First, I’ll preface by saying I have great admiration for managers, upper management and dealers. They are usually very intelligent, courageous, and have worked hard all of their lives. They are usually great stewards of the money and got where they are making a lot more good decisions than bad. Read further and see the part I don’t get:
Ok, so I get a call from a manager who has recently taken on much more responsibility and he knows that the lack of training is killing them at a few locations. They have used our professional online automotive sales training platform, eAutotraining for over ten years, so there is a nice level of trust and confidence. Who else should they call, right?
After explaining that they had many Salespeople on the sales floor who have never had any concentrated classroom training, even on the foundational Road to the Sale, his frustration was quite apparent.
I can only imagine the pain at the sales desk working deals or hearing why another customer blew out during negotiations, or the many who didn’t even go on a demo drive.
I sent a reasonable quote for a few days of in-dealership training which would have at least 10 Salespeople in a social distance-friendly room receiving the critical steps to the sale training. I get the dealer’s response, who declined the proposal and counter-offered a number for two days that I found to be a bit humorous…(I chose to not be offended). This dealer failed to realize the value that 10 to 15 front-line professionally trained Salespeople, many of which could potentially see that the investment is recouped in a day or two, would bring to the table. Do the math…
Let’s say you have 10 Salespeople, conservatively missing no less than $5K per month per person through missed sales or lower than necessary grosses equals $50K per month. If they’ve been there over six months, that’s $300K!
Whether you have a competent trainer in-house who will make the time to train, or know a training company who can deliver meaningful training to your new team members….do it.
I’ve always felt if there was a line on your financial statement showing the losses from not investing money on appropriate training, the dealer would definitely see it differently. That’s the problem… the losses don’t visually scream specifics anywhere. This reminds me of a commercial on addiction recovery where they said, “if you don’t get help from us, get help somewhere”. I sincerely hope they eventually did, at least for the sake of their Salespeople.
Thanks for allowing me to vent. Best wishes to all for a strong close to year-end!
RELATED: Dealers & Managers: Fire LESS | Look in the Mirror MORE by Richard Keeney
Richard Keeney, Co-Founder
The Mar-Kee Group
888-300-4629
251-680-6633 (cell)
The Mar-Kee Group is the leading provider of Automotive, Boat and RV Sales, Service, and Management training.
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