When Employees Walk Out, Keep the Know-How In cont.
Bottom line? Pricing margins, inventory reorder points, and customer histories live inside the platform, not in someone’ s head.
Ensure that knowledge of the software is shared across your dealership. Everyone should be familiar with it, and there should be backups in place in case someone is unavailable. Choosing software that’ s easy for non-technical team members to use can make this much easier.
A new hire gets online training, instant search, and easy workspaces tailored to their role on day one, so turnover becomes a user-permission swap, not a crisis.
Tip: Make it common culture for every team member to use your software – treating your dealership management platform like employee # 0. And make sure your team truly uses the notes fields in your software vs. hand-written notepads only. A hand-written note works for the moment, but a note captured in your software may pay dividends for years.
4. Pay for Results, Not Tenure When pay tracks hard outcomes: completed ROs, gross-profit, five-star reviews – people push toward wins instead of waiting for anniversaries. Multiple dealership workforce studies in other industries, including NADA’ s 2024 Dealership Workforce Study, show that stores with 25-30 % variable pay see markedly lower turnover and materially higher gross profit per employee.
Define two or three line-of-sight metrics for every role – parts margin %: billable hours per tech, trailer margin targets, and make bonuses escalate with impact, not just activity.
5. Run Monthly“ Bus-Proof” Drills What if a team member were suddenly unavailable? How would the team adapt?
Randomly assign one employee’ s tasks to a teammate for a day; gaps expose undocumented knowledge before real life does.
6. Make Knowledge Transfer Part of The Culture As Derek Hentges, Director of Sales & Service at Diamond C Trailers pointed out,“ We often wait until someone’ s already out the door. A culture of mentorship and ongoing knowledge sharing should be part of the way a healthy dealership operates.”
Derek went on to share,“ Cross-training is insurance. Building margin in the team by training multiple people in each role ensures you’ re not one retirement away from chaos.”
And the process doesn’ t need to be awkward. Derek observed,“ Transferring knowledge shouldn’ t feel like an exit interview. It should feel like legacy building. When you treat it that way, people are more invested in helping the next generation succeed.”
According to Will Holtz, Product Specialist at Blackpurl, it’ s about more than knowing what to do.“... There’ s a real risk of losing context, not just how something is done, but why. The best way to protect against that is to encourage knowledge sharing as a routine part of how the team works.” The goal?“ Operational stability and consistency.”
For Laurie Shearer of I-69 Trailer Center, the benefits are big, even before someone leaves. As she puts it, a culture of knowledge sharing leads to“ A more adaptable, engaged, and efficient workforce” that in turn creates a more profitable business.
Ready to bank the know-how? Bottom line: knowledge captured today is profit insured tomorrow. Film one SOP, tag a backup, and post the first metric on the wall before next Friday. Next time someone hands in their keys, you’ ll swap a user permission – instead of scrambling for lost know-how.
To explore practical tools that support retention, streamline operations, and drive dealership success, visit Blackpurl at Blackpurl. com or contact: Johnathan Aguero at 303-710-9820 | johnathan @ blackpurl. com.
Quick-start Checklist:
Pick one high-leverage process( e. g., unit check-in) and film it today.
Create a shared“ How We Work” folder; drop the video there.
Audit user roles and permissions in your dealership management platform – does each have a back-up?
Create the first public scoreboard metric( service hours, trailer sale margin, etc.)
64 NATDA Magazine www. natda. org