What sales training needs and lacks
For some dealers, today’s OEM sales training looks like a fast-forward of the past: technology is evolving quickly and training, whether in-person, online, or through videos, is coming in hot.
According to one dealer, auto retailers are receiving the information almost as quickly as the OEMs. Dealers will also sometimes discover something related to the vehicle, technology, or its overall situation prior to the OEM and share that information with them.
“Training’s become very, very big in this industry, especially from the OEM perspective, and it’s been like that for a while now,” said Laura Zanchin, Principal and Executive Vice President of the Zanchin Automotive Group, in an interview with Canadian auto dealer.
“What I will say, in my humble opinion, is they are getting the information almost at the same speed we are. That’s how fast everything has escalated. It’s almost like (the OEMs) don’t even have a chance to digest what they’re getting before (they send it our way).”
Zanchin Automotive Group is based in Ontario and covers 19 different brands, including both luxury and non-luxury vehicles. Zanchin said sales training has become increasingly complicated and that salespeople need to keep on top of it. “It can become challenging, to say the least.”
She highlighted two areas that can help improve training on the dealer side: the first is having a general manager and sales manager who are driven and passionate about what they do.
“People don’t necessarily have experience; we lean a lot on personality, which allows us to have people from outside the sector sometimes, and to attract them to the automotive (industry).”
— Steve Beaulieu, Associate General Manager, Kia Québec
While OEM training covers the clinical aspect, Zanchin said it’s the day-to-day experience of the sales manager or general manager teaching a salesperson how to sell a vehicle that covers the other aspect. “It’s amazing how on a day-to-day level, those kinds of everyday experiences — that’s training.”
The other area Zanchin highlighted is ensuring salespeople drive the vehicles themselves, including electric vehicles, so that their excitement can be felt by the consumer.
Building passion
It’s a concept shared by Steve Chipman, President of the Birchwood Automotive Group dealerships, which sells nearly every brand, and has a sales academy.
“What used to happen in the world of domestic cars, and maybe Asian vehicles, is that you would have what’s called a ride and drive. You’d go somewhere in town, there was a racetrack … they’d set a course, you get to drive your car against another manufacturer’s car, and you’d get to talk to other people,” said Chipman. “Those types of events are less and less.”
He said the OEMs could do a better job with more hands-on training. And although Chipman is aware of how expensive this can be, he said it gives people passion. “When you talk to our luxury salespeople, what they say they really enjoy about the training is (going to a) track and (having the opportunity to) drive the car. And then they get passionate about the car.”
Some OEMs do conduct in-person events and training, though perhaps not to pre-pandemic levels. They also deliver more video libraries, of different product features, and have made them more readily accessible to salespeople. However, different people learn in different ways. And Chipman does not claim to know the best way forward, he believes a tactile experience is also important.
He said there are two types of buyers: the need buyer and the want buyer. The need buyer will drive anything. But for the want buyer, there is something about the vehicle they love. To be a salesperson, Chipman said you must be capable of dealing with the need buyer, but have the passion to deal with the want buyer.
“If you’re flat on your product, if you’re not enthused about your product, it’s very difficult to convince someone else that they should buy that product,” said Chipman. As an example, he said there is a vast amount of technical knowledge about electric vehicles, “but until you’ve driven an EV, you don’t really understand the driving sensation and how fast they can go.”
Sales training around EVs has increased, in terms of technical knowledge from the OEMs, and whatever training auto retailers can provide to their employees. But some dealers feel more is needed.
Next-level EV training
Kia Québec in Québec City has its own academy called L’Académie de la Force Kia that takes training to a whole new level. OEMs continue to provide training, but the dealership’s Associate General Manager Steve Beaulieu described creating a training centre that makes qualified personnel feel valued when they are recruited.

academiekia.ca
(Kia Québec falls under the umbrella of Force Kia, which brings together two other dealerships: Kia Ste-Foy and Kia Val-Bélair.)
“People don’t necessarily have experience; we lean a lot on personality, which allows us to have people from outside the sector sometimes, and to attract them to the automotive (industry),” said Beaulieu. “From there, we train them. Training takes up to a month. They have three weeks in class, plus an integration session.”
Beaulieu said they also have an electrical interpretation centre, where they explore everything electrical, including information about test drives, terminals, installations, and the electric circuit in Québec. And there are advisors available to inform and demystify EVs, allowing trainees to touch, learn about, and try the vehicles. (The academy’s tagline is: a unique college for practical training in real situations.)
Asked what trainees enjoy most about the academy, Beaulieu said they like that the training is concrete. They also like the teachers, the years of experience they bring with them, and the guaranteed job post-training.
Furthermore, he said they enjoy the change in routine: after doing more theoretical training for a week, they get to come to the dealership, see the situation in real life, and be in the environment. “They (also) have mini-internships, (and) days at the dealership where they put the theory to use so that they practice a little of what they learned. They meet the directors, and they also see a contact.”
Asked about the academy’s training in relation to other dealerships, Beaulieu said this particular structure doesn’t exist elsewhere. He said training in this market as a whole is very embryonic; it’s not structured. “For us, it’s because we (have) experience and we have strong growth. So we’ve looked into it a lot.”
It’s all relatively new too; Beaulieu said it’s a process that has been going on for at least three years, to structure the training at the level of sales advisors and sales managers — and that’s only the sales department. But trainees seem pleased, are paid and guaranteed a job at one of the three Force Kia dealerships, and the group has experienced strong growth.
For them, it’s a recipe for success.
