Your people need a specialized sales training program in order to maintain their competitive edge in the auto sales industry. Options vary widely, and when you have a limited budget, you need a proven program to invest in that delivers durable skills that directly drive sales and growth.
The program you choose also needs to keep your people on the phones and in the showroom as much as possible to maximize your ROI. But which training methods are going to deliver the biggest results for the least amount of time?
Regardless of your business model, there are consistent answers that produce battle-tested results. In fact, it’s what we’ve staked our reputation on at Phone Ninjas, and it’s why we train sales teams for some of the top dealers in the nation. Here’s everything you need to know to leverage the perfect sales team training program for your people.
1. Efficient Initial Training
Too many businesses make the initial training of new salespeople a matter of videos, spreadsheets, basic orientation, and on-the-job training. These may come in the form of a few hour-long sessions, and after that, it’s sink or swim. These programs often have low retention rates, and the bulk of success relies on figuring things out as you go.
That may have worked 20 years ago, but today’s auto sales environment relies much more heavily on understanding the customer journey and nurturing qualified leads to the showroom. Phone skills for activities like appointment setting are tied directly to revenue, and they require detailed, script-driven approaches to capitalize consistently.
That means the introduction to your sales team needs to deliver key skills that need to be retained and put into use immediately to start generating revenue. To cover a broader range of learning styles and improve long-term retention, a variety of tools and techniques should be employed in all introductory training.
As you examine the sales training program for each of your candidate agencies, ensure they tick as many of these boxes as possible:
- The initial presentation structure should be about five minutes of instruction, followed by a short interactive activity for the team to let them work with each new sales tool. They should be varied to keep people engaged and offer several learning styles.
- Videos and presentations should use bright colors, bullet point lists, whiteboard presentations, animation, scrolling text, etc. to maximize engagement.
- Content should be skill-oriented, and offer detailed techniques for all important sales-related activities.
- Phone scripts are industry standard, and training should cover every aspect of how they are used and the key concepts they contain.
2. Emphasize Appointment Setting and Lead Qualification
Today’s customers don’t simply head over to a dealership when it’s time to buy a car. They’re researching online, investigating several reviews, and only pick up the phone when they need information they can’t find anywhere else.
That means your team needs to be prepared to meet customers where they are and answer their questions…but not at the expense of setting an appointment. After all, if you tell a customer everything they need to know on the phone, they won’t need you anymore. They’ll simply shop around for the lowest price they can find.
It’s a fine line between helpful and a handout, and your sales training program needs to arm your team with all the product knowledge available. However, if training doesn’t prioritize sales fundamentals like appointment setting and lead qualification, your people won’t be able to maximize its value. Every great program should focus on:
- Appointment setting techniques
- Confirming appointments
- Lead qualification
- Handling objections
All of these skills empower your sales representatives to use the product knowledge they gained from your sales training program to close deals rather than just answer customer questions. And that’s good for everyone’s bottom line.
3. Ongoing Coaching and Support
Everything an employee forgets after training is lost money for your business. That’s why training has to be an ongoing process of active coaching that strengthens and develops the skills they learn.
The top automotive consultants can achieve great results without interrupting the flow of daily work. Here are some key aspects of effective and efficient training programs:
- Mentors should work with team members individually, ideally in weekly active coaching sessions dedicated to analyzing sales situations they recently encountered.
- Mystery shops should be used to gauge the success of the sales training program, as well as target areas for future improvement.
- Follow-up training should focus on reinforcing new skills. These typically last as little as 15-20 minutes.
This extended sales training program may take a few months, but it’s worth it. Giving your team active support and time to master the material means durable skills and a retention rate upwards of 90%, and will directly boost appointment rates and sales figures.
Partner With Expert Coaches
At Phone Ninjas, we’ve made a name for ourselves as the best automotive training program in the industry. We train every day, all day, so we’ve developed our unique and industry-best training model into a formidable tool that delivers elevated KPIs across the board.
We start by having our VP of Training Mike Hoyser personally teach your team our appointment-tripling secrets and methodology. After they know the fundamentals, every sales team member is partnered with one of our expert coaches, who mentors them during weekly active coaching sessions until their skills are rock solid. We follow that up with mystery shopping to confirm retention and follow up with additional training.
We’re ready to share a free demo of our services with you, and we’ll even throw in two free mystery shops to highlight potential areas where your dealership is leaving money on the table.
Contact us today so we can discuss how we can deliver a sales training program that aligns with your business needs and keeps you ahead of your competition.
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.
