The Dealer Lab: Behavior change No. 2, the 6Is

By Max Materne

This article originally appeared in the April edition of Powersports Business.

In March, I shared the DREAM framework. Five filters every idea has to pass through before you roll it to the team: Direction, Responsibility, Expectation, Accountability, Motivation. 

And then I left you with a cliffhanger. 

Because knowing what to change is only half the battle. The other half is how you present it without losing the room to an extreme case of the IDGAFs. (If you don’t know that acronym, Google it.) 

I realized a long time ago that once I fully understand what I’m going to say, I need to spend just as much time on how I’m going to say it. That’s where the 6Is come in. 

Identify. Inspire. Influence. Implement. Improve. I. 

Identify 

Before you pitch anything, get the room to agree the current situation isn’t working. I like to start with a good old-fashioned complaint session. “What sucks about your day?” 

If I can get a service advisor to tell me he hates getting yelled at by customers, I’m going to validate that. Because it’s true. It sucks getting yelled at by anyone. With that validation comes trust. And with trust comes an open door: What makes customers angry? What could we do about it? What steps would need to be in place? 

Identify isn’t about dragging your team toward what you want. It’s about amplifying the current reality they don’t want. 

Inspire 

Once you’ve roused them with reality, hand them creative control. “What if we could do it totally different? No idea too big or too small. What would perfect look like?” 

Give everyone a few minutes to write down five ideas. Then go around the room so each person shares at least one. They may suggest things you’ve already thought of. They might even describe something that’s already in their job description but they aren’t doing. Don’t get frustrated. Celebrate it. “That’s a great idea!” 

Because the moment they feel ownership over an idea, it stops being your change and starts being theirs. 

Influence 

A manager can preach about a new CRM process for weeks and get nothing but eye rolls. But when the old-school guy on the team says, “Actually, this thing saves me 20 minutes a day,” suddenly everyone’s paying attention. 

That’s influence. Peer credibility. 

Remember that grumpy sales guy who won’t use the CRM? Let’s say during the Inspire phase, he mentioned that an appointment calendar with automated text reminders would help manage his time. Resist the urge to tell him you set that up six months ago. Instead say: “Great idea. Can you spearhead that for us?” 

Now he’s the influencer. And adoption gets a whole lot faster if he buys in. 

Implement 

Talking about change is easy. Starting the work is hard. Not everyone responds to change the same way. I’ve found there are three personality types to plan for. 

Grasping personalities are always down for something new. I fall into this category. People don’t usually call me “grasping,” but I hear “ADHD” a lot. We’re great with novel ideas, terrible with consistency. To keep us locked in, you need strong motivation systems. (Go back to last month’s DREAM article for that.) 

Aversive personalities push back on everything. Their default is “no.” But here’s their superpower: once they commit, they stick. Making your aversive into a change influencer is one of the most powerful moves you can make. Diluted personalities are go-with-the-flow types. Great instruction followers, but not natural self-starters. What matters most here is setting crystal-clear responsibilities and expectations. (Back to DREAM again.) 

That’s one framework with three different approaches. 

Improve 

Once change starts, the work isn’t over. It’s just beginning. Practice doesn’t make perfect. It makes progress. And if we’re striving for progress, we can never stop practicing. 

Schedule training from day one and stick to it. Measure with repair order audits, sales deal recaps, process spot-checks. Weekly if not daily. Because the moment you stop inspecting what you expect, your team will stop doing what you trained. 

“I” (you)

The final “I” is you. If this change fails, it’s not your team’s fault. It’s you not explaining it clearly enough. Or not holding people accountable. Or chasing the next shiny idea before the last one had a chance to breathe. 

I’m mostly talking to myself here. I’ve had plenty of “great ideas” die simply because the next one looked shinier. 

[SQUIRREL!] 

…what was I talking about? 

Two Frameworks. One Mission. 

DREAM tells you what to prepare. The 6Is tell you how to walk your team through it. 

If you’re going to build the dealership of the future, it won’t happen because you had a great idea. It will happen because your team believed in it enough to change their behavior. 

That starts with a DREAM. And it sticks with the 6Is.