For training to be effective three elements need to be present; you need to have:

1. Education

2. Simulation

3. Accountability

Education, simulation, and accountability! Let me just expand on this. If I want to train in golf, I don’t just watch golf on TV. While watching golf on TV I may become educated in golf, but then I need to train through simulation. I would need to go out and hit bucket after bucket after bucket of balls to get good and stay good. The day I stop practicing (simulating) is the day my performance starts to suffer. But then where am I held accountable? On the scorecard!

How many statistical categories are golfers held accountable? Obviously, there’s your score but there’s also putting average, greens in regulation, and driving distance. How many statistical categories are baseball players held accountable? If I’m a position player, obviously batting average, fielding percentage, slugging percentage, and many more. As the dealer I also need to hold my people accountable. While most dealers can tell you how many cars they sold last month, how many new cars, how many used cars, how many certified, it’s surprising how many dealers can’t tell you how many overall opportunities they had. The way we improve is not by looking at how many cars we sold last month; it’s by focusing on what we didn’t sell!

Let’s talk about phone-ups for example.

Do you know exactly how many fresh sales calls your dealership received last month? Of those callers, how many actually visited the dealership at least once? Many of you (and it should be all of you) have call monitoring, that’s great, but make sure that there are no holes or gaps in your recordings with customers calling on your local number. Those calls need to be switched over to a recorded line. Everything needs to be recorded! Recording 80% of your calls is not sufficient! We live in a day and age of incredible accountability and we need to be making sure that we are taking advantage of it.

Let’s talk about the role your switchboard operator plays.

Your switchboard operator is an integral part in your dealership’s accountability when it comes to handling inbound sales calls. No CRM or automated system alone can get it done. What I’m going to go over now are just a few pointers and tips to help you hold your people accountable. First off, logging is mandatory. Some dealers will tell me that they ask their people to log calls for protection. In other words, if the call is logged under a specific salespersons name, that sales person is protected for 72 to 96 hours or whatever time frame is designated by yourself, or the dealership.

Let me run through a quick scenario: Bill takes a sales call. The caller asks about a 2013 Honda Accord that you have listed on Auto Trader. Bill promptly informs the caller that it is sold, and the call ends. Bill could not care less about protection and he knows that the caller he just spoke with won’t be coming in… Actually, he’s insured that. At the end of the day Bill is only going to log the callers that he thinks that he has a chance of showing up. In other words, your sales people are only going to log their successes. That would be the equivalent of having baseball players track their own batting averages, but if they strike out or fly out, they probably won’t count that one.

Every call gets counted. Not by the sales people, but by the switchboard operator. I guarantee you, your switchboard operator can and needs to do this. If Disneyland can tell you exactly how many people came to see Mickey on a daily basis, you should be able to tell how many people called you on Explorers today.

It all boils down to training and more than that, proper training!

1. Education
2. Simulation
3. Accountability

Make sure these three elements are present in your training game plan in order to be effective. Training isn’t something you did, it’s something you do!