Louise Joyce is group sales training manager at Arnold Clark with 20 years’ experience in the motor trade. Louise is passionate about developing the careers of employees, delivering her training with humour and empathy, and engaging learners with original and imaginative presentation techniques. She is continuously looking for ways to improve the business and the customer experience, and is driven by results.
“Female buyers are increasing year on year but what’s not so measurable (but estimated at 80%!) is the influence women have on car purchases. At Arnold Clark, we want our customers to choose who they want to engage with, so diversity and working towards a more even split between male and female staff is our goal.”
Working where my passion lies
I have been working in the motor industry for 20 years, in both sales and management, but my passion lies in training and development, a role that I have held in insurance and retail industries, culminating in my current position as group sales training manager with Arnold Clark.
My role involves creating and delivering training solutions for the sales function of the business, whether for new employees, or to increase skills of existing employees. I have responsibility for our e-learning platform – ACE Learning – which is used by every area of the business.
Promoting innovative and challenging thinking
I joined the organisation as part of a take-over, so I was feeling a little vulnerable as Arnold Clark had an amazing existing training department. However, I was blessed with having some great mentors and was never shy about asking for help.
My role evolved with being given a project to help reduce attrition to being promoted to assistant manager then manager and finally (at last!) being given the opportunity to take the group sales training manager role. The directors have been very supportive and have allowed my voice to be heard (difficult not to hear it to be honest!) and promote innovative and challenging thinking. I have been surrounded by positive and supportive colleagues, and I try my best to pay this back and be available to help or guide anyone who needs it.
The importance of e-learning
At Arnold Clark we didn’t feel a need to engage with e-learning until 2017, mainly because each manufacturer had their own platform. However, we were keen to make sure that Sir Arnold’s legacy endured, and the best way we found to do this was to have consistent messages about policies, procedures and ultimately culture passed to all employees in an engaging way.
We didn’t stop face to face training – whether in the classroom or in the branches – we just used e-learning to enhance it.
Doing what we can to increase diversity
Arnold Clark is passionate about diversity and inclusion and our partnership with Stonewall is a great example of bringing experts in to help educate our people in subjects that we honestly were unsure of. So instead of trying to create something ourselves, we felt it was better to interact with outside agencies.
We have had similar great results through mental health in our partnership with Mental Health Scotland. Our People Team has worked hard to create a culture of diversity and inclusion. And our e-learning courses have allowed us to engage on easy to use platforms and include additions such as subtitles.
We are consistently evolving and looking for better ways to engage and educate so have set up a dedicated email address for suggestions and feedback. We introduced a female mentoring programme, initially using women in senior positions and now in other levels to mentor new female employees through their first year in the business. Our own success stories (and times where we have found things difficult!) allow us to have empathy, and work towards improvement and success.
Also, once, I even ran a coaching course for sales managers and got one male to coach his colleague on how to apply make up to my face! Full coverage, three-coloured eye, contouring – the lot! They still talk about that in terms of how uncomfortable they felt because they didn’t know or understand how to do it – which is exactly what I wanted to achieve as that was unfortunately how some new starts felt when we overwhelmed them with technology and systems and jargon.
Finally, we use our own employees when recording the e-learning footage – I find this makes it relatable.
A diverse salesforce equals better results
We want to be in a position where all our customers receive the customer experience that Sir Arnold demanded each and every time. And part of that is our change from sales executives to product consultants. Therefore, we find that having a diverse salesforce help meet customer needs better. Women are ideally suited to that role – listening to needs, demonstrating the product, and coming up with bespoke funding packages to present to the customer.
Female buyers are increasing year on year but what’s not so measurable (but estimated at 80%!) is the influence women have on car purchases. At Arnold Clark, we want our customers to choose who they want to engage with, so diversity and working towards a more even split between male and female staff is our goal.
Coming up next…
Arnold Clark is continuing to evolve so that gives me and my team lots of work to do to train and develop the workforce, this generation and the next. And as for me? Other than continuing my make-up lessons for my male colleagues who knows – I will continue to be guided by the directors who have my full trust and commitment.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/louise-joyce-ab55007b/