Erik Radle was a keynote speaker at the 7th annual DrivingSales Executive Summit (DSES) 2015 at the Bellagio, Las Vegas where over 1,000 progressive dealers and industry professionals gathered for the most progressive event in the automotive retail industry. Erik shared his insight into dealership advertising, human capital management and more – weaving in an evolutionary point of view.
Erik Radle has over a decade of experience in retail automotive, which even included a position as managing partner for one of the largest dealer groups in Texas. Radle applied his experience in automotive retail and held such powerful manufacturer roles such as manager of sales operations for Mazda North America, marketing manager of Subaru North America and performance leadership consultant for DaimlerChrysler. Radle currently serves as CEO of the Miller Ad Agency.
In conjunction with Radle’s keynote address, the renowned automotive professional sat down with DrivingSales News to provide insight for dealers. Radle’s first topic highlighted the impact of dealership advertising and how it could be having a negative impact on consumers.
Speaking of that potential negative impact Radle explained, “a loud voice in a TV commercial. That’s a phenomenon that they’re doing research on currently that’s called a tenuous, where if a parent speaks to a child in a loud voice, it will turtle-up, but that’s not the worst of it. When the child comes back to interact with the parent later in life, it will act with aggression. So, is it possible that by doing screamer ads we’re priming consumers for aggression? Just one example of the unintended consequences of poor dealer marketing efforts.”
In addition to loud noises potentially having a negative impact on car buyers, Radle touched on visual perception, which he feels dealers need to be aware of.
“The human brain is wired to process visually, 60,000 times faster than it is for sight or sound,” Radle said. “So that’s another huge opportunity that dealers are missing out on. It’s taking advantage of the fact that we’ve had call it 8 million years since we separated from the hominids and discovered Australopithecus to process things visually, but we’ve been clicking at each other in languages for only 10,000 years. So huge effort there that could be made to restructure marketing toward the visual.”
Human capital was a subject Radle also spoke about, indicating hiring the wrong employees can cost dealers tens of thousands of dollars for each employee who leaves or is let go after a short time.
Speaking about the cost of turnover Radle said, “I saw numerous studies in fact, some of them even showed up on the app, that put the cost of turnover in the $60,000 per employee range. A great exercise for any dealer to do is to go to their office manager at the end of the year and say ‘show me all the W2s and W4s we’re going to send out.’ They’ll be blown away by the 4x, 5x the number of employees that they have, that’s a wake-up call for turnover.” Dealerships can also use the DrivingSales “Turnover Tax” calculator to find out how much sales turnover is impacting their per vehicle profits.
Radle touched on a stereotypical successful salesman, someone who might not be a good choice to promote to management.
Describing the 30-car-a-month guy Radle said, “Your 30-car-a-month-guy is an alpha male, eyes forward, apex predator. They’re awful at managing people just by default. They’re the exception to the rule where most people will run from danger, that 30 car a month guy will run to danger, embraces conflict, they’re not who we’re gonna talk to marketing to tomorrow, they’re very much an exception to the rule, but a big mistake at promoting those people to a leadership level.”
Finally, Radle shared on experience of a preacher who worked at his store who didn’t sell particularly well, but worked wonders for the culture of the dealership.
“One of the best guys who ever sold cars for me was a preacher,” Radle explained. “Had got to a point where he felt like it wasn’t his calling or he had imparted enough to his flock it was his turn to move over and what he did for our sales team, and I don’t mean for a religious or even philosophical standpoint. But just from a gathering together and making people feel good. Somebody had a bad day or spent six hours with someone who ended up not converting, he was able to really put them in a good frame of mind. Didn’t sell a ton of cars, he was your prototypical 8-12 car guy, but brought so much charisma to the team that his presence was more than appreciated.”
Radle comments regarding human capital management is sound advice for dealers. What is the hiring and retention strategy at your store? Do you think great salesmen make great sales managers? Finally, have you ever had a member of your team like the preacher at Radle’s store that didn’t lead the team in sales, but improved morale at your dealership?
