CMETRICS are not data points on a chart. I won’t be boring you with big data or complex theories. The CMETRICS I’m talking about are specific things that you should be looking for when attempting to find your next hire. CMETRICS is simply an acronym to help you remember the following things you need to look for in your hire:

Competent
Mission Motivator
Enthusiastic
Trainable
Reliable
Inspired
Compatible
Solution Driven

These are the individuals you want as managers in your store. Let’s look at these individually, and how to uncover them in the interview process.

M=Mission Motivator

Motivation is a significant factor in success, in a job, on a diet, even to an education. The more motivated the individual, the more likely they are to succeed. No one wants to hire the discouraged, hinder of success.

Dealers think they want motivated managers. Many believe motivated managers will meet goals, that simply is not true because managers can’t meet goals by themselves. They can only meet goals if they can get their entire team working toward the same goal. What dealers need are mission motivators. Let me explain if you go back to the root of a motivator, which is motive you will find it means “reason for doing something”. To say you have a motivated individual is like saying the individual has more reasons to act the way they do. What dealers really need are mission motivators.

How do you find a Mission Motivator?

Managers who can provide reasons to the team to act the way they do to achieve goals. The mission motivator can provide reasons for the team to sell x units this month. It might be to provide reasons for reaching 90% shop efficiency. Dealers need managers who can give the entire team a reason to provide outstanding customer service. It’s a manager who can keep the team going when it gets off track and push them through the tough times.

This comes when your manager fully buys in, and that usually comes when they feel like they have some influence. It’s nearly impossible to be motivated if you believe you can’t make a difference and if you don’t give your manager the authority to make a difference … they won’t. Can your candidate provide reasons for your team to do what you expect of them? Or do they resort to because I said so?

Questions you can ask:

To help uncover this in the interview process structure questions like this, “You have an employee who doesn’t make his minimum number of outbound calls per day, what do you do?”  The candidate who jumps immediately to a disciplinary action as their response may not be what you are looking for. That individual may not understand that there are changes that can be made that would cause the employee to change. If the employee hasn’t decided they have a strong enough reason to change, they won’t. However, showing them the correlation between the number of calls to sales opportunities might do it. Or even limiting their opportunities for ups when they don’t accomplish it may do it. Although I prefer the positive reinforcement reasons to the negative reinforcement.

For the service manager candidate, “The service department is currently at 75% efficiency, you have been charged with improving this. Explain to your service team how things will change.”

Does the candidate just spout off his reasons, or does he connect the reasons to the work the team does? There’s a really big difference in approaches. Look for individuals who will think creatively when it comes to reasons to act in a specific manner.

Because I said so is not really a motivating reason for most adults, heck your kids don’t even buy into that one. Next week, I’ll discuss Enthusiasm and why you should look for it in mangers. If you missed last week’s post about the root of every good hire – competence – click here to catch up!