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Dealership Training

Is Your Training Investment Paying Off?

Steve Klees Blog HeadshotHow often have you heard the following statement?

“I paid for my people to go through training. While sales were up the first week out of the chute, we’re now back to our previous levels. What a waste of money!”

Structured training can be an effective means of improving sales performance, however just as any investment takes research and planning, so does training.

Before sending your team to any training course, it’s important to evaluate the effectiveness of the training model and whether it pairs well with your current performance culture.

In your research, ask how the instructors measure the success of their program:

  • Do they measure satisfaction and participant reaction?
  • Do their participants retain the stills learned in the classroom?
  • Do they evaluate behavior before and after the program to determine behavioral transformation?
  • Do they provide measurable business improvement metrics, like increased sales or product penetration rates?

Lastly, it’s important to take those business improvement metrics and compare them to the cost of the course to forecast the potential return on investment.

In order to ensure the dollars you spend on training is an actual investment, think of training as a performance culture shift for your dealership. The strongest training courses always include personalized follow-up as well as dealership management buy-in. Before the course begins, discuss the current situation within your dealership, develop goals for measuring success, and discuss how managers can reinforce the lessons learned in the classroom. After the course ends, you should expect you’re a representative from your product provider to visit your dealership to evaluate your team’s success, provide a re-fresh, and even, if necessary, work with your team as they complete sales to provide a refresh on what they’ve learned.

The fact is a training course is only as effective as the dealer who implements it. In order to truly reap the benefits of any training course, be it sales or F&I, the dealership needs to reinforce the skills learned in a classroom setting.

Sending your people to an offsite course and then plopping them back in the same environment as before is a sure way to negate most things they learned. Instead, evaluate how you can evolve the dealership performance environment to foster your team’s growth and success once they get back, as well as other support positions that are also a part of the sales process.

In addition, after you’ve sent your team through a training course and everyone is on the same page, consider putting in place a mentorship model where more seasoned staff continue to provide guidance to new recruits. It is also important to set achievable benchmarks to measure each team member’s success as well as actionable steps to improve performance.

No matter whether you send your team to an offsite course, or have an instructor come to your dealership, the skills learned in the classroom setting need to be reinforced in the dealership in order to generate successful results.

With almost 40 years of working hand-in-hand with dealerships, EFG Companies has perfected a specialized training model that goes far beyond typical sales training events that fuel sales teams temporarily without changing dealership culture or team behaviors and attitudes. Find out how our expert trainers can put your team on the fast-track to profitability.

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Featured

Enterprise Financial News – Edition 3

New EFN V3 ThumbGet a new perspective on how to maximize your dealership profitability while staying compliant with the experts from EFG. With Enterprise Financial News Magazine, you always know the latest retail auto industry trends, and understand the potential effect of ongoing compliance initiatives on your business.

Read the third volume of Enterprise Financial News Magazine.

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EFG Companies Featured

EFG Companies First F&I Product Provider to be Certified as a Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal

Company Receives Prestigious Award Based on Intense Onsite Evaluation and Global Benchmark Comparison

2014-center-of-excellenceEFG Companies, the innovator behind the award-winning Hyundai Assurance program, announced its status today as the only F&I product provider to be certified as a Center of Excellence by BenchmarkPortal. The Center of Excellence recognition is one of the most prestigious awards in the customer service and support industry.

BenchmarkPortal only awards the Center of Excellence designation to customer service call centers that rank in the top ten percent of the call centers surveyed. To earn this award, EFG demonstrated a commitment to achieving service excellence, as well as superior performance on quality-related metrics.

EFG continuously strives to raise the industry bar when it comes to providing superior products, administration and compliance. Earlier this year, EFG was awarded the Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) Blue Seal of Excellence with close to 100 percent of its claims organization ASE certified. The company was also recognized as being the only product provider of size to AFIP certify 100 percent of its field team. With these three certifications, the EFG sets the industry example for leadership in training, auditing and administering their clients’ business to whom its services are a critical priority.

“Our clients rely on our expertise and quality customer service when it comes to administering customer claims,” said John Pappanastos, President and CEO, EFG Companies. “We operate knowing that our claims administration reflects back on our clients’ business and brand. By demonstrating our high level of expertise with this certification, we are giving our clients the highest confidence that all claims will be handled expertly, efficiently and respectfully, promoting a positive overall customer experience and driving greater customer loyalty for their business.”

Founded in 1995, BenchmarkPortal is a global leader in the contact center industry, providing benchmarking, certification, training, consulting, research and industry reports. Contact centers achieve the Center of Excellence distinction based on an intense onsite evaluation and audit as well as best-practice metrics drawn from the world’s largest database of objective and quantitative data that is audited and validated by researchers from BenchmarkPortal.

“The achievement of the Center of Excellence designation represents EFG Companies’ commitment to delivering expert and professional customer service,” said Bruce Belfore, CEO, BenchmarkPortal. “EFG’s certification is a direct result of its leadership’s commitment to best-in-class service performance that is both effective and efficient from a business standpoint. It’s an achievement of distinction.”

Throughout its 37-year history, EFG has continually demonstrated their commitment to exceed customer expectations. Customer service and claims administration standards and real-time performance is continuously projected on the company’s walls as a constant measure of performance. 95.88 percent of claims calls are answered within 90 seconds, and 96 percent of all claims are paid by corporate credit card within one hour of receipt of invoice.

EFG believes longevity and success is ultimately measured by a simple premise: keeping a promise to a customer at a time when they need it most. EFG prides itself on being a claims-honoring third-party administrator and this certification only enhances the company’s commitment to fulfill that promise.