To grow, you have to stabilize your sales force. To do that, you have to hire the right people and create processes for them to follow. Then it’s up to managers to train everyone initially, and then daily, coaching each salesperson to help them develop their skills and their business, and manage them in their daily sales activities.

We talk about how poorly trained salespeople are, and everyone agrees. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about it, but the only people who get less training on how to do their jobs than salespeople are the managers in charge of the poorly trained salespeople. For most of us, moving into management was like, “Joe you’ve done a good job in sales, and now we’re promoting you to a sales manager – there’s the desk, there’s the people, now get out there and make me proud.”

With no management training in how to train, coach or manage, much less how to hire, track, set & reach goals, motivate the team and be an effective leader, it’s almost guaranteed that we end up running an 8-car sales team and explaining why it isn’t our fault. In fact, it can’t be an untrained manager’s fault that their group doesn’t do better. Because of our lack of management training, almost all of us get stuck in that “Unconsciously Incompetent” stage of skill development where you honestly don’t even know what you don’t know.

After 27 years of training tens of thousands of managers and salespeople, I can tell you that at whatever level you think you are as a manager, you could double your own abilities and your effectiveness as a manager after just six days of training.

I can also tell you that you already have a staff full of 20 to 30 car guys working for you right now. The problem is that those 20-30 car guys are stuck in an 8-car system that lacks the training, coaching, support, management and accountability to get them to those higher levels. Once managers learn what needs to be done, and how to do it, the sky is literally the limit on your sales, profits and growth.

Here are some tips to start that new guy you just hired off on an effective training program so they can become a high achiever in your dealership.

Their first 90 days in sales...

Once you do find the right person for sales, the first 90 days is the most important part of their career. This is where their selling skills, their work habits and their selling and success attitudes are developed. In this first 90 days, their long-term career decisions and habits are established.

The things they learn – or don’t learn - in their first 90 days will be with them the rest of their career and will help them sell lots of cars. Alternatively, the lack of training in any area will hold them back the rest of their career (and cost you money). New salespeople have to see the real potential, or they’ll never develop the skills they need to become high achievers. For salespeople to be productive, they also have to learn the selling process, how to close and how to turn unsold prospects into be-back-right-aways.