Rotating the workforce between jobs through cross-training them, can add great value to a business, especially for those involved in automotive sales. According to Jeff Lupient Wife, cross-training enables the workers to look at the bigger picture by understanding how their organization or departments work. Although, adopting interdepartmental cross-training is fairly a complex process, intra-departmental cross-training among more than one department like sales and F & I can work magically to escalate departmental collaboration making a business thrive. This is because, when it comes to closing a sales deal quickly and smartly– the activities of sales and the F & I team need to go hand in hand.
So, rather than letting them work in isolation which leads to workplace silos consider implementing cross-training to make the workforce more adaptable to work in changing circumstances. This helps in cost control, brings agility in sales deals, and boosts customer experience. The outcome is satisfied customers, higher employee morale, enhanced sales, higher productivity, and increased profitability.
After becoming the interim GM at his money-losing family-owned automotive business, Minneapolis Jeff Lupient introduced cross-training to boost internal teamwork between the sales and F&I team members and make the business profitably running. Some of the primary reasons that businesses should implement cross-training in the workplace are
- Once employees are cross-trained, they become more adaptable to play roles of another employee, belonging to a different department, when on leave due to falling sick or going on long-term leave. This brings flexibility in scheduling and thereby helps avoid employee burnout. This also helps the team to work more efficiently during the peak seasons like Christmas, New Year, and other Festive months or Special offer periods.
- Making employees comprehend the full picture of the sales and F&I process or sales and marketing process lowers the chances of mistakes which are often caused due to excess burnout. As Jeff Lupient Wife says, cross-training not only opens a space for workers towards their personal development but professional development as well. The training course let them understand the common challenges experienced by each team and how to deal with them. This encourages them to share personal viewpoints and knowledge and thereby helps in solving problems more efficiently. This leads to higher efficiency, increased productivity, as well as fewer mistakes during the operation.
- Organizations often experience a lack of collaboration since they require people to perform their jobs in isolation. Thankfully, the approach of cross-training teaches people to work on a rotational basis making them flexible to work in different roles. Thus, it removes the common roadblocks that hinder collaboration. Once trained, two different teams can coordinate seamlessly according to their needs and this fosters a greater collaboration.
- The cross-training program aims to develop employee exposure to gain knowledge of jobs that are traditionally done by an associate. They become familiar with working with one or more different teams and thereby become seasoned to play different roles. This strengthens their memory and capability to withstand the pressure of multitasking and thereby helps the team reach a strict deadline for a project. Moreover, as they get exposure to areas that they possibly were not familiar with before, this helps them develop their cognitive skill to make better decisions in their personal and professional life.
To conclude, when it comes to customer satisfaction, adopting cross-training at the workplace enables businesses to optimize customer experience due to the efficiency of employees to cater to their concerns and needs seamlessly and promptly.
