Advance Auto gets ACA 'Head of Class Award'

ROANOKE, Va. (Sept. 24, 2014) — Advance Auto Parts Inc. has received one of eight 2014 Head of Class Awards for excellence in company education and training practices from the Auto Care Association (ACA).

The award, from the ACA's education committee, recognizes companies within the auto care industry that “continually invest in enhancing the quality and level of learning and skill development offered to employees,” according to Advance Auto.

“Advance understands that in order to best serve our customers, we must not only invest in quality parts and services, but also in training and retaining the most knowledgeable team members in the aftermarket,” Advance President George Sherman said in a press release.

“We're honored to receive the Head of Class recognition for our training and certification practices and will continue to strive to provide all our employees with the information and experience that helps best partner with shops to improve operations and drive sales.”

The company said it employs more than 10,000 ASE-certified parts specialists and, in the past year, has added new staff to its education and training team, built a training center at Advance's headquarters in Roanoke, and introduced new training initiatives. Those include:

• General manager onboarding program focused on best practices in store management;
• District manager immersion program emphasizing team leadership and operational processes; and
• Video-based automotive systems training curriculum to keep employees up-to-date on safety, parts identification, common repair problems and automotive systems most important to commercial shops.

ACA President and CEO Kathleen Schmatz said in a statement that “businesses of all types can introduce and implement education and training programs to meet the professional and personal needs of our auto care industry family. In each case, the company has noted improvements in teamwork, morale, sales and customer satisfaction while at the same time reducing turnover.”

Advance noted that it also has additional training programs specifically targeted for its commercial team members, including weeklong onboarding for commercial account managers that focuses on leveraging the tools to support and help customers grow their businesses; sales process training for commercial team members, designed to help employees establish partnerships and build lasting relationships with customers; and commercial sales manager onboarding, a three-day hands on training.

Commercial customer representative onboarding also is a week-long session Advance uses to train entry-level sales team employees the basics of sales, partnership building and fundamentals for growing customers' businesses.

As of July 12, Advance operated 5,289 stores, 106 Worldpac branches and served about 1,400 independently owned Carquest branded stores in 49 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Canada. The company has about 74,000 employees.