Do you remember being a little kid and shouting, “do-over” when you were playing with your friends? A do-over could be because you forgot to roll the dice again on doubles in Monopoly, because someone hit the ball into the street where we were forbidden to play, or because someone tripped after being blindfolded in pin-the-tail on the donkey and ended up with the tail on his own shirt instead of the donkey. It didn’t seem to matter what the reason was, as long as the rest of the kids felt that a do-over was a fair way of giving someone another try.
Why wait until the end of the month for a mental do-over?
I suggest those of us in the car business — and maybe others too — should occasionally shout “do-over” as though we were kids again.
Zero to Hero
Our business is different from others because we close each month and start over. Sometimes that’s a good thing because we struggled with PVR or had more cash deals than anyone else, but why wait until the end of the month for a mental do-over?
Why not walk in Monday morning after a particularly rough weekend and mentally yell “do-over” in your office to shake off the last few days? You could flip the traditional hero-to-zero mentality on its head and move from zero to hero. That simple do-over just takes a little mental shift.
Preparation
Our successes, both personally and professionally, have to do mainly with our attitude, but it also has to do with preparation. Giving ourselves a do-over mentally doesn’t relieve us of the burden of action. We need to re-read our product contracts to understand coverage. We might need to flip back through some training material to remind ourselves of good tips. We might also need to film ourselves presenting a menu so that we can see what we’re doing well and where we can improve.
Yelling “do-over” to ourselves can help when we recognize a less-than-stellar area that we need to improve.
Relationships
Sometimes we roll our eyes when a salesman brings us a deal because we think it’s going to be yet another cash deal, or because we assume so many things will be missing from the deal as usual. Isn’t it time for a do-over so that we can appreciate the salesperson bringing us a deal? Salespeople are our bread and butter. Without them, we’d have no opportunity to make money.
The same mentality should apply to everyone from the receptionist to the sales managers to the office. We need to be grateful for the support. Mentally shout “do-over” and build good relationships or mend bad ones. Buying coffee for a small group doesn’t cost that much, but it goes a long way to building solid relationships. Saying “good morning” to people we pass instead of the usual snubbing helps too. We should do whatever we need to do to make and keep good relationships around us.
Whether it was a missed attempt at kickball or dust in the eye during backyard two-hand touch football, yelling “do-over” was our own way of building rules to make things fair. Many of us worked hard when we were younger to appear more mature, but this is one of those times we should try to get back in touch with the kid within. Just like it was okay to scream “do-over” then, we need to use the same trick now to allow ourselves a second chance to do things right.
Lori Church is an experienced F&I manager, a graduate of the University of Denver’s Sturn College of Law, and director of compliance for Holman Automotive.
