MT Interview: Steven Eagell

When Lexus named Steven Eagell Group as its best UK performer at the brand’s annual dealer awards, it was the latest in a string of accolades since Steven Eagell realised a long-held ambition, founding the eponymous group in 2002 through the Toyota sponsored operator programme.

Steven Eagell today operates 18 Toyota outlets stretching across the home counties. Lexus Hatfield was added in late 2016 and the group now has three other Lexus centres.

How did you become the top award-winning Lexus group so quickly?      

In the same way as with our other businesses – it’s all about having the right people. We have over the past 17 years organically grown our own management team right across the group.

We don’t go to market and buy high performers, we grow our own. We want people with the right attitude, as it is much simpler to train someone to gain the skillset they need, but much more difficult
to instil the right attitude if they don’t have it.

We take people, we develop them and we move them up the organisation to more senior roles.
Our average length of service is more than 10 years, and because the business has grown rapidly we’ve elevated a lot of people. Each time we promote, others in the company see that fantastic opportunity and aspire to follow the same path, to be the managers of the future.

You favour recruiting from outside the industry?

Yes, we tend to look for people who have never sold cars before, but who have that right attitude. Someone with 20 years’ experience may actually have one year’s experience 20 times.

Around four years ago we introduced our own management development programme. Our senior team wrote it and our senior managers deliver it. We believe the managers of the future will be much happier to be trained by those who started off in the same way and grew through the organisation.

Two years ago we bought 10 dealerships in one go, significantly increasing the size of the business. We made a significant amount of internal promotions because we had the people to be able to do that.

How important is communications to your business today?

It’s very important. We have an annual sales conference where all staff come together, but also every month we have our own management reviews, each a half day going through all areas of the business, the GM and a regional director meeting with the whole management team.

We have three regional directors and a group aftersales director and at least one of them attends every one of these reviews. It’s a great discipline as it gets us around all the dealerships. Over a quarter I try to ensure I visit each location at least once.

We still try to look at our business as one dealership with 22 locations. That’s getting harder as we grow but we very much share best practice across the group. We don’t do anything for one site only.

And on a day-to-day basis?

We don’t put up glass walls in offices and we have everyone in together. When we buy a business and find that the sales manager is in a separate office, one of the first things we do is to knock through that office to bring everyone together.

We don’t want statisticians sitting in offices all day looking at reports and producing lots of pretty graphs and reports. Our managers should be coaching and developing their teams to deliver the best possible customer experience.

How do you maintain customer levels?

Our number one objective is to offer complete satisfaction to all of our customers, all of the time. But the only way you will succeed in delighting customers on every visit is if the whole team are happy and enjoying what they do.

Once we have that, we deliver the best service we can, by following our sales process, doing everything right all the time.

For example PCPs have been a massive support and help to us. We currently have a live book of 27,000 PCP customers, a group renewals manager, regular renewals evenings and a very good retention rate
of around 51%. But this relies on our sales process.

In this industry when things get tough often a lot of money is spent on marketing to bring more people into the business. But if the sales process is not watertight, all that happens is that more people are attracted in to be dealt with incorrectly – a waste of money.

Every time things get tougher, we look at the sales process first and see how we can improve it – we will never perfect it as it’s always changing.

Our sales managers are there to get the best out of their staff. One day that might mean putting their arm round them, on another giving them a push. You have to manage different people in different ways.

What form does your marketing take?

Clearly digital is very important and we recognised five years ago we needed to improve in this area, especially in terms of social media, so we recruited from outside the industry.

We needed someone who wouldn’t ask on the first day what we wanted them to do, but tell us what
we needed to do and show us how.

Does product placement work for you?

Historically businesses have simply ticked a manufacturer standard box by doing off-site events, they have placed a car in a shopping centre with the least-experienced staff member, a total waste of time.

We do hundreds of these a year but we always have a specialist with the car, dealing with potential customers in the right way. At the end of the day we want to realise sales from such efforts. We don’t expect to sell cars directly from such exercises, but we do expect to generate significant amounts of leads.

What is the biggest challenge in used cars?

The biggest used challenge remains sourcing the right stock. But over the past 10 years our shop window has massively changed. Today it’s all about your digital image, and how you deal with the leads that are generated.

You are no longer marketing to a local community, you are on a national stage, and again your sales process remains key. You can have the best website, best stock and best imagery but if you don’t deal with an enquiry the right way it’s a waste of time. People who send email enquiries want instant replies, and we have a team specialising in this area, providing instantaneous responses.

What’s the biggest challenge facing the Steven Eagell group today?

Attracting and retaining the right team. It always has been and always will be, the people side makes the difference. You have to understand the needs of your staff and realise it’s not just about chucking money at them, although we believe we remunerate well, above the average for the industry.

Around three years ago we identified a slightly too high attrition rate in our sales staff. We researched it and discovered the biggest reason for staff leaving was the long hours, the weekend working. So we factored in six extra Saturdays off per year which we called family days, and we also looked at the basic pay. We changed how we do things to suit where
we are going.

How was 2018 for you and what does the near future hold?

Last year was another record year, we turned over £420m, achieving just under a 2% return on sales. This year we have seen a record Q1 and we are on track to significantly overachieve on 2018. We are hoping to move through a 2% return.

This is particularly pleasing in the current market but we are lucky to have phenomenal product from both Lexus and Toyota. We also have the advantage of both brands being very strong in alternative fuel product, which is growing rapidly in popularity. We are in a great place with both brands and we have good times ahead of us.

There are challenges in today’s market of course but talking about Brexit and other negatives is a waste of time, as we can’t affect those – such talk will generate negative energy across the business, so we only talk about positives. We concentrate on things that can affect our business, opportunities to provide better customer service, a better experience all round.

Is the group looking towards further expansion?

We are ambitious, we would like to continue to grow and preferably with Lexus and Toyota.

Yes we would look at other manufacturers but first we would discuss any move in detail with Toyota/Lexus and get their approval. We have a phenomenal, transparent relationship with them.

We would look at a sizable opportunity. We would not want ‘one of this, one of that’.

We would seek a meaningful relationship with another brand, offering economies of scale and a large market area.

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Written by Andrew Charman for Motor Trader.