The Sweet Solution: How Cake Parties and Camaraderie Drive Success in Dealerships

The importance of quality people powering your dealership is undeniable, but in recent years employee
turn over has seen a sharp rise, which was only accelerated during the pandemic. In today’s over
employed economy, finding and retaining quality staff is more difficult than ever, but people being
people, some of the most effective remedies to the problem are as simple as giving candy to a baby….
Or in this case, cake to an adult.
Typical management style in successful dealerships encourage a team atmosphere on the showroom
floor, but emphasize competition between team members to strive to be a top producer, and hold
members to task for ineffectiveness and inefficiencies. But what is often missing from the equation is
the building of rapport between team members that goes beyond friendly competition and instills a
sense of mutual appreciation and value among your community of employees.
Something as simple as having cake parties to celebrate occasions and successes as a group brings the
team together on more of a human level and establishes bonds that enable people to work together
more collaboratively and productively, with a common goal and sense of worth.
Raymond Automotive Group in Illinois has learned first hand over a decade of cake parties that the
practice pays dividends. They have enjoyed a much lower turnover rate than the industry average, and
they attribute much of that to the comradery and sense of mutual purpose fostered by group
celebrations, and individual rewards for selfless contributions made to the group.

“Sometimes its really easy to focus on areas where we need to improve or things that
somebody may have done wrong and actions that we need to correct” said Dina Vogt,
CFO of Ray and Raymond Automotive Group. “This really makes all of the managers
more cognizant of encouraging the good.”

Almost a decade ago Forbes published a well known and often sited article which referenced a Boston
Scientific survey of over 200,000 respondents regarding the top ten most important factors for
employee happiness on the job. Surprising to many, the top factor was not salary, but appreciation,
followed by good relationships with colleagues, work-life balance, and good relationships with
superiors as the top four. Salary was listed as only the 8 th most important factor.
This is really good news for dealer ownership and management, because not only is cake, and
camaraderie relatively inexpensive, it is good for business, and delivers results to the bottom line.
In an evolving market where success is increasingly dependent on your staffs ability to connect with the
customer, happy, collaborative personnel are dramatically more effective in capturing the lifetime

“Two things that are constantly evolving are our customers expectations and the ability
to attract employees in todays world” -Paul Walser, a partner at Walser Automotive
Group and former NADA chairman.

The average dealership turnover rate was 34 % in
2021, according to the annual NADA Dealership Workforce Study.
So, let them eat cake. Build long lasting relationships with your employees and
empower them to build long lasting relationships with your customers.

At BDC United we not only believe in team work, we thrive on it. We like Cake too..
Scan the code below to learn more about how our team can work seamlessly with yours
and offer the stability of a superlative BDC without the expense of 34% turn over.