Case Study – Automotive

How to support leaders of car dealerships in developing the right mindset, skills and behavior to be empowered to lead the customer-focused transformation within their industry?

Context

The car industry is facing a huge transformation. On the one hand there is a need for more sustainable modes of transport, on the other hand customer requests are subject to change.

A leading brand within the European market wants to support all leadership teams (consisting of the CEO, commercial manager and operational manager) of their dealerships in working more customer-oriented. The focus is on further developing communication skills, offering end-to-end service and thinking from the customer perspective to ensure continuous outperforming customer expectations.

Approach

In close cooperation with the customer, InContext developed a business game as part of a 5-day leadership program. The game allows participants to practice skills such as consultative selling, cooperation and giving feedback. The game consists of dilemmas and challenges that leaders have to deal with in their day-to-day work. Participants have to work together, discuss and make decisions. Subsequently they directly experience the effect of their decisions on the employees, customers and revenue of their (simulated) dealership. Maximizing the occupancy of the workshop may increase the revenue on a short term, though in the long term it may have a negative effect on the satisfaction rates of the workforce and lead to a higher employee turnover rate.

Results

    The game offers participants a mirror and provides immediate insight into the effects of their choices. During the evaluation participants come up with concrete actions and points of improvement. These can directly be applied in their own dealerships. In the coming years more than 10.000 people from 53 countries in the EMEA region will participate in the game.
Automotive

“During the first round I made decisions based only on my own opinion. From the second round I opened up for collaboration and really listened to what my team members were telling me. I discovered that this mindset change had a positive effect on the team dialogue and the choices we made.”

ParticipantAutomotive Simulation