This year’s 2012 CADA Laureate award winner in the retail category, says that if you put your trust in the right people, they will surprise and surpass your expectations.
Trevor Boquist
Dealer principal Trevor Boquist only has to point to the sales performance at his Bennett-Dunlop Ford Sales Ltd. dealership in Regina, Sask. When he took over the dealership, sales were a respectable $28 million but with incentive programs and a motivated staff, sales have climbed to more than $90 million in 15 years.
Trusting people was an early lesson in the Boquist family. “I knew when I was 12 that I wanted to go into the industry,” he said. It was the result of what he calls an “exceptional relationship” with his father John who took him to the dealership, gave him odd jobs to do, brought him to dealer events and introduced him to other dealers.
“I could drive when I was 12 and I was parking cars on the lot. I would go down on Sundays and organize the lot (for Monday’s opening),” he said. “I really credit my father for giving me a lot of responsibility when I was just 12 years old and trusting me.”
By graduation, Boquist was ready to enroll in Northwood University to pursue a degree in business administration and marketing with a minor in automotive. Although Boquist knew “that I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps” he never worked for his father. With a degree in hand he opted to work for two dealers in the Toronto and Mississauga area in Ontario for eight years.
There was the opportunity to go back to Saskatchewan, which was another leap of faith as two dealer partners, in their sixties, wanted to retire from their Regina dealership. “My dad was a dealer in Kingsley and Gord Bennett and Dan Dunlop knew him,” said Boquist, adding he had run into the two partners at dealer events. They were willing to let Boquist place a down payment and pay off the dealership over a six-year period.
At the time, Boquist was 29, and he says he looked about 22. Not wanting to appear like the young know-it-all, he tried to keep it business-as-usual. He kept the same business name plus the staff since the partners had assembled a good team. Boquist says that Bennett and Dunlop trusted him not only to run the business but also to serve a loyal customer base.
For Boquist, the challenge was really one of trying to expand the business. “What the store really needed was new vigour and enthusiasm,” he said. It provided Boquist a chance to put marketing strategies in place. He hired an advertising agency to give the dealership an edge.
The agency came up with the slogan “Driving Change” which became an internal mantra and external slogan. “We were using it as a noun as well as a verb,” he said.
Boquist wanted to ensure that the dealership was portrayed publicly as an organization that was striving to do better from customer service through to employee relations. “It brought a lot of pride into the organization,” Boquist said, as the “Driving Change” campaign is now going to the other dealerships in Winnipeg and Carmen owned by Boquist and three partners.
While the “Driving Change” campaign was instilling pride, he also wanted to motivate. He hired business coach Dick Bailey to develop a curriculum that looked at improving management skills, mentoring junior employees, focusing on accountability, and setting goals for both personal and career growth. “Fifteen years later,” said Boquist, “he is still with us.”
But, more importantly, said Boquist, the efforts have cultivated an atmosphere where caring about one’s self, the company, and customers is fulfilling.
“We have our own apprenticeship program,” said Boquist. The apprenticeship program simply lays out what is required to get to the next step and pay level for an employee. “We find this works well with Generation Y who just want to know what to do to get there,” he said.
Another in-house measure that has driven change is a team attitude that is attached to performance. Employees are paid salaries, but also incentive bonuses. But, departments are teamed (such as service, parts and body shop) and paid the same profit level so there’s an incentive to work together rather than compete at the expense of another department and customer service.
He’s also big on accountability. “I am one of those people that when things go wrong, I look at me first and think what do I need to do differently to get results.”
