Ask yourself, what is the turnover rate at your dealership? This question should be very important to you, especially when replacing a single salesperson can cost upwards of $10,000. This number is calculated by considering recruiting fees, onboarding costs and lost revenue from missed deals. If you do struggle with retaining salespeople, don’t worry because there are things you can do to keep them around. In this article, we’re going to give you 5 tips to train and retain your salespeople. 

1. Invest in Digital Training

Training your sales team is not an expense but an investment that will pay itself back in a few ways. First off, it will reduce your turnover rate as your team will feel like they’re being invested in. Secondly, it will make your salespeople better at their jobs which will in turn mean more deals closed. If you think digital training is a waste of money, you set up your sales team for failure. If your salespeople aren’t at the top of their game, they will struggle more to sell cars, creating frustration which can often lead to quitting before ever reaching their true potential. In our opinion, the best way to effectively train your salespeople is by combining in-house training with online digital training. The online training is great because it allows each team member to work at their own pace and schedule. 

2. Phone Call Training

Phone call training is incredibly important yet under-utilized across most sales industries. As a car salesperson, a ton of your customer interactions are going to take place over the phone. Being able to communicate well over the phone or not could be the difference between a customer choosing to shop at your dealership or the next one. Phone training should be something that you and your team practice together daily. Work on perfecting your voicemail messages and appointment-closing techniques. A good investment with phone call training is paying for a software that records your calls so you and your team can review calls with customers. As the team works together to improve their phone call training, team morale will increase and you’re less likely to lose team members. 

3. Create a “Team First” Culture

Having a dealership motivated by individual goals is not conducive to a successful dealership. When team members are fighting for customers it creates a toxic “you vs. me” environment. In order for a dealership to achieve the most possible success, everyone needs to be working together as a team. Dealers need to promote their salespeople working together, sharing ideas and techniques that lead to their success. Having a mentorship program is a great way to begin creating a team-first culture. Pair up a new salesperson with a veteran salesperson for 30 days and have the veteran guide the newbie through his days. In order to encourage the veteran to do this, consider giving them a bonus for the month or a bigger cut for each car he/she sells. 

4. Create Data-Driven Goals

Having clear goals will increase motivation from your team as well as drive better results. According to a Harvard study, salespeople who use a goal-oriented strategy perform 30% better than those who don’t. Before creating goals, you need to make sure that they’re data-driven. An idea may sound amazing, but if there’s no data behind it that says it will work, you should avoid it. All of your goals should be based on data and they must be measurable. 

5. Foster Employee Growth

Some of your salespeople have ambitions bigger than just being in an entry-level sales position. They may want to climb the ranks and work their way up as a finance manager or sales manager. It’s important that management supports them in their goals so they have a clear path of what they need to do in order to get their desired promotion. If dealerships aren’t willing to work with their staff on career advancement, many salespeople will look for jobs elsewhere because they don’t see a future for themselves at their current dealership.