Improve Profitability - Train Your Service Manager

How much formal training has your service manager had?   He heads the department that generates most, if not all, of the profit in your dealership.  If he is poorly trained, your company could be losing both revenue and profit that would make a difference in your bottom line.

The Best Investment You Can Make

If you want your customers to be happier, your technicians to be more effective, and your service department to be more profitable, training your service manager is the place to start.

There are many subjects he needs to understand :

• How to be a leader that his team will follow and support
• How to motivate his team
• Why not everyone responds to the same motivation
• How to identify and hire the right people
• How to analyze service data to identify issues and resolve them
• What a service call really costs
• What is the most important metric and why
• Where the service department fits in the financial model

If your service...

It is important to provide regular customer service training to your technicians. They are the face of your company. In most cases, your customers will see your technicians regularly and respect their opinions. If a positive relationship is maintained and the conversations properly filtered, the results will help your company grow.

Examples

Recently, I was helping a client with a major install and he related a conversation he’d had with the previous vendor. It was an example of a conversation that shouldn’t have happened. It was so bad, in fact, that it might have cost the previous vendor the account.

It seems that the technician for the previous vendor was constantly highlighting internal problems. For instance, he told the client that his company could not get the machine fixed because he had no assistance in troubleshooting the issue. He also stated that he could not order the parts that he needed because they were too expensive.

This client’s experience...

The one critical factor that is often overlooked is training for future needs. Most dealers train for their immediate needs and don’t worry about future needs. This is a very short-sighted perspective.

The one critical factor that is often overlooked is training for future needs. Most dealers train for their immediate needs and don’t worry about future needs. This is a very short-sighted perspective. Training for future needs positions an organization to make better business decisions and scale for growth. With consistently evolving industry parameters, new digital technologies and a push for advanced business intelligence, training to meet today’s requirements is only part of the train game – future training is the goal.

Here are 5 reasons to start future training – today.

Our Industry is Changing

One reason to train for the future is the constant change in our industry. Think back 20 years, and we were all selling analog copiers, stand-alone fax...