AutoCanon's incremental training is designed to help sales teams retain skills

A new company hopes to help automotive dealership consultants retain more information with a new approach to sales training.

AutoCanon’s mission is to give salespeople and managers the skills they need to have happy customers and bring profit back to the dealership. Andrew Sardone, the co-founder of AutoCanon, said they take the whole road to the sale, break it into tiny slivers, and create 10-minute management classes for sales consultants.

“The sales consultant can then go ahead and learn a very valuable part of the sale, immediately execute that part, take a little quiz after they’re done watching the 10-minute video with their cup of coffee first thing in the morning,” Sardone said. “That information goes to the manager, so the manager knows where that sales person’s shortcomings are and how to help them. Our main goal is to build business professionals rather than having really high rates of turnover.”

AutoCanon is supported through internet- and ad-based sales.

“We took a look at it from a very different scope,” Sardone said. “If you take a salesperson and put them in a classroom for three hours, 85 percent of what goes in one ear goes out the other and the other 15 percent they might attempt to execute, but then it goes on the back burner.”

Sardone said what AutoCanon does is build a system that is along the same lines as watching a video on Facebook or Youtube.

“They can watch a quick video and their attention span hasn’t been spent and they can hopefully retain that little sliver that we gave them,” Sardone said. “Then, the next day, we give them another little sliver. Eventually, you have a green pea that was just hired to go on the showroom floor that is selling you a lot of cars for a fairly decent profit and you don’t have to babysit them.”

Sardone said it’s a way of increasing the customer experience and making the customer more comfortable.

“You’ve now got a sales consultant that will stay with you a nice long time and be a great employee and asset,” Sardone said. “Our goal is to help them build a great life for themselves as sales consultants and that these dealerships have people on the floor that are actually valuable.”

Sardone said skills training needs to be built into one's head and it needs to be drilled in there because a person can’t drop a skills bomb and expect any of it to be retained.

"We give you a little bit every day,” Sardone said.

AutoCanon has been in development for two years. They launched their program this year.

“Right now we have about 10 dealers that we’re working with,” Sardone said. “A lot of them are still in beta. We have all of the bugs out of the system, but we’re seeing from those stores the same things I mentioned. Their rates of turnover have dropped and their selling skills have gone up.”