This week we take a step back and listen to some of the tops tips from our previous guests. There is one thing that Jim Reid, Steve Faulkner, Jeff Cowan and Mike Jones all have in common – everything centres round the customer.
Whether it’s in sales or aftersales, good customer service, and a good customer journey, are the keys to success. Of course, we all know this, but sometimes we get bogged down in the minutiae and forget the basics.
A good episode to refocus all our minds for the year ahead.
Here are the highlights:
{02:27} Chasing the pound
{06:11} Importance of upselling in service
{08:59} Map the customer journey
{13:17} Keep the customer and the vehicle for longer
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 visit
www.symcotraining.co.uk
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 Skippy, I will start by saying thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Today is my pleasure to introduce you to Jim Reed. Now Jim Reed is someone I'm going to tell you who really punches above his weight. Just before doing this podcast, I was speaking to Andrew Clark, one of the guys, one of our trainers. And I said, oh, I'm about to do an interview with Jim Reed. He said, ah, Jim Reed from up in Scotland, Aberdeen. Ah, listen, he runs a brilliant business. And we're going to get into how a small independent, I hope I don't offend him when I said that, but with someone, an independent dealer really does punch above their weight and has this reputation where he's done to build that reputation. So without further ado, I just want to say welcome aboard Jim and I really appreciate your time on this podcast. I appreciate the invitation, Simon, and some really keen words there as well. Well, listen, this podcast is all about sharing tips and ideas and best practice to some more cars, make more money, improve more hours in the service department, sell more parts. Can I ask you, is there any tips or advice or any nugget of information that you'd like to share that you think, ah, I wish I knew that when I started anything that springs to mind? Hey, I mean, the, I mean, the loads of nuggets, I mean, there's no, a, you know, I think we're all very bad at selling, you know, selling up, if you know what I mean. And it's kind of found up on now that, you know, you sell inclusive, so you would fair to careful that as well. I think, you know, advice, why does this maybe answer the question, Simon, but, you know, what I'm a great believer in, and listen to me, why I look at it, but I'm not going to die a million, but I think we're all very guilty of, of a, to keep it right. You know, we're all always looking at the profit, you know, always, always over the money, saying the things, how much money you've made against that deal, how much money you've made that week, this month, whatever. If you turn that in your head a little bit, and you say, chase the experience, you chase the delivery and experience to the customer, the money comes, Simon. Yeah. You know, money is a secondary thing. The money is a payment for delivering a service. And if you think of it like that, you'll have a different mindset altogether. Don't chase the money. Don't look at customers. I was always told, you know, when I was getting trained, when I was young, you know, those are pound notes walking about out there. You know, I don't see that. I see those as people with stories who are friends, potential friends who walk them back and look after you, and those are your peak customers for time and time again. If you treat them like bugs and money, guess what? You'll only sell one car from them. You'll never sell their peak. You'll never sell a stock car ever in a lifetime. You've got to look after them. You've got to repeat. And if you don't have repeat, you're always found all the traders pockets trying to up up that new customer leads. That's why I do it half day. Great advice. And I'll go tell you, it's, I see that on your website. You look at your website, you see all of your team there. Okay. I can see you've got, it's a family business. And you've got Gail. You've got Liam there. You've got Laura. You've got so many other people there. But I think you can see your team there. I think people do buy people. You do. 100% they buy. Was that part of your decision to put your name on the business to start with you? It's like it's about right, very for a start. And when I was at, you got so many different names of what the business could be named and whatever. And it's a really exciting time, isn't it? When you're thinking of a name for your company. And the, this guy actually said to me, he says, Jim, the best, he says, look after your customers, he says, yes. He says, look after your customers, use your name. It's the best thing you never do. He said, you can't hide from your name. If you look after your customers, it forces you to look after your customers, your name. It's so, so true. And the amount of times I've actually said that with customers, I can have bit undecided. Yeah. I would say, look, I'm not here to rip you off. But all it's my name, it's a lot of the door. It's my epivacence on a line. It's my name is going to be tarnished. Would I do that if I was going to rip you off just to tarnish my name? I wouldn't do that. Yeah. So true. Yeah, my point is not. Yeah, I love it. And today we've got someone talking about the parts and the service side of the business. And it's my pleasure to introduce Jeff Cowan from ProTalk. It's Jeff Cowan's ProTalk. Hi, Jeff. How are you? How are you doing, sir? Very good. So, what are the service advisors? Right. Sometimes in a business, they're almost seen as the forgotten part of the business. You sold cars as well. And you started selling cars first and then it was like go and have a look at the service department almost as an afterthought. And again, something I was taught by my first service manager. He said to Simon, never forget, car salespeople, they only sell the first car. It's the service people, they sell the second, the third, the ongoing sale. I think it's so true. How often have you been on that counter? And the customer comes up and says, hey, Jeff, that new hybrid technology is any good or not? Because Bob and sales are some years, but you'll tell me the truth there. I want to ask, is that attitude changing yet? Because listen, I've been in the motor trade since I was 17 years old. I'm 49 now. So that's too many years. But that was the attitude when I first started. Is it changing or is it still there, do you think? No, I think the service advisor has a tremendous effect on whether or not that customer is going to buy that second car at that dealership. Because like you said, the salesperson sees them once, the service advisor sees them anywhere depending on the vehicle and how it's driven two to four times a year. So the customer just drives that car for three years. That's 12 times. So yeah, but I even take it a step further because that's always been one of the things. Sales sells the first one, service sells the second, but service can also cost you the second. Because if you don't have a service advisor that knows how to walk around the car, how to interact with the customer, build a relationship and get the sale, then here's what happens. The vehicle gets the vehicle, they drive it for 100,000 kilometers. And they look back over 100,000 kilometers and they say, when the salesperson sold me this, he said that I'd never have to do anything to it. But let me back up for a second. So they come in, they drive it for 100,000 miles, but are 100,000 kilometers. And the whole time they're driving it, the service advisor never upsells them on the preventative maintenance, never helps them out with the repairs and the like. So then at the end of that 100,000 kilometers, the customer looks back and says, hey, I'm getting ready to buy a new car. And I don't know if I want one of these because the salesperson told me this one would last me, you know, for 100,000 kilometers and cost me almost no money. But the last two years alone, it's cost me $2,000 or $3,000, you know, to keep it running. So why would I want to go back and buy another one? Now, it cost them that much because they never did the service, but the customer will never admit that. So they go someplace else because they don't see the value. But at the flip side, if you've got a service advisor that knows how to build that relationship and sells them what they need all along the way, the oil changes, the maintenance, the repairs and the tires and all that stuff, then at 100,000 kilometers, the customer looks back and says, you know what, the salesperson told me if I took care of this car and I did, then I should be able to drive it 100,000 kilometers with little or no expense. And that really happened. I think I'm going to go back and get another one because obviously this is a great car. So yes, they can sell the second car if they're selling the customer the whole time, you know, they're driving the vehicle, the preventative maintenance and the repairs as they're needed. And that's, that's where I think a lot of it falls apart because most advisors I've met don't know how to sell or they won't sell. Now, today is my privilege and honor to say hi to Steve Faulkner. Now, Steve is the founder and the CEO of Automotive Solutions Group. Would you like to leave the listener to this podcast? What's your best tip or idea or something that could put in place immediately almost now and get a result? Any tip that you'd like to leave the listeners? I think what I would do, well, first I'd like to thank everybody. That's mostly important because you've spent, you've invested quite a lot of time listening to these dolce-it tones from a stoic on transit. I'm not talking about time. I think the second thing is you kind of have to look at the customer journey in your business. Now, a couple of years I invested in GE were around Lean Six Sigma. And one tool that I picked up and I've used so many times since is to map out the customer journey as if I'm the customer to identify the non-value add or the waste and try and get rid of it. So if I'm doing things that add no value to the customer, I'm either doing them for regulatory purposes or operational, critical to quality items. But outside of that, the entire journey should be a journey that everybody understands and understands really well that everybody can demonstrate as a standard operating procedure and they know where the value points are in that journey. And I think if you give everybody that map so they can actually act as if they're the customer and go through the process. And every market's different. When I arrived in Dubai and you're absolutely right, we'd asked the customer to sign 66 checks, deposit checks, 60 payments, three checks just in case he got his signature wrong. And I'm going to take the poor customer to do that. And that was just the checks. Think about all the paperwork that went with it. So it was a very manual. It felt like going back 10 years, if not 20. But now things have caught up and the process has become more and more digital. So I think what we've got to do is we've got to think that you're 16 year old and I'm not trying to classify everybody the same. But you're 16 year old and you're 80 year old, could look exactly the same and they could look very different. And we've got what we've got to do and our job is to work out who they are, what they like, what they dislike. And we've got to work out how to protect them and the business. So whether it's through warranty programs, through the workshop, residual value insurance, if that's what we need to provide, that's what we need to provide. And driving that retention, really focusing on holding onto your customer. Because at the moment, there's less cost, which means there's less customers, there's less frequency in your workshop. So we've got to work hard at to keep what we've got. Today I'm drunk with Mike Jones. Mike Jones is for the people in the UK, we'll know that Mike Jones was working with ASC for a long, long time. I know that the world's changing now. I'm sure he's going to tell us a little bit about what he's doing now and the future. So first I just want to say welcome aboard and thank you very much for joining the podcast. Morning. Thanks so much for having me on. This podcast is all about sharing tips and ideas to some more cars, make more profit. That's what it's all about. And there's always these little nuggets of ideas that you hear every now and then. There's one I believe I need to give credit to your father for. And that's the phrase, promise me. I'm almost certain with him. I heard this little phrase. If if someone's not going to get the tires changed, he said, listen, would you do me a favor? Just promise me you can't done by the end of the week. Okay, because with that trade on it, you're doubling your breaking distance. And it's just a great little line. So can I ask you, is there any tip, any one idea that you've picked up, nugget that you'd like to share that might help people? Oh, God, there's thousands. And yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's effectively a red and amber work sale on health and safety. It is, yeah. But it's, but it's, it was it your father? Sorry, I got your father stole that from. I think it was. Yeah. And I think it originally came from NADA in the R&D. The top 20 group idea. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, well, it wouldn't have come from a top 20 group. It would have come from somebody who actually was training it rather than. Yeah. Okay. So I think it's a really good thing to do with the FKO and or something like that. I can't remember honestly who that was. But no, I mean, there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. I mean, the one that I'm trying to get people to focus on, that's more of a macro thing than a tiny little thing, but is in this retention, you know, sort of service plan sales for use cars. We need to get some business back from the independence and keep the customer and the more that we're doing a better job dealing with the service customers. I mean, the level of follow up is terrible. And we've got more electronic tools to help us do that now than we've ever done. But I still have exactly the same success rate as I used to have when people had got a concertina file, they put invoices in based on what month people needed following up and just phoned them up. So for me, I would be using the technology to do it. But just basically, as I said, we didn't need the technology. I just need us to build a relationship with the customer. I need us to build a relationship with the customer, speak to them on a more regular basis about their business, about their personal life. And then we will get more sales of both cars and service out of it because I think it's still really quite poor. And as you said, you know, the way we're actually looking at each individual customer and going, okay, no, Simon's got, he's got another full service due in two weeks. So I'm just trying to drag that forward. So that would be my focus into after selling enough to sales. Sales is a dirty word enough to sales in the service department. They spend their entire time fighting with each other. So the last thing I want to be taught of is salespeople. But we're protecting the customer's time. We need to be giving them convenient solutions and the right ones for them, not pre-qualifying them, giving them the opportunity to buy and but fundamentally in the use car sales department, make sure we're selling service plans. 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.
