Craig Young will never forget the Sunday he called his management team in to discuss how Young Truck Sales Inc. would survive.
After extremely strong sales in 1998 and 1999, the truck dealership market was heading for a crash. On that Sunday, Young and
his team hammered out a plan that would allow the company to weather the storm. The plan included wage cuts — 5 percent
for hourly workers, 10 percent for management staff and 15 percent for the owners. It was a risky move, because none of Young’s
competitors had made cuts yet. Many of those dealers aren’t around anymore, and Young says his company wouldn’t be, either,
if he hadn’t acted when he did. Young’s ability to see market changes coming and having the guts to make the necessary, tough
changes have led Young Truck Sales through the lean times to 2006 revenue of $34 million. Smart Business spoke with Young
about how to bring out hidden talents in your employees.
Focus on what makes you successful. You
need to remember why you’re getting
into the business. For me, I want to
have a decent living and all that, but
really, it is to serve our customers.
Don’t lose focus on that.
It’s easy to get sidetracked in operational details or spending too much
time looking at the financials. But
what you’re really there for is to serve
your customer base, whoever it is, and
to make those people successful and
yourselves successful.
As you grow, it’s easy to get sidetracked and not do that.
That’s where my cousin helps me get
back on track. My cousin, Bob Young,
is my partner. We have very different
styles. I tend to be a bit more goal-oriented, he’s more customer focused. It
gives us a nice balance. He reins me in,
and I drag him forward.
HOW TO REACH: Young Truck Sales Inc., (800) 362-0495 or
www.youngtrucks.com
Show your employees the importance of communication. I’m hard-pressed to come up
with any problems we’ve had with customers that didn’t revolve around communications. It’s the hardest thing to do
right.
In trying to get managers, employees
and myself better at communicating, I
find ways to show the cost of poor communications on an individual basis. One
story was about a guy who was working
on his boat. He went to the parts department to pick up the parts he’d asked for.
But they didn’t tell him the rest of the
story, like the other parts he’d need, so
he broke down in the middle of the lake.
Just try to provide some examples to
make them stop and say, ‘Yeah, that
sucks when it happens. I don’t want to
do that to our customers.’
I can’t think of anything harder in a
business than keeping communications
going.
Communications are really what it’s all
about. Besides having meetings, I try to
wander through our dealerships every
day. It just helps me keep the feel for
what’s going on and say good morning to
all our mechanics and parts people.
Don’t try to cover up a bad decision. A bad
decision can have at least two causes.
If it’s a bad decision that’s made for
the right reasons, you can live with
those. We try to sit down and go
through what happened to cause that
decision. Every single time, it comes
down to poor communications.
A lot of times when things go bad,
people’s natural reaction is to cover it
up and hope the problem will go away.
That never works; at least it never
worked for me. When a bad decision is
made, you have to find out why and
learn from it.
Occasionally, a bad decision is made
by someone who is looking to enrich
themselves personally at the expense
of somebody else, or out of mean-spiritedness even. That’s the time
when I have to sit back and say, ‘Is this
the right person for our company?’
That doesn’t happen often, thankfully.
Think before hitting the ‘send’ button. I use
e-mail a fair amount, but that’s a very
dangerous tool. Particularly when I’m
angry, I’ve learned for whatever I
write, don’t send it for at least a couple hours.
It’s too easy to say the wrong thing
and hit the send button, and then it’s
too late. Still, it’s an excellent tool to
keep constant communication. It’s a
great sword but it’s a sharp one.
Allow employees to take ownership of their
ideas. I always encourage managers to
come up with new ideas or products
or opportunities. When they do,
they’re given control of it, it becomes
their baby to foster and help grow.
The latest example of this is a project with UPS Freight. The service
manager at my Volvo store found out
about it and said, ‘I think we should go
after this business.’ We talked about
how we could do it, it looked feasible,
so we said, ‘Let’s go for it.’
He set up meetings and landed that
business. He runs it all; he hired the
guys to do the work. He’s taken total
ownership of it, and it has become a
very successful program for us. It’s
given us three years of solid work, and
in our business — which is very cyclical — that’s welcome.
Also, it gives the managers the
opportunity to become entrepreneurs.
So if they have that within them, they
don’t have to take the total risk to do
it. Plus, it keeps them from leaving to
do it on their own, too.
Not all managers have that, and
that’s OK — it’s not a requirement to
be a manager. But those that do have
it, I want them to be able to exercise
it, and bring those qualities into their
daily job.