How Rising Tide Car Wash Trains Every Sales Associate to Win the Membership Upsell

Rising Tide Car Wash is a mission-driven car wash brand creating meaningful employment for people with autism. To grow membership sales, they needed to overhaul training and build a system that drove conversions across every location.

The problem: creating a membership sales training playbook

Rising Tide Car Wash is a full-service car wash brand in Florida with a 117-person, primarily neurodiverse team. Clarity, consistency, and accessibility are central to how they operate.

When Rising Tide made membership sales a business priority, they needed a structured sales training program—one that could teach the pitch, prep for objections, and verify skills on the floor. Most team members had never sold before, so the system had to be practical and easy to repeat.

What was happening

• Membership sales became a key business priority. Frontline team members needed a stronger understanding of Rising Tide's Unlimited Wash Club offering and how to sell it.
• Many team members had no sales experience. They needed practical training on the pitch, objection handling, and how to navigate the upsell conversation confidently.
• Managers needed verification that worked in the real world. Completing a training module wasn't enough; team members had to demonstrate the pitch in actual customer interactions.

"Retention is all about customer experience. You can't deliver that without a team that's trained and ready."
‍Tom D'Eri, Co-Founder & COO

The training module: a system built from the ground up

Rising Tide built their sales training program from scratch, starting with fundamentals and layering in complexity as teams gained confidence.

What they taught

The curriculum covered everything an associate needed to convert a walk-in guest into a member:

• Soft sales skills for team members who had never sold before
• Package knowledge: membership tiers, pricing, and benefits
• The pitch: how to introduce memberships naturally at checkout
• Objection handling: responses to common guest concerns

How they trained

Video made the pitch concrete and repeatable

Embedded video walkthroughs showed exactly how a confident upsell sounds. Associates could hear tone, pacing, and phrasing, which is critical for those with no prior sales experience. Visual cues and voiceovers also supported those with different learning needs.

Questions reinforced key behaviors and built confidence

Throughout the training, associates answered questions that reinforced the fundamentals: how to deliver the pitch, what makes the membership valuable, and how to handle objections. Each question strengthened habits like staying positive and responding to guest concerns with confidence.

Associates with no sales background could grasp and repeat the approach within days.

Digital training prepared teams for hands-on practice

This module took associates an average of just 21 minutes to complete, but that time was spread across 8 days. The training ends with a live certification check-in for pitch delivery, which meant team members could practice the upsell on the floor at their own pace before completing their final certification.

Digital training doesn't replace in-person coaching; it prepares teams for coaching, making floor time more effective.

In-person check-ins helped verify skills on the floor

Digital modules were only one piece of the team's training. To be floor-ready, team members had to prove that they could recite the script word-for-word, deliver it seven times with confidence and a positive tone, and complete the pitch in under one minute.

Not only did these in-person check-ins build manager trust that associates were ready, they also gave team members the confidence to sell with ease, knowing they'd practiced the pitch until it felt natural.

Training at the speed of the business

Rising Tide couldn’t afford to wait on quarterly curriculum rollouts. Training needed to evolve in real time.

• When greeters flagged common objections, Rising Tide created and pushed out objection modules within days.
• When managers needed better coaching tools, sales management modules launched in weeks, not months.

Using Opus’s AI-powered builder and automated role-based workflows, Rising Tide rolled out updates quickly, tailored by role and location.

"We'd realize, 'OK, the team needs objection training.' So we'd build it, push it out fast, train everyone, and move on to the next layer—like sales management. And we did all of it through Opus."
Tom D'Eri, Co-Founder & COO

Three principles that made sales training successful

✅ Start simple, then iterate based on what's working. Rising Tide began with membership basics, then added objection handling and manager coaching as new needs emerged. Updates rolled out in days—not weeks—keeping training relevant and confidence high.

✅ Verify skills, not just completion. In-person pitch demos ensured team members could sell in the real world, not just pass a module.

✅ Design for accessibility and adoption. Clear scripts, video examples, and on-the-floor practice drove 80% completion and 91% engagement. When training is accessible, teams use it.

The results: Nearly 4x membership growth and industry-leading retention

Better training drove better sales, which built stronger teams. With lower turnover, managers spent more time coaching instead of constantly rehiring—creating a cycle that reinforced itself.

Key results:

• ~4x membership conversion growth → from 5% to 18% in one year
• 5,000+ Unlimited Car Wash Club members per location → scaled membership base across all sites
• 80% training completion rate and 91% engagement rate
• Top 10% of the industry for membership conversion rates → placing Rising Tide among the highest-performing car wash operators

"This time last year, we decided to really focus on membership. Using Opus as one of the linchpin tools, we now have 5,000 members per location.”
Tom D'Eri, Co-Founder & COO

See It For Yourself

Try the training: Experience Rising Tide's membership training firsthand by scanning the QR code below

Read the full story: See how Rising Tide used training to drive memberships and service consistency—including their approach to retention, service standards, and building a mission-driven culture.

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