Hendrick Raises the Phone Standard

Dealerships invest heavily in generating leads (the average Franchise dealership spent nearly $600,000 on advertising in 2025), but every lead eventually comes down to a conversation. How that conversation is handled can make the difference between a missed opportunity and a customer walking through the door. Have a look at your numbers, and ask yourself: are you happy with your team’s phone and online lead conversion?

Like many, Hendrick Automotive Group saw an opportunity to increase lead conversions. With a strong focus on training and an already successful sales process, Hendrick saw that they could take deliberate steps to drive improvement. By strengthening and standardizing inbound phone training across stores nationwide, Hendrick set out to make sure a customer calling a store in California has the same experience as one calling a store in North Carolina. With such a heavy investment in marketing, elevating the standard for converting phone ups into showroom visits was crucial to the group’s success and to what the experience of coming to a Hendrick dealership should be.

The focus became more of getting the most out of every lead, making each person more effective in their roles. With nearly 70% of today’s sales beginning in the “virtual showroom,” strong phone conversations have become crucial as traditional walk-in traffic continues to decline.

By creating an even more standardized approach to phone training across the group, Hendrick could build on what was already working and help its teams capture even more sales opportunities. The goal was to establish clear, consistent expectations that would continue strengthening phone skills and keep those skills sharp over time.

To address the challenge, Hendrick worked with RockED to develop and implement the Hendrick Inbound Sales Call Certification, requiring team members to complete the certification every quarter. The program was designed to standardize the customer experience and equip teammates with the skills to move conversations forward without letting valuable opportunities slip away. Nearly 1,500 Hendrick employees have been certified in the last 4 months, with 500 in progress.

Hendrick Inbound Sales Call Certification pairs 90 minutes of targeted training with three Virtual Conversational roleplays. Learners don’t just study best practices, they have to demonstrate them in realistic customer conversations before they certify.

The initial results showed meaningful improvement across participating dealerships. More than 60% of stores measured saw an increase in appointment set and show rates.

Among the 10 highest-performing dealerships, inbound phone close rates increased by an average of 13 percentage points, moving from 47% to 60% (a 28% increase). The top two dealerships improved by more than 25 percentage points, while even the smallest increase among those 10 was nearly 7 percentage points.

The impact went beyond close rates. The certification established a baseline customer experience for new hires while giving teammates more opportunities to practice without being limited by their managers’ availability for roleplay. It also gave employees access to best practices from across the Hendrick organization, regardless of their dealership or geography. At some Hendrick dealerships, the certification has become more than a training exercise: teammates must complete it to be eligible to take phone ups.

The training also challenged experienced team members to sharpen skills they had been using for years. One sales manager with more than 20 years of experience shared:

“I thought I was great on the phone. I’ve been taking inbound sales calls for 20+ years. This AI Roleplay challenged me and really made me listen to the customer and think deeply about where I was taking the conversation.”

This wasn’t designed to be a one-time training initiative. Hendrick created a repeatable standard across its dealerships, reinforced every quarter through certification and put into practice through AI roleplay. By making continuous development part of the process, Hendrick didn’t just improve close rates. They built a stronger foundation for how inbound opportunities are handled across the group.