Companies that rely on partner networks to sell, service and support their products frequently view their network through a single lens — whether or not the product is moving, and how much. While sales are essential, there are some critical questions you should be asking:
- Are we retaining our customers?
- Are we featuring our products in all aspects of our business sales, service and parts?
- Are we providing a high-quality service to those customers?
If your company isn't providing high-quality service to your customers, it stands to reason that you won't retain those customers. You may move products, but if you aren’t also selling parts and services, you’re hurting your business.
Training as a Revenue Driver
A Network Manager responsible for network performance, sales, and service can do more to drive a partner network 's revenue by focusing on one critical influence: Training.
Training can bolster teams that need to move more units, sell more parts, and achieve high performance in many areas.
Let's say you have a product that isn’t the first product line a dealership sells. What do you need to do to be recognized more often as a first option or at least the second option? Often, it's not the quality of the product you're offering that changes your position, it's the training and support you provide the network partners that will improve your position in that ranking.
When you can correlate improved partner performance to the training you provide to the network, you have a strategic advantage that’s invaluable to your management team. And your partners now have highly skilled teams that naturally have higher confidence in you as a provider — and in your dependability and performance beyond the product itself.
When combined and executed effectively, your overall network performance will improve organically, and your partners will naturally seek to move beyond being an “effective network member” to being a “preferred network member.”
It's just as vital that the dealer network manager firmly believes that training is a value-added opportunity to help you move the needle and improve the relationship with providers.
Here's why this mindset is so critical: If a dealer network manager doesn't view training as helpful at all and sees it as little more than a "got to do it, it's mandatory" exercise, a large training program won’t be embraced on a large scale. After all, if the network manager doesn’t buy into the concept of training providing a more highly skilled team - thereby lifting the company up to be seen as consistently outstanding, why should anyone else buy into it?
Connecting the Dots from Pain to Performance
Here’s a practical and straightforward approach to convey the power of training, tools and having a superior LMS that our team at LatitudeLearning takes.
For example, we may be told, "Our network is suffering. Numbers are down. We're not getting the right customers or the parts we want in a timely fashion."
What we might say in response to that challenge: “Clearly, you understand what it means to be an effective member. To help round out your skill set, we believe there are specific tools you need, training your staff should take, and a strong decision on who should be retained due to their contributions up to this point.
Once your LMS program is fully implemented, we can prove that a dealership with training will outperform a dealership that isn't trained or compliant.”
If you make that commitment, you're going to have better returns. In turn, you're going to sell more items, including parts. You'll have returning customers too, and you’ll know how to manage them.
Training Is Not Just a Cost Center
Training can be an enabler in improving your network.
When you begin converting an LMS into a value-added model, it becomes easier to transform it into a profit center. We can show value at the dealership level and value to the network to deliver training – training they should pay for. This can be done in a one-on-one format, a course, or added to the parts budget annually.
Not only can you approach the type of training program you are offering to the dealer network as a value-added provider, but you may also be able to discuss being reimbursed for the service you are contributing to the network as well.
At LatitudeLearning, we think about training as a profit center – which is a perspective that many LMS providers simply don't have. For more insights related to LMS like this, subscribe to our blog.
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