The Automotive Leaders Podcast · Jan Griffiths

How Kim Less Leads and Elevates Nissan Aftersales Across the Americas

·40 min·2 clips

A vehicle owner that services with their dealership is three times more likely to purchase their next vehicle from that dealership.

1. The Automotive Leaders Podcast, hosted by Jan Griffiths, features Kim Less, Nissan's VP of After Sales for the Americas, on leading a 1,600-person team across the region. 2. Griffiths, a Welsh-born industry veteran with 35+ years in automotive and a former tier one supplier executive, interviews Less, who started as a co-op engineering student at Saturn and later led a General Motors engine plant before joining Nissan. 3. Less frames her leadership through Danny Meyer's phrase "constant gentle pressure," meaning persistence and accountability, empathy and empowerment, and a drive to win with urgency. 4. From Griffiths' 21 traits of authentic leadership, Less narrows five candidates (resilience, supportive, energy, ownership, integrity) to "energy," saying positive energy lets her "flip the script" in chaotic times, while Griffiths adds vision and Stephen Covey's advice to "raise the gaze." 5. Less says after sales is seen as an afterthought because people lack understanding of its role in brand loyalty and dealer profitability, and cites that a vehicle owner who services at the dealership is three times more likely to buy the next vehicle there. 6. She counts uniting After Sales Americas as one team, with common systems, shared strategies and optimized logistics, as a major accomplishment, built through travel to each market, trust-building and a common staff meeting a couple of times a month. 7. On leading through Nissan's transformation, Less cites an open-door policy, transparency and confidence, and recalls the pandemic, when her team had to "pivot time after time" to keep parts and service flowing to dealerships. 8. Citing Covey's The Speed of Trust, Griffiths and Less argue that trust raises speed and lowers cost, and Less says Nissan and Infiniti are focused on speed and simplification to avoid repeated validations and slow approvals. 9. Less recounts a dealer advisory board session where 60 dealer-facing programs were debated, with about a third eliminated, a third simplified and a third left unchanged, and she urges leaders to "kill complacency." 10. In the personal segment, Less names Coke Zero, faith and family as her routines, Scandal and Suits as her Netflix picks, and tells women balancing family and senior roles to "own your calendar" after missing school events when her twins were young.

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