It's exciting to hear that one of Paul Walser's top priorities as new chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association is to "offer dealers more robust solutions related to the challenges the industry faces with diversity" ("New chairman has 4 initiatives on his to-do list," Feb. 1).
However, convincing dealer leaders to make a conscious decision to act on this challenge will require going beyond the idea of it's "the right thing to do" or even matching the front-line management/staff to the customer base. Dealer leaders will need to believe that a diverse management and customer-facing staff has a direct impact on the bottom line.
Diversity efforts become most visible and impactful to the customer at the retail level, more specifically in service, where the customer is exposed to the dealer culture numerous times. Diversity, equity and inclusion champions should work to first identify those service centers that have diversity in place in their management and service adviser ranks. Those service leaders are already practicing diversity and are the best ones to identify how diversity makes for bottom-line success.
In order to accomplish this, retailers will need to call on professional diversity experts to aid in the effort. They won't be able to address this on their own.
ROGER CONANT, Houston
