Automotive
Identifying goals
How to motivate employees by including them in your vision
By Brooke Bates
Smart Business Detroit | April 2009
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Bill Perkins, president and founder, Bill Perkins Automotive Group
A little grime won’t stop Bill Perkins from shaking your hand; he’s more concerned with making a connection with you than he is with the dirt on your hands.
As founder and president of Bill Perkins Automotive Group, he has to get through grease to reach some of his 160 employees — namely, the mechanics, who often hesitate to shake his clean hands.
“It means a lot to them,” says Perkins, whose company reported 2008 revenue of $110.7 million. “It shows them that I’m interested in not only what they’re doing but I’m interested in them if I think enough of them to shake their hand when it’s all oily and dirty.”
Little gestures can go a long way toward showing employees that they all have a part to play in a company’s success. To communicate that, Perkins builds relationships to learn employees’ personal goals so he can tie their achievements to the business.
Smart Business spoke with Perkins about how to tie your employees’ goals to those of your company and how to find the best people for your company.
When interviewing prospective employees, learn their goals. You have to get people to talk. You’re supposed to be conducting the interview, but in today’s environment, a lot of people, they’re interviewing you. They try to turn it around, and they’re busy asking me, ‘Well, how did you do this? How did you accomplish that?’
I’m not the one applying for the job, you are. So I have to make sure that I keep it in perspective, and I keep control of the interview. You don’t want to ask yes or no questions. You want to ask questions they have to discuss. They have to have a conversation with you.
I ask them, ‘What’s your long-term goal? What do you want to do? You’re coming to work for me as a salesman, but ultimately, is that all you want? Do you like selling? Are you just applying for this job to get your foot in the door, or is it a job that you really want? Where do you want this job to take you?’
When you are hiring people, you have to find out what their goals and objectives are. If they are somewhat similar [to yours] — they don’t have to be the same, but if they’re similar — then it’s a little easier to get next to that person, to motivate that person, to inspire that person to want the same thing that you want. You have to be able to identify with people.
Find where prospective employees’ goals match yours. I always explain to them what I’m trying to accomplish. I let them know the goals and objectives that I have for the company, and then I come up with ways for them to get involved. They tend to somewhat buy in to it because I try to make sure that vision includes them.
I usually like to know [their personal goals] upfront, and then give them a goal that ties into that. One of my employees said to me that he wanted to do certain things for his kids at Christmas. He said, ‘My goal is, I need to make this amount of money.’
What I said to the employee is, ‘We need to finish strong. In the first part of the month, if you can sell this number of cars, there’s an extra bonus in it for you.’
When he did that, it provided me the opportunity to be able to do that for the entire sales force.
