CarMax's Grand Opening Dress Rehearsal
April 01, 2008
By Sarah Boehle
You only have one chance to make a first impression, and at CarMax, the nation's largest used auto retailer, first impressions are everything.
"If you're a grocery store and you get it wrong with a customer, you can quickly fix the problem and win back a customer's good will," says CarMax Director of Sales Training Will McCann. "The auto industry is different. We only see our customers every three to four years. If we are a mess on the first day and don’t know what we're doing, they're more likely to write us off. We have to get it right the first time."
To make sure that they do, the company conducts a Grand Opening Skill Practice (GOSP) before each new CarMax store opens.
Launched approximately five years ago, around the same time that CarMax revved up its growth and began aggressively opening new stores, the two-day training program involves associates from every department in the new store and equips them with the practice they need to succeed with customers on day one. "It's like an enormous dress rehearsal," says McCann, "with all associates—sales, business office, purchasing, and service operations—playing their parts just the way they will when the store opens its doors."
During GOSP, sales consultants are paired up, with one in the sales role and the other in a customer role. A trainer provides specific identities for the "customers," including vehicle and option preferences, creditworthiness, and so forth. Then, customers walk in the door and are greeted by their assigned sales consultant, who guides them through the CarMax sales process. Customers take real test drives and sales consultants run actual credit applications (the system is set up in advance to generate simulated answers).
Meanwhile, other associates in the store play their role in the process, too. CarMax merchandising associates appraise real vehicles. Business office associates print up and deliver real paperwork, and the customer assistance representatives issue dealer tags and answer phone calls from sales consultants.
While all this is going on, CarMax's regional sales trainers and the store's managers are tracking "gotchas"—problems that need to be addressed prior to the real grand opening. "If the computer systems aren't accessible, or if someone forgot to buy staples, or if dealer tags are missing, we find out before we welcome real customers at the door."
Training recently spoke with McCann about the program and his tips for success.
Training: What are the results of the program thus far?
McCann: GOSP allows us to open stores with associates who are truly confident and ready to go. Before we launched the program, everyone went through role-specific training. But when it came time to actually execute with a live customer, some people would have a brain cramp and forget what to do next. With this program, all associates learn new skills in department-specific training and then have a chance to apply those skills collectively and see how all of the pieces fit together as they begin to work collaboratively. Our managers can also step in when it's clear an objective has not been mastered and reinforce the CarMax sales process.
Every time we run a GOSP, the grand opening team collects all of the gotchas that occur, and steps are then taken to find the root cause and prevent those same issues from cropping up again at another store. As a result, we have seen our gotchas decrease significantly since we launched the program, from about 19 per GOSP to about seven or eight per GOSP.
Training: What tips can you offer to others interested in designing a similar program?
McCann:
• Preparation is key. Our regional sales trainers begin planning and organizing GOSP months in advance. Two to three weeks beforehand, they sit down with the management staff and explain exactly how the skill practice will be executed and what needs to be done beforehand. We make it clear that everything—uniforms, dealer tags, etc.—needs to be ready for GOSP, just as if they were preparing for the real grand opening.
• Don't wing it. Think through the specific scenarios you will put people through well in advance, document everything, and hand the information out in packets. Also make sure that your scenarios check every iteration of as many customer interactions as possible. We have 12 different scenarios and try to include every last detail in each one. We don't tell you simply to be a customer, for example. We tell you that your name is Sarah Jackson and that you are a mother of two and have a third baby on the way and a big dog and are looking for something with enough room for everyone. We tell you whether you are paying in cash or need financing. If we tell you that you are paying with a check, we even provide you with a blank, phony check to fill out.
• Keep it real. If you do a program like this, make it as real as possible. GOSP isn't a brief run-through. It is two days of dedicated practice where we run the store exactly as we would run it if we were dealing with live customers.
CarMax Inc., a FORTUNE 500 company, is the nation's largest retailer of used cars. The company is headquartered in Richmond, Va. In 2008, it placed 47th on Training magazine's Top 125 list, an annual ranking of organizations that excel at human capital development.
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