The Hidden Costs of Vendor-Supplied Training Programs

Vendor-led training is a familiar part of shop life, but the hidden costs of training programs like these often go overlooked. They’re easy to complete and check off the list, but they rarely lead to long-term improvements in diagnostic skills, technician development, or overall shop performance.

If vendor-supplied training is carrying most of the weight in your training strategy, it’s worth taking a closer look at what’s missing and what it could be costing your business. In this blog, we’ll break down the five most common hidden costs of vendor-supplied training and discuss what effective training should look like.

Table of Contents

• What Is Vendor-Supplied Training?
  
  
• Hidden Cost #1: Time Out of the Bay
  
  
• Hidden Cost #2: Product-First, Not Problem-First
  
  
• Hidden Cost #3: No Structure or Progression
  
  
• Hidden Cost #4: No Accountability or Visibility
  
  
• Why You Need More Than Vendor-Supplied Training
  
  
• Overcome the Hidden Costs of Vendor-Supplied Training Programs

What is Vendor-Supplied Training?

Before we dive into the hidden costs of training programs, let’s be clear on what vendor training typically involves and what it’s designed to do.

Vendor-supplied training is the product-centered instruction given by manufacturers or suppliers with the goal of teaching your team how to use a specific product, system, or solution. It’s often offered as a courtesy or add-on when a shop purchases new equipment or signs up for a service. It can be in the form of a platform, app, resource or guide of some sort.

The core intent behind this training is not necessarily technician development. It’s product adoption. These reps want your team to feel comfortable using their tool, following their workflow, and ultimately encouraging your shop to invest in their solution, and that doesn’t necessarily build a well-rounded team.

Hidden Cost #1: Product-First, Not Problem-First

In a real shop, problems don’t follow scripts. Technicians need to think critically, diagnose across systems, and adapt their approach. But vendor training isn’t designed for that. It’s built around a single solution: their product.

The Scripted Trap

Most vendor-led training focuses on how to use their tool. They walk through the features, the step-by-step process, and maybe even some test scenarios all within the boundaries of their product’s strengths, but that creates a few key problems for your team:

• Technicians get boxed in: If the job doesn’t match the playbook they were shown, they’re left unsure how to pivot.
  
  
• Diagnostic thinking is skipped: Instead of teaching how to diagnose root causes, the training teaches product features.
  
  
• Problem-solving becomes product-limited: Techs may know how to operate a specific tool but struggle to apply that knowledge when faced with multi-system faults or unfamiliar vehicle platforms.

What This Looks Like in the Bay

Let’s say a tech learns how to follow a process shown in a vendor-led training. But they weren’t trained to understand the underlying systems or how to adjust when the situation doesn’t match the example. That means when the problem goes beyond what was covered, the tech is stuck.

Hidden Cost #2: No Structure or Progression

The problem with vendor-supplied training is that it usually doesn’t offer any kind of ongoing training structure. Instead, it tends to be reactive, one-off, and disconnected from what your shop actually needs in the long term. Whether you're onboarding a new hire or helping a mid-level tech level up, there should be a clear path that lays the foundation, reinforces core skills, and challenges them to keep growing. That’s how real development happens.

In contrast, most vendor trainings are:

• Standalone training: There’s no larger curriculum. No roadmap. Just focus on one subject with no follow-up and no connection to what your techs have learned before or what they should be learning next.
  
  
• One-size-fits-all: Everyone gets the same slide deck, whether it’s a brand-new technician or a senior technician. That means some techs get overwhelmed, and others check out completely because it doesn’t apply to where they are in their career.
  
  
• Non-progressive: These trainings aren’t designed to build on each other. There’s no skill-building ladder, just isolated lessons or product overviews that never stack up to real growth.

The Long-Term Effect of Vendor Supplied Training

When training doesn’t follow a clear path, it doesn’t take long for the gaps to show up on the shop floor. You might not notice it right away, but over time, it can lead to issues that slow your team down and impact repair quality. Here’s what that tends to look like:

• Patchy knowledge: One tech might know a handful of shortcuts or tips tied to a certain product, but struggle to apply that knowledge outside of those examples. Others may learn bits and pieces here and there but never build the full picture they need to work independently and confidently.
  
  
• Inconsistent repair quality: When training isn’t aligned across the team, repair processes vary from one bay to the next. That opens the door to guesswork, rework, and different outcomes depending on who’s assigned to the job.
  
  
• Overreliance on senior techs: Without intentional development, junior and mid-level technicians stay stuck in the same spot and lean heavily on your more experienced techs to troubleshoot or finish jobs. That slows down the entire team and can lead to burnout for the people who are always being pulled in to help.

Read More: Create a Career Development Plan for Your Auto Shop Employees

Hidden Cost #3: No Accountability or Visibility

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. That’s true for most things in the shop, and training is no exception. For any learning to actually move the needle, you need a clear picture of what your team understands, how they’re progressing, and whether the training is making a difference over time.

Most vendor-supplied training doesn’t give you that. Once the training is over, there’s no follow-up, no benchmarks, and no visibility into whether anything changed on the floor. That creates blind spots in key areas, like:

• Knowledge retention: Without a way to check what actually landed, there’s no telling if the content stuck or if it was forgotten the moment the training ended.
  
  
• Learning progress: You don’t know if team members are building on what they’ve learned or just circling the same concepts without moving forward.
  
  
• Skill improvement over time: With no baseline to measure against, you can’t tie training to outcomes like fewer mistakes, stronger diagnostics, or more consistent performance.

Without accountability or visibility, training becomes something you hope is working but can’t actually prove.

Hidden Cost #4: Impact on Engagement and Retention

When training is product-centered and disconnected from daily tasks, it can fall flat and chip away at motivation. Layer on top of that the hassle of logging into yet another vendor portal and losing time they don’t really have, frustration for technicians builds even faster. Over time, that leads to disengagement, burnout, and eventually, turnover.

When technicians don’t see value in the training they’re offered, it impacts more than just their performance:

• Morale drops: Repetitive or irrelevant training sends the message that their time and potential aren’t being respected—especially when they have to stop what they’re doing, track down a login, and wait on a different system to load.
  
  
• Time is lost in portals: Every extra platform means another username, another password, and another learning curve. Jumping in and out of multiple vendor systems for short, one-off training interrupts workflow and eats into the time techs could spend actually fixing cars.
  
  
• Team culture suffers: Disengagement from a few techs can pull down energy across the shop, especially if everyone feels like they’re constantly being asked to “go log into this other thing real quick.”
  
  
• Top talent walks: Technicians who want to learn and grow will eventually leave for a shop that invests in meaningful development as well.

Vendor training alone can’t build a team that’s confident, capable, and committed to staying—and forcing techs through a maze of portals only makes the engagement problem worse.

Why You Need More Than Vendor-Supplied Training

Vendor-led training can be useful in small doses. They introduce tools, highlight new technology, and offer quick demos that show what a product can do. But on their own, they don’t provide the kind of consistent, role-specific development your team needs to grow. That’s where your team needs a real training strategy.

To support your technicians, reinforce learning, and actually drive performance, your shop needs a system that does more than spotlight products. It needs to fill the gaps vendor training leaves behind.

Here’s what a strong training strategy should include:

• Day-to-day consistency: Training works best when it becomes part of the daily routine, not just a one-time event. Short, regular lessons help your team retain information, apply it faster, and stay sharp without pulling them off the floor for hours at a time.
  
  
• Training that fits the role: Not every tech is at the same skill level or in the same position. Whether someone is just getting started or handling advanced diagnostics, training should meet them where they are and give them the right tools to take the next step in their role.
  
  
• System-based learning across brands: A technician’s job isn’t tied to one product, it’s tied to understanding how systems work together across a range of vehicles. Training should focus on complex issues as well as fundamentals so techs can diagnose confidently, no matter what rolls into the bay.
  
  
• Visibility into progress and performance: Without a way to measure growth, it’s hard to know if training is making a difference. A strong strategy should give you insight into what your team is learning, who’s improving, and how that learning is impacting repair quality, productivity, and overall shop performance.

When vendor training is used to supplement this kind of structure your team gets the best of both: relevant product knowledge and the foundational skills to actually apply it.

Read More: How to Create Customized Training for Different Levels and Roles 

Overcome the Hidden Costs of Vendor-Supplied Training Programs

There’s nothing wrong with vendor training, when used strategically. But when it's your only source of technician development, the hidden costs of training programs like these start to add up: wasted time, uneven skill development, disengaged teams, and missed opportunities for performance growth.

If you want a training approach that drives shop results, you need a training platform that’s structured, intentional, and built for the way technicians and service advisors learn. Reach out to the Today's Class team to find out how our solutions can support your team.