About Us

Training Team USA is a brand umbrella for Automotive Training Team, Truck Training Team, Powersports Training Team and RV Training Team. The roots for these brands began in 2003. 

Offerings

Training Team USA delivers courses and resources leveraging thought leadership, performance data, and industry insights. We equip clients to thrive in an ever-changing industry by building the knowledge, capabilities, culture, and mindset necessary to succeed today and in the future. Our interactive curriculum and experiences will benefit professionals within dealerships as well as those within OEMs/Allied Industry companies who work to support dealership operations. We focus both on deepening expertise around effective automotive retail operations and the change-enablement capabilities required of leaders, managers, and individual contributors.

The Team

All Training Team USA members have personally worked or had ownership shares in automobile, motorcycle, truck and power equipment dealerships.  They have hands on experience in variable and fixed operations. This creates the authenticity that sets this company’s training delivery and curriculum design apart from other companies competing in this space.

Programs (Training & Consulting)

Our training program content is grounded in data and facts. Our curriculum is developed using industry-leading KPI benchmarks and best practices. We gather data and insights from the wide-range of industry resources and the clients we serve.

Our consulting programs are in-dealership, hands-on training and instruction. Our consultants work with management to customize, change, or replace processes and practices that yield increase revenue.

Curriculum

The curriculum is developed using the most current, relevant performance data and content and delivered by subject-matter-experts for each type of program. Training Team USA offers a customized educational experience for learners at all levels.

• Categories
  ○ Financial Analysis ○ Dealership Operations Management ○ Leadership
• Audience Types
  ○ Dealership Managers ○ OEM Management & Field Staff ○ Allied Industry
• Levels
  ○ Essentials  ○ Advanced ○ Mastery

Delivery Methods

Depending on the program, we offer instructor-led, blended, virtual and online curriculum. All are interactive, engaging, and designed for immediate practical application and “stickiness” over time.

Participant Experience

Learners experience creative and interactive whole group, small group and individual activities and discussions. Curriculum is further customized by assessing the acumen of the participants in the group and training to their level. 

Client Experience

Many programs are recommended for mixed job role groups for the added benefit of building important relationships within organizations. This creates a de-facto support group for solving the increasingly complex industry issues and opportunities

Accreditation

Gil Weiss draws much of his inspiration from dealership experiences in managing and owning dealerships. As a sales manager early in his career, he developed a formalized recruitment and training programs for salespeople and other dealership roles. Success was validated by substantial dealership growth as a leading volume dealership for each brand he was associated with. This passion for personnel development provided the roots for Training Team USA when in 2003 he established Gil Weiss & Associates, LLC.

After spending years creating and delivering his own curriculum, he acquired the skills to write at a national caliber level during his four years as Director of Custom Curriculum for the National Automobile Dealers Association. Many of the car & truck programs he created during that time are still in use at the NADA Academy today. The NADA Dealer Board that vets talent for NADA Convention Workshops appreciated Gil’s speaking abilities and selected him as a convention workshop speaker for all four consecutive years of his tenure.

In his current role, Gil has provided educational programs for OEM dealer-facing staff as well as dealer groups and allied industry companies throughout the U.S. and Canada. Gil’s Dual skill set of presenting and writing training programs provides a content and delivery authenticity that participants immediately recognize and appreciate. He also writes specialized training curriculum for many national tier-1 training vendors and for manufacturers.  Gil either delivers the curriculum himself or designs it to be delivered by others. In those cases, he leads Train-the-Trainer (T3) events.

In addition to the automobile industry, Gil has managed or been the operator for Motorcycle and Truck Dealerships. He currently works extensively with the Commercial Vehicle, Heavy Truck and Powersports industries in all aspects of dealership operations management. Niches include business-to-business sales and truck spec’ing and technical product training for sales professionals.

Jim’s family was in the Lincoln Mercury business in the Norfolk Virginia area.  Jim grew up in the business, holding most every job in the store before leading the store as General Manager at a young age. He was a Salesperson, Service Writer, assistant Body Shop Manager, Leasing Manager, F&I Manager, Used Car Manager, and New Car Manager before being promoted to General Manager of the dealership. 

The dealership was sold and Jim went to work as a Parts and Service Operations Consultant for several years.  As a CDK and Reynolds specialist, Jim installed systems and processes in the parts and service operations.  Specifically, the computer integration with parts and service operations was his specialty.

Jim joined NADA at the beginning of 2001 initially as a 20 Group consultant. He started and maintained over 18 twenty groups and became an in-dealership Consultant for NADA. This led to Jim being named as Director of Education for the NADA Academy.  Creating and delivering exciting content, Jim is best known by his real-world simple approach to training. His NADA seminars were often requested by state dealer associations and dealer 20 groups. They were also used as convention workshops, NADA management education seminars, and international training engagements.

In 2017, Jim was recruited by Cox Automotive to develop a course portfolio and instructor team to create the Cox Automotive University.  This effort produced over 20 multi-day training courses delivered learners at all levels. The courses included financial statement analysis, Dealership Operations, employee retention, leadership, customer experience and more.  Jim delivered hundreds of courses and training events over that five-year tenure. Cox Automotive closed the University at the end of 2021.

Jim has been an operations manager for a dealer group and consulted with hundreds of dealership sales, parts and service operations. Jim is well known for training with a “hands-on” style that keeps him in high demand. As a certified Master Trainer, Jim continues to develop and deliver course content for a variety of clients.

Karl Fauss has diverse experience in the dealership and OEM world that brings authenticity and depth to his teaching, coaching, and consulting endeavors. In dealerships, he has held frontline, customer-facing roles as well as management roles in Sales, Service and F&I. These parallel retail backgrounds as well as working as an OEM trainer, consultant and 20 Group Moderator in recent years has rendered Karl a versatile consultant and relatable instructor.

Karl’s career has another layer beyond the automobile business. He has worked extensively as a Sales/Finance Manager for Commercial Truck, Motorcycle, Marine and RV Dealers. His ability to set sales records was always in high demand. This makes him a valuable utility-player for all Training Team USA disciplines with the ability to cross-pollinate best practices from these multiple vehicle related industries.

In 2006, Karl joined Gil Weiss & Associates, LLC. Building sales and service teams and developing personnel became Karl’s passion making him the perfect choice for this new role. As the company expanded, Karl took over full responsibility for the one-week new-hire sales training course that was held monthly for client dealers of all brands. He and Gil created a regional Ford Commercial Account Manager training that eventually morphed into a Ford nationally sponsored program and later expanded to Ford Commercial Truck Canada and Ford Commercial Credit. Gil and Karl have rotated responsibility as the Ford Commercial Truck National Trainer for nearly two decades.

The 2009 economic downturn brought a sabbatical from GiI Weiss & Associates, Karl went into the field and worked as a Commercial Account Manager and met with success using the techniques taught in the CAM courses and field testing new best practices.

In 2010, Karl rejoined Gil Weiss & Associates to purchase and run the company when Gil became Director of Curriculum Development with NADA. Karl renamed the company Automotive Training Team, LLC and it is one of the core individually owned companies under the Training Team USA marketing umbrella.

Recruited in 2015 by then client Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to become an instructor in their Performance Institute, Karl joined the company as a Retail Performance Specialist and 20 Group Moderator. Retail Performance Specialists are a primary liaison between the OEM and retail to support their collective objectives through their voice and actions at the dealer level. This career change was for the purpose of gaining OEM experience and perspective but also required him to liquidate his company. This coincided with Gil Weiss completing his one-year non-compete agreement with NADA and at which time Gil re-purchased the company.

Karl Fauss was invited to join the Training Team USA alliance in 2022.