Virtual Auto Dealer Maintenance Plan Training During COVID-19 | MarketSource Heroes
MarketSource Develops Virtual Training for Auto Dealer Maintenance Plans Despite COVID-19 Shutdown
As the pandemic threatened lives as well as people’s livelihood, MarketSource instituted a leading-edge virtual sales training academy for a major American automotive manufacturer. Sales of maintenance contracts have increased and the manufacturer sees continually improving results.
Lisa Sabo, the client’s Director of Extended Service Business, tells the story: “The relationship between us and MarketSource really strengthened as a result of the pandemic. I think it gave both teams some downtime for revisiting some programs that we’ve had in the past and looking for opportunities to do things differently and better in the future.
“The team’s work on the virtual training academy was huge. A lot of time was spent on perfecting and bringing that training program up to date so that now I think it’s one of the best-in-class training programs that you can find in the business. It’s a huge accomplishment for the team and something that was necessary, but sometimes hard to find the time to do when the business is continuing to run, and everybody is torn into a different direction.
“The team spent a lot of time during the early stages of the pandemic working on how we could provide a very prescriptive approach to encourage dealers to [use incentives] to forward the sale of maintenance plans. It’s really the first time we’ve taken such a very detailed modular type of approach to changing a process in a dealership in that way.
“The successes were huge. To me, this is just a great example of how we work together so well to create so many successes. And I feel that this is just the beginning. We’ve learned a lot how to do business, maybe a little bit differently than we’ve done it in the past. And we will benefit from any future successes as a result.”
Congratulations to District Manager Jim Howard and his entire team for earning one of our 2020 MarketSource Hero Awards. Thanks to empowering our client through strong Relationships—a MarketSource corporate value—the client was able to develop a successful virtual training program that has resulted in incremental increases in sales of maintenance contracts.