In this episode we look business to business sales. Obviously, you are still dealing with people but getting to speak to the right person first of all is key. With this in mind where do you start?
Simon discusses some approaches to help when cold calling: from your canvassing your suppliers to competitors of your existing customers.
If your hand feels heavy prospecting your business data base, then these tops tips will help.
Here are the highlights:
{01:14} Marketing isn’t selling
{02:25} Bouncing off one customer to another
{03:37} Suppliers
{04:28} Competitors of your existing customers
{09:23} How to get through voice mail and gate keepers
{12:15} Farmer rather than hunter
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.
To find out more visitwww.symcotraining.co.uk
Time, welcome to the Selling and the Motor Trade podcast in Association of Car Without. The online car-changing destination. Together we share tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service department, and generally put more profit into your department, dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Bowkett, or some of you might already know me as Skippy. First thing, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Hi, welcome to another episode of Selling and the Motor Trade. I've been asked to help some salespeople who are local business salespeople. They're selling businesses to business. And I said, it's different, isn't it? It's not retail sales, but kind of is because they're small businesses.
And I've been asked to go out on the road and get hold of these different people. What can you do? And I suppose there's lots of things we can do. Yes, people are still people at the end of the day, but it's how you get hold of those customers, how your prospect is different. And the first thing I would say is don't get caught in the trap of thinking marketing is selling. There's a place for marketing, of course there is. But marketing is getting your message out there, throwing a whole lot of stuff out there on LinkedIn and hoping that people come back and speak to you. And you know what, there's a place that I suppose we started this podcast as a marketing exercise.
And yes, people do regularly say, oh, we love what you do. Okay, what can you do for our business there? But that's marketing. Selling for me is a completely different thing. Okay, don't keep your whole time doing just marketing, marketing, marketing. You could actually do some selling. And selling to me is getting out and cold calling, speaking to these people who might not know about you and want to talk about what you can do. If you sit back and waiting for people to come to you, I think that's a game of wait and hope and see. Okay, where salespeople need to go out there and let them know what we do and how we can do it.
So where do you start? Okay, go to an industrial state where they've got a whole lot of pick ups and trucks and vans and hey, can I sell you vans? Yeah, you can do that. Might be hard work. Okay, let me show you one approach that I really like the idea of. And this is bouncing off one customer to another. Okay, let's say you sell some vans, okay, to Billy Bob plumbing supplies, okay. And you sold them vans. They're a good contract. We're going to look for trying to get some referrals. Now, firstly, you can say, hey, Billy, we've been supplying your vans for the last three or four years or however long. Hey, listen, if you and I swapped jobs, if you were selling vans for a living out of all your business contacts, who would be the first company you would speak to about something vans do?
Oh, really? Charlie, okay, the heating engineer. Why do you say because he was talking about vans the other day? That's referrals, okay? How is it Billy? You don't mind if I could use your name to make Charlie, it's easier for him to take my call, would you? Okay, so referrals is a great way to bounce from one lead to another. Okay, and next thing, if you're in a dealership dealer group, go to your bought ledger. So bought ledgers simply all the things that you as a company, you buy from other suppliers, okay? It's real easy. They're going to have to speak to you anyway because you sell them stuff, okay? Hey, you know, I've been working in the motor trade in the UK since 2000.
We train lots of lots of salespeople and dealerships and dealer groups and OEMs. Very rarely do people pick up the phone and say, hey Simon, how many cars you got? Okay, I went to the next car, can you change? What can we do? It just doesn't happen. In fact, actually last minute then it happened. Mark, okay, group sales manager of Braille's, well done sir, you actually did do that. But it's so, so rare that that happened, okay? So you're talking bought ledger, but here's the one I really like. It's one I want to talk to you about today, okay? And it's a simple process, but a little bit harder to explain. Let's go back to Billy Bob, planning supplies.
It's fair to say that Billy Bob knows you his local competition. And his local competition might be, let's just call them, Elsa, plumbing supplies, Peter, plumbing supplies, and Charlie plumbing supplies, okay? Billy Bob is going to know who they are and vice versa. So what we're going to do is we're going to try and speak to Elsa plumbing supplies. So firstly, we're going to do a suspect call, not a prospect call. Now, of course, LinkedIn's great for this LinkedIn navigator. This is not a podcast on LinkedIn navigator. You can go and get that information from LinkedIn navigator, okay? So many other sources there, but let's just say we're going to do it the old-fashioned way, the speed up some time, okay?
I find some people that you do all that work to put off the inevitable. I'm getting my list ready. I'm doing my preparation. How listen, the hard thing is you just got to pick up the phone. I'm going to tell you for me as well, and I train this stuff for a living. I've done it for 27 years of my life. The phone still gets heavy before I pick that up because it's that rejection that we as humans don't like. But here's what we're going to do. We're going to get on the phone to Elsa plumbing supplies. And I find out, hey, listen, who was the right person to speak to regarding the supplying of your vans?
Okay, that's going to be Adam. Okay, now then I'm just going to ask, hey, is Adam there? Okay, doesn't matter. Probably not. Okay, what's Adam's details? You'll probably get a great gatekeeper to say what's regarding. Okay, but we know it's Adam now. That's my suspect call. And now I'm going to try and get through to Adam. Here's my actual call. Okay, I'll get on. Ring ring can speak to Adam. Who is it? It's Simon from Symco forward. Okay, it's just regarding Billy Bob plumbing supplies. I think that's true. The person taking the receptionist, the gatekeeper, knows that I'm Simon from Symco forward. It's regarding Billy Bob's plumbing supplies. Do you think Adam from Elsa plumbing supplies might know who Billy Bob is?
Yeah, they might not know who Symco forward is, but they know their competition. Okay, do you think you might get through to Adam? Do you think Adam might call you back? Yeah, I think he will. And then when he calls back, what are you actually going to say? Okay, hi Adam, always you get through to Adam. Yes, you want to speak to me? Now the call's nice and simple. Yeah, my name's Simon from Symco forward. Listen, we've just supplied Billy Bob plumbing supplies, their van and their fleet for the last five, 10 years. And with significant save them money and reduce their time running their fleet. What I want to do is come along and fill you how successful it has been for Billy Bob plumbing supplies and how it might be successful for Elsa plumbing supplies.
And when's a good time for us to get together and show you exactly what we could do? Would that be this week or would next week be better now? Okay, oh no, no, we have a supplier of vans. You know what, that's exactly what Billy Bob plumbing supplies said. Till they found out what we do could actually save them money and time and running their fleet. What I love to do is come along and show you how it was successful them and why they changed their supplier when they see what we could do. Okay, when's a good time for us to get together and do that? Well, that means this week or maybe next week now.
So this is bouncing from one to the other. Now, of course, you need to have one great client to start with there. Sales measures, dealer principles. Today, I want to talk to you about our master class. We've been running symco training since 2000 and we've trained thousands. But today, I want to talk to you about your experience salespeople. How much better can they be? Are they the guys that get that constant coaching and development that the new people do? For the master class, we talk about taking things to the next level. It's not the basic steps of a sales process. We're going to talk a lot about the psychology as to why people buy. We're going to talk a lot about the attitude, how to get people out of the saddoms, if you've been on one of our courses before, back into the miters touch.
We're going to talk about how each salesperson can have their own business plan, because they're actually running their own business within a business. So listen, talk to us about the master class and let's see how we can take your salespeople to the next level. And now you can also use it to get through voice mail. How often do people use the answer machine just to screen calls? You get through to, I don't know who is this now, this is what do we say before? Beta, Bob from Beta Plumbing for Lies. We get through, we know who he is. Someone's given us the phone number, but it goes to voicemail because he sees the number. Come up, he doesn't know who it is.
He doesn't take calls, he doesn't know who it is. He lets the answer machine to screen the call. I know I do. We're all busy, aren't we? Who is that? I don't know, not sure. Okay. So here's the message. Hi, you're through to Bob. Okay, leave a message. I'll get back to you if I can be bothered. Hi, Bob. It's Simon calling from Symco Ford. It's just regarding Billy Bob from Plumbing for Lies. Or it's just regarding alpha plumbing supplies. Would you please give me a call on 07949 240 550? Guys, are you going to get a call back? Yeah, of course you are. Okay. And then when they call back, okay, hey listen, the reasonable, I love to go straight into it.
I don't go into, hi, sorry, it's just a quick call, sorry to disturb you. Don't be apologetic for it. Just turn around and say, hey, thanks for calling me back. The reason for the call is we supply Billy Bob plumbing supplies. Or we supply Charlie plumbing supplies, okay, or alpha plumbing supplies. The vans I've lost three, four years. And we've saved them significant time and money running their fleet. What I want to do is come along and tell you how successful it has been for them and how it might be successful for you. So listen, when is a good time for us to get together? Guys, I'm just straight to the point because remember, in any sort of prospecting, that's what this is.
Prospecting is, I want to remember, some will, some won't, so what, next, some will, some won't, so what, next, okay. And I tell you why I'm loving this in 2025. I just been lying to you on it. There's a place for social selling, social media selling. There's some great content supplies out there. Okay, I'm not knocking that at all. Mr. Disney, you know who you are. Some of the guys that are absolutely brilliant. But because of that, lots of people aren't picking the phone up. They're just not doing it as much anymore. And once you actually get that, you might be amazed at how well it does work again. Okay, now try that approach and see how you get on with it.
But what you need to do is obviously start off with one of the clients that you sold to. Okay, so ask for the referrals and they ask from one person to the next, to the next. And start growing your network that way. You know that business to business sales role, it's not one that happens overnight. You need to be more of a farmer than the hunter. Okay, and whilst you're speaking to them now, yes, you know, and I know that they've just changed their vans or the company, EV vans and you haven't got that, but it's coming along there. So now you know who they are. You can put them into your database. Okay, and then they say, ah, we're not doing anything for six months.
Great, listen, you don't mind if I give you a call in six months, do you? Okay, guess what everyone says? Yeah, of course, no problem. Okay, and then guess what we're going to do in six months time? We're going to call. You go through to the gatekeeper. Okay, hi, can you speak to Adam from ELSA, Plumbing to Lies. Does he know what's regarding? Guess what you're going to say now? Yes, he will know who it is because six months ago, he told you to call him. Oh, no, he didn't. You said, you don't mind if I give you a call in six months time. He said, of course, he gave you permission to call. Okay, so it's yes.
Okay, and then you get through. If he says hello, hi, I'm calling you as promised. We supply Billy Bob, Plumbing supplies their vans. At the time, you were six months away from doing anything. I just want to make a point and come along and talk to you about where you're up to now and show you exactly what we can do and how successful it has been with Billy Bob, Plumbing supplies, saving money and time from the left. Oh, sorry, I keep saying that. I didn't explain it why. If you're a local business person, guys, those people are spinning plates. Okay, they are trying to fix someone's boiler, get the other engineers to someone else, trying to get marketing done.
They are bombarded with people trying to sell them stuff. Okay, the amount of gate keeps, we run a business that wears a small business. Okay, and we're bombarded with people trying to sell stuff all the time. And you just don't have time to do this. This is on a weekend. I've come into the studio to do a few more of these things because quite frankly, it's anytime we can do it because we're just too busy. Okay. And so these people are as well, they are really, really busy. That's why we're always going to talk about. We've been able to save them time and money running their fleet. They're the two things that business people want.
Oh, listen, that about does it for now. There's so many different things we do on sending out proposals, okay, going from a suspect call to a prospect call. But again, come and speak to us. Reach out. We'll tell you exactly. In fact, lots of stuff, what you're doing as a local business sales person is actually what ourselves director does day in day out and said, go train. It's what we do all the time there. But I want to leave you with this thought, okay, there's selling and there's marketing. Don't just spend all your time on marketing. Don't just spend all your time hoping or waiting they come to you. There is a place that get on the phone and start reaching out to people.
So that's what the job is. And never forget, shine salespeople, gracing kids. Get on those phones and I'll see you next time. 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 through LinkedIn. Thank you.
