Training Helps Sustain Michigan Dealership Group’s Evolution Into A Substantial Corporate Player

Zeigler Auto Group believes recruiting and developing talented staff is essential to growth. BY JON MCKENNA

Back in 2004, Zeigler Auto Group ran four stores, covered staff training with an occasional live meeting and recruited new employees mostly by word-of-mouth. However, President Aaron Zeigler had ambitions of becoming a much bigger company and realized he’d need a more sophisticated training, recruiting and mentoring program to support the necessary work force.

Fast-forward to 2015. Zeigler Auto Group has swelled to 21 rooftops in western Michigan, suburban Illinois, Indiana and New York State and employs about 1,200 people. Many employees delve into a library of video training sessions that numbers between 2,000 and 3,000, picking out 15 short videos per week and 20 to 25 minutes of training each work day. The company recruits aggressively on college campuses against Fortune 500 employers and has developed several performance groups to groom talented staff for eventual leadership roles as GMs, F&I managers and office managers.

In short, Zeigler Auto Group has created a training, recruitment and development program that rivals that of much bigger dealership organizations, not to mention substantial companies in other industries.

“The reason why we created Zeigler University [in 2010] was we wanted to grow the organization, and the best people come up through your organization,” Aaron Zeigler said, referring to the internal name for the company’s training program.

“It ties into recruiting as well. When we started this program, we were in that 30% [annual turnover] range. We’ve got about 1,200 employees now, and if we were still in the 30% range, we’d never be able to build the company.”

The family owned company was launched in 1975 by his father, Harold Zeigler, in nearby Lowell, Mich. Thanks to a decade of rapid expansion through acquisitions, it ranked No. 60 on the 2015 WardsAuto Megadealer list.

Emphasis On Video Training

Mike Van Ryn, the group’s director of talent development, said most of the training videos are aimed at salespeople, service advisors and managers of various departments. Typically, they range in length from 30 seconds to between five and eight minutes. The group has access to noted sales trainer Grant Cardone’s video library, but also has its executives and managers record training videos at one of the numerous stores that has a training room. And, many of the guest presenters of live training also are willing to do recordings that are used later as video training.

Van Ryn explained the preference for short-duration video training this way: “It reflects the realities of attention spans now and how busy our people are. So, they can do the training on their own schedules throughout the week, and have more concentrated training during in-person sessions.”

The company makes a point of updating video training, which is categorized by complexity level, on a set schedule to keep it fresh, Zeigler said. Examples of “100-level” topics are displaying the right attitude when you come to work and how to treat a customer, while overcoming a customer’s objections to buying a car is one of the more advanced topics.

Employees are required to pass a short quiz after watching an online video. Zeigler gets a report each Saturday on whether employees have watched the required 15 training videos for the week, and any unexplained failures are referred to managers for a sit-down with those employees.

Like Van Ryn, Zeigler believes the high-frequency, short-duration video training approach has proved effective, particularly with salespeople. “We are getting numbers we have never seen before, like people who were selling 25 cars a month who are averaging 30 to 35 after the training.”

Role Of Live Training

As for live training, every one to two months the group brings in a high-profile guest speaker, such as Cardone, former Olympic hockey team goalie Jim Craig and Bill Rancic, the first contestant to be hired after Donald Trump’s TV show “The Apprentice.” Their presentations are videoconferenced live to other stores.

Also, monthly general manager meetings are videoconferenced throughout the chain of dealerships, and Van Ryn delivers a monthly sales training course at a different store each month. A six-hour new hire orientation course is another important component of live training.

Aggressively Recruiting At Colleges

When it comes to recruiting talented staff for a company of Zeigler Auto Group’s size, Aaron Zeigler said “we have found we can compete very well” against major corporations for new college graduates in the Upper Midwest, notwithstanding any stigma about working for a car dealership.

“A lot of the time in these big companies, it takes you a long time to get into middle management, and you get forgotten. We can offer a very concise path going forward. If they come into the organization in sales, we can show them if they are successful, they could be running a $50 million business unit in five years. I’ve been elated with the process.”

Van Ryn said four fulltime recruiters (who also assist with training and development) and he recruit at 10 to 20 universities and colleges in the region that have business colleges and/or marketing programs. The group also found a niche by promoting careers to college athletes through connections with coaches, he said. Van Ryn attributes that appeal to the competitive natures of both sports and sales.

Mentoring Groups Play Key Role

However, talent and training only get you so far in corporate America. That’s why the group also created within Zeigler University three performance groups, whose mission is to mentor and groom employees believed to have potential to become GMs, office/manager controllers or F&I managers. Service managers get mentoring in something of an informal 20 group.

Membership in a performance group comes only by invitation from Zeigler or Van Ryn, based on a GM’s recommendation. The groups meet six to eight times a year in Kalamazoo to discuss and analyze more sophisticated aspects of a manager’s job that aren’t addressed in training sessions. Several managerial positions have been filled by members of performance groups, as when a GM position recently came open at a Ford store.

“We had five or six people who were ready to go, and one was a perfect fit” to transfer in, Zeigler said. “Instead of putting someone in there and hoping he will grow into the job, we have someone who already fits in the culture and has been exposed to every challenge they will face.”

Keeping Turnover Down

At the end of the day, one of the critical metrics in judging whether Zeigler Auto Group’s investment in recruiting, training and development is turnover (more specifically, avoiding the high turnover that plagues dealerships).

Zeigler said the companywide turnover rate “has dropped like a rock” since Zeigler University was created in 2010, to an overall 8 percent (5% when seasonally adjusted). In the management ranks, turnover is only 2 percent, he said.