The Cost of NOT Investing in Car Sales Training

Are you an expert? Have you mastered your daily duties? Are you at the pinnacle of success in your position? Or do you have room to grow? Unless you believe you and your team members are operating at their highest performance level, there is the opportunity to get better. Now more than ever, car sales training and sales management training play a vital role in your organization.

Just this week, a client asked me to create, distribute, and analyze an Employee Satisfaction Survey for their salespeople and sales managers. They knew that coming from me, the sales team would trust me when I said it would be anonymous. And I am keeping it that way. This way, the organization gets unfettered employee feedback. One of the questions I included was, “Do you believe the organization invests in your success?”

Now, I already know the answer to this. DealerKnows is not what one would say is inexpensive. This dealership invests significantly in their team through us, another training firm, our CRM audits, phone audits, and even a local university to give their staff access to all the education and consistent feedback they need. Shockingly, even with all of this, not everyone felt the dealership was investing in their success. This floored me, considering that the average dealership likely spends sub-2% of their payroll expenses on sales training initiatives. Most would feel this dealer group is a leader in this area, but, alas, there is always room for improvement.

Whether car sales training comes from outside companies like DealerKnows, or internally from their sales managers (ideally, it comes from both), it needs to come. As I wrote last month, the current automotive retail landscape is making it too easy to sell a car, and it will leave us with a significant customer service crisis.

Are you bringing new dealership hires along the right way? As you invest in sales training, know that it starts at the orientation. We work extensively with stores to ensure they make orientations both impactful and fun, as this is when you lay down the foundation of your culture. This is when you begin generating employee buy-in. New-hire orientation sets the stage for a successful marriage between employee and employer. Ongoing sales training and sales management training keep the parties from divorcing. While I don’t have first-hand knowledge of it, enough of my friends have explained to me that divorcing is expensive. Similarly, NOT investing in sales training can negatively affect the bottom line more than you realize.

Car Sales Training Has Proven It’s Worth

A recent study showed that 70% of employees stated that training and development related to their job influenced their decision to stay. The younger the employee, the higher that percentage went. The Association for Talent Development stated that organizations that offer comprehensive training programs have 218% higher income per employee than companies without formalized training. Moreover, these companies achieve a 24% higher profit margin than those who spend less on training. Your profit margins may be through the roof now, but do you think that is because of your team’s expertise? I didn’t think so.

This data proves that investing in car sales training is wildly profitable for every organization and should be incorporated into your monthly budget. Between regular training and DealerKnows’ sales coaching software, organizations are positioning themselves to continue thriving when the supply chain issues return to normal. Better retention, improved employee satisfaction, increased income, and higher profit margins should be atop every organization’s list of goals.

Maybe you’re on top of the world. The choice is yours. Why part with money when you don’t need to. Why not wait until it becomes a problem for either your customer service or your bottom line? Because you know how costly it will be once it reaches that point. Automotive sales training needs to be initial and ongoing. Slowly develop your team and provide valuable coaching and feedback so they always know you are in their corner. We cannot turn a blind eye to investing in our people or giving them the training tools they need to succeed.

Since I mentioned its importance above, I wrote a past blog about sales management training and the need to train the trainer.