Achievement: Doubled store's profitability per transaction and improved sales efficiency

Ten years ago, Erika Olson answered a Craigslist advertisement for a dealership job. She didn't get hired. But Olson did persuade the hiring manager to suggest her to other dealerships, which led to a job as a salesperson for BMW of Bellevue, an AutoNation store. In the years following, Olson worked her way through the finance department and into AutoNation's corporate office. In 2015, she became intrigued by Lexus of Bellevue, a privately held high-volume dealership where employees are the single point of contact for sales and finance. "I thought it was a unique concept," Olson said. "And the finance numbers weren't impressive, so I thought I could probably turn this around pretty quickly."After the store hired Olson as finance director, she more than doubled its profitability per transaction to $2,000 in 2016, from $900 a year earlier. She said implementing a consistent, weekly training session and taking the finance process digital were critical changes.The store encountered a dilemma in 2017. It was performing at 78 percent sales efficiency, which is below the 90 percent minimum Lexus requires. Olson took on the role of sales director to combat the problem. Her answer to underefficiency wasn't to tell employees to sell more. Instead, Olson took the customer perspective and "changed the experience." She now markets to clients 16 times a month with email campaigns and puts corresponding posters on the walls and on slides of interactive TV monitors in the store. "I want this to be an experience like an Apple store," Olson said. "You walk into Apple and you're not captivated by the salesperson, you're captivated by a process and an education that is given to you."Thanks to a dedicated team and "merchandising" the store a bit, Olson said her team pushed its sales efficiency to 92.5 percent as of May. "That's not a predicament you can get out of in 30 days," Olson said. "It took 12 months, but we got there."