Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM FEBRUARY 2023 64 S E R V I C E D E P A R T M E N T M any dealers think that their front-line technicians are just an expense and that their only function is to fix products that the customers are having a problem with. How many of us take the time to think about how we can better utilize our front-line employees? Front-line technicians are a highly valuable asset for you, the dealer. Properly trained, the customer-facing technician is your very best salesperson and a goodwill ambassador for your company. We all know that our technicians should be properly trained and certified (MCAP) in the mechanics and technical end of the products they work on; and as dealers, we spend many dollars providing that training. Without continued technical education, technicians will quickly fall behind and become inept at repairing products they are unfamiliar with. Today's products are highly technical and feature-laden. The demands on the sales staff to understand the features and communi- cate their use at the point of sale are exceptionally challenging. What happens when the technicians are asked to explain a particular feature to a customer during a service call? They will likely get it wrong, unless they've been trained in the art of the sale. Misinformation will cause the customer to question the honesty of the salesperson and/or the credibility of the technician. In either case, the result is that you're faced with an unhappy customer – a scenario none of us like to deal with. How does sales training for your technicians benefit your company? I have a very small company with two showrooms and 10 service technicians. I was confused as to how we could make a market with a particular manufacturer without a great deal of expensive advertising. After brainstorming with my tech team, I found out that when they were faced with recommending a new product, they would always defer to the manufacturer's machine they were most familiar with. Armed with that information, I called the manufacturer's sales representative and requested sales training for my tech team. The week after the training, we sold four of the targeted products. Keep in mind that the average technician visits eight customers every day. Multiply the number of technicians you have by eight and that's the potential number of customers your tech team will have the opportunity to interact with in a single day. Your techs see more customers in a day than your sales staff! So why not make your techs sales professionals? And don't forget to have fun in the process. Our sales training for our techs happens on Friday mornings with coffee and bagels supplied by the manufacturer's sales reps. We choose a product that we'd like to target and let the manufacturer's sales rep teach our techs about its features and some of the smooth ways to present them. Some manufacturers even offer programs that enable the technician to own the product at a reduced cost as an incentive to sell their product. Truth be told, there's a huge difference between understanding the technical end of the appliance and understanding its features and benefits. Technicians don't receive any sales training at the manufacturer's technical seminars – the technical training is dedicated to teaching the techs to troubleshoot and repair malfunctions; and the manufacturer's technical training seminars want to avoid the hype that's common at sales training seminars. Skillful training on how to compare the features and their benefits across brand lines enables the technician to guide a prospective buyer confidently to the product that will best fit their needs – and then guide them back to your store to make the purchase. This type of interaction between the technician and consumer solidifies your company's value to your customers and breeds customer loyalty. Customer loyalty makes it difficult to shop anywhere but at your store. Whether you have one or fifty technicians, creating a partnership team with your techs will directly reflect on your cost of doing business and your bottom line. WHAT GOOD ARE TECHNICIANS? RO Ralph E. Wolff, MCAP, CSM Industry Relations, PSA

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