Part 2: How Is Tim Dahle Nissan’s Rooftop Built For Success?

Tim Dahle has been in their newly built facility for just six months. The building was designed with direct input from the Managing Partner, Fixed Ops Director and Service Manager. The design and construction were based on dealership processes like service and sales in lieu of simply trying to look good or just match up to an automaker requirement. It all begins with a state-of-the-art showroom. According to Managing Partner Tyler Slade, “We have the advantage now where we built a 16-car showroom where we try to get everything in there that a customer might want to buy so that if the weather is bad, it’s rainy, it’s stormy, it’s too darn cold, it’s windy, bring them into the showroom. They can sit in the car and they can see the car. It’s a nice, clean and very bright showroom.”

While giving customers so many options in the showroom is excellent, it’s not the only aspect of the store designed specifically with a process in mind. Thinking of the sales process, the delivery center was created.

“Customer, you don’t need to go outside, you stay here. We’re going to pull it up and pull it into our delivery center,” Slade explained. “We do the walk around in the delivery center, again a controlled, heated environment where they can now see the car, learn more about the car they’re most interested in and do the proper walk around and then hop in the car, start it up open the garage and drive out. So they haven’t even touched the elements and they’re already test driving.”

As Fixed Ops Director Josh Worthington explained another way in which Tim Dahle Nissan keeps customers out of the elements is with a service bay that holds a staggering 16 vehicles at a time. Worthington told DrivingSales News, “So if I have customers pull into the service drive that holds 16 cars, I mean they’re not waiting out the in rain, they’re not waiting out in the snow. They need an oil change I’m 20 feet 3(away) in my express service bay. Every single thing has been thought through. We figure if we can get the speed down maybe it gives us more opportunity to upsell. It gives us a better opportunity to treat our customers the way that they should be treated in a timely manner.”

When it comes to purchasing a new vehicle, a full tank of gas is a big deal. Slade mentioned when a customer purchases a new car, he or she would be able to have a full tank that comes not from a station nearby but from a more private source.

“You have to fill these cars up with gas, right. You buy a new car and you get a full tank. You usually have to go to an offsite gas station to fill up a call and here we don’t have a close gas station. So what we decided to do is let’s have a gas station here on the lot. So we have our own fuel tank on the lot.”

Transparency is another arena in which Tim Dahle focused when they built their powerful new building. Making use of lot of glass windows mean that customers can see a lot of what’s going on at the store.

“Car goes off for delivery, we’ve got the delivery center back there for the delivery detail, it gets brought right back into the delivery room, garage shut, car looks immaculate, ” Slade explained. “It’s right next to the finance offices so when they’re signing for the car, they can see their car right there in the delivery room. It’s all glass. Again, they’re not feeling like they’re not confounded they’re not feeling like they’re stuck. It’s all open, there’s your car, no pressure.”

The new state-of-the-art facility at Tim Dahle Nissan has reduced the pressure on customers is by thinking about what makes them feel at ease.

“(We put) Tables out in front,” Slade said. “We noticed that customers some of them don’t like to be cooped up back in a corner where they feel like there’s too much pressure. So we put these really less pressure (tables) out on the front by the glass where they can sit there there’s the glass they can see outside, they don’t feel like they’re pinned in the pressure’s less and they can just be more comfortable. We found that some customers just like to migrate up to there it’s just more comfortable for them.”

To reiterate it again, the theme of the setup at Tim Dahle Nissan is transparency. This means windows and a consistent clear view for the customer of offices, their new car or even their vehicle in service. Slade explained, “No you can see it’s open here. You can see into the sales offices. You can see into manager’s offices. You can see right into the general manager’s office. Even into our shop, there are huge glass windows. Your car is in the shop you can see your car and watch people work on your car, so I think that the customer enjoys that.”

The facility at Tim Dahle also positively impacts the dealership staff. It’s something that Mark Tuttle the dealership service manager spoke about. Tuttle said, “I come to work excited everyday. I’m in a new state-of-the-art modern facility and it just echoes through the whole dealership. We’ve got a quiet room where they (customers) can do their business Internet; the playroom is to-die-for for kids. There’s soda, there’s popcorn I mean it’s just a real customer-friendly facility.”

As Tuttle noted, he’s excited to go to work each day and seems proud to work at Tim Dahle Nissan. Managing Partner Tyler Slade said that’s the idea and one that has helped immensely in recruiting. Slade said, “Bring someone in for an interview and give them a tour of this building and before they’re even done with the tour, you haven’t talked about anything to do with the job they’re like ok, so when do I start? What do you mean? I want to work here. So when you have a facility that seems to be very friendly to the customers it seems to be very friendly to the employees, the employees are proud; they want to come to work here. The salespeople, the employees say you know what that’s a place I want to work I feel good going to work at that place and I know that I can take care of my customers at a facility like that. A lot of the bottlenecks and problems that I’ve had in other facilities, they don’t exist so I can make happy customers.”

The first two part of the Tim Dahle Nissan story that we’ve shared with you thus far were optimization of fixed ops and their multi-million dollar state-of-the art facility. However, we’re not done yet! Be sure to tune in with us next time when we go over our last part of our three part Tim Dahle Nissan series that focuses on the Customer Experience. Thank you for watching and until next time, I’m Dave Martinson!