Alistair Horsburgh, Group Chief Strategy Officer, from CitNOW Group, returns this week to chat about everything from Artificial Intelligence and Sales Agency to looking at future investments.
One of the biggest challenges to sales and service staff is time, and we discuss that there will always be opposing views about AI, but it should be used to help staff and bring efficiencies.
When looking for future investments Alistair explains that you need to understand how you current offering helps your customers, where the gaps are and look to fill them.
Here are the highlights:
{02:13} The Disruptors Wil Always Be There
{03:00} Artificial Intelligence
{05:30} AI Not Good Enough for Front of House
{13:48} Sales Agency
{16:57} When You Buy a Business What Are You Looking For?
{29:38} Advice for Investors
About Symco Training:
Symco Training was founded in 2000 by Simon Bowkett and it was his belief that the business had to offer its clients something different. That difference was clear to Simon from his days in the dealership when he experienced many sales trainers who had all the answers, but were unable, unwilling or both to actually show the delegate how they could be implemented. It remains the ethos of the business today. You see, Symco only employ trainers that are committed to delivering not only in spiring and insightful training, but are equally as happy to demonstrate these skills and techniques with real customers in your own showroom. We believe in order for sales training to be effective and in Simon’s words ‘real world’, it needs to be tried and tested in the only place it matters the showroom floor. There is no room for theory when your goals are for your team to sell more cars, hours or parts and retain more profit. In dealerships around the world the focus applied by many of the sales executives is to try and sell a deal. Symco specialise in getting your teams to focus on selling themselves, the product and then supporting this with the deal.
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Welcome to the Selling and the Motor Trade Podcast, an association with Symco Training. This is the weekly podcast where we share best practice tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service department and generally put more profit into your dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Bowkett. As some of you probably already know me as Skipping, I would start by saying thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Well, I want to get your views now on where the industry has evolved. We know there's the rise and fall and let's see what happens with the disruptors, the kavanas in the States, kazoo. I got to say with kazoo there, they floated, was it, 6.5 billion on New York Stock Exchange? Last time I looked there, worth 60 million. I might not have that wrong, but not a lot there. I don't know if they're going to survive. I'm not sure. I don't know if they are the disruptors at all anyway, but I want to get your views. Is a car salesperson still going to be relevant in the future? Let's just look at AI. It blows my mind with some of the AI stuff we're doing. We're not just talking about chats because so many people are using chat now on a dealership, but with AI. I got to tell you, do we need a service, a booking person anymore? When you got AI can do this. Do we need salespeople? They can do a lot better. I got to say one company I'm speaking to, they're in a cool center environment. They're transcribing their top salespeople and everything they say to the customer all the time on all their emails, all their phones, and why they're top salespeople. They're now asking AI to say, this is what good looks like, okay, because we know it works and then do they actually need those salespeople? So I suppose the question at the end of this is, is there a future for car salespeople in the motor trailer? Are we still relevant? Yeah, that's the longest question you've asked. So just by size chucks, the disruptors will always be there. Whether they are called this name or that name, there's always going to be somebody out there that's going to attempt to disrupt a particular industry. These particular disruptors, I think what happened is that in all fairness, we demonstrate, I say we because it's in my blood, there'd be 40 years in the car industry. It's in our blood that we as an industry are really good at adapting. So I think that the disruptors created a platform for everybody else to go and adapt themselves. I think COVID then changed the landscape a little bit and everybody had to accelerate the recent academic acceleration in digitization and the change of the way that people would communicate. So I think, to an extent, COVID definitely amplified that quite a lot. I think with respect to things like AI, I mean, we have one of the businesses we bought recently, originally it was a live chat platform and it then essentially re-established themselves as a conversation platform. So we do have the concept, not so much of AI. I'll talk specifically about that in a minute, but actually trying to make things like service booking. You don't need AI to make service booking. You just need decision tree mapping, you know, yes, no, let's do this, that and the other. And I feel that within the portfolio products we've got, so RTC, our big health check product, we can do online service bookings in there. With the web one-on-one platform, which is a conversation platform, we can do online check-in and we can help customers to book their cars in per service. So that to an extent is about as far as we've gone. There is always going to be a left and a right view about AI. Some of it's going to be wonderful, you know, rose tinted glasses, all that kind of stuff about the future and what we can possibly do. And then there's going to be the negative side of it. And what we will see in the press is all the negatives, everything that is wrong, why it might go wrong, who gets sacked for this, who does this out on the other. There is definitely a place for AI. Will it replace the people that we think, I don't believe so? No, I think what should happen first is that, safe first, what should happen in the way that this industry has put together is that we need to help salespeople and service advisors to become more efficient. That's one of the biggest things that we need to try and do. And for every salesperson that's listening on this podcast and for every service advisor that's listening, your biggest challenge is always time and being in the right place at the right time as a salesperson, but being able to service advisor and be able to contact the customer. And this communication channel is, in our opinion, it's a big opportunity from a technology perspective. Can we enable that conversation to be more readily achieved or happening in the channel that the customer wants to happen in? So whether that be in WhatsApp, whether it's text message, whether it's email, whether it's a phone call, whatever it needs to be, whatever the consumer's choice is, that's the big play. I don't think to try and cap your question, I don't think that AI is, I don't think anything like good enough at the moment to be front of house. I think that AI back of house, and we know retailers that are using it today to try and help, right, adverts for the user, try and try and bring together data inside an organization absolutely. But customer facing, I'd be very, very concerned if I had some AI that was customer facing that certainly needs a data society. Yeah, I gained at the last NADA conference. There was a lovely guy called Ben who showed me through some AI, what was doing on the service inquiry and email and the customer backwards and forwards. And it's quite impressive, but there must be some point there that AI, human needs to take over. I know a customer thinks they're speaking to a human there, and there was some very, very impressive stuff there. But the interesting thing is I think we've all got with chat an assistant now that can help us do lots of different things, but you still need to go through it and see what's there. Yeah, I don't think that many of us, I'm sure, have been on a website of a particular high street store and some kind of whether it's a supplier or some description and trying to go through a chat that may say, my name is X, helping me help you and you still can't get the question answered because you're trying to answer something that's not in their list of approved questions. So the human being, and actually our dealer desk business, which is in Germany, does just this. It is actually a support mechanism for the retailers. So where the retail account handles an inbound telephone call, telephone call, inbound email or a radio description, any communication with the retailer that they can't answer within a particular dedicated amount of time, that the dealer desk team picked that inquiry up and answered it on the behalf of the retailer. And that's just what they do in Germany. It's very much a very, very Germanic platform, but it is a, it's putting a human being in that process and it's being particularly successful. Well, I suppose it's back to video where people buy people. I like the idea of that. But again, some of the stuff that we see coming through and it's changing so quickly. I just want to get your views on how much you're looking at AI across the businesses because it's, it's there when it's not going to go away. We just need to see how it can integrate into what we're doing. You know, we can't ignore the fact that that is a, it's a piece of technology that's out there that people are talking about and it's really hit the market by storm in the last 12 months. We are, and it would be unwise of me to give you all of the trade secrets about what we do. But it's fair to say that we're looking for the most, we're looking for something that's going to help the retailers to buy the, to sell more or to, to save more time. It's got to be one of the two. You know, there's no point in just putting a piece of technology into the industry that just costs retailers more money and they don't get any impact for it. And I think that over the next, you know, if you take the after sales environment over the next 10 years and we start to see absorption, the sense and just go down electrification come into the workshop. Well, there's only a couple of things that the dealerships can do. They've either got to try and keep all of, all the vehicles in the workshop or they've got to find a way to find some efficiencies and the efficiencies have got to come from helping retailers to not spend as much money. So our ROTC platform, for example, going completely paperless. And if you can put a complete paperless environment into a workshop, there's an awful lot of money that you can say just on, just on a print cartridges, you know, it's literally this, it's as, it's as basic as that. But then you can build it out all the way to, to the right and you can say, okay, if I've got four service advisors who are looking after just too many customers and they can't give them the level of customer experience that they need to get because that customer experience is really important for the next time the customer want to visit the dealership to wow them, then open up the forms of communication. We have a, we've got a WhatsApp platform that allows a consumer to talk to the retailer and we, with my view, so the BMW environment, so BMW retailers and we're just launching it at the UK and said, don't all queue up. But we've launched it with the fact that the BMW consumer can talk to the retailer through the my BMW app and they don't need to do anything. They just need that the retailer can start the conversation off with the consumer or clearly the need to have the manufacturers application installed on their phone. But you know, one of the things that manufacturers have been looking for for some time is the reason for these manufacturer applications to be valuable to the consumer. You know, we've all got these apps and our phone and we know that it can open the car and maybe you can turn the editing on, tell us where we parked. But can I have a conversation with my, my, my retailer through the application? Yes, you can. Well, all of a sudden it's now more valuable. So that kind of technology, as far as we're concerned, is aiding towards customer experience. You offer more customer experience. You enrich that customer experience with a, or I would like to go back there because I knew that if I needed to speak to the service advisor, guess what? I could talk to them through the application. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose I want to go back in time. So I'm 49 at the moment. So 50 later on in July. And John Starmer, a great guy started off in the motor trade with. He had two card files on his desk. Now, this is a guy that sold so many cars, but two card files and it was as simple as one to 31 and then January to December. And he had two colored cards in the Alistair, one for a sold customer and one for a prospect he was working on. I mean, this is off the arc, the system. Okay. But every hour in the morning, you couldn't speak to John Eastarmer because he just goes through his cards and stay in touch with his customers every six months. It's what we've heard in the motor trade all our lives. Okay. And people used to come and wait for John, like waiting in a dentist sitting at the chair there. My sales manager said, go and help some of John's customers there. And they said, no, no, we'll wait for John. We'll wait for John. And he wasn't selling when he had contact every six months. It was just the clocks are going backwards or forwards or we'd be talking about a new cars launch. It's probably not for you and Mary, but I thought I'd keep you involved there. But what he happened is he was the friend in the trade. And I see in a company out in America the same. The view of AI is it can just stay in touch with that customer all the time from John Starmat because we don't get sales people to do it. Very few sales people do it in the modern world there. So it'd be interesting to see if it works or be interesting to see if the customer says, well, hold on this AI is not actually Johnny Starmat, though. So it's definitely an interesting time. We'll see what happens with that one. Yeah. I don't think the genie powers definitely not really helped in that respect. And I also think that consumers, they're not necessarily as loyal as they used to be. And I think it's harder because unfortunately, those salespeople, there's not many of them around. If you're visiting a dealership, you bought same cars as the dealership for the most X number of years, there won't be many salespeople that are still there. And I think that's that's not the challenge. It is actually part of the challenge. People seeing it as their own business within the business. So I suppose it's not just the motor trade and people having a job for life. Does it happen anymore? I suppose people are more transient. So talking about the future of the motor trade, then the sales agency model, there can't be too many of these podcasts or sitting down with investors and people saying, so what do you think's going to happen with agency? I think agency is a flood that's coming. The podcast has had the most views on this selling the podcast interview was James Wortman who was talking about what happened with Mercedes Benz in Australia, a court case out there where I think something about 90% of the dealers took their manufacturer to court. I want to get your views on how the agency model is going to really affect the investor out there. This is how I can give you my personal opinion. It's very difficult. This one we can take and we've got to go through different hypothesis. I'm sorry. I'm probably not going to give you a straight answer. I hope all this is there, that we have to believe that agency is going to work. We don't, then the technology that we're going to bring to market is going to just be too late. There's no point. I'm not convinced that the manufacturer will go so far with the software that they make available to the retail network. I don't want to start bringing out my same manufacturer names, but there's only a few in the UK that are in agency at the moment and therefore it's more challenging for us to try to be wholly predict the future. But one hypothesis is we have to accept that it works and we have to make available technology to help the retailer to stop double-kicking, which is really what this is all about. If we then start to think about, well, okay, well, what happens with those non-genuine agency environments? So people who are going to go partway there, well, then it gets about how can we then make software available to work in that environment? The big platform that people are talking about is Salesforce. And we've been working with Salesforce for the last two years. We're an ISV partner. We have built out all of our C&L applications. So sitting in our sales, sitting in our workshop, are in the Salesforce marketplace. We are just finishing up the RTC adapter into the Salesforce app marketplace. So people using Salesforce that are using our portfolio products are going to be able to bring all of the data, all the rich data that we've got into the Salesforce environment to create this one view of the customer. Now we think that is a universally available product, whether you go agency, whether it's a retailer who's doing their own thing, or whether it's somebody deciding that they really want the whole Salesforce environment, but maybe it's a single retailer, a couple of retailers together, but they really challenged over trying to make all that investment themselves and build everything out. We just probably don't want to be building everything if you're going to be just a small investor. So we have to have these buckets, these channels, these lanes of information that make it available so that if we're talking to this manufacturer, we can make these applications work in sales and after sales. And if you're a retailer group, we can do this, et cetera, et cetera. I think the most important thing for us is that the data that's available and the conversations that are available and all of that data can come into a single environment, whether it's Salesforce or whether it's a different system. That's what we're doing with agency. Okay, well, listen, if I've got this right, see it now, group. You've got 44 OEM partners, 60 million videos I've seen. I believe you're in 64 different countries. If I've got those numbers right there, what are the key factors that you look for when you're looking at? What are some of these businesses there? When you're acquiring your businesses, what are you looking for? So the business is split into really four different sections. Conceptually, at the moment, it's the easiest way to explain it. We've got point solutions, which are individual pieces of software that operate in the sales channel and point solutions that operate in the after sales channel. And they could be anything from a, we've got an auto imaging product, which just allows you to take video and photography to put onto orstrader.co.uk, for example, you can have the sit now video and you're certainly sharing and so on and so forth. And you can have RTC and the workship. So all these point solutions are available, some of which communicate with each other and you create, we don't have a single platform, but you create the basis of a conversation or you create the basis of a piece of process for the retailer. So having those two platforms, we then, we put bookends on the end of them. We've got data and insights on one side and we then got conversations on the other. So those two products, those two platforms effectively communicate and help to gather data on the sales and the after sales point solutions. So our strategy is today, our software communicates with 2 million people a month, are spoken to, emailed, messaged video off our platforms to these 64 countries around the world and it's increasing. What we want to do is look to enrich that conversation with more choice for the consumer and something that's going to help the retailers to sell more. That is our fundamental basis of what we do and we will continue to go on the acquisition trail for more businesses that help us to do that, not only in the UK but also overseas as well. But that core market is really being central Europe and the UK, although we are in North America, we're also in the Far East, we're in Africa as well. But we operate through a reseller market for those markets in the Far East and in Africa. But it does help us to understand trends in various organisations, various countries, they are different, the European markets are different to the UK markets, you have to make sure that you keep your ear to the ground and have software that will operate in the right markets. Some of the companies though, there must be crossover, I'm looking at DealAweb, Auto SLM, then you've got, well, I'm just looking at the list of companies you acquired recently RTC, you've got Quick, DealAdesk, Reef, Toodle, AUB imaging, I don't know if you pronounce that, Arbore, AUB imaging. That's all the publishing others, yeah. Thank you. There must be a challenge, I'm just looking at Auto SLM and then DealAweb, you've got competitors there, is that a challenge to integrate all of these into, see it now group? No, not really, I think that we have the concept of, I think the best products in the marketplace, we want to do that. We'll also acquire what we call book acquisition, so there's a platform out there that's got a number of retailers using a particular platform, we would look to acquire that in certain circumstances to migrate them across to DealAweb. In the instance of Auto SLM, we've actually kept the Auto SLM business alive because it's got a great platform for people who maybe want something a bit different to DealAweb, so it gives the retailers choice. We've also got a reasonable number of independent retailers using the Auto SLM platform, but also retailers who don't necessarily want all of the complicated interfaces that could exist in other CRM platforms. It's just giving people, giving the retailers some choice and we'll continue to do that. We'll always look for best in class. We want to be market leading software providers and it will be some of the big geographical, so the DealAdesk business is only ever going to stay in Germany, it's much harder for us to bring a CRM platform to the European market because of all the legislation when it comes down to selling vehicles, which is a lot easier to run a lead management platform or a lead response platform across Europe because you're just measuring a response mechanism. These things are a little bit easier, but there are still a few gaps in our sales and our after sales agenda that we'll look to fill out time. When you're looking at a business then, what are some of the things that you're looking for? Is it going to integrate into the business? Are you looking at the people there? When you turn up there and say, okay, this is the gaps I want to fill there, we're looking at the businesses. What do you start looking for, Alastair? Is it more the people or the product? Initially, it's about the product and the space that it fills. I think that what we've seen is, and without, I'm not going to sit here and dive all Germany strategy, but I think what is important to us is that we understand where the product software can help retailers, and we understand from our own perspective and our investors perspective on the gaps that we have in our current platform. We're looking to provide solutions to retailers that help them. That's what we're trying to do. We don't just want to put on cost to the retailers, but we can give synergies to those retailers where we're providing more than one system and we can join them together so they can have a seamless approach and they don't have lots of individual point solutions that don't integrate with each other. It's always the challenge, but our philosophy is to help the retailers to sell more. What are some of your non-negotiables? When you're dealing with staff, when people are either with the group or coming into the group there, what are some of the things that Alastair is a non-negotiable? See it in our group, this is what we do. Do you have any of those? I think that this time, but Q Dosto Jeffery here, one of the things that Jeffery brought in was the culture that he inspired and led within Sitna. That was one of the things that Sitna is renowned for, was the culture that it has. I feel that in a software industry, it's always been, for some people, it's never been necessarily the first thing, but our people are first. That's what we do. We very much focus on the culture of our team. We've over 300 people in the business today that are either talking to customers, helping us build software, processing our invoices, and generally keeping our business together in one piece. It's a challenge, especially when you've grown pre-COVID. We actually had our first conference since COVID hit in February this year. In February 2023, about 250 of our 300 people and colleagues in the room, and November 2019 was the last conference that we had because of COVID, and we had 80 people in the room. We made some really tough decisions in COVID to try to help both our own team and also our retailers. We didn't shut up shop. We actually tried to bring more products to the market, but we also looked at our team and gave our team some more time to try to... We had to try and save some costs. We went through a very challenging period like everybody else did, but we kept our business going. Out of the back of it, we were very successful in going through an acquisition strategy. It really started with Dealerweb in the back end of 2020, and most of our acquisitions have come from the last two-hour years. It's been in World War, Sam. There's nothing easy about integrating businesses. All the retailers out there that have bought other retailer groups have bought the business, knowing that the business has got good sound people in it, that are good operators. Eventually, what you want to do, you are the good systems first, so some of the big groups put all their systems in first, and then they bring their culture. Their culture is massively important. They're not sure there is not a retailer group out there that doesn't want people to buy into their culture. That's the one big attribute that we bring as well as attempting to be. Most of the time, we feel we are best in class with the software that we bring in. Peter Smive, again on his interview, he said, according to business, he said, it's culture, culture, culture. He said, you're having to get the culture right, and it takes so long to get that right, and it's the number one priority for them there. 100%. This question is for Aiden. Aiden is 25 years old. Just started the motor train. He's had three whole days in the motor train. He was talking about his video, and he went on that first, and was learning how to do video and so forth. I said, funny enough, I'm interviewing the guy who's pretty much behind video there. I said, anything you want me to ask him? He said, yeah, what advice would you have for 25-year-old Aiden? The Volers Group in Ireland, what would you do if you're in his shoes? So Aiden, my son is a year older than you. He was 26. 12 months ago, same age as you. He made the ball move to move. He was in Liverpool at the time, and he moved to London. He took a big step to go and do that, and he went to work for a big company, went to work for Gartner, and he'd gone through a long interview process, and he said, a year, therefore, a year in London. I was talking to him the other day about this. What's changed in the last year? If you could tell yourself, your 25-year-old self, what to do differently than being 26, and he's slightly cynical there. What would you do? The thing is, it's a balance, okay? I think from Aiden's perspective, he's going to be trying to prove himself. He's trying to make sure that he's seen in a good light, et cetera, et cetera. I think that 25-year-olds today, it's challenging. They've got a different culture. They've always got the mobile phone in their hand, whereas when we were in the show, it wasn't a mobile phone, we didn't have one. But we had to be seen to be always talking to all of us, attempting to talk to customers. It's slightly different today. But Aiden, I think there are going to be, again, we're basing this on the fact that the culture of the organization is going to help drive the driving in a particular direction. But I think it's personality. I still believe that if what you can do is aim to be in a listen, you've got two of these in one of these. Whilst I do talk a lot, I do listen. I think it's really important when you're talking to a customer. Aiden, if you take any inquiries from a customer, listen or read what they've written. Make sure that you understand what it is that they're looking for. Whilst in the early days, we would say to a customer, a dealership, don't ring the customer to ask them whether you can send them a video. Just send them a video. You've got a couple of choices. Some retailers today are simply sending a response video and then offering to do a more detailed walker and all something specifically of interest to them. You can do a five minute walk around on the car and then say, listen, Mr. Customer, if you'd like me to go and spend some more time in the real luggage area where I can show you how much luggage space you've got or whether you can fold the back seats down or what it would look like if I'm sat behind the driver's seat, number six, but one, et cetera. Make sure you process all of those questions through your video. Then send it to the customer and ask for a response, ask for feedback. It's a lot easier for the customer to ask you to do a little video that is for them to get in the car and can drive. Certainly through COVID, we've seen many customers adopt an approach where they will, dealership customers, they will use videos as a way to help you sell, reach, sell cars where they couldn't visit the showroom. There's some of these tactics are still there, but I would just encourage Aiden just to reach for the start and just make sure that you be positive, be confident, ask lots of questions, be inquisitive, but also when a customer asks something, make sure you deliver against it. Don't ignore it and don't walk away from it. Great advice. Great advice. Now listen, most audience investors, dealers, senior managers, that's too out-ordinates really is an Aiden, sorry, this is no disrespect to you. I'm sure you want to listen to this as well. But same question. What advice do you have to the investor? Listen to this now. Over the next five years, let's say that you sold see it now, group, you did the IPO or whatever is in the future there and you said, right, I want to buy a dealer group. What would you be focusing on, Alisa, over the next probably 12 to five years in a dealer group? So, I'm not the resident expert on how retailers will buy other retailers. I mean, I've seen it. We when we were in that business didn't do it, but I've seen lots of people go through that. I don't mean that, but if you did own the dealership, what would you be focusing on? So the investors got the dealership. What would your focus be if you did own a dealer group? Okay. I honestly believe that the world of retail and ours about efficiencies is about efficiency and how they can not. It's not that the language of cost cutting is not about just spending less on pens and pencils. This is about trying to work out what you can do to make those efficiencies. And the most expensive commodity that is in those retailers, apart from stock, well, maybe you're maybe not with agency, is about people. So if those people can be more efficient and you can improve your productivity because of that efficiency, then I feel that's going to be beneficial. Now that's different in sales and after sales. So in an after sales environment, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure you visited lots. You can stand in a workshop in a workshop controllers office or in a service managers office and you can tell how well a retailer operates their workshop. And because it's not necessarily about shouting and screaming, it's about everybody knowing what's happening and everybody's seeing what people are doing. And honestly, I was in no plug intended. I was in Williams, Joggy Rolandrova or Londrova dealership by the Trufford Centre a couple of months ago. And they've got the RTC papillus environment for their for their vehicle health check and their entire workshop management platform. And the service advisors are calm. You know, the service manager is efficient. Listen, I just want to say thank you so much. I really, really appreciate the time. No, we're just on. Take care. That just leaves me to say that all details of this episode and other episodes on the selling in the motor trade can be found on our website simcotraining.co.uk. Go there to get a copy of our book, Words That Sell Cars. Go there to sign up to a free trial of our sales fitness online sales training program. Easiest way to get hold of me is Simon Bowkett, food LinkedIn. Thank you.
