Podcast

Welcome to the Deep dive.
We're the show that takes your source material, could be articles, research, even your own notes.
And we really dig in to find the key insights.
That's right.
We sift through it all so you don't have to.
And today we're tackling something that, well, keeps a lot of automotive dealership managers up at night.
I mean, it's this constant struggle, right?
Training sales teams, dealing with high turnover, just feeling completely swamped day to day.
Yeah, it's relentless.
And there's this weird paradox, isn't there?
Everyone knows training is absolutely critical.
You need it for a good sales team.
Totally mission critical, the bedrock even.
But then so often it kind of gets pushed aside or, you know, it's just not very good, ineffective.
You spend time, you spend money, and sometimes it feels like it just, poof, vanishes.
Right, the intention, it's almost always good.
Managers want their teams to do well.
They know they should be training.
But the actual doing of it, that's where it often falls apart, leads to frustration.
And honestly, it costs dealerships a lot of money, often in ways they don't even track.
Absolutely.
So we're going to unpack why that happens, why these challenges are so persistent.
And then the exciting part, we'll get into a really innovative solution that's changing things.
Yeah, exactly.
Our mission today is to introduce you to this platform.
It's called my corporate trainer, MCT for short.
We're going to peel back the layers, show you how it helps dealerships take their people from just, you know, good to really great.
And that directly hits the bottom line.
Sales volume, how often you close deals, and crucially, profitability.
It's about a real transformation, not just tiny tweaks.
You want to reveal the teaching style it uses, which is pretty innovative, and just how immersive it allows managers to get with their teams.
It's about unlocking that potential.
And our info for this deep dive, it comes straight from the source.
We've had discussions, seen demonstrations of the MCT platform itself.
So you're getting the inside scoop.
Not just a review, but a look at the philosophy, how it actually works, from the people behind it.
It's like a shortcut, really understanding.
A tool designed to fix some of these really deep rooted headaches in the car business.
Turning that we should train better into we are training better.
And here are the results.
Okay, so let's dig into that core issue first, the one that just jumped out from the sources, this idea of the untrained trainer.
And it's kind of Mind boggling when you think about it.
It really is.
Everyone agrees 100%. Training the team, developing people, that's a manager's job.
It's in the description.
Absolutely, in theory.
But then you ask the million dollar question, the one that cuts right to it.
Okay, hands up.
Who in this room has actually been trained on how to educate people, how to change human behavior effectively?
And the response is, well, it's telling, isn't it?
You ask a room full of dealership managers, experienced people, and.
And maybe, maybe a few hands go up, sometimes none.
Yeah, we saw examples like three people in a big room who'd had any formal training on how to teach or how to build a curriculum or run an effective adult learning session.
Some might have brushed up against it, maybe like GM school or something.
But even then it's often focused on their leadership skills, not necessarily on how to teach others.
Right.
It's genuinely weird.
This industry is so advanced in many ways.
Sales, tactics, tech on the floor.
But this absolutely critical role, the manager as trainer, it's almost left to chance.
We ask people to do things they haven't been taught how to do.
Think about it really changing someone's behavior so it sticks, so they consistently sell more, more often for more profit.
And making it engaging, fun even.
That's hard.
It requires real skill, pedagogy, psychology, knowing how to facilitate.
But managers are just sort of expected to have these skills like osmosis or something without the training themselves.
It's like a giving someone a scalpel after they watched a couple of YouTube videos.
You wouldn't to be the patient.
Exactly.
And the patient here is your dealership's profit, your team's potential.
Without that training on how to do this surgery of behavior, change the outcome, well, it's going to be hit or miss, mostly miss.
And that lack of foundational training for the trainers themselves, it just cascades down.
It leads directly to all these common problems you see when they try to run training sessions.
Like what?
What are the big ones?
Engagement and focus.
That's huge.
Sales teams often just tune out.
Maybe they're skeptical from bad training in the past.
Maybe their minds are just elsewhere.
If they're not engaged, they're not learning.
It's just noise happening to them, not for them.
Exactly.
And then there's just getting them in the room.
Attendance buy in.
Oh yes, the classic oh, got a customer right when training starts.
Right.
Sometimes it's legit, sure.
But often it signals that they just don't see the value in the training.
They don't Believe it'll help them sell more, make more commission.
So they prioritize what they think makes money right now, even if it's short sighted.
Managers end up trying to hold training off site just to guarantee bodies and seats.
That tells you something.
It really does.
And then there's the time factor.
Managers are just bombarded.
The sources use that word, bombarded.
They come in with a list of.
20 things to do and leave with 20 new things.
The best intentions for training just get swallowed by the daily chaos.
Who has time to sit down and actually write learning objectives or build a proper curriculum?
Designing good training is basically a full time job itself.
And most managers feel like they're already doing two or three jobs precisely.
Which leads straight into quality and consistency.
You can't just do training.
It has to be good training and.
It has to be regular, like exercising.
Right.
You don't get fit going to the gym once.
Nope, a one off session won't change deep seated habits.
You need that repetition embedded in the routine.
Which brings us back to those core questions managers wrestle with.
Are my people actually learning this?
And maybe more importantly, can they actually do this on the floor with a real customer?
Can they perform the behavior?
That's the million dollar question again.
And most traditional training in the car world, it fails those tests.
Why?
What does it usually look like?
Often it's just one person talking, everyone else listening.
Like a sales meeting, basically.
One source said managers can be kind of boring because they repeat the same stuff and people just mentally check out after 15 minutes.
So if you can't confidently say, yes, my team learned it and yes, they.
Can perform it, then the training isn't really doing its job.
It's just an obligation noise, not an investment.
And that failure, it has a huge measurable cost.
The link between bad training and high turnover, it's undeniable.
That statistic is just brutal.
Hire 10 people, maybe two to five are still there in six months, a.
50 to 80% failure rate.
And so much of that is blamed directly on poor training.
Think about the cost.
Recruiting, onboarding, training.
Then they leave.
Lost sales damage, morale, constant disruption.
It's like a wound bleeding cash that dealerships often don't even fully measure.
It goes way beyond just the recruitment ads too.
Team cohesion suffers, customer relationships get fractured.
It hits everything.
But when managers do become better trainers, when they have the right tools and methods, they become, as the source put it, more useful to the company.
How so?
They can set clear expectations.
They can hold people accountable because the training baseline is there.
Those tough performance Conversations become easier.
Ah, okay.
It shifts from you're not doing it right to we trained you on this.
We practiced this.
Let's figure out why it's not happening.
Exactly.
Without good training, you're just asking people to do stuff they're not prepared for.
That's frustrating for everybody.
Okay.
So we've painted a pretty grim picture of the challenges.
It feels like managers are stuck trying to fill a leaky bucket.
It can definitely feel that way.
But the sources point towards, well, a potential lifeboat.
This tool, my corporate trainer, mct.
Right.
It's designed specifically to tackle these exact problems, to fill those gaps.
It's pitched as giving managers a master's degree in education without having to go to school.
That's a bold claim.
It is, but the idea is it provides the structure, the content, the methodology that managers often lack the time or frankly, the training to create themselves.
So it removes the excuses or the reasons why good training doesn't happen.
Pretty much.
It takes the how to burden off the manager's shoulders and gives them a professional, proven framework so they can focus on, you know, selling cars and actually developing their people.
And the core of this framework, the educational engine driving it, is something called guided discovery.
That's the key.
It's not just random courses.
It's built on this powerful adult learning methodology developed by Les Shapiro, big name in training effectiveness.
Okay, and what's the focus of guided discovery?
It's all about actually changing human behavior.
Yeah.
Getting people involved, interacting, not just sitting there passively.
So it's designed to nail those two questions we keep coming back to.
Exactly.
Are they learning?
Yes.
Can they perform the behavior?
Yes.
Mct, through guided discovery, is built to ensure the answer is yes to both.
And how does it do that?
What's the principle?
It boils down to something simple but profound.
See it, hear it, see it, hear it, do it.
Okay.
Seeing and hearing, you know, watching videos, listening to explanations.
That's important.
The initial exposure.
But the real magic, the part that changes behavior and makes skills stick so you sell more cars.
Let me guess.
Do it.
Bingo.
The do it is critical.
It's not enough to know the script for an incoming call.
You have to practice it over and over till it's second nature.
Muscle memory.
That focus on active performance, actually doing the thing.
That's what makes MCT different.
Takes it beyond just listening.
Absolutely.
It moves training into active skill development, measurable development.
That's how you genuinely get people from good to great.
Okay.
So building on that, see it, hear it, do it, MCT offers this Immersive experience through three pillars of training.
That's right.
Three distinct ways.
It ensures people don't just passively absorb info, but actively learn, practice, and really master those crucial behaviors needed to sell more, more often for more profit.
What's the first pillar?
The first one tackles something that's just fundamentally unfair about a lot of traditional training.
It's the self study guide.
Okay, self study.
What's the purpose?
It lets salespeople learn new stuff, new behaviors, scripts, processes, at their own pace, on their own time, before they get thrown into a group roleplay.
Ah, so they don't feel put on the spot immediately.
Exactly.
How can you expect someone to nail an incoming call script if they haven't even seen it, heard it, practiced it privately first?
These guides give them that foundation, reduce that initial anxiety.
They come to group sessions prepared, not ambushed.
That makes sense.
How does it keep them accountable though, if they're doing it on their own?
Good question.
It builds it right in.
When you start a guide, boom.
It asks you to set a finish date.
It's like a little contract with yourself.
Simple but effective.
And crucially, MCT was designed to beat the cheating you see in old school learning management systems.
You know the stapler on the space bar to fast forward videos or people selling answers.
Yeah, I've heard stories.
MCT prevents that.
You have to engage, you have to interact, answer questions correctly to move forward.
No shortcuts.
It forces real engagement.
Then how are they structured really clearly?
You get course objectives up front.
There are different icons for different things, like PIP for role plays, notes, tasks, key tells or takeaways.
It's a structured path and feedback.
Immediate, color coded.
Green is great.
Yellow means partially right, Red means try again.
And you can't move on unless you score yellow or green.
You have to actually get it.
No faking it till you make it.
Nope.
And the real kicker, the really immersive part of self study is the AI powered role play.
PIP learning, AI role play.
Tell me more.
At the end of a self study module, you practice with an AI.
It acts as the customer.
It's incredibly realistic.
Low pressure, but it gives you objective scoring.
Objective scoring and feedback.
Yes, and this is key.
It gives detailed, unbiased reasons why you got scored that way on each specific point.
Imagine a salesperson thinks this greeting script is easy.
I do this all day, right?
I got this.
Then the AI scores them at like 12%. We heard that actual number from early tests.
And the AI explains why.
Maybe they missed a qualifying question.
Their tone was off.
They didn't actively listen.
It's like a perfect mirror showing tiny flaws you didn't know you had.
Wow, that sounds humbling.
It is, but it's powerful, Immediate, unvarnished feedback from an unbiased customer.
You learn fast, correct your mistakes and build real confidence because you're practicing safely.
And for the hotshots who think they.
Already know it all, there's a test out feature.
A much harder scenario to prove they've actually mastered it.
And managers are warned, don't be shocked if people fail miserably here.
It reveals the real skill gaps under pressure.
So it's a true reality check.
Transforms training from abstract to a real challenge.
Helps them get ready to close more deals.
Exactly.
That's pillar one.
Pillar two is the team practice guides.
This is the real bread and butter for daily use by managers.
Bread and butter.
Okay, what do these look like?
Short focus sessions, like 15, 20 minutes max.
They are literally just a role play on one specific behavior.
Handling an objection, part of the close, maybe a walk around step.
And managers are supposed to do lots of these?
Thousands.
Consistency, repetition.
That's how you ingrain habits.
These are designed for managers to lead interactive sessions.
Guide, don't lecture.
And how do they keep everyone engaged in these short bursts?
This is where the magic comes in.
His one source called it.
Everyone in the session actively scores the roleplay using a digital performance evaluation form, A P, E, F on their own device.
Everyone scores, not just the manager, everyone.
It drives 100% participation.
No one can check out.
It's like a shiny ball keeping everyone focused.
I remember the story about the owner betting $1,000.
Yeah, he bet the manager couldn't get 100% participation on a walk around training.
Lost the bet because the active scoring turns everyone from passive watchers into active participants.
Everyone's learning, everyone's involved.
Huge impact on getting skills ready for the floor.
Okay, so self study, team practice.
What's the third pillar?
The third is full classes.
Now these are different.
Much longer, more in depth.
Could be two hours, a full day, even multiple days.
So like onboarding or a deep dive into F and I.
Exactly.
Big foundational stuff.
Usually led by formal instructors or corporate trainers.
Not your daily manager huddle.
They're vital.
But the day to day skill refinement, that journey from good to great, that's happening mostly in those self study and team practice guides.
Got it.
So beyond the training content itself, MCT has tools for managers too, to make their lives easier.
Oh yeah.
A whole suite designed to make them more effective, more efficient, which obviously helps sales and profit.
First up, centralized personnel management.
Meaning easy adding and deactivating users.
Assigning role like you can designate one manager as the primary observer who scores count officially, keeps everything organized, streamlines the admin side.
Okay, that sounds useful.
What else?
The effortless scheduling calendar feature.
This is a massive time saver.
A GM can literally plan out an entire month of training for the whole dealership in like six or seven minutes.
An entire month in minutes?
Seriously?
Seriously.
No more scrambling in the morning trying to figure out what to teach.
It builds in that consistency everyone needs.
Plus you can assign sessions based on manager strengths.
Got a great closer.
They lead the closing practices.
Someone else nails the meet and greet, they handle that.
Maximizing expertise.
That's smart.
Makes the training more impactful.
Definitely.
But here's where it gets really, really powerful for driving immediate sales results.
Real time alerts through PIP call intelligence.
PIP call intelligence.
Okay, break that down.
It analyzes incoming sales calls from your phone system automatically.
It gives immediate feedback on how the call went, recaps yesterday's calls, even shares best practices from other stores.
Analyzing calls automatically, that's cool.
But they're real time alerts.
That's the game changer.
Managers can set up custom alerts, get an email or text instantly if a call scores below a certain level or.
And this is huge.
If an appointment isn't set instantly, how fast is instantly?
Instant?
Five minutes after the call ends.
It's basically real time intervention.
Wow.
So you could catch a potentially lost lead almost immediately.
Precisely.
Think about it.
Customer calls, salesperson fumbles.
No appointment set, Manager gets an alert.
Before that, customer calls the next dealership down the road.
That addresses a massive leak in the sales funnel.
Absolutely.
The philosophy is clear.
The best lead is the one on the phone right now.
Don't let them hang up without an appointment.
PIP call intelligence gives managers the visibility and speed to enforce that.
Convert more calls into visits, visits into sales.
And does it provide details on the call or just an alert?
Oh, it gives you a detailed log, call time, customer name, contact info, appointment status, who took the call.
And it provides a digital P E F performance evaluation form for that specific call showing what went right or wrong.
So you get targeted coaching points without having to listen to hours of calls.
Exactly.
Saves managers massive amounts of time.
Smarter work, not just harder work.
Actionable intelligence for coaching.
Rapid improvement.
That's incredibly powerful.
What about adapting the system?
Every dealership is a bit different.
That's where customization comes in.
The sources stress this.
Everything in this system is customizable.
Everything like what the P F criteria, the actual training content, the roleplay scenarios.
You can tailor it all to your dealership's specific process, your market, your needs.
Maybe you don't focus on trade ins initially for new hires, so you remove that from their P this.
You can adjust to the difficulty.
Yes.
It allows for scarestepping.
Start salespeople with simpler scenarios, simpler behaviors.
As they master those, you gradually introduce harder ones.
Basic greeting, then objection.
Handling, then active walk around, then complex negotiation.
It creates a clear, clear path from good to great for everyone.
Okay, customizable, measurable.
What's next for mct?
What's the future vision?
It's pretty exciting actually.
They're looking heavily into virtual and augmented.
Reality, VR and AR for training.
Yeah.
Imagine putting on glasses and you're in a virtual showroom or virtual customer's driveway, interacting with full size AI avatars that act as customers.
Whoa.
Total immersion.
Complete immersion.
Practicing sales meetings, service department scenarios like outbound calls.
The applications are basically unlimited, even beyond the car business.
It provides that super realistic safe space to perfect skills before you're live with a customer.
That's definitely looking ahead.
Okay, let's bring it back to the practical managers using this day to day.
You mentioned the four Cs for running those team practice sessions, right?
The four Cs of effective training.
This is the practical framework managers use for those 1520 minute role play sessions.
It's a simple structured approach to make sure every session hits the mark, drives behavior change and helps sell more cars.
Okay, see number one, construct the role play.
This is all about setting the stage correctly.
First pick your volunteer salesperson.
And this is key for the edge.
Have them leave the room.
Leaving a room so they don't hear the scenario beforehand prevents pre planning.
You want a genuine off the cuff performance like a real customer interaction.
Makes sense.
Then what?
Then the manager and the rest of the team create this scenario.
The case based on the P E F criteria you're working on.
Customer name, vehicle, trade in details, motivation, hot buttons, challenges.
Keeps everyone focused.
You can grab pre made cases from MCT or build one on the fly.
At a critical first step for the.
Manager, they must start the class in the MCT app before anyone else joins.
Otherwise people end up in separate sessions and the group learning aspect is lost.
Gotta get everyone in the same virtual room.
Okay, so construct the roleplay.
What's scene two?
Conduct the roleplay without interruption.
This is pure guided discovery principle.
Let the salesperson run through the entire scenario.
No jumping in, no correcting midstream, even.
If they're Struggling, floundering even.
Then let them experience it.
Learning often happens through self correction by feeling the impact of their own performance, good or bad, in a safe space while they're doing it, one person plays the customer.
Everyone else is observing and getting ready to score using their pef.
Active engagement for all.
Okay, no interruptions.
Then C number three must be calculate the score.
Now the measurement comes in.
Everyone who observed, especially the primary observer manager, uses the PEF in the app to score the performance against those specific.
Criteria using that two one narrow sister.
Exactly.
Two for met, one for partially met, zero for did not do and an A for not applicable.
Once everyone submits their scores.
Bang.
The system shows a matrix everyone's scores side by side.
So you instantly see where people agree or disagree on the performance.
Instantly highlights discrepancies, sparks discussion, provides that objective view.
Plus the AI's score and reasoning are often there too.
Adding another layer of unbiased feedback.
It's like having an impartial judge construct.
Conduct calculate what's the final C comment on the performance?
This is the crucial feedback phase.
It needs to be constructive, encouraging.
Often uses the benefit sandwich approach.
Benefit sandwich, Start positive, give the constructive criticism or area for improvement.
End positive keeps morale up and the order of feedback is vital.
Who goes first?
Always, always ask the salesperson who did the role play to evaluate themselves first.
Why?
Because they're usually harder on themselves anyway.
Maintain self esteem, makes them open to coaching smart.
Then who?
If you had someone playing a realistic customer, get their feedback next, what did it feel like from the customer's perspective?
Then open it to the group.
Use that scoring matrix.
Okay, Sarah, you gave a two on active listening, but John you gave a zero.
Let's talk about what you each saw.
So the manager isn't lecturing, they're guiding the discussion.
Precisely.
The goal is for the salespeople to do most of the talking.
Giving input, learning from each other fosters teamwork, deeper understanding.
The manager facilitates that discovery.
Now, to run these four Cs effectively, managers need certain skills themselves.
Right?
It's not just following steps.
Absolutely.
They need good communication skills to truly guide that discovery process.
First, preplanned questions.
Not just winging it?
No.
Strategic questions designed to focus the discussion on the learning objectives.
What do they do?
Well specifically on building rapport, what's one thing they could try next time to handle that price objection more smoothly gets the conversation started productively.
Okay, planned questions.
What else?
Probing questions.
These are more open ended things like tell me more about that or what made you choose that approach or even just a gesture inviting more detail.
They encourage deeper thinking.
Moving beyond simple answers helps people uncover their own insights.
Getting them to dig deeper themselves makes sense.
Then there's paraphrasing.
Simple, but so powerful.
The manager repeats back what they heard someone say in their own words.
So if I understand you correctly, you felt the main hesitation was X, is that right?
Shows you're listening, confirms understanding.
Exactly.
And clarifies the point for everyone.
Builds trust.
And finally, something often overlooked.
Body language and tone.
Huge impact.
The research cited suggests communications like 55% body language, 38% tone, only 7% words.
Wow, only 7% words.
Crazy, right?
So how a manager stands, their facial expression, their tone of voice, encouraging, supportive versus critical or dismissive.
It sets the entire mood.
Positive reinforcement through non verbals is critical for creating that safe space where people feel comfortable taking risks.
And learning that supportive environment is key to getting from good to great.
Okay, this all sounds great for improving skills, making training immersive.
But let's talk brass tacks.
The money.
How does this tie back to the dealership's bottom line?
That's always been the hard part with training.
Right?
Proving the roi.
The missing link.
Exactly.
Yeah, you knew training mattered, but could you prove it in dollars and cents?
Often felt like guesswork.
An act of faith.
So how does MCT solve that?
With PIP charts, Performance improvement planning charts.
The idea is MCT will let dealerships track key performance metrics.
Sales volume, closing ratios, gross profit, F and I numbers.
Even service metrics like hours per RO or effective labor rate.
All the critical numbers.
Right.
You plug these into the PIP charts to get a baseline.
Then you directly link those metrics to the specific training you're doing in mct.
Finally, a tangible, measurable connection between the training, the behavior change, and the financial results.
Real accountability for the training spend.
Can you give an example?
Did the sources mention one?
Yeah, a really compelling one.
About Trade Dragon, a big dealer group was consistently losing money on trades overalling.
Basically, often.
Because salespeople weren't trained well on evaluating trades or explaining the value.
A common problem.
So what did they do?
They used PIP charts to pinpoint the financial impact.
Then they used MCT to specifically train on one key behavior, the active.
Walk around.
Something many dealerships should do, but often don't do well or consistently.
They trained it, measured it.
And the Result?
In just 60 days, 60.
They went from losing an average of $600 per deal on trades to making an average of $600 per deal.
That's a $1,200 swing per car just from training one behavior and measuring it directly.
Linked $1,200 per transaction.
Clear quantifiable ROI from targeted measurable training.
It turned a hidden loss into a profit center fast.
That really demonstrates the power of connecting training to metrics.
And it's not a one time fix.
It creates this continuous improvement loop.
Train measure, train measure.
Identify issues with data like from pip.
Call intelligence, train on them with mct.
Measure the results with PIP charts.
Refine, repeat constant optimization.
Always pushing from good to great.
Selling more cars more often for more profit continuously.
That's the goal.
And while we've talked a lot about sales, the broader application is important too.
Right?
You mentioned service departments.
Yeah.
MCT is being developed for service training advisors on upselling, effectively improving CSI scores, boosting labor rates and potentially other areas too.
Any part of the dealership that needs better measurable training, which is probably most parts, imagine applying this across the entire.
Organization, transforming the whole operation from good to great.
That's the vision.
Okay, so let's wrap this deep dive up.
We've seen my corporate trainer as this, well, really comprehensive solution.
It finds the problems using data like with PIP call intelligence, Real time, unbiased.
Insights, tells you exactly where the leaks are, where help is needed and then.
It provides the fix.
Structured, engaging, super immersive and crucially measurable training.
Through those self study guides, the AI role plays the team practice sessions.
It moves beyond guesswork into actionable intelligence that helps sell more cars more often for more profit.
It gives managers the tools to be real educators.
Elevating people from good to great, building skills through practice, improving the value with.
Data, building that high performing, profitable team consistently.
So here's a final thought for you, our listeners, to consider.
If traditional training, with its inconsistencies and lack of measurement, often breeds confusion and turnover, what happens when you introduce a system like my corporate trainer, one that's unified, consistent, objectively measured?
How does that fundamentally shift the culture, the daily reality and the long term trajectory of a dealership?
Imagine knowing, really knowing, that your training efforts are directly translating into better performance, more sales, and a team that's genuinely moving from good to truly great.
Think about your own training right now.
Are you measuring behavior change?
Are you seeing that clear, quantifiable roi?
It's a big question and maybe the answer lies in making that transformation truly tangible.