The Bayford Group is the longest surviving family owned motor vehicle dealership in Australia. It began as a small Ford dealership located in Fitzroy in 1917. The founder of the firm, Dick Bayford, worked for the Ford Motor Company in America. When Dick returned to Melbourne he was intent on establishing his own business.

 

He viewed the sale of a car as the start of a lifetime relationship, and would do anything to preserve that relationship. Dick’s enthusiasm for customer service was to be the guiding principle of the business over the next 90 years.

 

In November 2008 Autopeople sat down with Administrating Director, Hugh Bayford, third generation of the Bayford family, who started with the business in 1974. Hugh took us through the family history and into the future of the Bayford Group, reiterating why Bayford is an employer of choice.

 

 What is the culture like at the Bayford Group?

While the business is a now a large company, we still place an emphasis on continuing many of our family values within the business while also meeting the community’s expectations today. The value of our business is to involve our families and our employee’s families. We believe in customer satisfaction. While the people we compete with are getting bigger and more aggressive, for us as a private company, we have to find and promote a point of difference. We believe that is the exceptional customer experience we provide.

 

We try to maintain a small business feel while still growing as a company. We currently have 400 people working for us now having grown from 60 when I started in 1974. We try to avoid the feel of a big business, placing a greater emphasis on a more personalised approach for our customers. This is not achievable unless we have a good relationship with our own people and people will not provide good service to our customers unless they are happy where they are working. So we work really hard at making sure our people are motivated and happy to come to work every day.

 

We like to build a relationship with our people so that they feel they can build a career at Bayford and in turn, have a desire to stay here for the long term. In order to build this trusting relationship we make an effort to get know them and their families which is achievable through events like family days at Christmas. We believe in caring for our staff so they will hopefully return the loyalty through showing the same care for our business. We have management staff that have been with us for over 10 years and some even 20 years - in this day and age that is hard to do. We need to give them a reason to stay with us so we treat them well and we try to look after them and reward them as they develop.

 

 Is there much movement within the company to grow your career?

I was in the US about 20 years ago and I saw a guy who won USA dealer of the year. He was from a one-site dealership, yet he still won the dealer of the year award. He explained to me that he was able to achieve this by attracting and retaining the best people by offering them a structured career path, complemented by relevant training. Once he felt that they had progressed as far as they could within his business he would support their next move, even though it may have been outside the business.

 

This guy was allowing his  exceptional performer’s to leave the business, just so they could fulfil their career aspirations. His rationale for this strategy was that this would position his business as an employer of choice, thereby attracting the best and brightest people. It was one of the most far-sighted things I had ever seen. It made me realise that we had to create career paths so we too could attract and retain the best and brightest people.

 

So in our business, every sales manager starts off as a cadet and progresses to senior sales positions. Our Dealer Principal at Camberwell Volkswagen started off as a cadet. There were a lot of steps along the way, but he worked his way to that position which I am so proud of. And there are several stories like that here.

 

We now have 3 or 4 of our sales managers in line for that kind of position with the new Epping dealership that we are developing. The pay off for us is that we get people training people who really understand our culture as they have been here a long time and understand the way we do things. So the business continues to be consistent in its culture. The people who start with us are managed by people who are familiar with the way our company is structured.

 

So when you are looking for people, where do you look and what do you look for?

Well it obviously depends on the position. We have people within the business who are capable of teaching all disciplines. Therefore what we need is people who are willing to learn and who display a ‘can-do’ attitude. We try to hire people that our customers will like, so if you have a good attitude and have a willingness to learn, the rest of it we can provide. We like people who can learn and also bring their own personal style.

 

We are fairly disciplined in our structure, but we are always open to suggestions while trying to maintain the positive culture that we have developed over the years. So ultimately we want people with the right attitude, a willingness to learn and a willingness to work hard.  

We also like a mixture of ambitious people and people who are happy to come in and do the jobs which need to be done. I have an induction session with our new staff and I often say to them that I hope amongst the group, we have some who are ambitious, because I need future leaders and some people who are just happy to come in and do a really good job at what they do. Regardless of what category they fit into, I also explain that we reward and recognise any individual who is willing to work hard and go the extra mile for the company.

 

We have a mechanic who has been with us for 42 years and he is as “happy as Larry” with no plans to retire. We can build a business around a combination of people like that and ambitious people. We have had three people pass the 50 year milestone with us and they have all been fantastic employees. I think that says a lot about the company and we are extremely proud of that statistic.  

 

It is an interesting mix, trying to maintain old fashioned values which are the cornerstone of our business while also trying to stay in touch with an ever-changing environment. That’s why I have so much faith in process. There is no point just having nice people, it has to also be very efficient and executed well. After all, some customers care about history, but most just care about buying a car, although at Bayford over 40% of the cars we sell are to return customers!

 

What should people do if they want to work for Bayford?

Obviously there are at times opportunities to hire managers and that happens occasionally, depending on the position and timing. So ultimately I don’t really mind what their background is. I am however interested in their ability to learn and get along with people. We find a person who is ambitious is often the best quality of candidate as they are never quite satisfied and  are always looking to do a bit better. If the ambition is money, people get to the point where they have enough and they slow down. Ambitious people stay motivated, so if they have those qualities we can teach them the rest.

 The success of our business it determined by the people who work for us. So the better we do at hiring people the better the business is going to be. The whole focus of the business is about finding, training and keeping good people.