Beat the Winter Sales Slowdown with Effective Training

Winter can be a slow time for auto dealers. Holiday activity and inclement weather in much of the country combine to keep people out of showrooms. Historically, call volumes drop. Now is a great time to implement a training strategy than helps you develop more business in the first quarter.

If you have been considering training for your call handlers, the slow season is a great time to do it. For one thing, you need to make the most out of the calls you do receive and convert as many of them to store visits as possible. For another, you likely won’t need to pull people away from active selling to participate in training.

To maximize the value of training, it must become an integral part of your company’s culture. Companies where training impacts behavior are those where the learning culture starts at the top. If you want to make a fundamental change in the way your people learn and behave, it has to be something that you are fully behind in words and actions.

In a learning culture, training obstacles are removed, employees are given enough time for training and the transfer of training is supported back at work. If you pull someone out of a training session to work on the sales floor, or allow someone to skip the training, you undermine the training’s effectiveness.

It is crucial for ownership and management to agree on the training goals and set expectations for the results. Consider such important questions as “Do we churn through inbound phone calls or do we systematically manage opportunities? Do we recognize call handlers’ performance improvements or are they ignored? Do we incent people to improve their performance or is it just status quo?”

The next step is to provide your team with proper training. It’s important to select a provider who can help you create a program that suits your goals and your staff. The best providers use programs and materials created by both subject matter experts and instructional designers that foster effective, long-term learning.

A first-class provider will offer flexible course options that allow for different learning styles, because adults learn in different ways. That will include use of technology to provide a variety of ways to access training, from facilitated Webinars to self-paced online lessons to work-related games, all designed to improve your staff’s skills at converting callers to appointments.

It’s also important to measure training’s impact. A 2010 report in McKinsey Quarterly stated that only 50 percent of organizations track participant feedback about training programs, and only 30 percent use any kind of metric. Without tracking, training effectiveness cannot be determined and steps cannot be taken to improve program effectiveness.

Make sure to give your staff feedback on their post-training performance. Put in place processes that ensure that your staff put their new learning to work immediately, while it is still fresh and before key lessons are forgotten. Performance support is especially important when people are trying to master new skills.

And when that training kicks into gear and your people start booking more appointments and closing more deals? Heap the praise on them. Positive feedback goes a long way towards reinforcing the training and instilling confidence in future training.