to each otherand ranked from the best to the worst, they lose willingness to support each other. The group underperforms, despite the production of one or two overachievers, because everybody else is feeling like an underachiever.
So that’s how they act, they underachieve. You lose the synergy you would have had if they were supporting each other. Teamwork disappears.
Leadership. People crave it. They naturally want to be led, to be trained, to become better than they were before. That’s what Maslow’s work tells us. The more that you can put great leadership into action, the less you can rely on incentives to motivate people.
Before World War II, the Japanese culture was extremely competitive. Almost everybody was paid on piece work and by incentives.
After the war, a management scientist convinced them to institute a spirit of cooperation and to reduce competition among workers. Over time his ideas took hold, and we all know how successful that nation became in the global markets.
If you want to learn the details and read ‘how to’ advice on what that scientist taught them about leadership, look for books written by W. Edwards Deming. You might become the great leader you know you are.
The automotive industry is in the midst of a remarkable transformation, and the road ahead looks distinctly digital. As technology and AI reshape consumer behav...
In the modern automotive industry, success hinges not only on the quality of vehicles but also on the efficient management of data. Car dealerships are data-ric...
Dealer groups of all sizes face the ever-increasing challenge of staying ahead of the curve and to thrive in this dynamic environment, data-driven decision-maki...
In the fast-paced world of car dealerships, data is the driving force behind success. Every customer interaction, sales transaction, and service appointment gen...
The automotive industry is evolving rapidly, and sales teams must adapt to keep up with the latest trends and technologies.
A huge component of successful car dealerships is a showroom that best represents the dealership's brand and inventory. To optimise the customer experience and ...
The automotive industry is always changing, with new challenges that automakers and dealerships need to overcome. One of the biggest recent challenges in the in...
The automotive industry is evolving rapidly, and sales teams must adapt to keep up with the latest trends and technologies.
Inventory shortages can be a frustrating challenge for dealerships, particularly when demand is high. With the right strategies in place though, dealerships can...
As a dealership salesperson, it's crucial to maintain an organised and efficient workflow to maximize your sales potential. One of the key components of achievi...
©Copyright 2005-2023 SalesLogs Pty Ltd - All rights are reserved
Privacy Policy | Terms of Use