Tag: dealership training

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Training

A New Approach to Menu Presentations

Dave Gibbs Training Manager EFG Companies
Dave Gibbs
Training Manager
EFG Companies

It’s a common practice in most F&I offices to utilize menus of various types to present F&I products to customers. They can help to maintain compliance and ensure that every customer knows their choices when it comes to protecting their purchase. However, few subjects inspire more debate than how to effectively utilize menus to enhance the customer experience and effectively present F&I products.

While most F&I Managers still use menus to sell F&I products, there is another approach or philosophy that can be even more effective than using them as step-selling tools. I would encourage you to consider the menu as a natural conclusion to a benefits presentation and discussion, tailored to the needs of your customer that have been identified.

I do not recommend only using a menu to present and sell your F&I products. Many of your customers have most likely been through a similar presentation and are conditioned to reject any proposition you may have for them immediately. Most of us have experienced the “No thanks, I will pass” response that comes as soon as you begin to review the menu. The wall goes back up and the customer stops listening to you. Many times, all they can see is the cost of the products and they aren’t even hearing the benefits you may be trying to convey.

A better approach would be to identify the customers’ needs through conversation prior to presenting a menu. Utilizing the information that both you and the sales associate gathered from them, you can then transition to a product discussion and a review that is tailored to their individual and unique needs. This can help the customer see areas where they may have risks during their time of ownership and cultivate a value-based proposition.

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Dealership Training

Preparing for a Surge

Dave Gibbs Training Manager EFG Companies
Dave Gibbs
Training Manager
EFG Companies

It’s Spring! Warmer weather coupled with tax day refunds equals the potential for a customer surge. While this is certainly good news, one of the biggest challenges could be servicing that increased traffic. Whether it be prospective customers researching a purchase online or potential showroom floor traffic, responsiveness is critical to closing the sale.

To address this challenge, a knee-jerk reaction would be to extend dealership hours, schedule more employees on the showroom floor for longer hours, and hire more sales and F&I team members. Bulking up might seem like the logical solution. However, longer dealership hours can incur non-productive costs, including hourly wages and higher utility bills. Adding more staff on the floor – with longer hours – might increase your response time but it could also increase burn-out with your employees. Hiring new employees is great but your experienced staff might be too busy training those folks to effectively respond to prospective customers!

Work smarter, not harder

When experiencing a surge, the smart action is to step back and evaluate the dealership’s existing processes and measure their effectiveness. I often hear panicked dealer principals exclaim “But I don’t have time to step back! We’re slammed!” What you don’t have time for are lost sales and damaged reputations because your frazzled sales team was unprofessional, or the F&I department hurriedly left money on the table!

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Dealership Training

Your Personal Investment = Training Dividends

Contributing Author: Steve Roennau Vice President Compliance EFG Companies
Contributing Author:
Steve Roennau
Vice President
Compliance
EFG Companies

Today, most dealers in the automotive industry would agree that employee training is critical to business success. However, it can be tempting to simply “check the box” when it comes to employee training, (i.e. a manager simply offloads training to an outside party, schedules the training event, and calls it a day). No goals are set; no metrics are defined for skills development; and, no baseline is given to determine employee growth. Rather, the mindset is, “My staff needed training and they attended training – mission accomplished.”

The problem with this thinking is the lack of accountability on the part of the manager, the trainer, and the employees. If you are going to invest the time, money and energy into training, it’s imperative that you build in a measure of accountability to ensure a return on that investment. This starts with leadership support.

For any training to be truly effective, dealership leadership must fully support the training content and methodology. Remember, all training is not created equal. When engaging with training providers, it’s important that you have the opportunity to review the content, modify it to address specific dealership concerns, and provide final approval. If there are content changes that need to be made to ensure the training aligns with your operation’s processes and business philosophy, then the trainer should confirm with you that their delivery is in line with your dealership’s needs.

It’s also important to remember that everyone learns differently, and every dealership has different training needs and requirements. Ask yourself what you want your team to get from training.

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