Lord William Kelvin (1824 –1907) stated: “If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.” That theory is the basis of the Profit Blueprints® System. We start by measuring the numbers critical to your success and then work with you to reach your targets. We have the pleasure of working with Parts Managers who seize the opportunity to measure and improve the performance of their Departments. Here is how Sébastien Vanier does it:
One French-Canadian Manager’s recipe for success:
Big Hairy Audacious Goals
+ Real-Time Posting of Daily/MTD Results
+ Delicious Treat Rewards for Achievements
= Record-breaking Achievements Every Month
Parts Manager Sébastien Vanier sets the standard for motivating the productivity of his staff, and that is just one of his many talents. For over 4 years, Sébastien has been motivating his staff with posting the Department’s goals and the progress towards those goals. He admits, at first the employees were skeptical about the ambitious goals and daily posting of the numbers; “but once they saw the improvements in their efforts and in their paychecks, they appreciated it!”
Besides Sales and Gross Profit goals, there is a lot of emphasis on answering the phones. To give all Parts Counter People a chance to earn more, he allows Tech Counter People to answer phones when the Tech Counter is slow, and the Wholesale Counter People are allowed to help out at the Tech Counter when Wholesale calls are slow.
BIG HAIRY AUDACIOUS GOALS
Sébastien clearly embraces the philosophy of BIG Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG), a term first proposed by James Collins and Jerry Porras in their 1994 book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. BHAG encourages visionary goals that are strategic and emotionally compelling. The folks who work for Sébastien know all about the goals because reaching individual goals is built into their pay plans. Each year, Sébastien reworks and fine-tunes the goals, as the employees continue to exceed them.
REAL-TIME POSTING OF DAILY & MONTHLY RESULTS
Every employee knows where they stand on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis — thanks to the big-screen monitor in the Parts Department installed last year. Super Bowl worthy screens keep the numbers in front of the team’s eyes. It’s not just the Sales and Gross Profits that are monitored, the Incoming and Outgoing calls are tracked and shown in real-time. This measurement really took hold when the screens went up. Before he started tracking and rewarding the telephone efforts, the number of abandoned calls ran between 15% —18%, afterward that number dropped to 8%.
DELICIOUS TREAT REWARDS
The Parts Employees don’t have to wait for the end of the month to be rewarded. Incoming phone calls are monitored with the goal that all calls are being answered quickly and no one hangs up before the call is answered. He first rewarded them with Tim Horton donuts and coffee on the following day if no calls were lost. The staff complained that they were doing so well, they were gaining weight on all those donuts. So the higher goal was raised to have 5 days throughout the month with no hang-ups: Yahoo! It’s Pizza Time!
Sébastien’s efforts not only produce great numbers, they produce camaraderie among the staff. One week, there was a day when only 1 call was abandoned (that didn’t count against Pizza), but all the staff got into good-natured ribbing, trying to figure which Counter Person should have gotten that call and what he might have been doing when he should have been answering that call.
Thank you Sébastien for all of your efforts.