No matter how great your dealership team and management might be, no one knows everything. Knowledge is assembled from deep experience and expertise, and specialization is becoming increasingly important for success. If you don’t seek wisdom from outsiders, you’ll find your business in the dangerous position of not knowing what you don’t know!
So, how does the smart owner expand their business’s knowledge base? Training your team is an ongoing concern, and the programs you select need to deliver real-world results to recoup your investment. Plus, with the industry changing so quickly, it’s imperative to stay on top of evolving trends and new strategies to stand out from the competition.
Automobile consulting companies are often the best way to keep your business one step ahead of the game. The smart owner or GM looks for agencies that are founded and run by industry experts with a long history in selling who will work one-on-one with your team until they’ve completely absorbed the latest cutting-edge techniques. We’ll help you figure out what to look for in a partner agency, as well as what to avoid!
Real Learning Takes Time
Like it or not, learning and implementing new skills takes time. Single training sessions can be an efficient way to disseminate large volumes of information quickly. However, without being able to confirm that it’s being effectively deployed, these approaches often can’t make a dent in your bottom line. That’s why they often cost less than long-term individual coaching strategies: you’re getting a promise, not a product.
The best automobile consulting agencies know the real secrets are mentorship and coaching that takes place over weeks, not days. Also, look for companies that work directly with employees in one-on-one sessions. This ensures your team members learn at a comfortable pace and get tips that apply directly to them.
They’ll Create Materials Just for You
Training materials, phone scripts, and anything else automobile consulting agencies offer should be created in-house and customized specifically for your business. After all, you’re hiring them to get results that separate your dealership from the pack. That’s why partnering with companies that recycle the same scripts over and over means you’ll have to do the heavy lifting for your brand yourself. Worse, you’ll be indistinguishable since your customer service and sales reps will sound just like other dealerships!
Avoid Group Sessions, Embrace One-on-One Coaching
An expert automobile consulting firm understands that your salespeople work as a team, but they’re only as strong as their individual weaknesses. There are always big-picture changes your team can make as a whole, but the vast majority of improvements come down to coaches and individual salespeople working one-on-one.
That’s why an expert automotive consulting firm should be prepared to work with a variety of different learning styles. It makes sense that the most effective, efficient automobile consulting happens when the material and instructional procedures can be adapted to best meet an individual’s personal needs.
The agency you hire should provide a structure for short, efficient training sessions with each member of your team. They should also work to help them customize phone scripts to suit their own sales techniques and provide ongoing feedback and touchups to make sure it sticks.
Finally, timing is important, too. Meet too often, and there’s not enough time to absorb the materials. Too infrequently, and the training loses momentum as people forget between sessions. Short, weekly appointments strike a nice balance, and they won’t interfere with your daily workload.
Work from Real Sales Experiences
Hypotheticals can be helpful, but they’re usually light on specifics. To increase sales, automobile consultants need to understand what your sales team needs help with at your dealership, and that means building feedback and training off of real customer interactions.
Mystery shops are a benchmark for phone sales analysis and coaching that provide a training partner with instant insight into where your team can improve and capitalize on revenue-generating opportunities. They allow coaches to experience your dealership’s phone service just as any regular customer does, and the examiner can ask pertinent follow-up questions, probe deeper, test for very specific things, and give you a much more detailed list of actionable items to improve your business.
The best training agencies perform their own mystery shops and follow up with employees to improve their game.
Phone Ninjas Does it All and More!
Our active coaching agency was founded by automobile consulting superstars with over half a century of combined experience. We’ve heard it all and seen it all while making our fortunes selling cars and trucks. We know the game inside and out, and we’re perfectly positioned to coach your sales team to maximize revenues and consistently hit those monthly sales goals.
From our custom-tailored scripts that fit your dealership philosophy like a glove to weekly one-on-one training sessions that focus on each employee in turn, Phone Ninjas’ automotive consulting program is the complete package.
We work with your employees over time to make sure they thoroughly absorb key sales principles, best practices, and scripts. We back our work with mystery shops to make sure our training sticks and follow up with individual employees who need some more practice and pointers.
We’re ready to help your team start capitalizing on all their revenue opportunities. Call or email us today to set up a demo. If you’re still not convinced, we’ll even perform two free mystery shops (with no further commitment) of your dealership to show you exactly how we can improve sales and customer service!
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.
