GPA Training Inc. has released eight of its updated dealer eLearning courses for free viewing. The courses may be found HERE and can be taken without registering or providing an email address.
GPA Training says the courses are:
- Answering the Phone (“Customer Service”)
- Pipeline Management
- The Myth of Upselling
- Creating & Giving a Presentation
- Staple Questions
- Beyond Staple Questions
- Types of Vehicles
- Introduction to Learning Culture
GPA Training says this release celebrates the prosperous time we are currently experiencing in trucking, which is also an ideal time to train, particularly on soft skills. GPA debunks training misconceptions and offers tips for dealers to follow in selecting soft skills training:
- Don’t teach staff to be helpful; teach them to control the conversation. “Order taker” is perhaps the most dreaded word in the dealer world; yet, it is a problem that persistently plagues most dealers. Why? We train staff to be helpful, often resulting in them asking questions like, “How may I help you?” This hands control over to the customer, who doesn’t know which questions to ask, isn’t focused on the conversation because they are distracted by the million other tasks on their mind, and so forth. It is only through controlling the conversation that we can effectively serve our customers, as opposed to simply being order takers. (The free “Customer Service” course teaches how to control the conversation.)
“We’ve had clients tell us that they’ve seen customers who used to call upwards of 10 times a day, drop to 2 to 5 calls, daily, because now that their staff controls the conversation, they more efficiently serve customers on each call,” says Ian Coburn, president of GPA Training. Coburn also is the author of The Customer is Never Right: Sell More Trucks, Cars, Buses, Parts . . . Anything in One Month, the entire premise of which is sales is a consulting, guiding process; not a pitching, helpful one.
- Get content you can own. This way you can use it whenever you want, however you want. When times are slow, our soft skills need to be at their best because we can’t afford not to convert an opportunity into a sale. We have a conflict, though, because we don’t want to spend money when times are slow. Circumvent that challenge by getting content now, while the fish are jumping into the boat, to use without hesitation when you must fish long and hard.
GPA Training says ownership can come in the form of training manuals, eLearning, books, videos, follow-up coaching, almost anything. Avoid one-and-done live trainings and webinars — they’re temporary crutches that won’t be there when you need them most.
- Training is an investment in our customers not staff. Contrary to popular belief, we train for our customers not staff development. Staff greatly benefit, especially because soft skills enable them to be strong in any industry and every aspect of their lives. It is the customer, though, who benefits the most. When we neglect soft skills training, our other investments in our customers—marketing, staff salaries, inventory, technology—are far less productive.
- Identify the problems you want to eliminate. What behaviors do you want the training to eradicate? Create? Discuss with trainers and/or consultants you’re considering. Don’t go in with the mindset that you want to “improve a little” or “get somewhat better.” You’ll see minimal results with that attitude. Maximize results by starting with a “we’re going to crush it!” mindset.
- Evaluate would-be trainers and content. You want innovative, engaging content that is relevant. We only remember 10 percent of what we hear, so “death by PowerPoint” isn’t going to eradicate or create anything. In contrast, when we are engaged, we remember 70 percent. Content should be created by a combination of learning & development experts, to help maximize impact and retention, and sales experts who were top performers, to ensure relevance.
When it comes to trainers, we want polished presenters who practice exceptional delivery. Look for comments by other dealers and examples of content. Never invest in training until you’ve seen a significant amount of its content. The last thing you want to do is inefficiently invest and then have to waste time “untraining” what was taught!
- Think nonlinear, not linear. We tend to think linear—“My team needs to be better at cold calling. I’ll get that training.” What we need today, though, we may want to add to, tomorrow.
Set up your customers, team and dealership for success by investing with training that offers a full program. This doesn’t mean you have to get the full program; rather, that it is always a viable option. You want to train your sales teams on just cold calling for now? Great! Get a program that also offers pipeline and time management, asking probing questions, objection-handling, and negotiation content, too, so that you can add that content, painlessly, later.
When we invest in skills we need from different training programs, it’s like buying pieces from different puzzles and then trying to put them together into one puzzle—a jumbled, confusing mess of different terminology and contradicting techniques, that results in a confusing picture for our staff and ultimately, then, our customers. Stick with pieces from the same puzzle.
- Use the training terminology at every opportunity. We must integrate the training into our culture. This means management and leadership takes the training, too, and manages teams and each other to it. One of the fastest ways to integrate content into our culture is to use the terminology taught in the training. “In GPA training,” states Coburn, “we teach terms like touch points, staple questions, high value activity, and suggestive selling.”
Good use of a touchpoint and nice suggestive selling, then, are compliments GPA clients should use with their staff. “If you integrate training content into your culture, you will see tremendous results,” adds Coburn.
For more information about GPA Training, please CLICK HERE.
