Getting EV ready – Complementing your Manufacturer training; gaining competence and confidence for your dealership staff

Are you and your dealership staff ready for the interrogation by electric savvy customers?

Picture the scene, it’s 2020, you’re lounging on the sofa having 5 minutes to yourself. You quickly check your messages on WhatsApp before reaching for your iPad to spend a little time scrolling through Instagram and Snapchat. To be fair, you actually do some productive things as well; that Airbnb is now booked for your trip away this weekend and the Uber is booked to take you to the train station, you’ve loaded up the Revolut card with local currency. Now time for that run, you grab your Fitbit, make sure the 4G is enabled and off you go…

All seems fairly normal? Well 15 years ago in 2005 none of these things would be possible. None of the things mentioned existed!

So let’s move forward 15 years to present day. You pull up at the Car Showroom, it’s time to change your car. Perhaps that new model you’ve had your eye on will be just about in your price budget. The helpful Sales Executive takes the time to show you around the car, explaining features, opening doors, the boot and the bonnet. What! Hang on, where’s the engine? Well here’s the reality! In 2035, that’s just 15 years away, the new car you buy won’t have an engine. It won’t be petrol, it won’t be diesel and believe it or not it won’t even be a hybrid. It will be fully electric. Yep, powered by a battery and a motor!

The electric car market is growing rapidly, with more than 301,000 models on UK roads at the end of May 2020. The most recent set of figures from the SMMT shows that plug-in models made up 16% of total UK new car registrations with pure electric accounting for 12%.

More than 36,000 plug-in vehicles have been sold in 2020 (to May) of which 22,000 are pure electric.

Pre lockdown, the number of customer visits to a dealership to purchase was a talking point with average visits differing from brand to brand and geography specific. Recently however it has been reported that at one premium brand dealership, 68 orders were taken in the month of June and 82% of them were pure online purchases! These numbers represent a confidence in the product, the range and the specifications that the public are comfortable researching on line and then taking the final decision to purchase online. It could be argued that the current role of the salesperson is becoming obsolete.

With a widespread growing range of EV products on offer, the public will possibly revert to older style dealership visits, choosing to turn to the salesperson as the point of expertise, confidence and guidance. There will be a need to test drive, gain reassurance that this vehicle will give them exactly what they need. The knowledge levels of the sales staff will dictate the purchase/sale of the vehicle. It will no longer be a feature dump – most vehicles these days offer very similar specification levels.

Product, features and benefits are important, however empathy, listening, questioning and qualification, confidence, reassurance and knowledge of the wider EV challenges, pros, cons, laws, tariffs, grants, tax breaks etc. will be searched out by the buying public. If you are not 100% sure that your staff are able to do this, then these are potential lost opportunities and sales. Someone in a dealership somewhere else is going to know this – you had better make sure it is you!

Having an EV training tool to meet the demands of the savvy customer is needed, or indeed one to help the confused customer feel at ease with the whole EV buying process. At OSCAR LEARNING we have developed an online skill and competence system that ensures confidence and know-how are embedded into your front-line teams; anyone who interacts with a customer will potentially benefit from sales and satisfied EV customers.

It’s quite unusual to be able to measure what your front-line staff know and don’t know when it comes to Electric Vehicles. The great thing about OSCAR is that it imparts increasing levels of knowledge from basic to complex (depending on the role), it provides a manager with weekly tests to quiz teams and use as a reference library, rewards your dealership in engagement; and gives you detailed insights from regular video mystery shops.

On the Webinar you will understand how the OSCAR tool rewards, builds confidence, know-how and skills. It supports and enhances your Manufacturer specific EV training in short sharp bite-sized learning which takes less than 2-minutes a day, and all for the price of a cup of coffee a week.

A lot can change in 15 years. We are moving at a rapid pace towards 2035 (in the UK you will not be able to purchase a brand-new petrol or diesel car). 2050 may seem a long way off, however the UK, and potentially the planet, WILL be without the Internal Combustion Engine in cars of any age by this date. Wouldn’t you want to be sure that you are on the path for success and ahead of the field, that the skills needed were solidly embedded in your dealership and that you were just ‘topping up’ the knowledge – rather than learning the ins and out of Electrification on a ‘catch up’ basis. All of the benefits mentioned here are there for the taking – you just need to make the first step – it’s easy and OSCAR is here to make it even easier for you.