Pub 11 2021 Issue 2

11 Then the first game came around. The old ball coach has his adrenaline kicked into full gear and we want to win! Having fun and safety is out the window. Patience and understanding are lost virtues. Grown men could be heard screaming at third graders for someone to make a block or save a touchdown by chasing down a ball carrier from behind. Patience is tested, tears fall, mothers get upset, and some children lose interest and want to quit. As a leader in your dealership, I’d ask you to look at your team and consider that some of them have no more experience sell- ing cars than my little children had playing football. To be suc- cessful, you will have to have a simple plan. You will have to have plenty of practice and drilling before game time — which is when they make a phone call or take an up. If you don’t give them the training and repetition, what can you really expect? If training for you is telling stories about how you used to sell three cars every Saturday and you led the dealership in gross every month, please consider that you might be akin to the former High School Football star telling war stories to third graders. That’s not training, and it’s not helpful. Explain the process to them in detail. Demonstrate it, explain why it is done this way. Then have them try and repeat. Repeti- tion is the mother of learning; that’s not going away. Alterna- tively, you can keep hiring new people. Provide them limited training and be frustrated when they leave after four months. Repeat this until you’re convinced training doesn’t work, and you must find the right people. Sometimes what a salesperson needs is someone to offer them encouragement and understanding rather than war stories about how you used to do it. The likelihood is that the business has changed from when you were selling. The customers are more sophisticated, they have higher expectations, and will recog- nize an untrained sales professional immediately. If you want to reduce turnover and sell more cars, have your Sales Profes- sionals know that your No. 1 job is to help them be successful. That doesn’t mean doing it for them. But it does mean offering the training before game time as well as some encouragement when the breaks don’t go our way. We could never have that third-grade team hike the ball on two. Inevitably someone from our own team would jump offsides, causing a penalty and backing us up. For an entire season, we went on one. The other teams learned this and had a nice ad- vantage on the defensive side of the ball. But taking this source of frustration out of the mix allowed us to focus on the other things. It provided an environment where they could learn a new sport, have fun and be safe. Oh yes, and win quite a few games. If you have less experienced teammates, ask yourself are there ways to simplify processes for them until they’ve had enough practice to take on more. How you react to their shortcomings and failures will determine if they will remain coachable in the future. That doesn’t mean let them do whatever they want. But it does mean checking yourself on if enough explanation and training has taken place that your expectation is reasonable. Save your war stories for another time. They aren’t helpful, and they for sure aren’t training.  For more information, please contact Francis Fagan with Brown & Brown Dealer Services at 312-608-4979 or ffagan@bbins.com. Francis is the Regional Training Director for Illinois and Indiana. At Brown & Brown Dealer Services we put the emphasis on training. Visit our website for our training calendar and to meet our nationally renowned trainers. bbdealerservices.com As a leader in your dealership, I’d ask you to look at your team and consider that some of them have no more experience selling cars than my little children had playing football. To be successful, you will have to have a simple plan.