Automotive Industry Sales Training: All Skills Combined

AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY IMPROVEMENT IN THE 5 CRITICAL SALES SKILLS COMBINED Mastery of the sales process requires salespeople to achieve Knowledge and Application scores of 75% or greater in each of the 5 Critical Sales skills. When this is accomplished, salespeople increase their sales rate by 6X. Salespeople who were trained but did not achieve certification levels, were 50% lower in sales growth than those who became certified. REMARKABLE FINDINGS ABOUT ALL SKILLS COMBINED IN THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

• The gap between Knowledge scores and Application is certainly in the acceptable range. The majority of what was learned is being used in the field. An exception to this was in the Buyer/Seller Relationship skill where more application training is recommended.
• The improvements that were made provided a dramatic lift in Knowledge and a significant improvement in Application. This easily justified the investment of time and money to train sales forces in the Automotive Industry.

The Automotive Industry started with selling skills that were generally below the Universe. An exception to this was Gaining Commitment were salespeople had significantly higher pre-sales training scores. It appeared that automotive salespeople were being trained to be closers without enough training on the other critical selling skills. This creates selling situations where pressure is applied (rather than persuasion). Once the additional critical selling skills were more fully developed, sales growth rates in the Automotive Industry improved by 6X previous rates. This clearly demonstrated the need to develop a well-rounded set of sales skills.