What Are You Doing to Make Technology Easier For Salespeople?

[Craig Belowski]

"Introducing shiny new stuff without preparation, training and even testing among a small sample of your users usually just creates drama:

4 people love it; 8 people are just confused by it; 3 people had something shinier at their previous job, 2 guys are MIA & of course, 1 guy hates it because he has a better idea."

Eric,

Thanks for your comments.....we are beta testing a new addition to our showroom process right now and elected to solicit volunteers from our veterans to be the test pilots. You guessed it, 1 guy who hates everything....no wait 2 guys who hate everything, 2 guys that have made big strides in their technology game and 1 who's more "up to give it a try" always.

Tough to get anything rolling in big ways and without salespeople and middle management on board nothing flies.

 

[Darrin Smith]

Great post Craig and as the Northeast Regional manager for Automotive Computer Services, and former dealer kid (well always a dealer kid, graduate of the NADA academy, grew up living Joe Verde until Dad sold the store).

You (and Joe P.) are spot on with a dealer designed, not platform down design system to make technology easier. Automotive Computer Services has always been a Windows based DMS solution which as the industry has migrated beyond green screens, has become a much more embraced platform. We are a small company with approximately 400 dealers on our system. We typically replace Reynolds and ADP systems and we are privately owned with the one goal in mind of customer satisfaction. Many of our staff have dealership experience but many are also programmers and thus our best ideas come from dealers to make things more simple to use. Indexed help embedded in the ACS system, 100 support staff in our headquarters, free web training scheduled each month and available on demand, on site training available with low cost, and we continually improve. Over the past 3 years we've rewritten three core modules and provided about 900 dealer requested enhancements because they were things that would make their lives easier. Are we perfect? Not yet... we're finishing up our Toyota DCS integration for next year... then we'll be closer but as a small technology vendor we really do our best to keep it simple stupid. Point and click, real english statements, full MS Office integration, a built in CRM that while simple, it has horsepower, easy to learn.. and yes I'm self promoting too much; but as I once sat on your side of the desk with ADP and Arkona as our DMS' during my time with Dad, it took a special company for me to work for. Automotive Computer Services is that company. www.acsaccess.com Thanks again for the post.

 

[Craig Belowski]

Darrin,

Wow, thanks for the pitch....well not really sorry.

I guess although I agree with Uncle Joe on the CRM rant, I wasn't really looking for new vendors or trying to pick on any one item CRM,DMS or otherwise. For me this was about the blame on salespeople that goes down for not "getting it" while all the while they are the first connection to the customers that pay most of our bills either directly or indirectly and that they are often the last people consulted in adding technology or features to technology for selling cars.

Speaking of rants.....I didn't write this and Jeff didn't include my Linkedin link so I could be bombarded with generic request from vendors claiming to be my "friend".....sorry if I didn't add you, maybe next time hit me with a why we should be connected....please

 

[Darrin Smith]

Check. I agree our front line people (sales, cashiers, advisers) take the brunt of the blame when something doesn't work (i.e. sales training seminar, new CRM, getting them all hooked up with blackberries etc..). Again. Sorry for the prior pitch. I would like to throw out a thought; Sales people, cashiers, and advisers (sometimes) have the least amount of shelf life in many stores. While the "green pea" at my dad's store had been with us 5 years and is still there today, there are many stores with the revolving door. Probably the biggest reason they often are not included in technology decisions. We can do everything we can to train, support, re-train, and provide requested enhancements... but if vendors are having to train new staff each and every time, where do we start? If dealers do their best in keeping their face to face staff, there would certainly be more valuable input for technology advances and time for said staff to have the opportunity to learn it.

 

[Stan Sher (blog)]

You know I think you are one of kind in your position. I never met a GSM on your level in the digital aspect of the business.

 

[Shawn Morse (blog)]

Craig I like the post. Having been on both the dealership and vendor side I really believe that ongoing training is vital to the success of the sales team at any dealership. The market changes so quickly and the technology that is developed to support the automotive retail industry (CRM, ILM, Websites, Inventory Management, etc..)changes every day.

I believe that every vendor needs to ask their customers what they need to do in order to make the systems they sell better and easier to use. The best companies in this arena base updates and improvements on customer input, after all it is the people in the dealerships that know what they need to operate more effectively and efficiently and it is our job as vendors to supply an end product (UI) that helps accomplish those results.

It is equally important to have interactive training, be it in-store or web based, accessible and available to dealership staff. What good are updates to a CRM if the end users don't know how to take advantage of them?

The timing of this post is interesting as I have several dealers that I work with that have recently made it mandatory for everyone in the organization to take a certain amount of training and testing on the systems they have in place in order to become "certified". While these dealerships have just recently implemented these requirements the early results are very encouraging. There has been an increase in overall usage, data input is much more accurate, and time spent using the system to prospect has increased.