The Ontario Dealer - Volume 7 Issue 1

YOUR CONNECTION TO ONTARIO’S USED CAR INDUSTRY

THE ONTARIO UCDA

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1

THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE USED CAR DEALERS ASSOCIATION OF ONTARIO

PLUS DEALER PROFILE: Right Drive Inc. /24

> INSIDE:

WRITING EFFECTIVE JOB POSTINGS /34 TURNOVER BLUES /39 WINTER 2019

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THE ONTARIO UCDA

IN THIS ISSUE

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1

Winter 2019 USED CAR DEALERS ASSOCIATION OF ONTARIO 230 Norseman Street, Toronto, ON M8Z 2R4 Tel: 416.231.2600 Toll Free: 1.800.268.2598 web@ucda.org

FEATURED STORIES Your Dashboar d

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ucda.org Publication Mail Agreement #41890516

Marketing Getting Tired?

By Angela West

ONTARIO DEALER is published by Laservision Graphics Ltd. four times a year.

21

130 Industry Street, Unit 36, North York, ON M6M 5G3

Writing Effective Job Posting

By Lori Straus

EDITOR Gina Monaco Tel: 1.647.344.9300 or 1.289.456.4617 gina@ontariodealer.com

34

ADVERTISING SALES

Turnover Blues

Terry Coster Direct: 416.360.0797 Office: 647.344.9300

by Angela West

PHOTOGRAPHY

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photosbypierce.com

EXIT

05 07 09 11 17 19 24 28 32 42 44

The Driver’s Seat Warren Barnard

Editor’s Note Gina Monaco

Member’s Corner Bob Pierce

The Law Matters Jim Hamilton

Trends Chris Chase

Tech Talk Angela West

Dealer Profile Rhonda Payne

Best Practices The Common Lawyer Justin M. Jakublak

Old Car Detective Bill Sherk

Line of Credit Angela West

DESIGN thrillhousestudios.com

CONTRIBUTORS Chris Chase, Rhonda Payne, Bill Sherk, Lori Straus, Angela West, David Miller.

If you are interested in having your personal opinion heard, contact the editor at gina@ontariodealer.com

The publisher of The Ontario Dealer reserves the right to turn down any advertising or content submitted to it. The Used Car Dealers Association of Ontario and the publisher accept no responsibility for claims or statements made by advertisers in this publication or by the independent authors of articles appearing in this publication. All statements and opinions appearing in this publication are those of the writers themselves and are not to be construed as reflecting the position or endorsement of the Used Car Dealers Association of Ontario or the publisher.

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 | 3

ALL-IN PRICE ADVERTISING It’s putting the fun and excitement back into car-buying … and, IT’S THE LAW.

omvic.on.ca

THE DRIVER’S SEAT Knowing What You Need to Know With support from OMVIC and the Automotive Business School of Canada at Georgian College, the UCDA and Wye Management have developed a new Dealership Management Certification Program. Unlike the OMVIC certification course, this program is designed for currently registered dealers and salespeople. Its focus is on management … both for an individual currently involved in the management side of a dealership, or someone aspiring to become a manager.

By Warren Barnard, Executive Director, UCDA

WELL, HOPEFULLY WE’RE OVER THE HUMP of what’s turned out to have been

a pretty frigid and snowy winter to start 2019. Let me start by wishing a belated Happy New Year to all our readers!

One of the themes for this issue of The Ontario Dealer is getting educated to know what you need to know and familiarizing yourself with and following best practices.

In a larger sense, education has become a buzz word in the industry these days. It has long been a priority of the UCDA. The UCDA pioneered industry education in the mid-1990s with our Green and Red education courses for dealers and salespeople, respectively.

Mandatory education has been required for entry into the industry since 1999. The UCDA has taught the OMVIC certification course in class for the last four years. We now have 4 instructors and offer five or more classes per month. Classes are often booked solid a month or more in advance.

Compliance certification has long been a feather in the cap in many regulated industries and professions. Many skilled trades, for example, offer various certification upgrades.

could serve to point the salesperson back in the right direction.

At the end of each module, he or she would need to answer a few review questions. If a question were to be answered incorrectly, the salesperson would be referred back to the section of the course material that provides the correct answer and allowed to re-submit an answer until they get it right. No one would fail. No one would lose their licence.

The course would serve to remind salespeople about things like disclosure requirements and the importance of following best practices. This type of course would also be able to introduce and explain any new requirements that Continuing education is the likely next step for salespeople in our industry. When may have come into effect since the salesperson had last completed a course. it comes, it will be delivered in an onWe already promote “Buy with line format of some sort. Right now, the automotive sales business is one of very few Confidence” to consumers when purchasing from a UCDA member dealer. regulated professions that do not already Education and certification would deliver have some type of continuing education a stronger image of professionalism. requirement.

The program need not require the completion of a formal test or exam, but could take the form of a simple refresher course on an on-line platform. I can see the day where a salesperson will complete an on-line refresher in order to renew their sales licence. This would not have to involve lengthy reading of course material or an all or nothing test that you must pass in order to avoid losing your licence.

Anyway, that’s for some time in the future.

An ongoing education refresher could consist of several modules which the salesperson would complete on-line. It’s common to slip into bad habits and start taking shortcuts in completing paperwork or doing proper appraisals. The refresher

Line of Credit – Is It Worth It?

For now, here are some of the stories you’ll enjoy in this issue of The Ontario Dealer: ■ Get Educated! Do You Know what you need to know?

Best Practices - Get your sales team on the same page

Marketing Getting Tired?

Writing Effective Job Ads

Feel free to contact me at w.barnard@ ucda.org, anytime.

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 | 5

EDITOR’S NOTE Could Self-Driving Cars Ease Traffic Issues? as they normally would in rush hour traffic. The video showed that the vehicles ended up driving in a stop and go pattern.

The cars race around one side of the track, only to get caught in the traffic jam on the other side of the track.

Then unbeknownst to the drivers, a selfdriving car, with artificial intelligence, was introduced, and the pattern changed.

By Gina Monaco, Editor

EVER WONDERED WHY, WHEN YOU’RE DRIVING along the freeway and, for no

reason, in some lanes, cars start to slow down? And in other lanes cars just sail through.

I was interested in understanding why when I was commuting from Hamilton to Toronto for a time last year. It’s what experts call a “phantom” traffic jam – I was getting stuck because of the way people drive.

According to traffic researcher Dan Work, “small disturbances from one driver get magnified by the driver behind. Pretty soon it’s speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down.” He took the concept one step further with a driving test.

He had 22 cars drive in a circle on a test track. Drivers were asked to drive

The car was programmed to smooth the flow of traffic and the human drivers responded to the steady speed. As the self-driving car moved more smoothly, so did all the other cars.

The self-driving car was able to monitor the speed of the other cars, the ones who were driving too fast and the ones who were driving too slowly, and found the average speed. This is the magic traffic-calming speed. Humans can’t seem to figure it out but artificial intelligence can.

There’s also an energy savings component -- mixing regular humandriven vehicles with one self-driving car in a controlled setting, reduced fuel consumption by 40 per cent. That’s pretty amazing when you think about it. And the fuel savings is not just for the self-driving car, but for all the other cars that are in the traffic flow.

Whether you like it or not, some level of automation is coming to a roadway near you. The technology is already available as an optional feature in some vehicles in the US. These systems use an advanced version of cruise control that allows you to set the amount of space between your car and the one ahead.

Researchers say that can help keep you driving more smoothly - and benefit everyone around you.

If you’ve ever driven on Ontario’s highways during rush hours, then you know that something has to be done – this just might be the answer. ■

Traffic researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California have been using computer modeling to simulate different traffic scenarios to test what self-driving cars can do to improve traffic.

The computer models show that selfdriving cars can figure out, on their own, how to improve efficiency when cars are merging on to a road or moving through an uncontrolled intersection.

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 | 7

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MEMBER’S CORNER The IN and OUT Deal

By Bob Pierce Member Services Director

YOUR CUSTOMER HAS A REALLY SWEET CAR. The neighbour knows he has it

and wants in. Your customer wants a newer car from you and knows you won’t offer anywhere near what the neighbour will give…in cash. But, your customer wants the tax credit for the trade-in. What to do? Oh yeah! Let’s do an “in and out”.

Another term for this is a “convenience deal” and this practice has been around since cars were taxed….

But, let’s fast forward to this century and take a look at how this practice goes wrong under today’s regulated industry.

First, everything your customer said about the car to get the neighbour

to buy it, every representation, disclosure or pedigree about the car will be your responsibility. If, in fact, it is found to be untrue, you are on the hook.

The term “in and out deal” is slang that is best forgotten by the Industry.

There are no circumstances that should change the process of buying and re-selling vehicles.

When the car goes through your books and you become the seller, everything is on you. The most problematic issue is that you sold a “certified” vehicle but you didn’t do the safety. Your customer had a relative or friend that did it and they overlooked a couple of things to save some money.

No manager, finance manager, sales person or owner can or should change the process just because the customer has arranged the sale of their vehicle, wants the tax reduction and wants retail for their trade. There is nothing in it for the dealer.

Second, you aren’t making any money.

You have to give your customer the same amount in trade as he/she has agreed that the neighbour will pay retail for the car.

So far, has anything that you have read been good for the dealer?

The example I am using to write this article was a deal involving a 2014 Corvette with 14,500 km on it.

Apparently the customer was going through a nasty divorce, and he had to sell his toy.

I've seen these deals go sour so many times in the last 20 years. Most often the new owner of the trade-in comes back because the vehicle isn’t what they thought it was, it needed a lot of repairs, has had undisclosed damage and the customer you were bending over backwards for, is nowhere to be found.

The only consistent thing in these “convenience deals” is…..the dealer pays. ■

The sales person and the floor manager were doing “everything” to make the seller and the new buyer happy. No appraisal on the toy, no inspection, no searches and someone else did the safety. The bill of sale was as clean as could be and everyone was happy…….except the ex-wife and coowner of the Vette.

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 | 9

Cyber-breach or a common virus – no one is immune

By Philomena Comerford, President & CEO Baird MacGregor Insurance Brokers LP | Hargraft Schofield LP

A CYBER SECURITY MISHAP could

happen to just about any business. On November 1, 2018, federal mandatory breach notification came into effect, putting the onus on all Canadian businesses to report any breach of your customer, staff or any other third party’s personally identifiable information. As businesses become more dependent on technology, cyber privacy exposure is a growing concern, especially for dealers who deal with a large amount of personal information gathered in a sales transaction.

Mainstream media is riddled with stories of cyber breaches, network extortion, and social engineering fraud. The Cyber Security Readiness of Canadian Organizations - 2018 SCALAR Security Study, reports that the annual cost to recover from a cyber breach averages $3.7 million in direct and indirect costs per organization. SCALAR noted in its study

10 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

that Canadian organizations reported an average of 455 attacks in 2017; more than one a day. Suffice it to say, if you are hearing about cyber security disasters every day in the news, you ought to be protecting your dealership with cyber privacy insurance. Two thirds of small businesses that experience an uninsured cyber breach do not survive.

Not only are there direct financial costs of cyber privacy claims to your dealership, but there is also a risk of third-party costs. With a well-crafted cyber security insurance policy in place, your dealership can have ready access to the insurer’s forensic cyber security experts, breach notification services, legal advice and access to restoration contractors.

Your business could be exposed by something as simple as an unwitting employee opening a virus-infected link that spreads throughout the dealership network; or losing a laptop or smart phone on public transit, increasing the risk of exposing sensitive customer or employee data. Phishing and/or other electronic scams are becoming increasingly common. These risks can be insured under a cyber privacy policy.

Cyber privacy coverage has not traditionally been part of dealership coverage. However, business owners

who add cyber privacy insurance to their insurance program will sleep better at night knowing they are well covered in the event of a cyber-privacy claim.

In addition to insurance, dealers should focus on developing cyber security internal protocols, employee cyber security training, and an incident response plan.

Statistics on data breaches investigated in the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report indicated that 31% of breaches involved companies with fewer than 100 employees, 78% of cyber thieves employed techniques classified as ‘low’ or ‘very low’ difficulty, 75% of attacks were untargeted and opportunistic and 66% of breaches took months or longer to be discovered.

Data destruction, virus file corruption, extortion threats, unauthorized access, firewall and network security attacks, loss of income and security breach expenses can be staggering.

It can become a dealer’s worst nightmare to learn their business has been hit with an uninsured cyber-event. This awful predicament can be avoided by adding cyber insurance to your insurance program. The time for a ‘vaccination’ is before the ‘virus’ strikes not after. No one is ‘immune’. ■

THE LAW MATTERS Should What Happens in Vegas Stay There?

By Jim Hamilton Legal Services Director WHAT FOLLOWS MIGHT LOOK LIKE A BIT OF A RANT, and I don’t want to appear

alarmist, but we are becoming victim to our own data and the sky is falling! Well maybe not, but still …

As consumers we produce millions (billions?) of points of data every day in countless ways, from our shopping choices, to the online searches we do, to the calls we make on our cell phones. We create data in other ways too, ways that many people may not fully appreciate.

When we drive our vehicle, when we have an accident, when we go to a body shop for estimates or repairs, when we make an insurance claim, we are creating data. Companies are collecting this data and monetizing it on a massive and ever increasing scale.

I’m not aware of anyone questioning who owns this data. It seems to be accepted wisdom that the company collecting it owns it, but do they? If it’s my car, is it not my data?

This is not to say that huge benefits haven’t been realized from the compiling of these data points into organized and useable forms so that I can simply search (for a fee) online using the VIN of a car I want to buy and find out if it might have been in an accident, had an estimate, a police repair or an insurance claim in relation to the damage. I can find out quite a bit about a vehicle without leaving my desk if I want, and that’s much different than the lay of the land even 20 years ago. That’s a good thing.

But. You knew that word was coming didn’t you?

The first concern here has always been interpretation. If I search a vehicle and I get a response that says “police reported incident 2013, $0 dollar amount” what am I to make of that? Is it a “red flag” or a “red herring”? Am I better informed than when I paid $40 to find this out? Who explains this mountain of data to me?

In the meantime, I may have so much information I’m paralyzed to act for fear of making the wrong choice, not fear of missing out (FOMO) but fear of messing up (FOMU)!

Data collection science, if I can call it that, does not stand still. As I mentioned, it has become monetized and as soon as that happens, companies will continuously seek to push the envelope into new uncharted regions; potentially darker areas that should raise concerns for us all.

Recently, word out of Las Vegas, breathlessly reported in automotive news circles, is that Audi announced at a J.D.

Power Automotive Marketing conference that in 2019 they will unleash upon the world their first “all digital” vehicle. Just to share with you what that means, in case I’m not the only one who didn’t know, is that this little gem will send data back to Audi about every aspect of my driving experience.

Audi will know virtually every aspect of the vehicle’s function, more than 800 data points every minute … but wait … there’s more! The car will also “know” and report on my travel destinations, the load weights I carry, the time I spend at various places and so on. My car will know more about me than I do. And so will Audi. Supposedly this data will be used for the noble purpose of creating a better customer experience for me.

And this is viewed and reported on as a wonderful thing, a thing dealers should definitely get in on. Suppose they do?

Then suppose someone hacks Audi or the dealer and uses the data for evil purposes - who is responsible to me? Please don’t tell me that can’t happen, we all know it happens more than we care to admit (and even more than we know about I’m sure).

In the race for more and more digital content, data and granular analysis, I wonder if the right questions are being asked.

Aside altogether from prickly questions about who should own and control data created by my vehicle, owned and operated by me, what about other questions of privacy?

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 | 11

THE LAW MATTERS | If this goes wrong you better believe the blowback will hit the dealer and not just Audi.

Can you imagine the value such data might have to lawyers for insurance companies, separating spouses, and litigants generally, not to mention police, government tax authorities and other regulators? And these are just the non-criminal, nontotalitarian governmental third parties who would like a piece of the glorious pie that is me and my data.

I don’t want to come across as a party pooper and I’m all for progress, but it seems to me we all need to take a deep breath and try to look at these issues from more than one or two sides.

Just because we can do something, does not necessarily mean we should. Perhaps there is such a thing as too much information?

12 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

If I haven't convinced you yet, then consider this latest tidbit out of China, that great bastion of human rights and privacy protection, reported on recently by the Associated Press: IN CHINA, YOUR CAR COULD BE TALKING TO THE GOVERNMENT

By Erika Kinetz, November 29, 2018 Automakers selling electric vehicles in China send a constant feed of information about the location of cars to the government, potentially adding to the rich kit of surveillance tools available to the regime as President Xi Jinping steps up the use of technology to track Chinese citizens.

Generally, it happens without car owners’ knowledge, The Associated Press found.

More than 200 automakers selling electric vehicles in China — including Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler, Ford, General

Motors, Nissan, Mitsubishi and U.S.-listed start-up NIO — send at least 61 data points to government-backed monitoring platforms, under rules published in 2016.

Automakers say they are merely complying with local laws, which apply only to alternative energy vehicles. Chinese officials say the data is used for analytics to improve public safety, facilitate industrial development and infrastructure planning, and to prevent fraud in subsidy programs.

But critics say the information collected exceeds those goals and could be used to undermine foreign carmakers’ competitive position, or for surveillance.

Under Xi’s leadership, China has unleashed a war on dissent, marshalling big data and artificial intelligence to create a more perfect kind of policing that can quickly neutralize perceived threats to the stability of the ruling Communist Party. ■

DO YOU KNOW

By Lori Straus

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW? NO? DASHBOARDS MIGHT BE THE ANSWER. NOT EVEN BATTERS ARE IMMUNE TO THIS PHENOMENON. A headline from

arizonasports.com last year asked “Are Diamondback Hitters Suffering From Information Overload?”

If you asked the retired professionals in our industry what information overload meant to them, they would likely describe it as the phone ringing off the hook while a stack of unopened envelopes on their desk threatened to topple over onto a shoebox stuffed with customer surveys that needed to be sorted through but wasn’t a priority right now because payroll for the dealership’s ten employees

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had to be calculated by hand and, oh darn, where’s that new government publication with the new payroll guidelines?

We may chuckle at that scenario (or reminisce about the “good ol’ days”), but information overload has become a reality.

Information Overload: No Longer a Myth A white paper published just last November by IDC says, “The data-driven world will be always on, always tracking, always monitoring, always listening and always watching – because it will be always learning.”

The IDC predicts that the total amount of data in the world, which it calls the “global datasphere,” will grow from 33 ZB (zettabytes) in 2018 to 175 ZB by 2025.

Just how big is 1 ZB? One trillion GB, or 1 billion 1TB hard drives.

And how big is 175 ZB? The white paper gives this mind-boggling illustration: “If you could download the entire 2025 global datasphere at an average of 25

Mb/s, today's average connection speed across the United States, then it would take one person 1.8 billion years to do it, or if every person in the world could help and never rest, then you could get it done in 81 days.”

Kyle Murry, a professor of marketing at the University of Alberta, and Dominic Thomas, a senior lecturer with the Faculty of Business and Economics at Monosh University, write, “Estimates suggest that today we take in about five times as much information as we did 25 years ago, and that we process as much data in a day — approximately 34 gigabytes — as our 15th-century ancestors would have in their lifetimes.”

So, you aren’t delusional when you insist that you have to deal with more information than older generations in our industry did. But what do you do about it?

Get Your Information Under Control There are numerous tips out there on how to deal with information overload.

For example, you could improve your ability to mentally focus or use your

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 | 13

DO YOU KNOW | LORI STRAUS dealership’s mission and values to filter out the unnecessary information as you sift through it. Some of these even come with attempts at funky names, like “the green hat” strategy. (Ironically, it doesn’t require you to wear a green hat.)

I wrote it as an illustration of what you could learn by connecting the data you’re already collecting through your various databases. The conversations I had with each company were open interviews, not closed ones necessary to compare the information I collected.

Those can help, but they don’t stem the “You Want Me to Subscribe to Another tide of information that’s crashing onto Thing?” your shore. A new industry of tools has rarely help you actually discover where popped up over the past decade, though, the problem is.

Seems to be never-ending, doesn’t it? that may help: dashboards.

However, Mark Hoffman, CEO at Dealer “There's a thing called sales reporting Insights, developed his company out of What Are They? in a DMS,” Dulla says. “Somebody who feedback he’d heard through work at a created that sales report just put the previous company he had co-founded, Dashboards collect your data and basic information out there. What did AutoRevo, a car-dealer website and present it to you in visually meaningful I sell on what day? How much gross marketing platform. graphs, charts, and other forms of profit? Front end, backend, etc. It's what imagery so you can see immediately we call transactional reporting, so it's “One of the things that I noticed,” where things are at. They’re really no really basic reporting.”

Hoffman says, “is that some of our different than the dashboards of the better dealers were far more curious vehicles you sell. And just like a car’s A dashboard, though, can help you dive about the data.” dashboard, if your digital dashboard deeper into those high-level reports doesn’t show you the right information If you’re frustrated with all the data your without your needing to carve out hours when you need to know it, you’ll get to solve the different problems these different platforms are tossing at you easily distracted and maybe even cause without suggesting any actionable items, standard reports highlight. a metaphorical crash. then an omni-channel dashboard can Khalid Kadrie runs Vicimus, a help.

Chances are the software you already software company that specializes have in your dealership offers in customized solutions for the Hoffman says, “Most car dealers, dashboards. The companies I spoke automotive sector. Part of what they they're busy. They're running around to in this article, though, specialize solving problems, dealing with the day- offer is connections between the in crunching data for the automotive various software platforms you already industry and therefore will help you pull to-day fires, and what they don't have subscribe to (though they also offer time for is to sit there and pour over data from your DMS, CRM, marketing solutions to replace those), which can all of these various analytics and try to analytics platforms…pretty much all of then lead to some very rich data. find that nugget of gold.” it, in fact…into meaningful information you can act on.

“As an example,” says Kadrie, “if I Chris Dulla of FrogData, another were to look at Glovebox [one of their dashboard provider, says that the Please note: This article isn’t intended to products], I know that if a vehicle is compare these three companies. Instead, reports your current software provides

14 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

DO YOU KNOW | LORI STRAUS viewed more than 26 times and hasn't sold, then there's something wrong with that car. Is it the photos? The price? The description? It's one of those things.

Now, what we do, and in terms of integrating with the used car manager's life, is we give him that alert.”

So, What Do You Need To Know?

Knowing what you need to know means identifying the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are important to you, and possibly being open to ones you hadn’t thought of before. This goes beyond just setting a net profit goal for the year, or ensuring you maintain a 3% profit margin.

In the case of all three companies I interviewed, each claimed they worked closely with the dealer to establish appropriate KPIs. The companies also said they watch the data, too, and would offer additional insights if they believed they were helpful. This means you’re not stuck working with an out-of-thebox solution that’s going to require you to change how you work.

Hoffman explains that setting KPIs means defining the sections of the business that require your attention and assigning each one a score. He says it’s not enough to just say “we’re not as profitable as we’d like to be, so we’re just going to fix profitability.” You need to hunt down the problems causing your main concern.

What Is a Data-Driven Company?

In December 2017, Netflix tweeted the following: “To the 53 people who’ve watched ‘A Christmas Prince’ every day for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?”

The tweet caused a controversy, with people wondering just how much Netflix was actually watching them. However, it illustrates the question posed above.

Netflix is a data-driven company, so it has that data readily available. And while you may not wish to tweet “To the 53 people who viewed our 2014 Acme Used Car every day for the past 18

days and didn’t purchase: What scared you?”, focusing more on data can help you solve the problems affecting your bottom line.

Being a data-driven company means you analyze the data and then act on it.

(Staring at your data on your computer screen doesn’t count.)

You’ve likely heard this dozens of times a year for at least a dozen years: the industry has changed and the customer now holds the balance of power. That means you have to work harder to find out what it is the customer wants if you want to sell to that customer.

However, you don’t need to be a number cruncher or data geek to understand the information these dashboard reports and alerts generate.

“I'm a firm believer you shouldn't have to be a data scientist to be able to understand what's going on in your operation,” says Kadrie.

So just what can you do with the information these dashboards give you?

I asked all three companies and here are some of their ideas.

Phone Calls Vicimus specializes in customized software solutions for dealers. This gives them the flexibility to integrate with many of your systems, including your phone system. Did you ever think to measure how long a potential customer will let the phone ring before they hang

up? How many calls are being dropped?

How would you find that out?

Kadrie says that his software solution can answer those questions for you. Based on the data you receive, for example, you may discover that your service department gets an influx of phone calls between 8 and 9AM and that every third call is dropped. In addition, even though you’ve had a positive response to having a human answer calls to your main line again, you notice that many calls are dropped there, too. Now you can decide if it makes sense to have more staff on hand to answer calls in general, if a voicemail system would be an effective backup, or if you want to keep dropping calls.

And once you decide on a solution, you can test it and adjust your actions again if necessary.

Used Car Pricing & Sales Pricing is always tricky. Some of you will still insist on a “gut feeling,” but many of you will look at the data.

Dulla says that since 2009, price margins have declined. However, by using both external and internal (i.e., your dealership’s) data, you may realize that you don’t have to discount some of your vehicles as aggressively.

FrogData may uncover details your regular data may not tell you, for example, that it’s actually not the price of the car that’s the issue, but how you’re promoting it.

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DO YOU KNOW | LORI STRAUS “We augment the traditional things that dealers are looking at with new data points and say, ‘Maybe you should rethink this because we don't think you're looking at all the relevant metrics to drive a better decision,’” Dulla says.

Hoffman explains that Dealer Insights, for example, can help you figure out if a particular make and/or model sells poorly on your lot and by how much. He clarifies that, although Dealer Insights is not an inventory analytics company -- “There's a lot of companies in that space,” he says -- they show how customers behave with that vehicle. For example, what vehicles are customers viewing and how long are they viewing each one? These kinds of details will help you see if customers really aren’t interested in a make or model at all, possibly leading you to decide to not carry it, period.

Your Customer’s FULL Sales Journey You know you get visitors from different sources coming to your website. But have you ever analyzed the full customer process for each of those sources?

"..you shouldn't have to be a data scientist to be able to understand what's going on in your operation” “What a tool like ours shows,” says Chris, “is that every one of those lead sources closes at a different time interval. We call it median time to convert.”

So, for example, sources that come from Canadian Black Book, Auto Trader and Ontariocars.ca behave differently.

Once you have that knowledge, you can change your follow-up process based on what source the customer came from.

16 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

“Dealers are never going to close that CBB lead,” Dulla says, “because that customer is earlier in the funnel or is still not certain that they want the specific car that you might have in inventory, so it takes longer for that customer to convert.”

A soft follow-up approach with this customer is likely best.

On the other hand, what if your customer landed on your website from Car Gurus?

Dulla says, “These Car Gurus leads, I just need to all-out blitz those people for the first five days because they're going to make a decision now.”

Dealer Insights offers what Hoffman calls a “DMS match-back,” depending on what DMS you have. “We can say, ‘We know that this phone number dialled in at this time, and we know that that came from Auto Trader and we know that you sold the car to that person 35 days later, and we saw that that phone number was put into the DMS. So we have some degree of confidence in the attribution of that data.”

This data may look pretty on the surface, but underneath it all lies your bottom line.

This data “really helps them understand where to put their marketing budgets,” says Mark.

Working With Lenders Your dashboard can even show you which lenders bring in the most money for you, something Hoffman says they focus on for independents especially. “Those guys tend to be some of the hardest working people in the business, and they don't always have the staff that a franchise store

might have, the corporate support, and so, they'll struggle with that,” he says. In addition, he says this particular data can be hard to collect.

“So being able to have software that can help you just instantly pull that information up or tell you when those numbers are moving in a way that you didn't expect them,” he says, “it's a whole lot better than trying to keep that in your head and trying to remember.”

It’s very easy to get bogged down in reports, flashy graphs, and the like.

DataFrog, for example, can create over 800 reports, even though you certainly don’t need 800 reports to run your dealership. After all, aren’t these data aggregators supposed to save you time?

Yes. But, as I wrote earlier, you have to set up your KPIs. So, if improving your closing rates is a priority, for example, DataFrog can provide you with 10-12 reports that can help you analyze exactly what’s going on in your processes that’s leading to your current results.

Dealer Insights and Vicimus can also help you home in on the specifics you need to track to improve your business.

Sitting down with your management team to decide exactly what data you want to pay attention to and exploring what data would be nice to have will help you define exactly what you need to pay attention to.

And employing dashboards to aggregate that data from the various databases you have can help you keep your focus and be just what you need to stay sane and improve your dealership’s performance. ■

TRENDS | CHRIS CHASE

TRENDS

By Chris Chase

AS A USED-VEHICLE RETAILER, we

know you spend a lot of time considering which vehicles to keep in your inventory by tracking local demographics and sales trends. But although granularity is important when determining which vehicles you think will best suit the buyers in your region, it's a good idea to keep an eye on the bigger picture and what vehicles you'll be most likely to turn quickly, versus those that will languish on your lot.

A recent study by iSeeCars.com revealed the quickest- and slowest-selling latemodel used vehicles market-wide, and offers some clues as to which vehicles to avoid bringing in if you want to keep your store's average days-to-turn numbers as low as possible.

First, in its analysis of used-vehicle transactions in the first half of last year, iSeeCars.com determined the average late-model used vehicle (defined as model

years 2015 through 2017) spends nearly 47 days on a used-car lot before a buyer takes it home.

In a September 2018 article at AutomotiveNews.com, Dale Pollak, usedvehicle inventory expert and founder of the vAuto inventory management software, suggests that, while that 47-day figure looks good next to the old industry metric of aiming to sell cars within 60 days of adding them to your inventory, in fact "30 to 40 days is the new 60."

According to iSeeCars' data, the 10 slowestselling used cars in early 2018 all spent more than 60 days on market. Atop the list is the Porsche Cayenne, which spends an average of 67.8 days on the market.

That luxury SUV has been instrumental in boosting Porsche's profits on the new-vehicle side, but like many upscale vehicles, it has developed a reputation for being expensive to maintain out of warranty and enjoys limited demand among used-vehicle shoppers.

The Cayenne is followed by a pair of Buick sedans, the compact Regal and full-size LaCrosse. Buick's efforts to develop a new,

younger audience of buyers has met with mixed results. These two models exist to appeal to the brand's more traditional demographic, who we suspect prefer to lease a new vehicle every few years rather than look for pre-owned models.

The only sports car in the top 10 is the Porsche 911. With an average selling price of well over $100,000, it's not hard to see why these cars spend more than 67 days on the lot, in spite of their sharp performance and iconic looks.

Next on the iSeeCars list of slowest-selling vehicles is the Land Rover Discovery Sport. Based on current market trends, this compact luxury crossover should be popular, as upscale compact crossovers and SUVs are a big deal right now.

However, there are two things working against the Disco Sport, as it's commonly known: Land Rover has a reputation for iffy long-term reliability and expensive maintenance, and the smaller, cheaper Range Rover Evoque boasts slicker styling that appeals to more of today's upscale utility-vehicle shoppers.

The bottom half of the top 10 contains

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TRENDS | CHRIS CHASE

year affects sales.

no surprises. In sixth place is the Ford Flex, with an average of 64.3 days on market. It’s a well-designed mid-size utility vehicle whose popularity is hampered by a controversial design that's more than a decade old.

Like Buick, Cadillac has been working hard to find a younger consumer base. The compact XT5 crossover is a handsome vehicle, but hasn't found much of a foothold, so used examples stick around on dealer lots for a little over 64 days. Don't count on that figure improving, either, with the even smaller XT4 now on sale in Cadillac showrooms.

Rounding out the last three spots in the list of the top-10 slowest sellers are the Mazda CX-9, Ford Taurus and Lincoln MKX, all of which spend an average of just under 63 days on used-dealer lots. Interestingly, if you look strictly at 2015 models, these three cars are closely related, sharing mechanical underpinnings that date way back to when Ford had a controlling interest in Mazda.

The Japanese brand redesigned the CX-9 in 2016, so we suspect the mid-priced crossover might drop off this list when iSeeCars revisits it next year.

As for the Ford Taurus, it's a victim of an industry-wide trend away from big sedans. The Lincoln MKX, like the Cadillac and Buick models higher up on the list, suffers from its maker's reputation for attracting an aging demographic. It was also redesigned for 2019 as the Nautilus, as part of Lincoln's drive to refresh its vehiclenaming strategy.

At the other end of the spectrum, the top five quickest-selling late-model used vehicles are all gas-electric hybrids or fullelectric vehicles.

18 | THE ONTARIO DEALER 18 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

Rounding out the top 10 are the Volkswagen Golf R, Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla, all of which spend an average of less than 35 days on the lot, the Honda Accord at 35.5 days, and the Hyundai Veloster Turbo, which averages 36 days before selling.

? 60–90 ?

DAYS

The Toyota Prius C, a compact version of this well-known hybrid, occupies the top spot and is the only vehicle to break the 30-day mark, at 29.6. It's followed by the Tesla Model S (32.4 days) and BMW i3 (33.4 days) electric cars, the standard Toyota Prius (also at 33.4 days) and the Chevrolet Volt, at 34.3 days.

The automotive media's current obsession with electrified vehicles has focused attention on cars like the Prius, whose hybrid drivetrains are an effective gateway to the electric-car market. Bulletproof reliability doesn't hurt the Prius' prospect as a used-car purchase. The Tesla Model S is expensive, but its popularity is a testament to its performance and star power, with Tesla founder Elon Musk's grandiose promises and erratic behaviour proving that bad publicity is better than none at all.

As BMW's least-expensive electric vehicle, the little i3 sticks the brand's wellknown badge on a car whose modest performance is out of character for a company that used to market its products as "the ultimate driving machine." The Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid is more conventional; we'll be curious to see how Chevrolet's recent announcement that it will stop building the Volt in March of this

We're not surprised to see cars like the Civic, Corolla and Accord in the list of quick sellers. Honda and Toyota crank out thousands upon thousands of these models every year, but their shared reputation for durability means there's lots of demand in the used marketplace.

The Golf R is a relatively low-volume version of VW's compact hatchback, but it offers the performance of a German sports car at a fraction of the price, which explains its presence here. Meanwhile, the Veloster Turbo puts a fun engine in a headturning compact designed by a company known for strong value.

A typical car shopper now spends 60 to 90 days researching their next purchase online. That's plenty of time for them to notice you've had the same vehicle in your inventory for two or three months. For some shoppers, that could be an invitation to see what kind of a deal they can get on a vehicle that apparently no one else wants, but it's just as likely to prompt them to do some research to find out why that car hasn't been sold.

If you can turn your used cars within that magical 30- to 40-day window, shoppers will notice that you're tuned in to their needs and stay interested in what you have to offer. Understanding sales trends in the geographic area you serve should always be your number one priority, but it also pays to remember that any local trend can be influenced by the bigger picture of which vehicles are in demand with used car shoppers, and the reasons behind that demand – or the lack therof. ■

TECH TALK

By Angela West

HERE’S THE LATEST ON WHAT’S HAPPENING IN AUTOMOTIVE GADGETS AND APPS. The New Year is the perfect opportunity to revamp vehicles with gadgets and accessories that get you the most out of your driving experience.

Here’s the latest on what’s happening in the world of automotive gadgets, apps, and accessories.

Drive safer and more confidently with this unique mirror dash cam With dash cams becoming increasingly popular in recent years, the number of unique high quality products on the market has increased exponentially.

Dash cams can save you a great deal of trouble in the event of an accident, can be used to capture memorable road trips, and serve as a line of defense against vehicle thefts and other incidents. YI’s Mirror Dash Cam is one of the most unique dash cams available, mounting directly onto your vehicle’s rear view mirror and offering frontfacing recording and a crystal clear rear view display.

The YI Mirror Dash Cam gives drivers a 120 degree, 720p HD rear view. This view is broadcast on a non-invasive 4.3 inch touchscreen that lets you

record, organize, turn the camera over, and more, covering your entire rear view and guaranteeing a safer driving experience that doesn’t distort your view or leave any dangerous blind spots. The front camera features a large aperture and wide angle lens that supports a large viewing angle of up to 138 degrees, with 1080p resolution that allows you to capture every moment of your trip in high definition. A unique emergency recording feature automatically backs up your footage in the event of an emergency, preventing it from being damaged or deleted, and protecting you with the evidence you’ll need in case a dispute arises.

To learn more about the YI Mirror Dash Cam, visit its website at yitechnology.com.

Get your caffeine fix whenever, wherever A hot cup of coffee is a vital part of every morning for millions of Canadians, setting the tone for your day. Not having the time to get your coffee fix can result in a very long morning.

With the Wacaco Nanopresso Portable Manual Espresso Machine, drivers have the freedom to make a

warm cup of coffee on-the-go, ensuring that you can always get your caffeine fix no matter how busy your morning gets.

The Wacaco Nanopresso is loaded with a number of unique features, making it one of the most versatile portable espresso machines on the market.

The Nanopresso features a powerful pumping system with a maximum pressure of 261 PSI (18 bars) capable of extracting coffee of unparalleled quality, and ensuring that every cup is consistent and easy to brew. The Nanopresso has a water capacity of 80 ml, and comes equipped with a special lining to protect you from the heat.

The ergonomic and lightweight design makes it perfect for trips of any length, allowing you to bring it anywhere you need. Make sure to brew your coffee when your vehicle is parked to make sure you aren’t running afoul of Ontario’s distracted driving laws.

For more information on how you can get your caffeine fix on the go, visit wacaco.com.

An industry-standard portable breathalyzer with accuracy you can count on Getting behind the wheel while you’re intoxicated can be one of the worst mistakes you’ll ever make. Not only

VOLUME 7, 6, ISSUE 14 | 19

TECH TALK | ANGELA WEST found in law enforcement gear around the country. Testing can be done in seconds with one touch operation, and advanced user controls allow for easy changing of measurement units and testing thresholds. The BACtrack S80 also meets DOT and NHTSA requirements, allowing you to rely on it for accurate BAC readings.

For more information about the BACtrack S80 Professional Breathalyzer, visit breathalyzer.ca.

Take Alexa along for the ride

does it put you and others on the road in immediate danger, but it can result in massive penalties that can be difficult to overcome. Sometimes the line is blurry, with drivers getting behind the wheel too soon after having a drink or two over dinner, or thinking that they have sobered up fully. The best way to ensure that you’re fit to be behind the wheel is by using a portable breathalyzer that meets the many rigorous standards upheld by professional alcohol screeners. The BACtrack S80 is one such industryleading portable breathalyzer.

The BACtrack S80 Professional Breathalyzer meets industry standards set by police, estimating blood alcohol content with high accuracy, and using fuel cell sensor technology that can be

Virtual assistants have become extremely popular in the last few years for their convenience and versatility, becoming an important part of every modern home. With the Anker Roav VIVA 2-port USB car charger, drivers can now take Amazon’s Alexa on the road. The Roav VIVA brings with it voice controlled navigation features, voice-initiated calling, and easy music

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20 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

streaming that lets you keep your eyes on the road and your hands up on the wheel. The VIVA uses in-car acoustic echo cancellation for more accurate voice control, and allows for simultaneous dual high-speed USB charging for all your favourite devices.

More information on the Anker Roav VIVA can be found at anker.com.

Accurately monitor your tire safety with this real time monitor One of the best ways to have a safe driving experience - especially during Canadian winters - is by keeping an eye on your tire pressure. A leak or blowout could be disastrous, and monitoring vehicle tire pressure is the best way to avoid it. The Nonda Zus Smart Tire Safety Monitor is an easy-to-install monitor that plugs in and pairs with the Zus app to immediately improve road safety. The Zus Smart Tire Monitor gives drivers real-time alerts and warnings when tire pressure issues are being experienced, and features slow leak detection technology to accurately detect and stop slow leaks in your tires. The Monitor also allows you to individually track the history of your tires, including pressure and temperature on your smartphone, and comes with a sensor locking system to keep your sensors in place at all times.

Learn more about the Nonda Zus Smart Tire Safety Monitor at nonda.co. ■

MARKETING GETTING TIRED?

By Angela West

IS YOUR MARKETING GETTING TIRED? GIVE IT AN OVERHAUL FOR THE NEW YEAR

AS THE YEAR DRAWS TO A CLOSE, many

dealerships turn their attention to their marketing strategies to make the New Year a successful one. Business lives and dies by the leads you get, and finding those elusive “quality leads” is all about having the right strategy. With a little planning, you can take a tired, antiquated marketing strategy and inject new life into it - often without busting your budget. We talked to Prakash Mistry, the owner of Mistry Motors in Mississauga, about what he plans to do with his marketing for 2019 to take his three-year old dealership to the next level.

Make the customer feel like they are buying a new car Mistry’s strategy up until now is to make the used car buying experience exactly like a new car buying experience. His experience of over a decade at Whiteoak Ford Lincoln gave him great insights

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 | 21

MARKETING GETTING TIRED? | ANGELA WEST as he puts it. Just the week before our interview, he sold a car that he had posted on Instagram - a woman saw the post and forwarded it to her father, who drove down from Barrie to purchase the vehicle.

into not just how to sell cars, but how to turn customers into repeat ones. Part of that, according to Mistry, was excellent customer service, which turned into referrals and customer retention.

“Our marketing strategy has been about customer satisfaction and building our brand,” says Mistry. He spends quite a bit of time attending local networking events to increase his brand awareness.

Mistry’s best advice for independent dealers trying to decide where to spend their marketing dollars is to build their brand and get name recognition in their community. As an independent, he thinks it is even more vital to work at trust and brand-building. “Advertising is great, but building up the brand is the most important.”

Instagram, Google Reviews work well for Mistry One of the advantages of having an independent dealership is not being bound by marketing restrictions that big-brand dealerships have to face, and one of those freedoms is being able to embrace Instagram with open arms.

Mistry credits Instagram posts with actually selling cars for him.

There’s a method to it though - he’ll post a cool new car on his Instagram, and doesn’t make the post “salesy”,

22 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

Mistry is also careful to ask customers to leave a review on Google. It’s very important, because according to him, “being an independent dealer, 90% of consumers will see a vehicle they like, and then check out Google Reviews for the reputation of the dealer.”

He always asks for the review the day they leave with their car. As part of his post-delivery follow-up call, he takes the opportunity to throw in an additional request for a review -- after ensuring customer satisfaction, of course.

"Advertising is great, but building up the brand is the most important" Mistry’s marketing plans for 2019 Mistry has two marketing goals for 2019: Increase his online presence and get better at staying in touch with past clients. Mistry’s website will take

priority. His goal is to optimize his website to increase traffic and generate more leads. Some of this will be achieved through more targeted use of social media.

“There’s always room for improvement on social media. Keeping in touch with past customers is always front and centre, so we’ll probably do more outreach such as newsletter mailings.”

Our tip: Measure results from every source It can’t be overstated: measuring your results is essential to your success. If you aren’t receiving regular reports from your radio, television, or digital advertising, ask for them. If you are managing your own digital marketing, there are several reporting tools available, including DashThis, that will collate all of your digital advertising from Google Ads, Facebook, and Instagram in one place.

Ask each buyer how they heard about your dealership, and note the results somewhere you can tabulate them later on, such as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system or at the very least in a spreadsheet.

Knowing where your actual sales are coming from is key, as a source may generate a number of leads that very seldom or never result in actual sales.

This means that method is marketing to the wrong people. This will help you

MARKETING GETTING TIRED? | ANGELA WEST make informed decisions in real time about how to adjust your marketing. A CRM is the preferred solution, as it offers superior lead tracking, and can often be integrated with your website, online advertising campaigns, and every other form of digital advertising, so you can see the actual ROI of your campaigns.

This helps you to make better decisions, and kill what isn’t working.

"There’s always room for improvement on social media" Building your brand and trust in your business will always work to grow your business long term. To do this, consider following Mistry’s example of stepping

than any form of advertising ever could to build trust. Advertising may bring in leads and foster some brand awareness, but relationships with real people are what the car business is built on, and it’s those relationships that will keep your customers coming back. ■

up attendance at networking events, such as those offered by your local Chamber of Commerce.

Forming good relationships with other local business owners and people in your community will go much further

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VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 | 23

DEALER PROFILE Right Drive Inc.

By Rhonda Payne Right Hands in the Right Hands NOT EVERYONE APPRECIATES A RIGHT-HAND DRIVE VEHICLE, despite the fact that one-third of the

world produces them, but Michael Kent, President and founder of Right Drive Inc. in Pickering does.

He started the business when he was in his mid-20s, more than 11 years ago, and has been taking care of a complete range of needs for right hand drive enthusiasts ever since.

His love of cars started at age 16, with a 1988 Chrysler Fifth Avenue.

“It was a beautiful car, I loved it,” he says. His family wouldn’t help him fix it, so he learned how to do it on his own. “I learned that cars could be fixed.”

A love of cars doesn’t necessarily mean a solid business idea, but it did for Michael. Ideas started to form when he saw the potential for the niche right hand drive market after he had success buying, rebuilding and racing a Nissan 240 SX. He started competing in the Canadian drifting series in its early days and even continued on next page

24 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 | 25

Right Drive Inc and needs of their future owners.

While the sports and collectors’ market is easy to understand, the others are even more of a niche.

got his Formula drift series license for the United States. But it wasn’t the racing that created his future success.

“It was a ton of fun and landed me a job with the Speed Channel,” Michael says.

“At that time, I looked at the production side of things. I actually videotaped how I built that car and sold those videos online and that was how I paid for my university. It was great.”

From this rare experience, Michael learned that the auto industry wasn’t cut and dry – there were a variety of different business avenues a creative mind could come up with. He decided to import cars from other parts of the world.

“I wondered if I could create something completely out of the box that worked and do it myself,” he says. “And it did work. I saw a market for the Japanese and British sports cars really, and to sell to those marketplaces [that were looking for a right-hand drive] and that was the beginning.”

Now, Right Drive caters to four distinct areas of the right-hand drive market: sports cars and collectables, mail delivery trucks, film and television vehicles and micro trucks. While this may have you singing a revamped version of the Sesame Street song “One of These Things is Not Like the Others,” they are alike in that they are all righthand drives that meet the unique wants

26 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

“When you’re delivering mail, having a vehicle that’s right-hand drive makes the job very easy. Being able to provide service for these vehicles and making sure they are able to do a robust mail route, it’s something that worked out very, very well,” Michael notes. “We provide right hand vehicles to (Canada Post and other delivery businesses) which allows them to sort mail [and deliver it] without ever leaving the vehicle. It makes them very efficient.”

Michael is able to access a more costefficient right-hand drive delivery vehicle from Japan instead of the military-grade vehicles that are overkill for the job.

The company also sources right hand drives for “every major motion picture in Canada and the United States,” he says.

Then, there are the micro trucks ideal for the landscaping industry.

Drive, due to the different environment in Canada when compared to the countries the vehicles come from. That’s part of the reason the business is endto-end in the service it provides. Right Drive not only purchases and arranges shipping of right-hand drive vehicles, it also offers parts and service, which, when one considers the number of makes and models of right-hand drive vehicles, sounds rather daunting.

“We have to block it by year,” Michael says of how vehicle SKUs are tracked.

“We don’t know if a client is going to be ordering a windshield for a Skoda or something else. Our SKU list is very, very long. It involves lots of organization, we’ve got a really good team to be able to process these transactions.”

Even though the vehicles are 15 to 25 years old, Michael wants to be sure Right Drive can supply customers with parts, provide the service needed easily and ensure the vehicle will do the job it is intended for. That means keeping a lot of parts on site from that Skoda windshield to a gear knob or even a snowplow for a mini-truck.

“They are very good on fuel, four-wheel drive, easy to service, very simple to drive and to sell and we found that there was a pretty good space in that market,” he says. “Not just to provide the trucks but to provide a full range of services.”

The team at right drive includes 20 people in sales, services, parts and administration roles. Many come from outside the automotive industry.

Bringing right hand drives into Canada requires knowledge of the regulations.

The vehicles must comply with applicable Canadian safety standards at the time of manufacture unless they are 15 years old or older. Right Drive works with vehicles between 15 and 25 years old.

“Every single one of our customers’ needs to be seen as a construction project,” he says. “If you’re able to model the company in such a way that it uses the tools that a kitchen renovation company would use, it widens the pool of people who understand how it works in that space.”

Ensuring these vehicles are fit to do the job they are purchased for (even if that’s just special Sunday drives) demands a rigorous fitness test by the team at Right

Some team members come from computer programming backgrounds, others from project management.

Because of the word-of-mouth Right

DEALER PROFILE | RHONDA PAYNE Drive has achieved, there is no marketing team (or even a marketing budget for that matter), yet the company continues to rank high in search engines due to their unique specialization.

“The most interesting thing about our company is our retention record,” he notes. “People have an average of about eight years. They really enjoy working for the company. We’ve actually worked with the Japanese embassy to get staff.”

As Michael explains, by hiring team members from Japan, the wide range of vehicles isn’t overwhelming for them.

It’s their core knowledge and Right Drive, as well as its customers, benefit from that experience.

“This stuff isn’t foreign to them,” he notes. “Our wheelhouse doesn’t just stop at importing automobile equipment, but we have also brought in employees that know these vehicles. We have helped people immigrate to Canada that way. We are really servicing [these vehicles] in a way that no one else can. We already know how to service the product before it ever touches our floor.”

Michael adopted something similar to a new car dealer model to manage the project management style of business.

“We consider ourselves as the first used car dealer OEM,” he explains. “We really offer full-cycle support. We really had to model this as a new car dealership in terms of supply chain.”

While the company’s software was custom-built, other things were obtained from the countries where the vehicles

are built. This includes essential service equipment like specialized compressors and alignment tools.

As a project drive process, the team at Right Drive refers to the vehicle by its VIN or other identifier, rather than by client name. As Michael explains, they are usually making modifications to the existing vehicle, so using nonpersonalized identification helps keep things project-based so team members know each project from start to finish.

Having team members from other spaces gives a strong understanding of project management and then, as Michael puts it, it’s just plugging cars into the model.

“Our pricing models generally are on a per-project basis,” he explains. “We look at being able to take each project, on its own, through the different parts of the company. Clients don’t just order cars from us, they’re going to order twice the value in restoration or they’re going to order clothing because they really love the brand.”

Of course, from a sales aspect, it is far from transactional or project based.

Michael describes it as an ownership experience where a customer can have all their questions answered, doubts allayed and have the vehicle they want from a partner who can provide parts and service in the future.

“We want them to feel like they’ve become part of a team and really they do, that’s why we’ve got such longevity of client relationships,” he says. The relationship often includes shipping the completed project to its customerdefined destination.

“I’d say about 90 per cent of our sales are online. Canada and the United States, really anywhere,” says Michael. “We organize all the shipping, the logistics, loading up the container, customs clearing in the country. We do all the [coordination] and shipping that a shipping company would.”

Parts are also shipped globally.

In addition to sales, service, parts and customization, Right Drive provides financing through third-party finance companies who understand the business. As Michael explains, few banks understand the concept of bringing cars from the other side of the globe.

“It’s worked out very well given the tenure we have in the space,” he says.

Michael has big dreams for Right Drive.

He admires Peter Klutt, former host of Dream Car Garage and owner of Legendary Motorcar Ltd., and would like to emulate him in the Japanese car space. This is part of what is driving Michael forward.

“We have a five, ten and fifteen-year plan,” he says. “We eventually want to be able to franchise this out under the brand. To be able to offer the products in more of a localized space across North America.”

With so much going on, it’s hard to believe Michael and the Right Drive team have much room for anything else, but they make time to love their community.

“We absolutely love supporting anything that has to do with racing. We sponsor a young kid racing team by building carts and supporting the race community,” he says. “We’re involved with SickKids Hospital and we support local hockey teams. We really love our hockey and we like to get involved in as much community efforts as we can.”

Right Drive may be relatively new to the automotive scene, but by filling a niche, the company is making right hand drive enthusiasts happy, while ensuring their vehicles perform at their best. ■

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BEST PRACTICES

GET YOUR SALES TEAM ON THE SAME PAGE A used-car dealership's goal should be simple: Sell a car to someone who needs one, make some money on the deal, and stay in business so you can repeat that process.

To fulfill that objective, just as a car's wheels must all be in alignment to deliver peak performance, it's important that all of your salespeople are aligned toward that goal and are working from the same playbook.

One of the first steps in writing that

28 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

playbook, says automotive strategy expert Jason Harris, is to recognize that it's increasingly rare that staff working the showroom actually have to sell cars to customers.

"I don't typically like to use (the word salespeople), and I never did at my own dealership," said Harris. "In their training process, the dealers are trying to train salespeople to sell a product. The product has already been sold."

Harris said today's consumer is more confident than ever about their vehicle purchase before they even arrive at the dealership.

"Selling has changed," he said. "The average customer spends 22 hours doing shopping and researching the vehicle they're going to purchase, and they do

60 to 90 days of research and shopping online before they come into the dealership. The customer used to visit five to seven dealerships before making a purchase. Now they visit two. Most of the time, if the first dealership doesn't sell the car, it's because they screwed up the process."

Andrew Lemoine, CEO of CoverageCorp Dealer Solutions, agrees that "the oldschool sales training is becoming less relevant. It's becoming more about customer service. We used to have people who came around who we called tire kickers; we now call them tire clickers because ... when they show up at the dealership, they're very well-informed, they generally know what they're looking for and they're probably just looking for a place they feel comfortable doing business."

BEST PRACTICES Harris said a dealership's problems begin when they equate the customer's experience with the sales process, the latter of which is usually designed selfishly to suit that dealer's purposes and goals.

"In their training process, the dealers are trying to train salespeople to sell a product (but) they need to train people to facilitate a great experience. We missed that step entirely," he said. "The consumer is so confident when they come through the door about the product they're interested in that we no longer need to take a sales approach, but more of a consultative approach.

the attitude and train the skill, not the other way around.

"A lot of people will go out and just look for someone with three to five years' experience, but that person might have a terrible attitude."

For that reason, he thinks bringing in people from other industries is a wise approach.

"hire the attitude and train the skill"

Certain businesses are better than others at fostering the qualities that make a good auto salesperson. Harris and Lemoine both put the restaurant and bar industries high on their lists.

"Some of my best salespeople have been baristas from Starbucks, they've been bartenders, they've been wait staff, and grocery-store cashiers, anyone who has spent time in the customer service industry," said Harris. "It gives you an amazing baseline with the training to have the intent to serve another person."

Lemoine also calls out servers and bartenders for their typically high level of social skills.

I (recently) spoke with a used-car manager "They're very good at talking to people on one of my podcasts, and last year, in "Most dealerships wouldn't do that," and comfortable talking to strangers.

2018, 10 per cent of all the used cars he Lemoine said. "Most ... are going to I've pulled some great people out of the sold, the customer never test-drove. It's insist on finding someone with five to 10 restaurant and bar industry in my career not a matter of asking the customer what years' experience in automotive. That's who have worked out as great salespeople." product they're interested in; it's a matter great, but you might get someone who of asking whether they've come in with has repeated the same bad habits for five "The tech industry is (also) fascinating an intention. Are they shopping, are they to 10 years, so that (experience) has no to me," said Lemoine. "What's unique to doing research, or are they ready to buy?" relevance in terms of how capable this me about hiring IT and tech sales reps person is for this role. When you bring in is you're getting people who are hunters, Having established a strategy to provide people from other industries, they bring a meaning that they had to prospect to the experience many of today's usedunique and fresh perspective." make a paycheque. They needed to get out car shoppers are looking for, the sales manager's next job is to find team Harris says that, regardless of background, into the world and find clients to sell their services and products to in order to earn a members who are up to the task. And the key things you should look for in commission cheque. as Jason Groulx, CoverageCorp's hiring staff are passion and drive.

Director of Operations, can attest, "In the car industry, a lot of people sit there the best candidates often come from "We have to look at the foundation and become complacent. They wait for outside of the car industry. He joined of what a good employee looks like people to come in. When you bring in CoverageCorp a few months ago after and then develop and train up from someone who had to hustle for Nortel a career in the restaurant industry, there," said Harris. "Too many people for 15 years, but now they're out of work, including nearly six years at downtown are looking to hire the next best they're a hunter. If you hire them on the Ottawa's Shore Club, where he worked salesperson. They have one salesperson sales team and you watch, they don't sit as corporate executive chef. in their dealership who sells probably back and wait for business to come to 25 per cent of all the deals every month "I only hired people who were better and they want to clone that individual than me; I don't want to be the best," and focus on those individual traits. In said Groulx. "I have no ego and I'm very reality, you can't. It has a lot to do with humble. I know my 5 per cent and the developing and training ... their ability other person has their 5 per cent, and or willingness to consume information we click. It's not about being the best at and process it." everything; it's attitude."

Lemoine said he was always told to hire

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 | 29

BEST PRACTICES "We ask this because the dealerships are realizing that they need to stop selling and start branding," said Harris. "Each of these salespeople, when they're hired on, has their own individual brand, and the more brands a dealership has, the stronger the dealership is in its actual sales numbers."

them. If they're in the dealership and nothing is going on, they're up. They're in the service department, they're asking for old client lists to call and they're prospecting. If business isn't coming to them at that moment, they go out and find it. It's amazing."

Recognizing talent in a potential salesperson is one thing, but something many sales and general managers struggle with is attracting candidates for sales positions in their dealerships in the first place. Posting a text ad on recruitment-service websites is no longer enough. Harris said he works with many clients to develop social media campaigns to help those dealers attract new talent.

interviewing the most eager candidates.

It also helps to highlight those who show "a commitment to social media efforts," a major factor given the importance of online engagement in today's auto marketplace. One of his recent social media-based efforts was built around a video that asked applicants to respond with a short video of their own explaining what they would bring to that dealership's business.

"We now go to social media and create ad campaigns to attract people who work at "We had 77 applicants, and of those, only certain places and already have the skill sets that we're looking to develop," he said. four people responded with a video," he said. "We made it clear we weren't looking "We just ran a Facebook and Instagram ad for anything professional, just hit the targeted at employees of Best Buy, Rogers record button on your phone and tell us a and Home Depot. All three of these big few things about yourself, like where you companies do a great job in training their went to school and your hobbies." staff in the art of customer service, and I can take advantage of their training That may seem like a complicated efforts, and then I can develop the process to bring new talent to your knowledge required to do the paperwork showroom, but Harris said that kind of for a vehicle." approach is necessary if a dealership is Harris said social media-based campaigns to adapt to the modern realities of how are also a good way to weed out "an insane people buy cars today. amount" of applicants so that you're

The important thing, said Harris, is that a dealer has to understand the importance of its salespeople’s individual brands.

"There is a lot of fear, unfortunately.

Dealerships are afraid of these salespeople’s brands being bigger than the dealership's own brand. I have to explain to them that the dealership's brand is the collective of the brands of its employees."

Harris adds that the key to being successful at an auto dealership in the next five to ten years “is not the product. It's also not your product knowledge that will differentiate you, because the consumer has spent so much time doing research online. It's that individual, one-to-one, face-to-face experience that's going to differentiate you from everyone else. We have to be able to capitalize on and advertise those experiences, so the people we hire have to be comfortable in promoting their brands."

As an example, Harris described a friend of his who has been selling cars at South

Let us help your dealership with:

30 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

BEST PRACTICES West Chrysler in London for just seven months, but in that time has racked up a social media audience of thousands by branding himself as “The Dodgefather.”

He’s also consistently selling more than 20 vehicles per month, numbers many industry veterans can't manage on a regular basis.

"..the dealership's brand is the collective of the brands of its employees."

"He has more people following him and tuned in to his content than the entire dealership does on their own branding efforts," said Harris. "He's charismatic and he's fun. Most people don't associate the car-buying experience as being a fun one, but (he is) making it fun."

The sales manager also has to be able to recognize the strengths of each of their salespeople’s brands and successful sales techniques, and they should be open to learning from their staff.

"This happens in the restaurant industry all the time," said Groulx. "Are they being rude or doing things incorrectly?

Is it completely off-base or are they still selling cars? That's the question. You can cook a steak on a grill, you can cook it in a pan, or you can bake a steak, as long as that steak comes out the way I need it.

If the person is selling cars and has their own trick, as long as they're being polite and respectful, producing the results we need and the customer is happy, well, let's figure out how they're doing it."

Lemoine said it's critical for sales managers to ensure that everyone who works for them has a voice, and to be open to feedback and constructive criticism from all members of their team.

"I've had summer students I had hired to wash cars who came into my office and said, 'Andrew, can I make a suggestion about something? We're doing deliveries this way right now, but I think this would make more sense,' and it did."

Another key to assembling a showroom collective that clicks is ensuring diversity both in the people themselves and in their approaches to providing customer service.

"A diverse team is very important," said Lemoine. "(When I was in retail) I didn't want an army of everyone who looked the same. I didn't want 25 22-year-old males. I wanted a mix of men and women, a mix of ethnicities, and a mix of socio-economic backgrounds. In your Saturday morning sales meeting, when you look around your boardroom table, the more diverse you can make that table, the more unique the team becomes, the more perspectives get fed in and the culture itself will lift everyone up as a whole."

Harris calls it a "Moneyball" approach to putting a sales team together, referring to the 2003 book about the Oakland A's major-league baseball team. In 2002, that California franchise eschewed traditional scouting techniques for seeking out the best players. Instead, Harris said, they looked at it from a statistical-analysis perspective to make it a collective team effort, and not about the individual.

"We have to look at it from a collective brand effort," Harris said. "Do I have a charismatic brand? Do I have the old, crusty brand? Some people still want to deal with (that style of salesperson).

There's a female brand that has to be more active in the automotive space.

There are still not enough females in the auto industry at all. The female audience understands the brand concept incredibly well. They follow these people and they know these people. Women buy a brand story faster than they'll buy a product."

Just as having a diverse team on the sales floor will help you adapt to the various needs and wants of your customers, you have to treat your staff members as individuals when it comes time to motivate them and reward them for good performance.

"There are a lot of people who don't have aspirations to move up in title," said Lemoine, because with a title often comes an increase in responsibility and stress. "Some people are content being a salesperson. They want to enjoy where they work and who they work with.

They want to feel valued and want to be included and needed as part of a team."

Harris says a sales manager has to be audience-specific in their motivational efforts.

"For some employees, just take them out for lunch; others want to see a few extra dollars," said Harris. "I have an employee now who is a Buffalo Bills fan, and I have tickets for her. I could have easily put that dollar amount in a bonus for doing a great job, but the perceived value would not be the same now that she gets to take her boyfriend to this football game."

Groulx says that assembling a cohesive and successful sales team revolves around recognizing that the entire process of selling a car is about people.

"It always was about the people," he said.

"You have to understand how people feel.

Be in the moment and listen: 'How did your day go? How are you feeling?' It comes back to the sales manager being aware and having hard conversations.

Take off the blinders and look around. You have to make it about the people.” ■

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THE COMMON LAWYER Repair & Storage Liens...You've Taken Possession of a Vehicle, Now What? throughout Ontario. That said, it is not always the easiest act to navigate and I hope this article (and my previous articles on the topic) will help demystify the process.

By Justin M. Jakubiak

I WOULD LIKE TO START by wishing every Ontario Dealer reader a healthy and prosperous 2019. While not hoping to be perceived as a doomsayer, there are signs that the economy is changing.

As a nerdy lawyer, I strongly believe that knowledge and preparation is the greatest protector against adversity.

For that reason, I thought I would revisit Ontario's Repair and Storage Liens Act and discuss the next steps when a repairer or storer is in possession of a vehicle and has been unable to secure payment from their consumer.

The RSLA is a great tool and is used regularly by dealers and mechanics

In a previous Ontario Dealer column, Repair and Storage Liens … Great Tools, if Used Correctly (Volume 4, Issue 1, page 31), I outlined the process to secure and enforce liens under the RSLA. Many readers were left wondering, however, what the required steps were to take the next step and sell a vehicle to satisfy their debt. This column provides readers a high-level guide on how to sell such vehicles.

To help illustrate, let's assume the following facts: An owner drops off her vehicle at a body shop and authorizes the completion of $5,000 worth of repairs.

Unfortunately, at the time the work is completed, the owner does not have the financial means to pay the body shop. In response, the body shop secures itself by exercising its rights under the RSLA and maintains possession of the vehicle pending payment.

Time passes and, unfortunately, it becomes apparent that the owner will be unable to pay for the repairs in the foreseeable future. The body shop has no interest in keeping the vehicle and decides to take the necessary steps to sell it to recover the monies owed to it.

Upon review of a lien search, it is clear there are no other parties with an interest in the vehicle (lienholders).

32 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

Ownership Transfer: To sell the vehicle, the body shop (repairer or storer) must take steps to transfer the vehicle's ownership to itself. The transfer of ownership can be completed at any ServiceOntario location (without the Owner) with the following documentation and information: • A sworn affidavit; • A copy of the Notice of Sale; • A copy of the Personal Property Security Act search (PPSA Search) for the Vehicle, which was used for the purposes of the Notice of Sale and determining who was required to receive notice under the Act; • A copy of the registered mail receipt showing that the Notice of Sale was delivered to the required parties; and • The legal name and address of the new owner (whether a corporation or an individual in the case of a sole proprietorship).

Contents of the Affidavit Unfortunately, ServiceOntario does not provide an easy to complete template for the affidavit required to effect the transfer from the owner to the repairer.

In order to be effective, the affidavit must include the following information: A statement that all requirements under Part III of the RSLA have been met; the

repairer is required to show the UVIP to any potential buyers of the vehicle, unless the repairer is a registered dealer. It should be noted that it takes 24 hours after a lien on a vehicle has been discharged for the UVIP to be updated to show a lien is no longer active. full legal name, address and signature of the person making the declaration; a statement explaining how the vehicle was obtained; the name of the owner; the Vehicle Identification Number; the make, model, colour and year of the vehicle; and the type (e.g. 2-door or 4-door) and class of the vehicle (e.g. passenger, truck etc.).

The affidavit must also attach a copy of the Notice of Sale. It is good practice to also include as exhibits the PPSA search results for the vehicle, and the registered mail receipts to demonstrate proper notice was provided. Less is not more when preparing the affidavit.

It is important to note that an affidavit is a document in which you are swearing or affirming to tell the truth. It is a serious offence to intentionally lie in an affidavit, so it is important to ensure that your affidavit is complete and truthful. Before submitting the affidavit to ServiceOntario, it must be sworn or affirmed before a commissioner for taking affidavits, such as a lawyer, law clerk or a paralegal.

There are certain ServiceOntario locations where commissioners are available to commission affidavits.

UVIP In Ontario, a private seller (i.e. a nondealer) of a used vehicle is required to provide the buyer of the vehicle with a Used Vehicle Information Package (with certain exceptions). A UVIP provides a description of the vehicle, its Ontario registration history, odometer information, outstanding debts registered against the vehicle and in certain cases, the wholesale and retail values for the vehicle’s model and year.

Sale When you sell the vehicle, it must be sold for a "commercially reasonable" amount.

If a court subsequently finds that you sold it for below a reasonable price, you could owe the owner the difference.

Completing the UVIP and Application for Transfer Included within the UVIP is a bill of sale which is straight forward to complete.

The repairer must also fill in and sign the Application for Transfer, found on the back of the "vehicle portion" of the vehicle registration permit. Once the Bill of Sale and Application for Transfer are filled in, these documents are given to the buyer of the vehicle.

In the event the repairer is a registered dealer, it is important to note that it would be required to sell the vehicle using its standard bill of sale and to comply with all of the required vehicle disclosures and material facts mandated by the MVDA. Leftover Proceeds If the repairer sells the vehicle for more than what is owed under the Notice of Sale, the repairer is obligated to give the balance to the Owner (or distribute same to the other lienholders as the case may be).

A Few Other Important Things to Note

vehicle attend at ServiceOntario with the buyer to ensure the buyer registers the vehicle in their name on the same day of the physical transfer of the vehicle. If not, the vehicle remains in the seller’s name until the vehicle is registered to the buyer at ServiceOntario. During this time, the seller may be liable for any infractions involving the vehicle, and it can pose insurance issues for the seller in the event of an accident.

If it is not possible to attend ServiceOntario with the buyer, the buyer is legally obligated to register their ownership of the vehicle within six days of the sale.

The seller should keep the licence plates and the “plate portion” of the vehicle registration permit after the vehicle is sold.

Conclusion The RSLA is a powerful remedy for repairers and storers to protect themselves and to recover money which is lawfully due and owing to them.

In the coming year I hope everyone has positive business relationships and that monies owing are paid quickly. In the meantime, it provides peace of mind to prepare yourself and ensure that you are ready for the various trials and tribulations which may be experienced by your dealership from time to time.

Justin Jakubiak is a Partner with Fogler, Rubinoff LLP and is recognized by the Law Society of Upper Canada as a Specialist in Civil Litigation. This article was written with the assistance of Roberto De Pasquale, Articling Student, and is intended for general information purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal advice. ■

It is recommended that the seller of the

The repairer may purchase the UVIP from ServiceOntario for $20. The

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 | 33

WRITING EFFECTIVE JOB POSTINGS

By Lori Straus

THE BEST EVER, TOP-OF-THE-LINE, BEST-IN-CLASS WAY (OR NOT) TO WRITE JOB ADS

Down in the dumps with the candidates your job postings are attracting? We’ve got the ultimate survival guide on how to write the awesomest job postings your company has seen. EVER. These astounding tips will blow your mind and recreate the recruiting world as you know it.

And it starts with this: You don’t have to write job postings in that tone to attract the right candidates.

And it ends with this: Your job postings are part of your branding, i.e., if you want to attract job candidates that will reflect your dealership’s brand, your job postings need to match your other marketing efforts.

34 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

But there’s a middle, which is what we’ll cover: How to define who you’re looking for, explain what you offer, and create postings and a Careers page that reflect your company.

I’ve collected information from two experienced writers, an account manager from Auto Careers Groups, and several studies, all with the goal to help you see what may not be working and start doing what could work.

Who Are You Looking For? Jayne Reczulski is an account manager with Auto Careers Group. In her experience, dealerships post bland,

JOB POSTINGS | LORI STRAUS generic job ads in an attempt to appeal to everyone.

“They’re not about attracting the one candidate they want to hire,” she says.

“Dealers are trying to gather a bunch of people together when ideally they're only looking for one. It's kind of a waste of time. They don't have time to do all the interviews, do all that kind of stuff if they want to cast a wide net.”

Wintress Odom, owner and senior editor at The Writers for Hire, has worked on recruitment campaigns for OEMs. She agrees with Reczulski.

“Ten really great applicants are much better than 100 okay applicants,” she says.

In other words, write a job ad that answers the question “Who are we looking for?” and not “How many applicants can we get?”

What Can You Offer Them?

If you believe the main reason you don’t have good candidates is because you don’t offer trendy perks, think again. You don’t need an onsite dry cleaning facility, a visiting massage therapist, ten restaurants all cooking locally sourced, organic food, or unlimited days off for illness.

So, why will applicants work for you if you can’t promise them the same benefits that large, billion-dollar corporations can offer?

Because not everyone wants a ton of perks they’ll never use. I was once head-

hunted by a tech company in my city, and one of the amazing perks was that I’d get my birthday off! (Exclamation point included.) I didn’t care. I take on work that offers me excellent work-life balance.

Ironically, now that I freelance for a living, I love my work so much that I actually forgot to book my birthday off this year.

Of course, I’m just a case study, but I also know not everyone wants to work at an eternal party.

The employees you need may have other obligations outside of the workplace, e.g., religious, familial, volunteer, etc., and may be more attracted to an employer that offers them that space.

You Don’t Need an Indoor Slide to Attract Strong Candidates Recent research in the journal Human Resource Management confirms that job seekers are looking for companies that offer work-life benefits (WLBs). These can include child-related benefits (e.g., financial assistance, parental leave), time benefits (e.g., flex-time, job sharing, compressed workweek), psychological well-being (e.g., employee assistant programs), and elder care. The study reported that job seekers often use information on employee benefits to judge if the potential employer would be a good fit for them.

"When companies emphasize the availability of WLBs,” the study says, “they signal to job seekers that they are taking cognizance of and responding to important social issues. Thus, companies

may benefit from communicating their WLBs in their recruitment materials as doing so may enable them to reach out more strongly to qualified applicants.”

No indoor slides mentioned.

In addition, a 2014 study published in Benefits Quarterly says that health benefits are a strong recruitment tool for younger candidates. Because Millennials have grown up in a risk-averse environment, health benefits feed into that generational characteristic.

So, detail your health care benefits somewhere in your job advertising, whether it’s in the job ad directly or on your website, and if work-life balance is something you offer, add that in, too.

However, don’t be afraid to think a little outside the box either.

"..health benefits are a strong recruitment tool for younger candidates."

“There probably are benefits you can offer, but they might not be conventional,” says Lisa Bendall, a freelance writer who has written web copy for hiring organizations.

She wrote recruitment material once for a company that offered unlimited gaming

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JOB POSTINGS | LORI STRAUS and bowling time at a local arcade on an employee's day off.

Reczulski offers a few additional suggestions: staff BBQs that spouses can attend, getaways, being a family-oriented business, donating time and money to the community, being closed on Sundays. This list goes on.

Don’t get caught up in the trendy job recruitment campaigns that make the news. Instead, talk to those who know first-hand why people stay with you.

Get Input from Your Employees “You have to find out what your people’s happy currency is in your organization,” Odom says. “If there’s a cohesive theme within your organization on what’s making your employees happy, that will go a long way to correctly conveying the culture your’e trying to convey in attracting the right applicants.”

This doesn’t mean your employees write the job postings: Odom’s company talks to employees and also asks managers about their ideal new hire when working on a hiring campaign.

“When we do a campaign, we always ask employees why they’re happy, why they stay, what makes them successful,” she says.

“And we also ask managers what they’re looking for, what they think makes a good employee.”

If you can triangulate what management wants with the actual reasons employees are staying, then you can write job postings (and your Careers page, which we’ll cover shortly) that portray your dealership’s culture well and improve your chances of finding good matches in your applicant pool.

Get Your Point of View Right You’ve collected all this information about why your current long-term employees stay, now you need to use it to convince the right job applicants to apply to your job.

“To be honest, one of the biggest hassles with any job posting is that clients don’t take the step back to look at what will attract

A JOB AD ISN’T JUST A JOB AD In a study published last year in Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, researchers used the Inc. 5000 list, which annually lists the 5000 fastest growing businesses in the US, to analyze the latest trend of writing hipster job ads.

Because of their growth, the listed companies hire frequently and therefore post what can sometimes feel like a deluge of job ads. However, they’re usually start-ups, which means they don’t have the benefits and wages that larger, older corporations have.

Therefore, according to the researchers, these job ads rely on edgy writing and techniques to attract applicants. You may have read ads similar to these online or in your local paper: • We’re looking for people who share and believe in the vision of smarter consumption of consumer electronics and want to be engulfed in a gadget geekdom haven.

• Welcome to Tahzoo, a place where ideas are put to work and shoes are optional. You arrive at 8:35 . . . your Tahzoo-Fu is strong, and you’re ready to make great things happen.

• We’re looking for driven, innovative people who embrace our core values. You must be pathologically optimistic and an owner of results.

You must be eager to improve and a creator of “WOW” moments. And finally, you must not be an asshole.

You may cringe at that wording, or you may find it exciting. It doesn’t matter. What does matter, though, is your opinion on how it would reflect on your dealership.

In other words, don’t use these kinds of hyperbolic, metaphor-soaked job-ad descriptions just because.

Here’s why.

For starters, using “hip and cool” wording can actually be very excluding. The researchers quoted the following ad from a tech startup: “We’re seeking team players and Jacks and Jills of all trades who aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves, tackle new challenges and have fun doing it!”

They write, “The use of a common idiomatic

36 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

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expression like ‘Jacks and Jills of all trades’ is not necessarily problematic (it is gender inclusive), but it does make us wonder what might happen if it were changed to Josés and Jalilahs of all trades.”

Secondly, if culture is emphasized and requirements are provided in prosaic, vague language, such as “proven track record of success,” “highly analytical and metrics-driven,” and “be able to work well under pressure,” you’re more likely to receive resumes that use that same wording.

But it doesn’t mean anything. What is a “proven track record of success”? For me, it means I sit at my desk every morning by 8:30 to write and keep myself from getting distracted or interrupted by other people. I track my time, so I can prove that I’ve been successful. But no sales rep would make money if they followed my “proven track record of success.”

The researchers recognize that these job ads likely help companies achieve their goals, namely that of branding themselves as somewhere cool and hip to work.

“Nevertheless,” they caution, “the average job seeker is going to read several job ads, especially for similar positions and within similar sectors. Thus, these statements can lose their efficacy—the companies and positions all start to sound alike.”

They conclude: “Companies could simply describe what employees do in plain language, which would eliminate exertion of time and energy on producing gimmicky language that deflects from job duties.”

JOB POSTINGS | LORI STRAUS someone to come and work for them,” says Reczulski. “I think everyone kind of misses the point—they put in the skillset, they put in experience, they put in all that kind of stuff. But why should [an applicant] come and work here?”

In the end, look at it this way: for most of you, you’re not the only dealership in your city or town. And even if you are, you’re likely not the only retail business in your area. That means you’re competing for competent employees with other businesses.

“Everyone doesn't look at the benefit of 'Why me?' And I think that's one of the biggest things that gets missed,” says Reczulski.

Write an Effective Job Posting Let’s start with the headline.

The first general rule of thumb in writing headlines is that they need to attract the reader’s attention. The second one, especially for anything appearing online, is that search engines should be able to find it easily. In the case of job postings, that means staying away from funky headlines and creative job titles. “Numbers Genius Needed!” is nowhere near as effective as “Bookkeeper in Automotive Dealership Needed.” (Not to mention not as accurate: is a Numbers Genius an accountant? Controller?

F&I Manager?)

"You should obviously put a job posting headline to attract people to get them interested in the role,” confirms Reczulski, “but I would just leave it short and sweet and to the point.”

For Reczulski, that means the title and location. This will also save you time in the long run, as we discussed in the beginning of the article, because the job posting will speak to the people who should be applying.

She also suggests adding something about the personality you’re looking to hire. You could, for example, get input from others who’ll be working with this person.

“There's a lot of different personalities,” says Reczulski, “and everybody's missing that. If you have a very strong A-type sales

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JOB POSTINGS | LORI STRAUS manager at the dealership, and you want somebody to come in who's a little bit softer, you need to attract that. You don't want another strong A-type, because those two are just going to eventually butt heads.”

page be well organized so it’s easy to navigate. In addition, Odom suggests your Careers page should make the application process easy.

Even try it out yourself to make sure you’re not banging your head against the wall,” she says.

Bullet points? Sentences? What format First, make sure your Careers page should you use in your job ad? In the end, conveys the big picture: What’s it like to whatever gets the right information to the work for you? Odom suggests describing right applicant. Odom suggests selecting a format that engages potential applicants, a regular day on the job. for example, a checklist of questions. This can help them evaluate if they’re a right fit “The right candidate should be excited to come into work everyday for the job before they even apply. and descriptions should reflect that excitement,” she says.

Many potential applicants look for salary information, too, says Bendall, but that In addition, describe the skillsets you doesn’t require you to put up a figure. need and why people stay. Add pictures, “You don’t have to give it,” she says, “but videos, or quotes of real employees you should say something about it.” (with their permission).

Overall, she advises to make sure your job “Those are tried-and-true methods for ads reflect your company. This goes right down to word choice & writing mechanics. recruitment pages,” she says.

“The actual language you use should reflect the kind of tone of your company,” she says. “I’ve looked at pages that are very formal and very professional, and that’s the kind of atmosphere it’s going to be and the kind of people you want to entice.”

Your Careers Page Bendall advises that your Careers

Bendall adds that the Careers page should include whatever qualities you’re looking for in your employees, no matter the job requirements.

Your Careers page will likely also share some background information about your company. However, cautions Reczulski, make sure it’s not just a statement of facts. “Dealers don’t tell a story,” she says. “They say when the

store was opened and give a brief synopsis of who they are.”

If you’re not sure how to structure a story, here are the basics: a story has a protagonist (the main character) and an antagonist (the roadblock, which doesn’t have to be an evil, moustache-rubbing, conniving villain). The antagonist creates a problem for the protagonist, and the protagonist goes about solving it.

So, if your Careers page (or About Us page) starts off with “John Doe and wife Jane Doe started our dealership in 1963.

Since then, we’ve been growing and doing amazing things and are now located on Main Street, Acme, Ontario,” then you’re not telling a story.

"The right candidate should be excited to come into work everyday.."

Your dealership wasn’t founded because someone was bored and didn’t know what to do with their time. Whether you or your parents or even your grandparents were the founders, someone dreamed of achieving something with the business.

Use that as the foundation for your story.

And last but not least, make sure your Careers page (and the rest of your website for that matter) is accessible according to AODA law, says Bendall. Not only will this help you cast the net wider to find suitable applicants, but you’ll be walking the talk when you put up any required diversity statements.

In the end, job ads are branding, the promise I made to you at the beginning.

If done properly, they’ll not only bolster your image in your area, but they’ll also help you find the right candidates who can support and hopefully build your brand even more. ■

38 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

TURNOVER BLUES

EXIT

By Lori Straus

TURNOVER BLUES? HOW TO RETAIN YOUR TALENT WHAT ’S YOUR TURNOVER RATE COSTING YOU? Andy Church, an

automotive consultant with 25 years’ experience and COO at Dealer Solutions North America, says that if your dealership’s turnover rate is 30%, for example, it’s estimated that you’ll spend 70% of an employee’s annual salary to replace them.

“A dealership with 20 employees and average salary of thirty grand means $126,000 on the bottom line,” he says.

You can’t afford to ignore your turnover rate, and there are steps you can take to reduce it, so let’s get started.

Why People Leave Unfortunately, the answer isn’t perhaps what you want to read.

“People don’t leave companies, they leave bosses,” says Frank Newman of Newman HR Consulting. “And they leave because they don’t feel like their boss cares.”

He’s not alone in stating that. “I think it's something like over 40% of the people say the reason they left job was their manager,” says Church.

Even managers leave, of course, though the reason for their resignation may be different from that of employees.

Bruce McLeod, an automotive executive consultant, has worked in auto retail since the mid-1970s. His career spans leasing, used car sales, and dealer development. He’s seen first-hand the effects a dealership’s environment can have on its employees.

“I've been in stores that have had wonderful environments where people are happy. They're working with each other,” he says. But he also recalls working in one that was “completely toxic,” as he described it.

“We find that especially in that manager level,” says Church, “a lot of the turnover “The owner was constantly berating comes from the fact that these people people. He couldn't finish a sentence aren't equipped with the tools and really without the f-word. It was an the knowledge that they need to be unbelievably difficult place to work, and successful in the job. So, what happens the turnover was very high.” instead of giving them those tools and education, the dealer principal or the general manager gets frustrated and says, Church says you can create culture without spending a penny: by defining ‘It's time to make a change.’” success and treating people with respect.

Both of these scenarios have roots in “Once you start to define success,” says your dealership’s culture.

Church, “that's a culture, because the success and definition become the Culture Defines Success culture.”

Culture isn’t about having expensive The cheapest tip he has that will move perks that many small businesses simply you in the right direction? Spend a few can’t afford: it’s about consistently pennies on printing up the values of behaving in a certain way that reflects the values of your business.

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 | 39

TURNOVER BLUES | LORI STRAUS

1

HOW TO HIRE

What Does Success Mean to Your Dealership?

Andy Church has a three-step hiring process that will help you more effectively test potential sales recruits once you’ve decided whom to interview.

That question might be easy for you as the owner to answer, but your managers and employees should be able to answer it, too.

Hint: Their answer should match yours. If it doesn’t, include it in your onboarding.

Ask applicants to write you a description of how they would sell.

You’re looking for two things: The first is a well-written answer, because your sales reps do write to customers. The second is an answer that starts with prospecting, even if that’s a given. Church says that hiring salespeople who answer with “meet and greet” as the first step, for example, are going to expect you to do the prospecting for them.

2

Ask the applicants to call in and have a discussion on the phone. (Record it.)

Church says that, according to Mediahawk, used car customers will buy within 48 hours of that phone call. If the customer talks to a sales rep on the phone, that sales rep had better ask for an appointment by the end.

“Often, they don't understand that the job of a phone call isn't to sell a car, it's to book an appointment,” Church says. He wants to see if the salesperson tries to lead the conversation. “If they try to lead and create a conversation, then that's the kind of person you want because you know they're comfortable on the phone.” And although Church says it’s not a deal breaker for him, if the applicant doesn’t ask if they have the job at the end of that phone call, they’re likely not going to ask the customer if they want an appointment.

3

your dealership, laminating them, and then posting them in the lunchroom.

Conduct an interview in person, this time with the hiring manager/dealership owner, who has read the written submission and listened to the call. Church advises setting aside about 30 minutes for it, because the first 10 or so are usually taken up with canned answers to questions like “What are your weaknesses?” Church says that many run out of things to say after 15 minutes, and it’s then that you can start to get to know the applicant better.

40 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

For you as a dealer, you may define success as reaching that 3% net profit mark, and the actions that need to be taken are simple: sell more cars, spend less money. But how can your administration staff help?

Church returns to the signage in the lunchroom.

“Put something in your break room about the philosophy you believe in. If it's customer first, type a big sign that says ‘customer first’ and stick it on the wall.” Then repeat that philosophy at all managers’ and departmental meetings.

Connect With Your Staff Get to know your staff, says Frank Newman. “This can be as simple as saying good morning and thank you. People just want to be appreciated, and 'Thank You' goes a long way.”

Next, Newman says effective leaders embody what he calls the “5 Cs:” they Connect, Coach, Clarify, and show Courage and Compassion. Your ultimate goal with these components? “You want to create an environment where people leap out of bed to come to work,” he says.

And finally, Newman says to not be afraid to be vulnerable to your staff. “Let people know that you as a boss are entirely human and that you trust them to have your back.”

If you sense that your staff doesn’t trust you or members of your management team, you can fix that, too. It’s simple but difficult.

It’s Newman’s fourth C, courage.

“Managers need to have the courage to make the right decisions, e.g., terminate when it’s time, and deal with harassment and bullying issues promptly. These will get you the respect of the workforce,” Newman advises.

If you’re having problems with an employee, Church suggests talking with the employee and having him or her write out the plan that will bring their performance back up to par.

“I always tell managers: stop writing action plans for people,” he says. “And if they can't even take the time to come up with their own action plan, then that shows you the dedication they're actually going to do to accomplish it.”

If the employee doesn’t perform as agreed to, Church says, “Sometimes it's time to cut your losses and move on.”

You Need a People Strategy It all comes down to having a people strategy, says Newman.

Always hiring at the last minute isn’t a strategy: a concrete plan of how to hire, manage, and even fire is.

Church helped a dealer in a major Canadian city who wanted to hire and put the new employee on the floor immediately. He encouraged the dealer to slow down, but the dealer resisted.

The result? He had to hire four sales managers in under seven months for one position and five salespeople within that same time frame, also for one position.

“I know you want the sales tomorrow, but do you want an order taker? You can't let that person hit the floor immediately.”

If you’re constantly getting the wrong people, Church says you’re looking in the wrong spots.

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Often, dealers (like the one above) place ads online in automotive publications and get 30 applications. “I know one store that hires 20 people knowing that 10 of 'em are gonna drop out by the end of the month,” Church says.

So although that’s a strategy, it’s called cattle herding. “They're hiring too fast,” Church says. “So I have a big belief in hire slow and fire fast.”

Your people strategy needs to include a training/onboarding strategy. We’ve talked about onboarding in previous issues, but Church can’t emphasize its importance enough. With an automotive technician, for example, you’re competing against aviation. If a technician applies and is accepted to Boeing, for example, an entire onboarding regimen awaits him or her.

“Whereas we're probably going to go, ‘Hey, roll your toolbox over there. And here's a wrench and have at it, have a nice day,’” says Church.

Newman advises doing a Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis of your people strategy and using it to help you target better employees.

“Great companies don’t get there by accident,” he says.

Hiring and retaining strong talent for your dealership shouldn’t involve a revolving door. A lot of the changes necessary to improve a dealership’s retention rate can actually be undertaken just by the dealer principal and the management team (if there is one). The changes needn’t cost much, and they can save tens of thousands, possibly even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And who doesn’t want a stronger bottom line? ■

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THE OLD CAR DETECTIVE 1946 FORD STATION WAGON LIKE NEW AGAIN LAST SUMMER, THREE CLASSIC CARS

arrived for lunch at McDonalds in Leamington, Ontario. The three drivers were on their way to a National Early Ford V8 Meet in Dearborn, Michigan.

Bill Halpenny of Paris, Ontario, was driving his black 1939 Ford Deluxe coupe, John Hogg of London, Ontario,

42 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

By Bill Sherk

was driving his green 1939 Mercury convertible, and Bill Dolan of Waverley, Nova Scotia, was driving John Hogg’s 1946 Ford wood-bodied station wagon.

A total of 16,960 Ford station wagons were built in the 1946 model year, including 742 built in Canada. John’s station wagon was built in July 1946.

Bill Dolan has an identical vehicle back home which he has owned for 37 years and was delighted to drive John’s station wagon.

The body on his station wagon is all wood from the windshield back and was constructed in the Ford plant in Iron Mountain, Michigan. The wood is hard maple and the insert panels are plywood, having various outer skins. Bodies were completely painted, varnished and trimmed at Iron Mountain. All wood was given three coats of spar varnish.

I joined the three drivers for lunch, where I picked up the story behind John Hogg’s 1946 Ford station wagon.

The Canadian serial number of his vehicle is #4546H-34209. The letter “H” means Home Plant in Windsor. Ford of Canada at that time also had an assembly plant in Burnaby, B.C.

Approximately 80 bodies a day were made and over 30,000 from 1946 to 1948. Each body was given a sequential number stamped into the firewall. The

body on John Hogg’s station wagon is #163. It could be the earliest surviving postwar wood-bodied station wagon left with its 1942 Ford dashboard trim.

The body was shipped to the Ford plant in Windsor, Ontario, where it was mounted on a 1946 Ford chassis and shipped to Toronto, where it was bought new. It remained a one-owner vehicle until 1962, when John Legue of Blenheim, Ontario, bought it and kept it in storage for the next 39 years.

John Hogg bought it in 2001 and says “new bodies can be purchased at $30,000 plus. We bought some new wood parts, made some and repaired and reused most of the original wood.”

John and his son Andrew gave their station wagon a total restoration and nicknamed it “Old Tree.” The original front end sheet metal was black and John finished it in maroon identical to a colour available in 1946.

As John points out, his station wagon “was also called an Estate Wagon and a “Woodie.” These vehicles were often used to transport passengers and luggage to and from hotels, train stations, and estates. The California surfers made the “Woodie” famous by using them to carry their surf boards.”

The 1949 Plymouth Suburban was one of the first all-steel station wagons.

Within four years, all station wagons had steel bodies and the Woodies were history.

Top of Page 42: John Hogg’s 1946 Ford station wagon.

Top Right: Rear view with spare tire.

Middle Right: Dash has 1942 Ford trim, suggesting this is one of the earliest postwar Ford woodies.

Bottom Right: Here is what John Hogg and son Andrew started with. ■

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 | 43

LINE OF CREDIT ...

IS IT WORTH IT

By Angela West

GETTING A DEALER LINE OF CREDIT IS IT WORTH IT?

44 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

AUTO DEALERSHIPS IN ONTARIO rely on

having a fully-stocked showroom and lot in order to draw in customers and give them variety. Fresh inventory is one of the most effective ways for dealerships to differentiate themselves from their competition, so it’s important that auto dealers know how they’ll be paying for their latest inventory purchases. It’s often impractical for Ontario dealers to pay for every single vehicle on their lot with cash.

This can get very expensive, very quickly, and can result in losses if inventory isn’t turned over quickly enough.

Many dealers in Ontario don’t outright own every single vehicle on their lot.

They use a flexible payment method called a dealer line of credit, sometimes known as floorplan financing. Floorplan financing, like any other inventory purchasing method, has a variety of pros and cons that can affect the success of your dealership. Floorplan financing is used by a wide variety of industries, especially those dealing in large consumer goods sold with financing contracts like appliances, boats, and motorhomes among others. Every dealership has its own preference in

LINE OF CREDIT | ANGELA WEST incentive to sell vehicles at a quicker pace in order to gain higher profits and avoid depreciation costs.

Since you’re not purchasing inventory using cash on hand, a dealer line of credit can increase your purchasing power and give your dealership access to a wider range of vehicles on your lot, offering your customers more product selection which will then prevent them from going to another dealer to find the vehicle they’re looking for.

Additionally, many floorplan lenders offer flexible plans that can help you better accommodate the seasonal needs of your buyers, as well as market fluctuations.

What are the disadvantages of using an auto dealer line of credit? regards to inventory financing - some use bank loans or cash, and others take advantage of floorplanning.

with some being on the low end for smaller dealers, and floorplans totalling millions of dollars for large dealerships.

Before deciding whether to use a dealer line of credit or ditch your existing floorplan financing, it’s important that you weigh the pros and cons of such a decision, and analyse the ways in which a floorplan will affect your business going forward.

What are the benefits of using floorplan financing?

What is a dealer line of credit?

Floorplan financing is a revolving line of credit used to finance vehicles on your lot. This prevents dealerships from having all of their cash tied up in inventory, allowing for far more flexibility for auto dealers, especially if they are new to the industry or having cash flow problems.

When using a floorplan, lenders hold security over the inventory until it is sold, with the dealership then remitting the balance to the lender. As a dealer, you would pay the lender the full balance owed on the vehicle and any accrued interest, and would keep whatever profit was left from the sale. These floorplans generally vary in size and scope depending on the size of the business,

The most obvious benefit to using a dealer line of credit is that it frees up your organization’s cash flow to invest in other business initiatives. Less cash tied up in inventory means that your company can expand and improve other vital departments like sales and marketing, both of which can result in increased profits for your dealership without you having to worry about strained cash flow.

Floorplan financing can also lessen the burden of dealing with aged inventory.

When dealerships have free and clear ownership of the vehicles on their lot, they have to deal with the fact that their inventory will depreciate in value over time, leading to selling vehicles at a loss.

With auto dealer lines of credit, dealers have more flexibility, having the option of paying off small amounts of their inventory, extend vehicles, or buying down on the depreciation. Using a floorplan also gives you and your staff more

While using floorplan financing offers auto dealers a great deal of flexibility that can be worthwhile when establishing or building your business, there are also a number of disadvantages to using this method of financing.

One of the biggest drawbacks that some dealers have noted is that because a dealership’s inventory can fluctuate from day-to-day, lenders have to physically inspect inventory in order to verify that their loan is adequately being covered by the dealer.

This means representatives from your lender will be dropping by at least once every 30 days in order to check the inventory in person, keeping a close eye on which vehicles have accrued interest or depreciation costs that your dealership will have to pay out.

The fluctuating nature of a dealership's inventory also means that your business will have to change its administrative processes in order to reflect the information that your lender requires.

This includes info on when vehicles were sold, how much interest must be paid to the lender, which vehicles have accumulated interest and depreciation,

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 1 | 45

LINE OF CREDIT | ANGELA WEST and more - this can be very time consuming, and can take the attention of staff away from their regular duties.

Representatives from your lender can also drop by your dealership without making any sort of appointment or informing you in advance, meaning that you or your staff may have to drop whatever they’re doing in order to accommodate their needs and ensure that there are no problems with your floorplan.

"Floorplan financing takes the pressure off your business cash flow and lets you focus on growth and expansion.."

While using a dealer line of credit to expand your inventory can create many opportunities for dealers, the monthly interest payments owed on your floorplan can very quickly balloon into an unexpectedly high amount. This is especially true of inventory that sits on the lot for longer than expected due to slow business periods or sales being lower than projected.

Not making payments on the interest or depreciation on your floorplan will lead to the inventory being repossessed by the lender, which can very quickly spell disaster for your dealership. As such, you must ensure that your dealership will be able to pay the amount owing on its floorplan, no matter how slow business may get.

With so much at risk, it’s probably wise for dealers not to overextend on their floorplan - starting small and working

46 | THE ONTARIO DEALER

your way up rather than immediately overextending your credit is advised.

Is a line of credit worth it for Ontario dealerships?

This will depend entirely on the current state and the future objectives of your organization - a dealer line of credit has many benefits and drawbacks that dealerships will have to take into account when exploring the possibility of using this method of financing. If you have a relatively new dealership and are looking to expand inventory and grow other aspects of your business, then a floorplan can be an extremely useful tool.

Floorplan financing takes the pressure off your business cash flow and lets you focus on growth and expansion without worrying about every vehicle on the lot slowly depreciating and having to eat the entire cost. Dealer lines of credit can allow increased flexibility for you and your team, but it’s important that you don’t bite off more than you can chew making this mistake can prove fatal for your dealership.

Those with established auto dealerships and a healthy cash flow may find themselves compelled to use other methods of financing like cash or a more traditional bank loan.

The drawbacks that are associated with floorplan financing can prove burdensome for your staff, with unexpected administrative work required on each and every sale, extra steps in ensuring that everything is recorded accurately and immediately, and unexpectedly large interest and depreciation costs can make you wish that you had financed your inventory yourself. Established dealerships generally have already expanded their sales team and marketing efforts, so the flexibility allowed by a floorplan may not be useful to veteran dealerships.

When mismanaged, floorplanning can spell trouble for auto dealerships - this added pressure likely isn’t worth, it if your dealership has a healthy cash flow and established practices. ■

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