Auto Dealer Monthly Magazine is the daily operations publication serving the retail automotive industry. This automotive publication serves dealer principals, officers and general managers with the latest best practices.
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BU SINE S S DE V E LOPME NT By Greg Wells MAKING IT STICK Expert offers three keys for coaching staff to follow a new process after the trainer leaves. ©ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/SAJE All dealerships conduct trainde dealersh c ing. It comes in many forms with vary ing frequency. Whether the y varying freq training is done internally, extern g training i d nally, virtua y virtually, classroom-style nally, v irt online, the n n or online, th same question arisn e es when the training ends: How will you make it stick? You invested in training for a reason. You wanted to sell and service more cars, improve CSI, increase your employees' efciency and efectiveness, and reduce turnover. When training doesn't stick, it is not just a big waste of your time and money. Your objectives will not be met and management's credibility will take a hit. When the trainer leaves, focus fades, old habits resurface and the new program becomes the next item on the list of forgotten favors of the month. Seriously, could you even begin to count how many times you've seen this in a dealership? Te reactive environment facing frontline employees is a real threat to new processes. It's so easy give in to the onslaught of phones, faxes, e-mails, pages and those pesky customers, especially in a busy showroom or bustling service lane. It takes real commitment and dedication to break through the old habits. To prevent that from happening, you must remain committed when the training is over. Learning a new process is actually just the frst step. Tere are three keys to making a training program take hold and become part of your dealership's culture: zero deviation, skill and heart. Let's review each one. 1. ZERO DEVIATION Tere's no such thing as a "pro- Greg Wells is president of AllCall Automotive Contact Center. He has spent almost 25 years working in automotive retail, with specific expertise in business development centers and Internet sales. His work has been recognized nationally by the NADA, and his in-dealership sales training experience has launched many successful selling careers for his students. GWells@AutoDealerMonthly.com 20 AUTO DE ALE R MONTHLY • SE P TEMBE R 2013 cess in a box" that can be plugged in at any store and deliver immediate results. Your trainer should be able to make changes and adjustments to ft the store. Te fnal product, including the process map, is the way it's meant to be done, period. Zero deviation is the only way to truly learn how the process works. It's also the only way to get real results. It's okay to make needed changes afer a little while, but you must remap the plan and reprint it so that the ofcial instructions match what you're doing in the course of business. It pains me to hear "Tat's not really how we do it" from a frontline employee. When I worked at Paul Miller Ford, somebody wrote: "We do what we say we do" across the front wall of the training/meeting room. Lip service was not acceptable. Once we agreed to a new process, we followed it. Tere was no wiggle room, no one was exempt and everyone was accountable. 2. SKILL BUILDING Managers must follow the process just as closely as their staf, but that's not the only way they can make sure it sticks. Tink about it like a basketball game. Te coach is on the sideline every minute of the game and he or she doesn't ignore mistakes. If a player does something wrong, the coach reacts instantly. If that player doesn't adjust, they're on the bench.