Train your people, and Train yourself!

I am in dealers all over the country and the one constant I find is the LACK OF TRAINING! How do owners and managers expect to grow their market share with salespeople who have no direction or training?

Typically we arrive a day early to set up for our sale, and I will sit down with the managers and do a Q&A session. When their questions and concerns are addressed I will usually ask them for the low down on their sales force. And it never fails first thing is they point out one or two green peas and say watch them they don’t have a clue. I usually will ask them how much training they have had and most responses are none, or just what they taught them in the hiring class. (an outside training company)

Then we typically have a kick off meeting where we get all the salesman together and we go over the complete Super Sale process! From the registration form to the worksheet (4 square for all you old school guys) In this meeting it usually last 15 to 20 minutes. I give them some easy to use and remember word tracts etc. Amazingly most get it right off the bat, but one or two will have the DEER in the headlights look. I will dismiss the meeting and then quietly grab the one or two who looked completely baffled and sit down with them for a one on one. We put them at ease and go thru complete process a couple more times.

Then usually all hell will break loose about two hours into the sale a few will just forget the whole process. It takes about 5 minutes to stop them right in their tracks and put them back on the road to a sale. What I find is usually the Green Peas who are shown a little respect, guidance and a good chat on a day in the life of our business do real well.

Case in point; two weeks ago we were doing a sale and the store had two brand new salespeople. Neither one had ever sold a car before. (They had been on the floor for two weeks) First day one of them gets a customer and it was a project deal. Bad credit, upside down in his trade etc. I walked this young man thru the whole process step by step. And lo and behold, it took six hours but he delivered his first car ever. You should of seen his face when I walked up with a pair of the scissors the next morning an wacked his tie off! I explained to him it was a tradition in our business and he loved it. The other new salesperson could not wait to get his tie clipped, and he did about three hours later!

The end result of this was, at the end of a seven day sale, one sold 6 cars and one sold 4 cars. At an average gross of 3100 per car front end gross profit! I hooked them up with some awesome phone scripts from Phone Ninja’s and they email me and call me on their progress. All it took was a little coaching and some firm guidance to start grooming these two into professional salespeople!

I will never understand how managers can say they don’t have time to train their people. 10 minutes every morning and then train from the sales desk. Load their lips; get out of your chair; and go talk to a customer while they shadow you. A lot of dealers and their managers dislike the Super Sales, however most of their salespeople like them because most of us out here do more training in 5 days than they do all year. We all have bad days, dealer screaming, mad customers, upset salespeople, wives, kids etc. But to me there is no better feeling than teaching a new salesperson how to take control of his/her own future and be a professional salesperson. Train your people and it is amazing how much you will remember while doing it.

Good selling my friends.