Dr. Bharani Nagarathnam, an associate professor at Texas A&M University’s Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution, showed the slide above recently at the Lumbermen’s Association of Texas annual meeting. The obvious reason why is that it resets the company’s focus from what staff members do to what those staff members do for the dealer’s customers. But Nagarathnam pointed to two other compelling reasons for printing new business cards.

The first reason why is that it will help your recruiting. Members of Texas A&M’s Talent Development Council told Nagarathnam that the number of resumes they received per job posting went up when the title changed. “For some people, ‘sales rep’ sounds like you’re working in a call center,” Nagarathnam said. “The job doesn’t sound good compared to other industries.”

There’s also a second, deeper reason that should motive title changes, he said, and that’s because young workers today want to understand how what they do fits into the company’s overall purpose. Young people want to work at a company that they believe is doing good in the world, the professor said.

Articulating a purpose might seem useless to dealer executives who started their careers believing their job was to work hard, don’t question management, and consider a paycheck as their reward. But executives can’t operate that way today. because the labor market is far tighter than it was decades ago. “Employers no longer have the power they used to have,” Nagarathnam said. “We need to have a mindset shift from ‘You should be so glad to come work for a brand like us’ to ‘We’re so glad you chose to come work for us.”