It is almost funny as I travel visiting dealerships in just about every demographic group the very successful ones all have the same thing in common. Their sales departments are highly trained on salesmanship. It is great to have product knowledge the factory spends hundreds of millions training your salespersons and managers on product. The most amazing product knowledge salesperson I ever had the pleasure to meet was a 5 to 8 car producer in a 140 unit store with 10 salespersons to include himself. He severely lacked selling skills.

The internet has became an amazing tool, however, can anyone in management show a report that 100% of your business is internet driven? No. Let's just say you are at a whopping 80% that leaves 20% of non internet customers. We know the internet customer knows their product and has a pretty good idea of what they want. When they enter your showroom they still need a highly skilled salesperson to take them over the finish line.

A great percentage of Single Point Dealers and even some Auto Groups invest next to nothing in training other then Factory required Training, no sales skill training, that is essential to sharpen a salespersons skills. Once they do make that initial investment it is months or years before they do it again. One time doesn't fix your problem.

You must have continued sales skills training to have a strong team that can continue to produce results most would have thought not at all possible, If your store is under- performing I bet your training investment is low. Managers have so many additional task to do with new factory requirements showing up all the time are you really asking them to train your salespersons?

If you are a 100 car store and half your sales staff lack skills in overcoming objections or closing skills you can bet that the half of unskilled salespersons cost the dealership at least 10 to 15 units. If your average combined gross is only $2000 per unit it costs the dealership $20K or more in sales. What is the better investment- having training on a regular basis or continuing along the same path?

I went to a dealership in Indiana that is crushing it. They spend 9K a month is training. Each week they bring in another trainer for a full day. They have half the salespersons training in the morning the other half after lunch. Every Tuesday is Training day. Period. No one can be off on a Tuesday unless they are on a scheduled vacation. They are a great team if a salesperson is in training the management helps take care of the customer until training is over or they sell them a car. These people take training serious and it should be taken seriously when you see the amount of money walking out your door everyday. The reason they use different trainers from different companies is because they want to make sure their salespersons are hearing every type of close and every bit of knowledge on overcoming objections, follow up. prospecting etc known to mankind. I return every 7 weeks to perform training.

This dealership went from no training to training weekly. As trainers we do the training onsite at the dealership. The dealership 2 years ago prior to training weekly sold 160 vehicles a month. After 2 years' with very little sales turnover. they are now doing 295 units a month. If you train your salespersons and managers to be able to find a job anywhere you will find they will never leave you.

Preferred Dealer Solutions

#automotive #cardealers #carsales