Investing in a great training program is one of the best ways to increase all of your key metrics and meet your monthly sales goals. By bringing a specialist consultant who understands the auto industry and what it takes to sell effectively in this unique environment, your sales team can stay ahead of the competition by following the latest trends and perfecting vital skills like appointment setting and lead management.
That being said, sometimes it can be difficult to prioritize sales team training. It takes employees off the showroom floor, costs money, and never seems to stop. Employees often dislike training for similar reasons—every second they’re not selling it’s costing them money, so if they don’t instantly understand how it translates to better sales, they’re going to check out fast.
However, if you work with a partner who delivers skills and strategies that put more money in their pockets, they’ll be eager to put their foot on the gas when it comes to training. Here are six excellent reasons to keep your team’s skills sharp with a highly effective training partner.
1. Uniform Customer Service
Today, twice as many companies compete on customer service compared to twenty years ago, and 96% of customers say the quality of service they receive is key to their brand loyalty. If you want to keep your customers happy while maintaining the consistency of your brand message, sales team training is one of the best ways to keep everyone in your sales department on point. Your training partner can achieve this through:
- Sales scripts that are well-crafted.
- Coaching that keeps delivery fresh, drives toward revenue, and improves long-term brand/dealership awareness.
- Individual training sessions that help each team member utilize scripts naturally for their own style and personality.
2. Get New Employees up to Speed Faster
Turnover is a given in every business, and sales team training is critical for helping new hires hit the ground running. The faster they can align their sales skills with your brand and business, the faster they can operate as part of the team to generate maximum revenue for your business. This includes general training on the use of scripts, understanding inventory, and general phone skills, as well as more advanced concepts like appointment scheduling and lead qualification.
3. Ensure Regulatory Compliance and Financing
Automotive dealerships have any number of requirements they must adhere to, ranging from brand policies to the law. Consequences for failing to comply with these directives, even in single instances, can come with severe penalties. And as the owner of the business, you’ll be the one paying the price.
Also, many customers will be interested in financing options for purchases, and a great training partner ensures your people are delivering compassionate, accurate information to customers on this sensitive point every time. Plus, they can help your sales team understand how to make the most of the opportunities your dealership can offer.
4. Keep Veteran Staff up to Date
The sales environment is changing right before our eyes thanks to the internet, phones, and developments in the industry at large. Phone skills are more important than ever, and the top dealerships are integrating and aligning messaging and customer experience from initial online searches to well past the final sale.
That means even the best team member is facing a constantly evolving environment, and your most experienced salespeople are perhaps the most vulnerable to falling behind. They may be closer to retirement, overconfident from decades at the top, and may need some extra assistance adapting to the modern environment.
A great training partner can easily bring them up to speed, answer any questions they have, and use their expertise to help instruct the rest of the team for maximum success.
5. Bring in More Customers
Getting people through the door has been increasingly challenging over the last few decades thanks to the ever-increasing number of competitors and internet sites. Appointments from phone calls are a huge driver of foot traffic, but the average dealership only converts these at a 20% rate.
Proper sales team training can boost that number to 60%-80% of your call traffic. It’s surprising how easily a few seemingly minor missteps on the phone can be the difference between eager customers in the showroom and an empty lot.
6. Increase Profit
At the end of the day, everything that happens at your dealership is about delivering a return on your investment, and training needs to give your sales team a big bang for the buck. Fortunately, a great auto sales consulting partner who specializes in supporting sales teams can give you an edge in a number of ways:
- 84% of companies that work to improve their customer’s experience see increased revenue.
- Good training on sales scripts helps your team close leads and identify revenue opportunities they might otherwise miss out on.
- Employees who are well-versed in CRM software and strategy keep the central data collection effort streamlined, organized, and functioning as it should, critical to the effective functioning of your BDC.
- Not everyone is going to have a natural talent for sales, and training helps build the skills they need to bridge that gap.
Improve All Aspects of Your Business with Phone Ninjas
Sales team training touches every corner of your dealership. That being said, it is a specialized type of long-term coaching, and finding the right training partner is one of the most important decisions you’ll make as an owner.
At Phone Ninjas, we’ve made a name for ourselves by working with some of the top dealerships in the industry to get their sales teams ahead of the competition—and keep them there. Our clients regularly see increased KPIs across the board, including appointment-from-call rates that are three to four times the national average, giving their sales teams far more quality leads to work with.
If you want to set your people up for success with industry-leading sales team training, contact Phone Ninjas today for a free demo and two free mystery shops!
As the COO | Partner of Phone Ninjas, Chris delivers leadership, coaching, and mentorship to 55 team members providing software sales and phone skills coaching. He fosters powerful partnerships and collaborations with leaders across various business sectors, establishing expectations, communicating vision, and escalating performance to maximize productivity and effectiveness.
Chris is an innovation-driven business executive with over 25 years of experience delivering leadership to teams of up to 75 overseeing development, launch, and sale of website lead acquisition, reconditioning process software systems, and technology that support automotive dealerships across the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
