Aloha Automotive Group has selected the World’s Premier Automotive Sales, Management and Lending School, The College of Automotive Management, as its exclusive training partner. The two are collaborating to provide a training platform to support a culture of ethics, compliance, and sales excellence at all 7 of the Aloha KIA Automotive Group locations.
Bill and Niki van den Hurk, owners of Aloha Automotive Group, were named 2011 Hawaii State Dealers of The Year, and Bill was nominated by his peers as the State’s representative for the Time Magazine Quality Dealer of the Year award. Bill has also been selected as this year’s new incoming President of the Hawaii Auto Dealer Association (HADA).
“Aloha Automotive Group is committed to ensuring ALL employees interfacing with customers and their managers are trained, tested, and willing to operate in a manner that is consistent with the values of the owners, Bill & Niki van den Hurk.” says Bill Hanyak, President of The Lloyd Andersen Group of Companies, parent company of The College of Automotive Management. “We are not just tracking every employee’s training time, progress, and test results – the learning management system is fully interactive, and employees are given opportunities to share their opinions, which reveal their attitudes, regarding the company’s policies and the curriculum content being provided by The College and the dealership. This is powerful new data being provided daily for the owner and management’s consideration.”
The College of Automotive Management’s online training program, Automotive Career Training (ACT), is the automotive industry’s first and only web-based interactive training tool that provides each employee with a personal business coach to help them set and achieve personal career goals at the dealership and a personal skills trainer to provide one on one live skills training as needed.
“I have to admit we were a little skeptical in the beginning. The College made some pretty bold claims. Their promises to create happier employees that have less stress at work while achieving higher profits and 100% happy customers 100% of the time sounded too good to be true. But the results speak for themselves. What mattered most to me was what my employees thought of the program, and then the program’s effect on our bottom line. After seeing that every employee, without exception, agreed with the content and was happy to be participating in the training and after watching our profits in the first store increase by several hundred percent more than we invested in the training in just the first 30 days I was sold. At that point the decision was simple, provide CAM-ACT to everyone as soon as possible.” stated Bill van den Hurk, Owner of Aloha Auto Group.
“We needed a solution to standardize our Sales, Desking and F&I process at each location and create a team atmosphere where everyone has the same objective of 100% happy customers, in order to continually increase profits per sale, closing ratios and repeat business. We also wanted a training platform where we could customize and use to train, test and support ALL employees on the values, policies and best practices of our organization, while taking advantage of The College’s world class training, coaching, and career development programs. The College is helping us build our own customized Aloha Automotive Group training center online and accomplishing all of our training objectives. The ACT program and its emphasis on ethics are also helping us attract, develop and retain top talent with good character at our organization.” said Russ Wong, Aloha Automotive Group COO.
“CAM – ACT is carefully designed to actually “reduce” the workload of management, while allowing managers the ability to easily add or delete any content as they see fit according to their own culture and preferences. This helps dealer principals rally their management team leaders behind the educational initiatives and gain their full support.” says Eric Andersen, President of the College of Automotive Management.
“We are quite pleased with our relationship with the College of Automotive Management. In the first two months since implementing ACT, our auto sales and gross profits have increased immensely!!! We are total believers in the College’s relationship selling training, and our employees are very happy to be working in an environment that is 100% committed to ethics and integrity in all our customer transactions. We will continue to attract and retain the top talent on the Islands to work for our Company.” says Alan Uyeoka, General Manager of Aloha Kia Nimitz and Aloha Kia Leeward.
“After the first six hours of online training, I commented that I plan on making 5 times what I normally make now, which is over $100,000 per year (approximately $12-$15,000 per month). Then, in my first two months after starting the training, I’ve already earned more than $55,000 in sales commissions. Needless to say, I am very grateful to my employer for providing me with such a valuable, life-changing resource.” reported Lorenzo France, the top-producing salesperson of the dealer group.
