You spend time creating ads, you spend money advertising and yet the sales don’t reflect those efforts. Does this sound familiar? Let’s figure out why we don’t get the results we want before we spend any more time and money on advertising.
The following is a recent Service experience. (Skip to the “Bottom Line” if you don’t need another story about a bad service experience) I needed to replace a trim piece on a 10-year-old vehicle – easy enough, no diagnosis – just “do you have the part in stock?” before I spend an hour in drive time. First, I called the Service Department and was able to get the voicemail of the concierge. The voicemail, while pleasant, encouraged me to make an appointment online at my convenience; I guess that was so I wouldn’t have to bother her with annoying details or questions. You can tell it is a highline dealership because they call their appointment setter/reservationist a concierge. I left a message explaining the two items I wanted to have installed and waited 24 hours before calling the new Service Manager. I knew he was new because he sent an email letting me know he was the new manager and he wanted my business with a “too good to be true” offer for service on older vehicles.
Me being me, I felt I should help him out (at no charge) and let him know how he could bring back old Customers…Answer the phone or return calls ASAP! You don’t have to give everything away if you take care of the Customers!
On day three, I decided I had to be smarter than their system and contacted the Parts Department directly to check on the availability of the part and after hearing “Parts, could you hold please?” I knew I had hit gold; I didn’t have to leave a message and wait for it to not be returned. I was prepared, I had the VIN and pictures of the trim part ready to email, unfortunately, the Parts Counter Person had been there two weeks and wasn’t familiar with the models of the vehicles or how to look up trim parts. However, he was friendly and tried hard before he had to ask someone how to look up the part. Good news, that part breaks so often that even though the vehicle is 10 years old; it is stocked in dove or ivory. He promised to have a Service Advisor call me, which happened 2 hours later.
Thirty-six hours after contacting the Dealership, I had an appointment! Yahoo! Several hours after that, the Assistant to the new Service Manager called to see if there was anything he could to do to help me. My first thought was, “Can you connect me to the Used Car Manager and see if he wants to buy a 10-year-old car with less than 70,000 miles?” Maybe he had an in with the Service Department. Side note: The vehicles they sell new are on my short list for a new puppy transportation vehicle, but the Salesperson would have to put a gun to my head to buy a vehicle from them. If I can’t get decent service, what will the sales experience be like?
A long story to get to the point – train your people on how to take care of your Customers, how to do their job and to take pride in doing the job well. If you whittled out a percentage of your marketing budget and invested it in improving your process and people, you might receive benefits you are expecting.
Bottom Line: Train All of Your Employees:
- If you’ve hired the right people, training will improve your employees’ skills,
- Training will help employees feel appreciated and you are investing in their future,
- Training reduces employee turnover, which is very costly.
The second and third points are a bi-product of what should be the most important reason – trained employees can take care of your Customers the way you want your customers to be treated.
Before you begin any training, answer the following questions:
- Exactly what do I want to improve with training?
- How will I measure the results of the training?
- How will I measure the return on my training time and investment dollar?
If there is no way to measure the results, do you need to spend money on training?
Tips to make your training program a success:
- Get the buy-in from all who will be impacted: Management and Employees – what do they want to learn and need to learn?
- Get staff excited about the training by reinforcing the benefits. Think of it as learning…not training.
- Have a training agenda designed for your specific needs and one that focuses on the changes you want to make, leave out the “fluff and nougat.”
With a little training, your Advertising dollars will pay off!