Why Real Training Pays Back 10X

Training should be entertaining 0:00

Steve Shaw: Welcome back to Fixed Ops Focus. I can't believe another month is passing us by. Dave Rogers, what's on your mind tonight?

Dave Rogers: There are five days left until the end of May. To me, we're almost in June, half the year. It's crazy, isn't it?

Steve Shaw: It's amazing. This year is flying by. We are pushing it, man.

Dave Rogers: What have we got coming up on June 5th?

Steve Shaw: June 5th, Fixed Ops Focus Streaming Live on Fridays. If you join us on Fridays, you can chat with us, ask us questions and talk to our super-duper vendor partner. You're going to love the conversations with our vendor partner, as well as some amazing guests we have lined up. I'm excited about some of these guys coming in to talk with us. I've been holding back a little bit, saving some of the best for our live sessions. So that's pretty exciting stuff.

Dave Rogers: You have to be the podcast teaser. I like it.

Steve Shaw: I do that in training. Training is an art as well. When I did my all-day sessions, I looked at it like a TV show. We've got to take a break at ten o'clock or whatever, so you've got to have a cliffhanger. You've got to leave them with something to think about, so they have a discussion down the hallway. When they go out to lunch, we've got to have a cliffhanger so they come back. Training has to be entertaining. I love it.

Dave Rogers: That's great. I never thought about that. I always came back after lunch because I thought I was supposed to, not because you teased me.

Steve Shaw: If you sign the check-in sheet, you've gotten credit. So I've got to give you a reason to come back after lunch.

Time, micro-learning and spaced repetition 2:11

Dave Rogers: So let's stay on the subject of training, a subject near and dear to your heart. We've talked about it before in bits and pieces, and I think the rest of the world knows it's difficult to set aside time to train. What do you see out there? What are the biggest hurdles and obstacles dealerships are facing, in your experience?

Steve Shaw: Well, I think you said it best. It's time. I could get on my high horse and say we should train, and I know there's never a good time to train, so find time. But there's reality in the stores. Time constraints are real. There are all kinds of different ways of learning now. You get a guy on the drive with you, great. You send him to a session. I used to do six-hour training sessions, and now we do 30-minute training sessions right at the lunch hour. Things are migrating to micro-learning, all the way down. When I first started, it was two-minute quizzes. Now it's 30 seconds or less.

You've got to ask yourself, though, is it really effective? Out of all of those things, is micro-learning effective? Are webinars effective? Is in-person training? I think each one has merit. And I really believe that we as an organization have to carve out time. You've said many times that there has to be 40 hours of training a year for people. The real world outside the car business does 60, 70, 80 hours. They do a lot more than we do. It's a different business and a different model, but all of our dealers want to be successful. I've never talked to a GM or dealer who says, "I don't want to train my people." It's how do we do it, and what's the most effective tool?

Having a guy standing side by side with you is probably the most effective, but what are they going to teach? The service advisor is working with somebody, so then they have to come off the drive for a class, or be given some instruction, whether in a seminar or a webinar. And then I think you use micro-learning as sustainment, or follow-up. I've gone through the webinar, I've gone through the on-the-drive training, I've gone through the classroom, and now my trainer's not coming back for one, two, three, six months. So now micro-learning is the reinforcement.

But the one thing I think is a fallacy, and I'd say it to anybody, is thinking someone's going to learn how to overcome an objection because you gave them a 15- to 30-second micro-learning exam, even every day. They're not learning that. Spaced repetition is how people learn. You have to give them a tool and allow them to practice it, and practice it and practice it, and then come back and reinforce it. I may be way down my own rabbit hole right now. I've been training certain auto groups, yours for one, for years. I've been training now for close to 15 years, if not longer. I've got accounts I'm still working with, and we still do quarterly training. I promise you we're still talking about the same things 15 years later that we talked about on day one. And those are the dealers that are successful.

Dave Rogers: Fundamentals.

Rick's perfect role play 6:28

Dave Rogers: I went to a training class a couple of weeks ago with one of my service managers. It was advisor training, and one of my owners said, "You guys should go check it out and see what they're teaching our people." It was a Hyundai advisor training class. The guy did a good job. I can't knock him, and a lot of the people in the class got something out of it. And I was amazed. My service manager was role-playing with the instructor, and I'm telling you, Rick, shout-out to Rick, he might be listening to this, answered his role plays textbook perfect. It couldn't have been any better. Every single one he did was textbook perfect.

So the next day I called him up and said, "Rick, that was amazing what you did. Have you ever bothered to show your advisors that same thing?" "What do you mean?" "We always talk about T.O.-ing deals and all that. Have you ever just taken the RO from them, brought it into the office and shown them how you do it? Because you did the phone role playing and everything else." And he said, "No, I've never done it before." I said, "But you're so good." So the next day he did it. Of course, he sends me a text later in the day: he sold like three sets of tires and a bunch of everything else. And I started laughing. He was away last week, so I'm sure if I check with him this week, he probably hasn't done it again.

But I do think there's something to that role playing, to showing the advisor. Take the RO from them and bring them along with you, almost like a trainee at a restaurant, so they can watch you in action. I'm just not sure a lot of people out there have the confidence to do it. It's not always the easiest thing to do.

Tell, show, do, review 8:17

Steve Shaw: And I don't even care if you're a brand-new manager who came from up front, or you came in a different way. Maybe you're a technician and now you're the manager. You talk to GMs about this all the time too: I'd look at the guy learning right next to me and have enough guts to go out there and practice right alongside him. We could learn together. "Hey, let's learn this together. Even if neither one of us is great at it, we can practice."

There's an approach called tell, show, do, review. The instructor told you what he wanted done, then he probably demonstrated how it should work. Then you, the associate, do it, and then we review it together. And that's a circle. We review it, we talk about it, I show you how to do it again, you do it, we review, and we just keep doing it over and over again. Some people try to make tell, show, do, review more complicated, but it's really just those things. And if you practice that over and over for 15 years, you'll probably become an expert at it at some point in life.

I promise you, 15 years ago, leaving the role of a fixed ops manager and getting into training, I did not know how to overcome objections. I didn't have a formal approach. I could talk to people, figure out what was wrong and come up with a solution. But I didn't have a formal approach. I remember being in a class with a very large auto group. I was a contract trainer for them, and I was with a GM, a great guy, up in Maryland, and we were doing the overcoming objections approach. AutoNation had the five A's: acknowledge, align, ask, answer and agree.

We were kidding around while practicing the five A's, and I asked him, "Do you ever do it on your wife?" He goes, "No. My wife is like, 'Don't pull that car dealer stuff on me.'" And I was sort of chuckling, because I was new at it as well. But then I had to learn it. I had to internalize it. I had to work for it, and I understood it. And then we created our own approach called LEAD: listen, show empathy, ask questions and determine a solution, as a takeoff on the five A's. There are a bunch of them out there. There's LAST: listen, apologize, something, something. There's feel, felt, found. And for the most part, if you're good at it, you're good at it. These are just a structured way of doing it.

But I had to learn it, and then all of a sudden I realized, "I get it. It's in me." So when people would give me an objection: listen, restate. How do I show empathy? What questions do I ask? How do I end up determining that solution? That's the practice. A guy like you would read the warranty manual to learn something. I was fascinated with human behavior, so I studied that. But it goes back to what you were saying about Rick. He learned it, and then what did he do with it?

Who reinforces it when they get back to the store 11:52

Steve Shaw: I say this to people: come to class. I'd love to have you in class. I'll sell out seats in my seminars, 25, 50, 100 people or more. But who's going to reinforce it when they get back to the store? I told them, I showed them, they practiced it, but nobody's reviewing with them, so they don't get the refinement they need when they get back. When I do a big seminar for an auto group like yours, I immediately try to get one of my trainers on the drive afterward, because they've got to go practice it, and somebody needs to hold their hand and guide them and make sure they're doing it the right way. Or they're going to leave with a new tool and use it the wrong way. So the tell, show, do, review approach is extremely important. I don't care if you're perfect at it, like Rick. It's just being out there and reinforcing it with those guys.

Dave Rogers: I agree a hundred percent. One of the biggest things I've noticed, and I've been saying this for probably ten, fifteen years now, is that Google, or Yahoo, or Bing, whatever it is, has gotten everybody to the point where they don't need to know anything until they want to know it, and then they Google it. AI is going to make that a little worse, I think, because the answers you get from AI are really, really good. And I think this is the challenge for what you do and what I do: nobody wants to know anything until they need to know it. They're not students of the game. Nobody wants to hone their craft.

And I don't care if it's a twenty-year-old kid or a forty-year-old adult, because everybody's been brainwashed by Google. I've said for years, if Google charged five dollars every time you searched something, people might go back to learning things, reading books and investing in themselves. These answers are free. They don't cost you anything, so there's no skin in the game, which drives me crazy. That's the battle you're up against. And you mentioned micro-learning. I just envision a thirty-second TikTok video teaching somebody. I guess that's what it's going to be, educational short bursts, because that's the attention span everybody has now. But how do you get people to really want it, invest in themselves and learn about their trade?

I went through the DISC training. I read the book Personality Plus. I wanted to learn that stuff. There was a Nissan class years ago called the five senses. People talk to you, and they're visual, or they're auditory, and you had to cue in on those. There was never a taste one. It wasn't like I licked the steering wheel. But it was listening to people. I went through all those classes, and they were all good. Little bits and pieces of each were good. I just don't think anyone has the attention span for this stuff anymore. That's the challenge.

Steve Shaw: I think what you're talking about is VAK: visual, auditory, kinesthetic. That's neuro-linguistic programming. I love NLP. I'm a master practitioner of NLP, and I studied under the master, Paul Webb. A lot of people in sales know Paul Webb, the Mercedes trainer.

Dave Rogers: He did training for Penske. When I was with Penske, he was one of the trainers.

Steve Shaw: Paul's a great dude. It's hilarious. I ran into some people the other day who asked, "Is that NLP? Where'd you learn it?" And we got to talk about Paul. Everybody in the Mercedes world knows Paul, and the Penske world knows Paul. In fact, Paul's out riding his bicycle around the United States right now, so kudos to Paul. You'll probably catch him in your state. He would teach visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and it's amazing stuff.

Micro-learning and process evaporation 16:21

Steve Shaw: So now we know VAK, we know DISC, we know the five senses, we know all of this. But who's applying those principles anymore? Even overcoming objections is a lost art. From our perspective, I like the idea of micro-learning, but how do you get it to stick? I think you have to have a hybrid model, and that's really where we've been going lately: not just online, not just in-store, not just a seminar, but a hybrid of everything. I'll be honest, I fought micro-learning for a long, long time, and we're finally going to start rolling out micro-learning through our university at the end of '26 into '27. It's gotten to the point where you have to have it. But it's a sustainment tool. I've learned it, I've practiced it, and now I'm not going to see my trainer, so I use this myself to sustain it so I remember it.

That's a big thing with training. We always called it process evaporation. I can come into your store and you'll see two tenths, three tenths, whatever dollars, but over time it fades out. Honestly, I think that's where dealers get heartburn, because there's nobody there holding people accountable. When I was young, I did a seminar for a very large auto group, and six months later I ran into the vice president of that auto group at a convention. He said, "Yeah, I remember you, Steve. I should have given my money to charity." I said, "You're right. You should have given your money to charity." He looked at me like, "What do you mean?" I said, "You sent fifty-plus people to a six-hour class and didn't do anything else. You didn't follow up, you didn't role-play and you didn't practice. So what was the point?"

We're very good at telling people: if you're not going to follow up, if there's no champion, if there's nobody going to be there, just give your money to charity. Please don't hire me. And don't hire anybody, because it doesn't matter if you hire me or one of the others. There's a handful of guys out there I think are pretty good, and then there are about a thousand who think they're good but aren't. If you're going to hire somebody with a good reputation who understands it and has a program they can teach, go for it. But go all in. Don't do it half-hearted: "I'll just bring Steve in for a weekend." Why? It's a waste of money.

Dave Rogers: One of the other things that popped into my head: I've had these conversations with almost all of my managers, and tried to have them with the GMs, and a lot of them just don't buy in. We have the virtual training, the university online. If you're not out there as a manager, a general manager or a parts manager, whoever it is, taking these same training tests, or at least becoming acquainted with them, how do you know anyone's doing what you're training them to do? That's the aggravating part for me. I haven't taken all the classes or all the quizzes, but I've skimmed through them and watched a lot of videos, and obviously I've gone to your classes. And I'm not in the store anymore, on the ground floor making things happen.

It's astonishing to me that these managers wouldn't want to do that. When I was a manager, I would go to the advisor classes. I wanted to know what they were learning, and if it was any good, I'd reinforce it. If it sucked, I'd tell them not to listen to it, and we'd go back to doing what we were doing. But you don't know unless you're out there. That's good management, great leadership, whatever term you want to use. It's fundamental to being a good manager. You don't send your people to a training class, not know what they're learning, and then expect them to come back programmed to do things differently. How do you even know it jibes with what you want in the store?

I think some people in the business are getting it. I've seen a lot of folks on podcasts talking about training and manuals. I don't know how much of it's BS and just clickbait to get some likes, and maybe they're monetizing it somehow. But I'd like to think we're trying to get better, and that people in this industry are trying to leave it a better place than they found it.

Process plus behavior: P + B = R³ 21:34

Steve Shaw: I know some guys who are very big into analytics training, looking at numbers and helping people through that, which I love. If I were a dealer and I was underperforming, I would absolutely look at my numbers first. I'd want to know where my numbers were and how to get them right. I was talking to a dealer today: "Do you have a menu to sell?" We're working with them. First things first, we've got to have something to sell. And before I can have something to sell, I've got to have it priced appropriately. I've got to set up my pricing strategy first. Once I have that, I look at my processes and decide whether they drive the behavior, like a walk-around. We look at our sales training as a process, and then we incorporate the final piece, which is behavior.

So you monetize it first, then you develop your processes to support it, and then you add in the behavior. We have a formula for it: P + B = R³. Process plus behavior gives you exponentially better results. One plus one is generally two, but if you do this in a methodical fashion, you can get exponentially better results. There has to be a well-thought-out plan. I'm more than happy to set up a university, do training and give people that stuff, and there will be some incremental improvement. There's no question about it. But the dealers who commit and go all in, with their seminars, their webinars, the on-site guy, and then add the micro-learning, you're going to see such a result.

A while ago, after a seminar, a guy told me, "I gave Steve Shaw X, and he gave me back ten times X." And the numbers were really more like thirty times X. They were exponential. All I did was give him the seminar, and then we followed up on the drive. But he followed up, followed up, followed up. They made it their culture, another word I hate to say. They made it who they were, and that's what drives it. We have one-off success stories, like a commercial: "I went to class and doubled my income." Great. That's the one percent, or two or three percent, and it can happen. But the majority of people will see a little bit of improvement, and evaporation is going to happen unless there's somebody who's a champion. The end-all, be-all is that accountability piece: the guy or woman who's accountable when it's all said and done.

Short staffing and 125% advisor turnover 24:50

Dave Rogers: You hit a point there. If you can track the KPIs, that's what most dealer principals and general managers are going to pay attention to. They don't want a slow walk or incremental improvement. They want to see exponential growth, and that's not necessarily the way it's going to be. If you have five advisors, they're not all going to be veteran advisors on the same level. It's just not going to happen. We talked about this before with the pitchers. You can have a number one pitcher, a number three pitcher and a number five pitcher. You can't expect the number five pitcher to go up against the other team's ace and win every time. Same thing with your advisors. We talked in another episode about career advisors. That's probably one of the reasons there aren't a lot of folks looking to make a career out of it: nobody's training and nobody's fixing it.

I'm always amazed when you look at retail operations, the big-box retailers, a hotel, the racetrack. There always seems to be a bazillion people there. You take these company trips to the Ritz, and they have all these people showing you how to get around. You wonder, how do they get them all trained and on the same page? Why can't we do it? Why can't we have that many people working for us to do these little things? I guess the margins in our business are different, or we're stuck in the 1980s and 1990s with our staffing requirements, our gross profit percentages and our expense percentages.

Steve Shaw: And then, of course, there's the world-famous consultant who comes in and says, "That's expensive. Cut that, cut that, cut that." That's where your instant result comes from. We cut it all out, we get an instant result to the bottom line, but then we don't build it back up for the future.

Dave Rogers: It's a shame, because after COVID, we're not overstaffed. You almost have to be overstaffed by a third now, because people call out. You've got vacations, you've got sick time, and it seems to be worse now than it was before COVID, which makes it more of a challenge. To piggyback on the training: if everyone is short-staffed and you're running and gunning, it's going to be really tough to get trained.

Steve Shaw: I hate to say it, and I'm not going to mention names, but I worked with a group of about thirty stores that had 125% turnover in the ranks of service advisors in a year. I'd only go there a few times, but they would always ask me, "What's new, what's new, what's new?" And I'd say, "What's your turnover?" They said 125%, and I said, "What I did last time is probably new." But why do we have turnover? We're not training our people. It's a vicious cycle. It's the car business, and I guess that's why we're here talking about it, because we have fun with it, and it's a great place to work.

Dave Rogers: Listen, I'm just as guilty as the next guy. I'm not perfect. The one nice thing about getting older is you get a little smarter. If you had the wisdom when you were young, it would be really great. I use the football analogy with advisors. If you have a rookie offensive line out in front of you all day long, always rookies, and they never get a chance to gel or do their jobs, you're always going to have a problem in the NFL. Same thing in service. If you have 125% advisor turnover, I can guarantee you've got poor CSI. Every time people come in, there's a different face. They're just not happy. Different processes, different personalities. So retaining employees is probably the best thing you can do for training. Keep people long enough to get them through the classes.

GM tip: sit in on the training yourself 29:16

Steve Shaw: Exactly. You'd probably better wrap us up on that note. I appreciate the training conversation tonight. Remember: P + B = R³. Dave, wrap us up with a GM tip of the day.

Dave Rogers: Wow, you just blew our minds with some math there, algebra. It's crazy. Listen, culture is part of the GM's job. Leadership is definitely the GM's job. You set the tone. If you want your people trained, you're going to have to set the example. And to go back to one of the points I made earlier, I think it's important that you at least attend some of the training, so you know what they're being taught and make sure it's compatible with your vision. Then you can reinforce it. When you see people aren't following the training, you can be up there saying, "Hey, that's not what we learned. That's not what we do." If you're not going to be in there, how do you know if they're doing the right stuff?

Steve Shaw: Awesome. It was good chatting with you. And by the way, look for us January 5th, Friday, at 4 p.m. Eastern. That's going to be Fixed Ops Focus Streaming Live on Fridays.

Dave Rogers: That would be June 5th, for those of you keeping score at home, not January 5th.

Steve Shaw: Did I not say that right? I need some training. June 5th at 4 p.m. Eastern time. Looking forward to seeing everybody next week, as well as live on June 5th for Fixed Ops Focus Streaming Live on Fridays. I'll chat with you later, Dave.

Dave Rogers: All right, have a good one.