Fixed Ops Journal - February 2020 - F21

FIXED OPS JOURNAL

TRAINING
continued from previous page

should be trained, says Israel Mora, general
manager of Gosch Chevrolet in Hemet, Calif.,
part of Gosch Auto Group.
Mora says that if a manager - or the owner
- doesn't think they need training, that sends
a bad signal.
"If that's the attitude you have, I wouldn't be
surprised if that's the attitude your people
have," he says. "If you want to see if training is
worth it, you better go through it yourself. If
you get something out of it, then your people
should, too. If you don't get anything out of it,
then you can't expect your people to."
Mora graduated from an NADA Academy
management course in 2016, and when
NADA instructors trained
advisers and managers at
Gosch group in 2018, he
sat in on the sessions.
Reed notes that when
DealerPro does in-dealership sessions for service
managers, "We always invite the general manager
and the dealer to attend as
Atwood: Group
well. When you have a
setting is best
dealer or the GM attend a
training session, chances are that you're going
to have a successful training event in that
store because, obviously, they're committed
to taking care of their customers."
In the service department, advisers do most
of the telephone and face-to-face contact with
customers, yet Reed says surprisingly few
have been taught how to interact with customers and sell services.
"Most service advisers, unfortunately, have
had no skills training as to how to properly
communicate with a customer," he says.
"They're taught how to operate a computer;
they're taught how to open and close a repair
order, but they're not given any skills training
on talking to customers on the telephone or
face-to-face."
One common mistake advisers make on the
phone is to quote a price on a job such as replacing brake pads, but when the customer
brings in the car, a technician finds that it also
needs rotors and calipers.
"Now that $389 brake job just blew past
$600," Reed says. "There is nothing positive
that's ever going to come out of telling someone it's going to cost $389 and then have to tell
them it's going to be $600."
Another mistake: trying to sell a customer additional services before their main concern has
been satisfied, such as performing a safety recall.

Dealer exec: Put training
efforts where customers are

RICK POPELY

foj@autonews.com

att Walsh, vice president of
operations for Carter Myers
Automotive in Charlottesville, Va., thinks service advisers need sales training as much as - and
maybe more than - the vehicle sales and
finance and insurance staffs because they
meet far more customers face-to-face.
"Most dealerships tend to put all the
[sales] training in the front half of the
house and not enough in the back half of
the house," Walsh says. "I would argue that
it's more important [to train advisers] because we sold 13,900 cars last year, but we
wrote 160,000 customer-pay tickets. That's
like 12 times as many customers, and
that's not including warranty or internal
[repair orders], just customer-pay tickets."
Walsh says Carter Myers hired DealerPro Training for the service department at
its Buick-GMC-Cadillac store and saw the
service department's monthly sales grow
from $250,000 to $300,000, helping it go
from a breakeven operation to one that's
profitable.
"We wanted a fresh set of eyes," Walsh
says of the training. "They diagnosed what
was wrong, did a lot of observation,
helped us reduce costs, helped us with
how to overcome objections [from customers] when calling back on declined
work. We saw that our service advisers
had a better skill set in front of customers
and were better on the phone."
The success of the initial program led

"The primary item always has to come first,"
Reed says. "That's the No. 1 reason they
brought the vehicle to the dealership."

Online or in-person?
Training costs time and money, and the
most convenient and cost-effective way is
with online courses and virtual classes. But
while such e-learning programs can provide a
good foundation, nothing beats in-person
training where participants interact with and
learn from instructors and one another, says
Bob Atwood, a service instructor for NADA
Academy who also does in-dealership ses-

Carter Myers to train service advisers
from the group's other 14 dealerships,
bringing them to a classroom setting in a
central location.
"We have seen our hours per [repair order] and our effective labor rates go up,"
Walsh says. "I can't necessarily attribute
this to the training, but we also have very
low turnover among service advisers, so
there's more stability now."
Training also boosted morale and engagement among service advisers.
"When they saw that we were investing in
their skill sets and their ability to learn, a lot
of the advisers loved the attention they
were getting and loved the training," Walsh
says. "They would apply what they learned
and try it out on the floor. They'd come back
with questions the next time the trainer
would come by. You could tell they were
engaged by the questions they asked."
Walsh thinks any sales training needs to
include face-to-face interaction with an
instructor because all the variables involved in talking with customers can't be
distilled into a computer program.
"It needs to be role-playing, rehearsing,
going over word tracks that work and lower the anxiety of a customer who's hearing
them," he says. "There are 10 ways to say
the same thing, and if they do it in a way
that educates the customer, lowers their
anxiety, then the better they are. I don't
care if it's in the finance department, on
the sales floor or on the service drive,
there's certain ways to do things that are
more effective than others." 
sions for advisers.
"We found in the academy classes that if we
have 36 students and we break them off into
groups for different exercises, what they learn
from each other interacting in that group is so
meaningful," Atwood says.
"As instructors, we can only tell them so
much, but if we put them into groups and
make them do 'thought-starters,' it's amazing
what they come up with."
Mora, who trains salespeople in the Gosch
group, says that "trying to send [employees] to
see TRAINING, Page 22

FEBRUARY 2020

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Fixed Ops Journal - February 2020

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