Retail Manager Development
It’s a fact. Managers in the best dealerships have a high level of business and technical expertise, and know how to retain customers and high-quality employees. The greatest impact you can have on your retail network or organization is to successfully address the quality of management practices. PDA’s Manager Development curriculum gives your managers the tools they need to be the best. Our specialized curriculum fully supports your current training program.

We focus on five delivery mechanisms, which establish a self-reinforcing system that guarantees a much higher success rate than traditional training:

• Experiential Training—an experiential focus is critical
• Engagement—players play better with a coach
• Commitment—written commitment to specific actions
• Accountability—peer coach holds the manager accountable
• Measurement focus—“keeping score” helps maintain focus on activities that make a difference

Manager Development Curriculum:

Understanding What Management Is
Create a common language, agree on the results, identify different styles, highlight essential management activities.

The Manager You Are
Each individual is unique. No two managers have the same personality or strengths, and fortunately, there is more than one right way to achieve the desired results. Participants would utilize a recognized talent inventory to reveal each individual’s unique array of strengths. Each participant would then view their past management successes as they reflect the application of their talents. They would then formulate a strategy for utilizing their unique collection of talents to achieve specific management goals.

Recruiting, Hiring And Orientation
How to establish continuous recruiting to attract new talent into the workgroup; assessing talents of potential employees, recognizing “fit” for the position; making the optimum selection for each position; new employee orientation that integrates each new employee quickly into their new environment and teaches them how to bring their talents to their new jobs.

Individualizing
As much as each manager is a unique set of talents, the people that report to the manager are each unique individuals and must be managed accordingly. The manager will learn how to identify individual’s strengths and create a plan for development to help each person increase his or her success.

Communicating As a Manager
How to effectively listen, understand, and give positive and negative feedback; conducting one-on-one sessions; expressing your expectations; avoiding the “blame game” and keeping employees focused and motivated.

Conducting Effective Meetings
How to develop an agenda; using meetings to provide information and create enthusiasm; empowering through meetings; how often to have meetings and how long they should be.

Mission/Vision/Values
Establishing and maintaining a sense of purpose in individuals and the team; creating a culture of customer service; focus and consistency through cycles of change.

Setting Expectations
What does success look like in this workgroup; what, how much, and by when. What is reasonable achievable, and “do-able;” how to tailor expectations to employee talents.

Creating Teamwork
knowing each other’s strengths; nurturing relationships; team decision-making; practicing teamwork; conflict resolution.

Creating Compensation Plans
Being competitive; empowerment through compensation; tailoring to the individual; what to reward, how much to pay.

Employee Development
Tailoring the job to the individual—how to match talents to job functions; customizing job descriptions to take advantage of employee strengths; the manager’s role in helping individuals grow and succeed; creating plans for development.

Training
How to be an effective trainer; train-the-trainer; a training model for teams.

Process Improvement
Creating culture where all employees continuously look for ways to improve; engaging the team, creating ownership through on-going involvement in the examination and enhancement of processes.

Measurement
Using measurement effectively as a management tool; what to measure, when and how to measure, who should do the measuring; common mistakes.

Empowerment
Practical strategies; misconceptions; empowerment not as a single action, but as a management philosophy realized through a variety of management activities; how to use empowerment realistically and effectively.