Why Can't I Get My People to Do X? The Secret Expectation Problem Killing Dealership Performance

What Does a Clear Expectation Actually Look Like?

Ed lays out four questions every expectation has to answer before it counts as clear:

1. What do you want?
2. Why do you want it?
3. How is it going to get done?
4. What's in it for the employee?

Miss any one of the four and you have a secret expectation. Your people cannot read your mind, and the ones who try will usually guess wrong. Ed's harsh truth on this point: you pay the same price whether you do the work of setting expectations or not. The payroll clears either way. The only question is whether you get the performance.

The reason most leaders skip this is not laziness. It's fear. Being clear is uncomfortable. Ed describes it as choosing clarity over comfort, and he is blunt that today's managers index toward comfortable. His counterpoint from his time running stores:

I may not have known where I was going, but nobody that reported directly to me knew that I didn't know where I was going.

Clarity over comfort is the principle that a leader's job is to remove ambiguity for the team, even when doing so creates friction or requires admitting a standard isn't being met.

Why Does Keeping Score Matter More Than the Sales Total?

Ed's second diagnosis is that leaders are not keeping score, or they are keeping score on the wrong thing. Everybody wants to win. That's why sports work. But most dealerships only put one number on the scoreboard: how many did we sell.

The problem is that number only tells you what you got. Ed spent his career paying attention to what he was losing. His logic: if you sold 150 cars and everything had gone perfectly, you could have done 275. Excellent might have been 210. That means 60 deals were left on the table. How many of those 60 were self-inflicted? Missed follow-up, sloppy process, wrong pricing, a lead that never got a real response?

Most leaders chase the 150 and go, look at us go. I'm chasing the 60.

My takeaway from years working under Ed: what you don't know, you don't know. When you start analyzing what you lost instead of celebrating what you sold, you find the gaps you never knew existed. Ed compares it to game film. You don't watch film to see your team score touchdowns. You watch it to find the missed assignments.

Loss analysis is the practice of measuring the deals, leads, and gross a dealership failed to capture, not just the results it recorded, in order to identify self-inflicted misses in process and execution.

Why Is “We're a Nissan Store” Not a Business Model?

Ed said this is the biggest mistake he sees walking into dealerships today. He asks what the business model is, and the answer is a franchise name. A franchise is not a business model.

A real business model answers questions like: Are we finance-first? Used car centric? Used car volume centric? What are we known for? A fringe suburban store, a high-volume metro store, and a rural store all have different models, and each one requires different talent. Ed's framework is to define the model first, then match human capital to it, then build people up around it.

This matters for used car managers specifically because pricing and acquisition strategy flow directly from the model. Ed used pricing as the example: “You can't have 107% price to market in a car that should be at 94. That means you don't believe.” Private party acquisition works for some dealers and not others, and the difference is usually belief and commitment, not the tactic. His phrase for it: believe or leave.

Business model, in a dealership context, means the defined operating identity of the store (its primary profit center, volume strategy, and customer focus) that determines which processes and which people the store needs.

What Is a BHAG, and Why Should You Chase It Instead of the Guy Down the Street?

Ed was mentored by a dealer who walked into a 40-car-a-month Pontiac/Datsun store in a town of 50,000 and announced they would sell 300 a month. Ed, then the service director, thought the man was out of his mind. Four years later they sold 303 and shut the store for three days to take everyone to Vegas.

The mentor rarely showed up. When he called, he asked about details: “That's nice, you sold 23 cars. How many could you have sold?” The whole culture ran on “what if.” What if we added people? What if we changed the marketing? What if we ran a different model than every other dealer in town?

Ed's warning is that the industry chases the dealer down the street instead of a big goal. The guy down the street probably isn't world class either. Chasing him caps your ceiling at average.

BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) is a long-range target set deliberately beyond what current performance suggests is possible, used to force a team to rethink process, staffing, and strategy rather than incrementally improve.

What Do High Performers Need From Their Leader?

Ed's “windshield time” is the most talked-about story in this episode. When something was off, he would show up at a store and tell a manager, “Let's go for a ride.” No pre-planned route. Sometimes a milkshake at Sonic. Sometimes 20 minutes on a back road.

Two things made it work. First, he did it on purpose so the whole store saw the two of them leave together. That's a message about who's tight with the boss. Second, every ride focused on three things every high performer needs:

• To know their work matters, regardless of the final tally.
• To know there's more development ahead, meaning here's what I saw and here's how we get there.
• To know the leader has their back.

Ed's point: a high performer who doesn't get those three things starts to doubt, and doubt becomes the enemy. Next thing you know, they're calling the store down the street. “You can't run a dealership on doubt,” he said.

Windshield time is a one-on-one coaching conversation held away from the showroom floor, framed as development rather than punishment, and conducted visibly so the team understands the relationship is strong.

How Does a Leader Diagnose a Store That's Running Loose?

When Ed walks into a new store, his first question reframes the engagement: you made an investment in me, so let's make an investment in high performance. Then he breaks it into five areas and treats it like a full physical:

1. Are you a high performer in inventory distribution?
2. Are you a high performer in sales processes?
3. Are you a high performer in management processes?
4. Are you a high performer in culture?
5. Are you a high performer financially?

Nobody in retail automotive brags about being slightly above average. Everyone says they want to be number one. The gap, in Ed's experience, is that they don't know where to go because nobody gave them clarity. When a manager pushes back that they're satisfied with current activity, Ed's response is simple: okay, you want to be average, I'll move on to the next one who wants to be a high performer.

If you want a place to start on the management process piece, a weekly inventory meeting with a real agenda is where most expectations either get stated and scored or quietly disappear.

The Bottom Line

Ed French has spent 52 years in the car business, and he says the leadership problems today are the same ones he faced 30 and 50 years ago. The difference is that the industry has gotten more comfortable accepting them. If your people aren't doing what you need, start by asking whether you actually told them what you want, why, how, and what's in it for them. Keep score on what you're losing, not just what you're selling. Define your real business model and match your talent to it. And give your high performers the three things they need before doubt sends them down the street.

As Ed put it in his closing: there is no money in being comfortable. There is money in winning and being clear.

Want a coach to help you build the scoreboard for what your store is losing? Book a free Lot Audit.