Decision Maker 101: Doing the Right Thing Can Be Expensive
Some decisions are just beyond tough. Your best employee commits a firing offence and getting rid of that employee is going to hurt badly. What do you do?
In all honesty I’m not sure if the same circumstance happened today, I would make the same decision. It was a tough call. Some ten or fifteen years ago, we were really rocking. Selling more cars than ever. Solid General Sales Manager, amazing Business Center Manager, and wicked Floor Manager. They could close anybody. Those three individuals were a solid team and the best of friends. Beyond that we had built a solid team of sales and finance staff. Good times.
One night, the Floor Manager makes the fateful decision to stay after work and invite a bunch of sales staff back for a party. Then drive home in company cars. The company had a strict policy. No drinking at work. No drinking after work at the store. No drugs. Zero tolerance. Let’s face it. Cars. Demos. Business. They don’t mix well with booze and drugs. As ownership we get wind of it and it’s decision time. Do you sacrifice your business integrity and let it slide, or do you make the difficult decision?
We knew that gunning our Floor Manager would likely cause us some serious pain.
We knew that gunning that Floor Manager would likely cost us our GSM, and Business Centre Manager, causing us some serious pain. But we also knew that letting it slide might send the wrong message to everyone else. Believe me you don’t want to be standing in court one day fighting some lawsuit and have that come up as evidence of bad judgement. Imagine some employee getting drunk and killing someone with their demo and it comes to light that we let a drunken party at the store slide. That wouldn’t go well.
Ultimately, we made the decision to move on from the manager. A fantastic closer. Hard worker. Driven. Made one mistake. A big one in our eyes. It cost us the other two managers and a few other staff members in the process. It was painful and took us a while to recover from, but we did.
Here’s the thing, as a business once you’ve drawn a line in the sand, once you've made it clear that you have a policy that is black and white, do this and you're gone, you have no choice when someone crosses that line. No matter how good they are. You move on. Because you have to.
The integrity of a business lies in the policies it creates over time. Integrity is synonymous with strength. When you sacrifice the integrity of your business to save a few dollars, or even save a really talented employee, you weaken your company. You send the message to other staff that some people are exempt. Special.
The most important aspect of company policies are that they apply to everyone equally.
The most important aspects of company policies are that they apply to everyone equally. A failure to operate that way only leads to employee dissatisfaction. When you have to start making decisions about policy based on how long an employee has been with the company, or how many cars someone sells, or even the position they occupy, you set yourself up for a ton of unhappy staff.
Here’s the thing, at some point some really high functioning staff are going to cross the line and do something that they should be fired for. Maybe they kept some deposit money, “forgot they had it.” Maybe they borrowed a car without asking, or even worse, leant out a vehicle to a friend without asking. Maybe they committed fraud. Who knows? There are literally an endless number of stories about the crazy things that have happened in the car business over the years. The booze. The drugs. The gambling. The bad judgement.
At some point it’s going to happen in your store in some way, and you will need to make the difficult decision between integrity and profit. The best advice I can give is that having integrity in your business only leads to greater stability and profit in the long run. So, when someone crosses that line, no matter how good they are, say goodbye and move on. Good luck and good selling.
Ready to generate leads for your business? Schedule a demo today!
Have questions? No problem — we're here to help. Contact Us"