How 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.