#285 - Training - Housekeeping Series

You are listening to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson.

Hello and welcome to this edition of the Independent Dealer Podcast, brought to you again by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. Luke, it's hot. I'm going crazy, man. This is our second installment in the housekeeping series, right? Because I don't want to go outside. I want to stay inside. But I know I've got stuff in my dealership that I could fine tune, right?

Yeah, all of us do. No matter how much you think that your machine is weld old, listen to your phone calls. It'll surprise you, right? But it's, it's, you know, this week is about employee training, about us training. And I believe that everybody can improve here. No matter how much you're training in your dealership, there's something that you can train on and get better, as I discovered this morning.

Yep, as I discovered this morning, with a very serious face. That is exactly how it goes. When I listen to phone calls, I just think to myself, where have I led these people astray? Like, how have I let them down so badly that this is what is happening on my telephones every single day? And it comes down to the training guys. So because we're doing this housekeeping series, if you didn't listen to our last one, it was great. We talked about all about tuning up your website, Luke. All of us go out to things, right? We always go to, like, convention. And I'm always trying to get better, right? I'm listening to this podcast, I'm listening to other podcasts. I'm going to all. Everything under the sun, my 20 group. And I'm learning all these cool new things and I know how to do it right, but I don't always tell my guys how to do it right.

Yeah, you know, the first thing that goes into this is training yourself. And that's reading, that's podcasts, that's going to Convention 20 group, if you can. All these things. We have to get others to train us. But the next component to that is bringing it back into the dealership and making sure that we are training our staff. And it might be. It might not be something we're good at. So we have to get somebody else to help us, Jeff. But we've got to make sure we know what we're doing.

The guys at the Unfair Advantage Market Mining Group, Tracy and Troy, you guys, if you're going to the Carolinas, I think you got a couple of weeks left to sign up and make sure you're there. Mastermind Convention. That is a great opportunity. Right. Because we go to those things and we say, hey, you know, I'm just. You know, my time to line is off. Like, what's wrong here? What's wrong with my inspections? What's wrong with my detailing process? What's wrong with my sales, my BDC reps? Just the appointment percentage is just not right. What am I doing wrong? And those are the times when we learn all those things. And then we've got to bring it back and give it to our people. Luke, who at the dealership do you think needs to be trained regularly?

Everybody. Yeah.

Wow.

I mean, it's everybody. So we were sitting in a manager's meeting the other day, and I. I said, hey, guys, let's talk about the detail department. We started talking about it. I said, well, when was the last time we did training? And they said, well, the first time we did it, I said, well, that was like four weeks ago. What happened, guys? Well, you were out of town and. And we use your office. Cause we're watching YouTube videos, this, that. And I said, so you're tell telling me that none of y' all can come up here and turn on my television and Project YouTube up there and go over some things with the. With the detailing stuff? Well, yeah, I guess we could have that done that. So everybody needs to be trained as low as the detail department, as high as your comptroller. Everybody needs training. And it's. It's our responsibility as the owner, as an entrepreneur, to make sure it's getting done.

Yeah, training will creep in somewhere. Guys, your guys are getting trained. Sometimes they're just being trained by laziness, and they're being trained by the other employee that doesn't know what he's doing. I guarantee, if you stepped out there in your detailed apartment or in your shop, you would just watch for like, 20 or 30 minutes, and you would think, how on earth. Where did this come from? Where did we learn to start using, you know, this process or this chemical or, you know, this wording with our customers, like your collections department? Like, when did we ever. Whoever taught you to say that? Well, nobody taught you not to say that, right?

Well, and, you know, this is the scary part. Sometimes the people that taught them to say that were people that you fire because they weren't doing a good job. So you gotta be careful who's doing the training. So sometimes, you know, you'll have a lazy salesperson that you want to get, you know, rid of. So you hire these new guys, right? And they come in and, and they're great for a month or two, but then that laziness of that salesperson who you need to fire, but you can't fire until you get this other guy up and running ends up training that guy and next thing you know, the new guy that you hired is also lazy. So be careful. You need to be training or your managers need to be training. And if your managers are training, you need to be training your managers. Right?

Yeah. And Luke, the next two points I think are the key and absolutely like the crucial part of training and that is consistency.

Yeah. You know. Yeah. We talked about last week in websites and, and it's going to be a theme that's going to go over and over and over in this housekeeping. Just like housekeeping. Right. Consistency matters. And it's not a one time event. It is weekly. And it's the next week and it's the following week and it's the following week and you never stop, you never stop training. It's hard. But if you do mandatory times, hey, Friday morning and Jeff and I both, you know, do this for sales Friday morning at 9am or 8:30 at my dealership, we are training for 30 minutes and you're going out. 30 minutes enough. 30 minutes is plenty. Because it's the consistency that, that over those 30 minutes each week, I mean each week, for each week of the year, you're going to get, if my maths right, you get 26 hours of training. I mean that's a pretty good number, right Jeff?

Yeah, yeah. So I do every Friday morning my sales trainings at 9am it's mandatory. So I think building that into your job descriptions is so crucial that the employee needs to know from the point they're hired that training is mandatory. And you've got a specific mandatory time for each department. Sales for me is on Friday, you know, services on Monday. And I got a bunch of other ones I haven't worked in yet, so I won't mention them. But the other, you know, like working in my collectors, there is no consistency with my collections training. It doesn't happen. So it doesn't happen. But building it into your pay plan and saying, hey, this is part of why you get paid is to be at these trainings. And obviously salespeople who are commission based are kind of like, whoa, wait, that's an extra hour of my day that I'm not getting paid for. It's like, dang right you're getting paid for it.

It's part of your compensation package. Yes, it is.

That, but to make sure they look at it is, hey, this is going to get you paid more. Right. Because you're going to do it right. Whether you're a BDC rep or a salesman, training is going to get you more money because you're going to be closing more sales, bottom line, pretty much.

It's that simple. Right.

And the other thing I want to point out at this point is we need to understand the difference between a training and a meeting. Right? We talked about this in previous episodes. This is not a sales telling meeting. It's not a housekeeping meeting. It's not a talk about leads and percentages and talk about this, this, this, like that's all housekeeping that could be done another time. The big difference between sales training and sales meetings to me is role play. If you don't have scripts and role plays in these, they're not trainings.

Right. You can use percentages in this training process. Percentages are super important. And numbers should be conveyed to your, your sales staff, to your collection staff. That's part of my collections training, to your F and I staff, to your service department. All these need these key metrics and you use them and say, okay, let's just say in sales and we all talk about this. We're gonna, we're gonna set 50 appointments this week because we wanna sell 12 and a half cars. So you're gonna set 50 appointments. And the way we're gonna set these appointments is by using this role playing model. Right? Jeff. Hey, Mr. Customer. I really appreciate you reaching out. Do you have time to come in this afternoon or in the morning? Right, we're gonna set those. We're gonna talk about how to say that each and every time. Because that way we'll build consistency on setting the appointment. Then we'll use our next role playing on. This is how you make sure the customer shows up for their appointment. Right. And if you keep doing those role playing models, you will get better at setting your appointment showing and the sales. Because you can also practice your closing statements, right?

Yeah. And that's, and that's what I'm saying when I, when I point that out is we use the metrics to know what we need to train on. So just talking about metrics and discussing closing ratios and discussing the new financing programs and talking about upset customers and talking about how the seats are wet in the car, that's not training, that's identifying the problem which needs to happen beforehand. Right. Or maybe the first 15 minutes you can talk about that. But then I think you Literally need to be side by side. And for sales and bdc, it's role play for collections, it's role play for, you know, detailing. It's maybe showing them a technique or standing there while they're doing the technique. For parts managers, it's probably, you know, getting on and building a ticket out with them or following a vehicle from start to finish with them. Right. Like, I think that's just the big, big distinguishing factor is people think meetings are training and if you're talking the whole time, if you're doing 90% of the talking, that is not a training.

And let's talk about, you know, training the service department. Most of us aren't technicians and there's probably some people listen to it, to the podcast who are technicians. So that's not necessarily something we can train them. When we go to convention, we're not learning about how to better repair a car. Right. But there are, there's so many services that people you are currently using, Worldpac, Carquest, O'Reilly's, all these have different ways to train your, your technicians. And that's one of those things that we do as a, as a, as a company, at least once a month we try to get our techs to go to a training and we pay for the training and there's usually dinner and things like that there. And I tell you, sometimes it's great and sometimes it's not. But every time it's mandatory and they get to do it. Yeah.

If you can't do it yourself, then get help from the professionals. Right?

Yep.

Look outwards, look at another area. But Luke, I want to back up first before we start talking about other areas that we can get help from. We're still talking about internal stuff. How often are you training these people? Yeah, department like sales, should that be daily?

For me, I think weekly is enough. Like I said, if you do it 30 minutes a week for a year, that's 26 hours. That's a lot of training.

I don't think it's enough for sales. I don't think 30 minutes a week is enough.

It may not be, but it's better than nothing, you know, and that's, and that's what you have to look at. For our collections, we try to stay on that 30 minute increment for everybody. But my manager's meeting, which is every two weeks, it's a meeting and a little bit of training and it runs about an hour and that's where a lot of housekeeping, things like that come in. But you know, people unfortunately, our staff, their. Their capacity to learn is probably not much more than 30 minutes. So if you make sure that you hammer it in those 30 minutes, there's no need to waste people's time. So I think 30 minutes from an hour is fine.

Yeah, I would definitely say for me, and this would be. My advice is for. There's certain roles where 30 minutes a day is probably needed in a lot of areas, especially for a new hire. The sooner you get. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, you train them. I always like to tell my guys, it's like a professional athlete. Do you know how much conditioning and practice goes into an NFL player's day for that 90 minutes they're out on the field, you know, like, they are putting in so much work, and we need to look at the same way. Like, when we get a customer in front of us, we are. We're in the batter box. Like, every single repetition and all that training that we take in the batting cage has got to pay off when we're standing in the batter box, so. And Luke, all this leads to more sales. This is a good time for us to talk about Primal End. Our guys over there that are great sponsors of the podcast and they want to give you money.

Yeah. You know, just. Just adopting a little bit of this will sell more cars. And in our business, we're selling more cars, need more money. And primaland they're there to help you with the cash. And I'll be willing to bet you they have tons of training material that will help you get better at managing your money, at trading your comptrollers, all these things, because this company's here to help the independent dealer, and they show it all the time.

Yeah, Luke. So let's. Let's give these guys some advice on outsourcing their training. Right? Because I know that, like you said with mechanics, I. I can't teach my mechanics anything. Right. My detailer is probably beyond my knowledge too. He's pretty darn good at what he does. So where do we go to get resources for other people in our dealership?

You know, this is going to sound so silly, but it's not. YouTube is a hugely valuable resource. You know, people joke about these. YouTube, you know, like, ASC trained. No, they're YouTube trained technicians. You know, there's tons of really, really good technicians out there doing really good videos. So that's an easy resource that you can bring in lunch, sit people down, your detailers, your service department text. There's plenty of resources out there on YouTube that it's just easy, right?

Oh yeah. And that's something you would hope that most of these people, like I know with my mechanics. Yes. When they get stuck, they go to, you know, all Daddle and Mitchell and look at some of the help decks and then they go to YouTube, right?

Yeah.

And they see someone who's done it. That's how I do all my mechanic work. You know, on my 92 Bronco, every single thing I did was just watching a YouTube video, going out and doing it. So there's a ton of resources there, especially as it comes to hands on stuff like, you know, detailing mechanic work. But then there's some more like unique stuff, right. Like I'm not going to be able to find a YouTube video on, you know, how to merchandise my used car lot. Like that's going to be a hard search, right? Yeah. And when I talk to my lot tech and I'm like, hey man, why do we got cars parked all which direction? Right. But then I can go to someone like Luke and say, luke, will you stop by my car lot and take a look? You know, will you call my BDC people and just secret shop them? You know, And a lot of great people like Maggie and all these people out in the industry are always willing to help. And sometimes it takes money. It's not all free like YouTube, right?

No, it's not. And so there are just great, great resources. Buckeye, who's, you know, a supporter here, they have good resources with the F and I and sales and they could, you know, Primalin is probably someone that can help you with collections. David Brothers and niada, all the 20 group moderators, they're there for a reason. They're there to make you better. And they can help put together probably a training schedule for you as well to make sure that you're hammering at home yourself once they train you how to do it.

Yeah, there's a handful of great guys like Brett from Buckeye. He will come out to your dealership any day of the week and teach you and train your guys on selling warranties. And I mean he'll literally train you on everything. That guy will literally train you on anything. So it's not even F and I products through Buckeye. It's anything. And I'm sure he'd love to do it. You know, my good friend Nick Marcosian up in northern Utah, he is a great example of training his staff. You know, he will bring in Bill Elizondo like once a quarter, he'll bring in all these sales training people and he'll have all hands meetings and train his staff, both morale and literal hands on training. He's the kind of guy that's going to put some money back in his team. Like if you're not willing to spend a thousand dollars to put your collector on a virtual training class for a day or a couple hours through Ben or Bill or one of the Niada guys, like, then why do you even have them there, right?

I mean, these people are making you all the money in your dealership. Why not get them to do it the right way? Or just find, you know what you find in these training situations? It's not like you're learning everything they're teaching you, but you find these little nuggets that you can just all of a sudden flip the switch in your collections department or your sales department, and next thing you know, it's often running.

Remember that phrase that says, but what if I train them and they leave me? Well, what if you don't train them?

Don't train them and they stay right. It's just we can't, you know, and as I'm gonna sidetrack a second. But as owners, sometimes we get afraid to train. Maybe we say the wrong thing. You know, maybe we're role playing and, and we make everybody laugh because we're, we, we stutter or something.

Who cares?

I mean, our, our people we're training feel the same way. What if I say the wrong thing to my boss? Well, you know what? We have fun. Sometimes we all make mistakes and we all say the wrong thing, but we learn from it. You can't be afraid to do it. And if you do it consistently, you know what you can build inside your dealership? You can build training manuals.

You. Yeah.

Every week you do it. Make a copy of it, stick it in a notebook. Make sure your people, every time they come to train, they bring that notebook, they write in the pages. And you know what? After a year, you've got 52 weeks of training and it's just sitting there.

That's true. And it's important because you need to have scripts, right? You can steal these scripts from everywhere, places you've heard. You can ask ChatGPT to give you sales scripts, but your employees need to memorize these scripts so that they can make them their own. Right? You've got to internalize them. A couple of things we do here at our dealership that might be interesting. So I bought a small white volleyball and every single panel of that volleyball. You know how there's like little sections of three Panels. I wrote a sales objection. And so what we'll do is we'll throw this ball around a circle, and when you catch it, wherever your thumb lands is the objection you read to the person who threw it to you. So they're literally throwing you an objection. You catch it, you read it, and then we have to wait, work on overcoming those, right? You can do the same thing with, like, popsicle sticks in a cup that just have objections written on it. And this can be done for collections, can be done for sales, it can be done for service writing. Anything that's like a conversational based training. It's just a fun thing to break up your day. You bust out the volleyball and you start tossing it around the sales room.

And that's. I mean, such a great idea, Jeff. I'm sure you didn't come up with that, but, I mean, it's. It's so amazing that. That you use that in your dealership. I was. I was. I was joking with you, Jeff.

Yeah, of course.

Don't get mad, Luke.

Obviously, people can reach out to you. You're gonna want to tell them what they've done wrong. But also the whole point of this, and explain this to me what you call the flywheel effect, right? Which is in the good to great book that we. A couple of months ago.

How does that. It's, you know, and, you know, good to great. They don't really talk about training. Flywheel effect. But it's. But it's the same principle. You know, the flywheel effect essentially is the little things you do in your company that over time, just creates this huge flywheel that won't stop. It's the same with training. 30 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever. Once a week, if you start pushing that flywheel round and round, round and round, you're getting better at it every day. All. All those objections that your customers used to tell you, you're having to rewrite a new volleyball, having to have Wilson 2 here. Because those objections you once had are now new objections that you have to come up with answers to. But the more you train, the faster your flywheel runs and the better your company runs. And that's really what training is about, is making your day easier, making your salespeople's day easier, making your service, the department, stay easier. Or they can take on more at this point by just getting better by training. Just here and there.

Awesome. Luke, I think that's it. That's the pod. Thanks for listening, guys. We'll talk to you next week.

Dealers helping dealers. Please leave us a review and subscribe the Independent Dealer Podcast.