Catherine York Mace shares approach to immersive leadership training

Catherine York Mace left the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) in Washington, D.C., and moved back home to High Point, North Carolina in March. 

The plan: Spend 18 months rotating through every frontline position (service, parts, sales, HR) in her family's dealership group, Vann York Auto.

"Every time I'm in a department, I have a notebook. I've kind of become a little notorious for it," Mace told Daily Dealer Live hosts Sam D'Arc and Uli de' Martino. "I just carry a notebook around. I'm always taking notes. And the first week, I have this long list of things I think I can fix. And then the second week I start crossing things off because I see the reason why they're done."

Driving the news: Mace and her team pushed two stores over 90% technician video attachment rates, well above the 70% group average. Now they're tackling the next issue—customers aren't watching the videos.

The problem: Mace assumed customers would watch the videos, but not all of them did.

"Some [customers] don't know how to open it, don't know what it is, it's new to them," she said. "So now we've got to focus on, we've got our team doing the right thing, now we've got to educate the customer."

The solution: Vann York changed the check-in process. 

Service advisors now confirm the customer’s cell phone number and set expectations: 

"Okay, this is the number we're going to send a video to. Expect that in the next 30 to 45 minutes. Open it. You're going to see your technician with your vehicle. Have you ever seen underneath your vehicle? Well, you're about to."

According to Mace, it boils down to starting with personal connection before vehicle talk. 

"The first thing you talk to them about should not be their vehicle. It should be something—if you see a bumper sticker, you ask them how they're doing and you make a personal connection and then go to their vehicle,” she explained.

Between the lines: Mace noticed that the store’s phone systems and processes were creating bottlenecks. Customers were often getting transferred between departments, and put on hold multiple times.

So, she brought in OneCloud. Customer calls now route to service advisors first. If there is no answer, it goes to the manager. Then, the BDC and back to the service lane if it's flooded. The system also generates abandoned call reports weekly and each department reviews their numbers.

Big picture: Most dealers still promote managers based on sales performance or time served. The result is leaders who are strong in their home department but blind to downstream impact. But Mace’s thorough departmental rotation is designed to close those blind spots before they harden.