GPA Training has published its newest dealer video tip, which expands on its previous video and its focus on the difference between soft skills and hard skills.
GPA Training President Ian Coburn says “soft skills give us the ability to ask questions. Hard skills tell us which questions to ask.” He adds that many of the resources we invest in, both as dealers and in any other industry, fail to offer us their full value because of a lack of soft skills. “A CRM will keep us from losing business but it will never grow our business,” Coburn says.
He says this is because while a CRM will help a business track customer data and conversations, it won’t actually make phone calls, attend follow-up appointments and objection handle.
“We would never hand someone a socket wrench, expecting it to give them the skill to repair vehicles. But we do it all the time when we have staff answer phones or visit customers, and we haven’t trained them in soft skills. The phone, just like the wrench, are tools to enhance knowledge that exists; not ways to create the knowledge themselves,” Coburn says.
