Six Essential Principles to Operating a Profitable Special Finance Department

Principle #2 - Team

Have you ever wondered how on any given day a sports team with much less talent can beat a team that is far superior to them on paper? Usually, it’s because the members of that team completely trust each other to do their job, so they play together as a team, not as individuals.

In a car dealership, the ultimate goal for the sales team is to sell as many vehicles as possible before the end of the month. It’s just like in a football game—the team’s ultimate goal is for the offense to score as many points as possible before the end of the game.

If you want to sell as many vehicles as possible before the end of the month, you need to figure out how you’re going to do it. Accomplishing that will not happen without planning and part of that is putting the best possible special finance team you can.

As Vince Lombardi said, “Individual commitment to a group effort—that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”

Building the best possible team does not mean filling all the positions with the highest-paid people or the people with the best “individual” numbers and stats. Instead of looking for that 20-car salesperson who has worked at every dealership in town and can’t stay in one place for more than six months, you should be looking for salespeople who want to learn, train and grow with your dealership. I would personally rather work with a blank slate instead of trying to extract all the bad habits before I even get started with a new hire.

If you owned or ran a dealership with team-oriented people who had heart, integrity, character, honesty and a competitive nature, do you think your financial statement would look the same as it does now? I bet it wouldn’t for very long, if at all!

You need to stop looking for “salespeople” you think will help you succeed right now and start looking for “quality people” with good character traits who you want representing you now and in the future.

I hope this article helps you understand just how important the team concept is to the success of your department as well as your dealership. Our next article will focus on process.

Vol. 3, Issue 4