Ello Don’t have an issue with mb. All in all been fair with me to date Dealerships is a different ball game When a manufacturer joins up with mb who trains the “legendary” mb specialists. Does a mb specialist train a manufacturer representative and then they in turn train at the dealerships or do mb go to every dealership on the scheme. Not all dealerships deal with mb right? I take it that’s an individual choice. Only asking this coz there’s a massive difference in standards of service. Would of thought that if all trained individually by mb a more consistent level would be attained coz at the moment some dealerships are diamonds and others don’t seem to know their brown hole from their mid arm joint
Motability train the dealership Motability sales people. (The manufacturer has no part in the training and basically are just involved with Motability in deciding overall if they wish to sell some or all of their vehicles via the scheme, setting prices every quarter and actually supplying the vehicles).
To become an accredited Motability salesperson, dealership staff must:
How to become accredited:
Complete the e-learning modules.
Complete and pass the assessment.
Attend a full-day virtual training session via Zoom.
Once accredited, the individual accreditation lasts for 25 months, upon which they must complete ‘refresher training’ (currently half a day of e-modules).
So, as you can see, most of the training is synthetic or ‘online’ currently. They used to hold ‘face to face’ dealer training day at various regional locations pre-covid, but that part is now done over Zoom.
The Motability dealer training department consists of nine people. They not only have to train sales staff, but also service receptionists and other sundry dealership staff such as ‘after sales’ and accounts dept.
The dealership is responsible for training costs (for example Motability charge £110 plus VAT per person for ‘new to scheme’ sales staff). The dealership has to also buy all Motability signage, pop up blinds, printed materials etc from Motability.
You are correct that not all manufacturer franchised dealerships are Motability accredited. It is a dealership or dealer group decision if they want to become vehicle suppliers to the scheme. If they do, then they must have (and pay the cost of) Motability trained and accredited staff.
As an aside, I do know of a small family-owned franchised dealership who decided to become Motability accredited about 18 months ago. They paid to train the necessary staff and bought point of sale advertising etc. Less than a month later the manufacturer decided to no longer supply vehicles to the scheme, without the dealership ever having sold a vehicle on the scheme!
As to service standards, it is like many companies. As per another current thread on this forum about a tyre supplier, service standards can differ between branches. Just as much as they can across lots of different retail establishments. Some are more customer care driven, whilst others maybe more profit driven! When you take into account how much a dealership actually makes on a Motability (or any other fleet) vehicle sale versus a retail or manufacturer backed PCP sale, it maybe somewhat inevitable that standards differ in the current climate.