What makes a great sales trainer? This is a question we get asked regularly, so in this episode we look at the qualities that Symco look for in people to join our team.
Great trainers go on more training than their delegates to stay fresh and sharp, can engage an audience and are good communicators.
These tips can help, not only if you are looking for a career in training but also public speaking or coaching your team.
Here are the highlights:
{02:14} What separates the good from the great
{07:16} Look at your audience
{14:30} Work in the industry
{22:10} Get feedback from the audience
{27:28} Give people the meat
{39:07} Give credit
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
Welcome to the Selling in 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 cards, 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 will start with saying thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Hi, welcome to another episode of Selling in the Motor Trade. Listen, again, it's a thank you to all of you listening to this. Watch on YouTube. We know most of you people listen to this podcast, but again, our last episode, it hit another record. It just keeps growing and growing. So all you people who are subscribing, thank you so much. All you people are sending this on to your sales team. Thank you so much. Again, the goal of this podcast is to get as many of these ideas out in the motor rate as we possibly can. And you know what? It's working. I can't believe we started this in the first lockdown because I needed something to do. And this podcast is really just growing legs. So thank you. Now listen, today, the conversation I want to talk you about is what makes a good sales trainer? What makes a great sales trainer? Now, don't worry, I'm not going to be arrogant enough to say, oh, I'm a great trainer. Look at me. Far from it. But I've seen lots of great trainers in my time. Unfortunately enough to probably go on more training than the delegates do on our training courses. And of course, we have to because we have to stay sharp and we have to be right at the forefront. And a lot of listeners to the podcast will know that I go to the National Automotive Dealers Association Conference every year in the States. I think the one coming up soon, thanks to Patrick Tessier. This is going to be number 22, I believe I've been to. 22 of them. And I always like to go and see what's fresh and what's new. And I love to see the trainers there and what separates the good from the great, how they engage with an audience. I've been fortunate enough to speak at the Australian Automotive Dealers Association Conference Automotive Management with their conference in Ireland. I've spoken at their conference as well. So I've been so fortunate to speak at so many conferences, as you would expect, and see some really great communicators. And the reason why I wanted to do this is not because I think I'm a great communicator. I think I hold my own. I think I'm still learning my trade. I've been doing this for 23 years. But the reason I want to say this is every now and then, no, sorry, I'm going to rephrase that. Regularly, at least once a month, I run a sales training course. And someone will stay behind and say, oh, I'll tell you what, that was a great course. Best one I've ever been on. How do I become a sales trainer? What do I need to do to become a sales trainer? And I get that all the time. Now, my standard response is, hey, listen, if you want to be a great sales trainer, I can put you in the right direction, but we'd never employ anyone that we're working with. My standard joke is, could you imagine the conversation with someone like Gavin Hides? Well, hello, Gavin. Okay. You know, your great sales manager. Okay, your great head of business. We've just poached him. That would be quite suicidal for any work I wanted to do with that owner of that telegrip going forward. So we always say, we'll never employ people that we're working with. That for me just would not be right. Okay. So if you're all one of the people we're working with and listen to this thing, oh, great. I want to be a trainer. Okay. We'll point you in the right direction. Okay. But we're never ever going to employ you because that just doesn't work. But even so, I was the same person. I sat on training courses and I'd see some people there like, I remember, of course, with Brian Milstead. I went, okay, he's really got my attention there and held it for the whole time there. Conversely, I've been on some other courses. I won't name any names now. I lost the will to live death by PowerPoint. Okay. It's almost like goodness sake. You just going to sit there and read everything that's on the slide. Why don't you go and have yourself a break and just give me the click and we'll read through all of it. In fact, better still. Why didn't you just email it through to me beforehand? In fact, I'll go go one stage further. So often, I've been on, we've run training courses for OEMs, dealer groups, and I get someone who's not been there. I'll just say, hey, can you just send through the slide deck of your course just so I can go through it. And we always say, no, now it's not because we're protecting our intellectual property or anything like that. We don't have slide decks like you're thinking about because they're the ones that put people to sleep. You see, for me, a good sales trainer is really simple. Great sales trainers. Just a great sales manager. That's all. I just think what makes a good sales manager a business manager, a coach in a car dealership is the same thing that makes a great trainer, in my opinion. Someone who doesn't mind rolling sleeves up, getting involved and showing someone how to do it. Again, here's the other thing. And then we turn up to our partners we work with. We have a program where we turn up once a month. Again, we do coaching onsite with the guys and we get involved with real customers and real customers and deal with salespeople and show them how to sell the value added products, how to make those prospecting calls, how to close someone that says, oh, no, I don't need GAP. I'm a safe driver. I'm driving for 30 years. Because people learn more when they see it, I believe, than they're actually just talking about it. It's all about for me. A great sales trainer is a great sales manager. In fact, I've got to say this as well. Our philosophy, when we turn up to a deal group to do some work with them, and our philosophy is always to turn the management team into the trainers. I always like to think the management team is one of our trainers. And we try to teach them the same ways we want our trainer to deal with that salesperson, that after sales that service advisor when they're in the dealership. So let's have a look at this. What makes that great trainer then? Firstly, this is going to be no rocket science, but I've seen so many trainers get this wrong. In fact, I'll share this with you. They're currently looking for a trainer at the moment. And I'm looking for a great trainer. Not good. They need to be great. So what I'll say is I'll say to anyone, I say, listen, just send me a quick video on yourself. Okay. Five minutes long, not much longer that. What's happened to me? Get the video to me any which way you can. Now, what's app? It limits the size you can send it. So that's almost bad as sometimes because I want to get a feel for who they are. Or send me a link to YouTube or get a video to me any which way you can. I say, just train me on anything. Okay. I just received what you like because, you know, so much the training at symco training is in this media updates. Okay. Over 50% of our training is digital content now. And I suppose that's where the world has gone since COVID. Also, it's somewhat easier to get me to Canada now. This way, so much easier to get me to Melbourne this way than it is jumping on a plane and having to fly out there. So we're doing more and more of it. Listen, everyone is. So I want to see how they react with the camera. So first thing is, same as if you're doing a see it now video in your car dealership, make sure you're looking at the audience. Look down in the camera because I contact. Now, I know you'll listen to this. I just have people listen to this podcast, but if you're one of the people that's really interested on how to be a good trainer, go and find this on YouTube and hope you see how I'm looking at you. Now, here's the funny thing. When people record themselves on an iPhone so often, they look at themselves and they're recording. Oh, what's happening is their eyes are offset kind of like this at the moment they're looking at themselves there to see if the message is right. Great. If you're talking to a mirror, but you lose that eye contact. Okay. So we asked people just to send us a video to see how they come across in this medium. From there, I said, yeah, I tell you, I quite like you. Andrew Clark, one of our great trainers. I said, yeah, really like that. Then I asked him to turn up and teach me a lesson on anything for half an hour. And I can tell you what I get. I get three types of trainers turn up for an interview. They can train me on anything. I object to handling skills, vehicle hop selves, red and amber work, see it now, videos, how to do that. I don't care what they teach me on. And I want to get a feel for number one, do they know the subject? Do they know what it's all about? So this is the first train that turns up. They go off with a PowerPoint presentation and they start clicking through it. And I see that they're reading from the slides there. And halfway through, I do this every time. I just get my hand and I lower down the screen of the laptop. I said, keep going. And you know what? The amount of people. I said, no, no, forget that. Just tell me about RTI or gap insurance or red and amber work. Come on, tell me from the heart. You see, because I want to know, do they know it? See, a great trainer is not a presenter. A great trainer is a communicator that has a conversation. Just by the way, these are my views on what a good trainer is. You might think it's something completely different. But if someone's just clicking through that PowerPoint presentation, I tell you, not interested. Oh, number two, I just had this recently. And if you're one of these people, listen to this, I might offend you now. And I really hope I don't. That's not my intention. It's just there is a place for this person. But just not in Simcoe training. You know, in Simcoe training, those who can do, those who can't teach, or those who can do, those who can't train. And I believe that you've got to be able to do it. I want someone that's been ahead of business and run the biggest BMW dealership in Scotland. I want someone who's actually been there on a Sunday afternoon, whenever one they spoke to, all week has turned to shite. They're down the saddoms for the people who know our material. Okay. Where everyone they speak to turns to crap. And they'll go be motivated and enthusiastic and go and help, come help someone to buy a car. That'd be really difficult sometimes. And as a trainer, if you haven't been in that situation, I don't think you got empathy with that person. When someone turns around and says, you know what, the air conditioning service, I've never had it serviced before. Okay. I don't really need to do that. Okay. I want a trainer dealing with a service advisor that's had that objection from customers plenty of times before so they can empathize and say, listen, I've had that. I know where you're coming from. This is how I've done it. Okay. Now, by the way, I don't think they need to be the best at what they've done. As a salesperson, I think I held no. I think I learned a lot more on how to be a good salesperson too long into the business. Okay. I started selling cars because I liked cars. I wanted a car. Okay. So a lot of people get I was 17 years old and you've heard my story before go back to listen to the first podcast and you'll hear about the story there. Okay. It's only when I really focused on being the best sales person I ever could. I learned lots of things from my first manager, Mr. Mel Deeth. I said, I could Rod Pather. I learned so much from. He was a competitor dealer and he drove me home because I lost my license. That's a whole new story. Speeding when I had a permit to drive effectively for the people listening to the UK. It was in Australia. So my competitor drove me home to and from work and he'd coached me the other way home about the customs I dealt with. You got Rex Keen. Oh, so much to Rex Keen at Tony Island Holden. Okay. I learned a hell of a lot there. So there's so many people that I've learned so much from, but I really learned how to sell kind of myself. Now podcast went out back then, but I devoured books. I would listen to books. There's a book. My son's 17 and I've got him to read this now. Okay. And he's into it as well. Well, I don't want to give out so many books there because there's almost too many books out there, but how to win friends and influence people. It's not a book for sad people who can't get friends. It's one of the greatest books on selling ever. Okay. And that I devoured that on audio cassettes. Oh, sorry. A few young people. Listen to this now. A cassette. That's how we used to transport music in the olden days. Okay. So what I do is back to looking for that good trainer, hard way through them presenting something. Okay. If they're presenting how to sell air conditioning services in a car dealership, I shut the PowerPoint presentation down. On purpose, I said, keep going. Because if they don't know the material, I think they're going to be asked a question from someone in an audience, okay, from someone on a training course. And if they don't know, if they can't help it, if they haven't been there, they lack. Now, here's what happened recently. I'm looking for a trainer at the moment. This is what I'm doing this podcast. And there's someone was recommended through my LinkedIn account. And this person worked for a big dealer group in the UK. I said, brilliant. I go, that sounds good. I went and had looked some reviews. And this person was had great reviews. So it just went back through their history and worked out what position I held in the motor trade. Had they been a sales manager, a head of business and after sales manager, what had they actually done? And no disrespect to this person, but that person had never worked in the industry. Okay. Again, I was asked by one HR director and I probably offended this person. But she said to me one day, she said, Oh, I've got this trainer. He's a brilliant trainer. I worked with him before in XYZ industry, whatever it was. Okay. By the way, I met this guy. He is great. He'll be a brilliant trainer. And she said, can you just spend a day with him and just download all your knowledge? Okay. Just so he's got all of that material there. No, no, I can't. Okay. I could give him a workbook. I could give him a training course, but I can't give him 30 years. I started when I was 17. Okay. I'm 15. Now what's that? Two million, 33 years. I can't give 33 years in a days course. So what can you do it in two? No, it just can't be done. Okay. And there's the old 10,000 hours to master anything. And I don't think it's fair on anyone. Now, don't get more on that person. I have a place for brand new people that come into the industry and don't know anything themselves. But when they've got that experienced salesperson that's been in the business for 20 years, okay, you got to win their conference very quickly. And they say, hey, how do you do what the customer says? Yeah, it's great. I need to go and check with my wife. That trainer needs to have some different ways to be able to deal with that objection. And they need to know it off the cuff. They can't say, ah, I heard that somewhere. Okay. Now, don't get wrong. As a trainer, there's lots of tricks that trainers get taught. People things like, if they don't know, there's a, that's a really good question. Let's ask the audience. What do you think guys? Guys, you can do that. You only do it once or twice and they think, hold on, this guy doesn't know what he's fucking talking about. Okay. People aren't stupid how we're training. So you've got to be in the industry. Now here's the other thing. The next person I get, and by the way, this podcast might cost us a lot of business, but I get the OEM trainer. Again, if you're an OEM trainer, listen to this, I'm not putting you all in the one category. But too often I get an OEM trainer who either has never done it in the real world or done it 20 years ago, 30 years ago. And actually, is that what really happens now? Guys, I've got to tell you so much of our business. We get from people that say, yeah, we've gone on the manufacturer training courses, but we're looking for you guys now because you guys are real world. That's not the trainers fault at the OEM. They've either did it 20, 30 years ago themselves or more likely most OEM training now, it's more about the product. And it has to be because if EVs coming along and there's so much there, the art of sales training, they might not have. Now, also, an OEM will have an outside training agency and they're dealing with another OEM who's not actually dealt with them. So you've got two people, good, I'm fending everyone with this, but you've got two groups of people, okay, one that's employing this agency, but the agency may not have done it in the real world for a very, very long time, but the person in the selling tool has not done it either. Therefore, the content that's given to the salesperson on the floor actually, it might not be relevant anymore and needs to change all the time. So anyway, they're the trainers that we don't look for. We don't look for people who haven't done it. We don't look for people who haven't got the knowledge. How to train someone to be a trainer goes actually, that's the easy bit. Being someone to be a trainer, okay, to engage people is the same as what you do when you're selling a car. Let me tell you now, if you listen to this, you want to be a great trainer. When we have a room of 15, 20 people, okay, and by the way, some of you might not know yet. Some people, if you're aspiring to be a trainer or a good coach, you think, ah, the smaller the group, the better. Let me tell you, the smaller the group, the better you have to be. That's hard work. The bigger the group, the easier it is. I know it sounds the wrong way around, but trust me, the bigger the group, the easier you've always got some of that you can bounce off. The smaller the group, you might end up just doing all the talking and giving all the answers. It's hard to get interaction. So anyway, what does a good sales trainer do? It's what a good sales person does. A good sales person, it's not a presentation of the car. It's a conversation. You say something. You say something. You say something. For me, a good trainer isn't doing all the talking. A good trainer is relying on who, what, when, where, why and how. And by the way, I've got to talk about Guy Orman now. Now Guy Orman, a friend of the show, Guy Orman gave me a job, my first job. No, that's not true. I was going to say first job in the training in the motor trade in the UK. It wasn't actually. But Guy Orman, he famously says, and I get this, he says, hey, I've never sold a car in my life. OK, however, Guy was very, very smart. He employed lots of people, had huge experience there. But he didn't teach me this. The who, what, when, where, why way of training? OK. In fact, there's a guy called Will Holden. He referred this to as guided discovery. OK. Who, what, when, where, why, how. So take any subject. Let's sell gap insurance. OK. Who should be selling gap insurance? Well, salesperson name, the business measure. When should we be selling gap? How should we be selling cap? Where in the process should we do it? He calls it the who, what, when, where, why. And it's kind of guided discovery. And listen, that is a great training technique. But, you know, even Guy Orman said, but you've got to have the raw knowledge underneath it. You get that out. Because otherwise, you're a facilitator, not a trainer. And whoever's the strongest person in that audience, they're all going to do what they do. And if someone says, I really do it this way, because I sold 18 billion cars a year, and I'm a genius there. OK. Everyone else think, OK, that's the way it needs to go. But that might not work for everyone in your group. OK. But it is a good technique to remember, because a great trainer is actually getting feedback from the audience. A great trainer is actually having a conversation. OK. Hey, here's the next thing. And in our training courses, we use humor. Go tell you guys, I'm not naturally a witty, funny type of person. I go to the National Automotive Dealers Association. And I'm actually the shy person there. I don't mingle lots. I actually don't do automotive management conferences or car dealer conferences, stuff like that, because I'm actually just the shy person. And there's so many other people that are great at networking. And let me tell you about my widget and let me do this and that. And I'll met some great people along the lines there. But I try to avoid those types of events wherever you can. Now, I haven't said that. I'll go to the National Automotive Dealers Association, the Australian Automotive Dealers Association conference. And I know a group of people there that we meet up with all the time there. And a lot of people don't believe me this when I say I'm the shy one there. But I actually am. And a great trainer uses humor, which I'm not naturally witty. It's the same silly little jokes I have all the time. It's the same little one line has come out, because when we laugh in D'Orphin's flow, we're talking about the audience now. And when the D'Orphin's flow, they're the bits that make you feel good. OK, we tend to remember the next bit. Here's the next bit that I find a good trainer does. You've got to get people to remember as much as you possibly can. There's no point just going down humor. You don't want to be like that great Billy Conley comedian, OK? Or Mickey Flanagan or something like that. Oh, I wouldn't see Mickey Flanagan. He was brilliant. OK, what do you say? Can't remember. I thought of an all night, but you can't remember a single joke. Because you see, you've crossed the line into not an enter trainer. And we do believe our trainers need to be into trainers. But the laughter is a method behind the madness to get people to remember things. If it's just last old time, go be a comedian. OK, but what we need to do is put some humor into it as much as we possibly can. That's what a great trainer does. But also get people to remember things. It's stories. People remember stories. Tell you one of the little tricks we do. We tell people half of the story right at the beginning. Not the whole story, half of the story. And then I'll tell you that after lunch. OK, I'll finish that off tomorrow morning. We leave people hanging. Think about a great suspense movie. Don't they always sometimes movies? I've seen this now in John Grissom movies. Oh, these books. They do this sometimes where they have the end of the movie right at the beginning. OK, or the middle of it, right? The middle of the movie in the plot line, right at the beginning. Because it gets that curiosity. In fact, I'll tell you a story about Billy in a second. People want to know it's about Billy. How does that work? That gets that intrigue. And that's where those stories can really help. OK, so often when I start a training course. And we'll talk about do introduction. Oh, and by the way, I personally am not a fan of the hour long icebreakers. You know, all that bollocks where interview your partner beside you. Tell us three extra things about your person. OK, let's do this icebreaker, that icebreaker. Guys, when I first started training, I did icebreakers as well. OK, that's because I was. Limited light on content and I find lots of trainers use them to fill stuff on. Oh, by the way, here's the other thing. If you've been on our training courses, there's nothing winds up the delegates more than being there for a two day training course on something they could have done in an hour and a half or three hours because it's all games and roleplays and poker games and do all this sort of stuff. Don't get me wrong. We'll do some of these things, but we limit it to the point. OK, if you're just doing games at the whole time there, goodness me, people are lacking on the content. People want what's going to make him money. OK, people want. In fact, I'll go say Tom Stuka. Hi, Tom. I know you're a fan of the show as well. Tom Stuka is, I think he was voted and one of the best speakers of the National Automotive Dealers Association Conference. Don't quote me on this, Tom, you'll email in and tell me this or you'll text me. Sorry, Tom. I'll see you soon. I think it was eight times or something like that there. When I did my first big gig, I was in Australia and I was speaking for Patrick Tessier's Australian Automotive Dealers Association. And I did the conference. I started off saying, hey, this is who I am and why you should listen to me because I'm an expert, all that bollocks. And Tom got me afterwards. And I really appreciated him doing this. He said, yeah, it was really good. I enjoyed all that. But the whole start of it. He said, forget all of that. That's all the crap around the sausage roll. Just give people the meat straight away. OK, if the meat's any good, you don't need to tell them about all the other stuff. Let that come out afterwards. You've got to train the turns around and says, I've sold by the way. I'll tell you this now. The most cars I've sold in one month is 63. I'm proud of that. It was with Roger Kundliff and then this dealership and I work in OK. Now, that's not really fair. 63 and one month sounds all right there, but it was in a plate change month. OK, so I'm a decent salesperson. I don't think I was ever the best salesperson. OK, but I worked harder than everyone else there. OK, but you know what? I don't. I can't remember the last time I mentioned that on a training course. Because actually, it's the meat, the information's good enough. People don't want to hear how many cars I've sold. People don't want to know that. They want to know. How do I deal with the customer that says I want to go and think about it and get them across the line now? How do I deal with the customer that says, or I think that paint and fabric protections are post Polish? How do I overcome that objection? How do I slow down the customer just says, what's your best price? Best price, best price. People want the meat. And here's the thing. We jam so much meat into our training courses. They always finish at six o'clock. OK, they go on and on. And so many times people come out and go, goodness me, that course went so well. I had so much information there. In fact, we have one criticism. Sometimes we jam too much into our training courses. I'll never change that. Tell you why. We want to give people as much as we possibly can. Because everyone will pick out a little different part from that smorgasbord, or the buffet, depending on what country you are. Listen to this. But give people the meat, give them the information. Back to the point I was trying to make. One of the trick trainers we use, OK, write it late introduction. OK? I'll turn around and say, in fact, I tell the story how I got into training. And I started with the phrase of what people are thinking there. I started off with something along the lines that saying, hey, guys, there's an old cliché on the world of training that says, those you can do, those you can't teach, or those you can do, those you can't train. Have you heard that before? If there was someone in the audience that's heard it, I say, is there any truth in that? The brave person says, well, wait and see. OK? Yes, I think it is. I say, you're right. And I'm sitting in front of you because of that statement. And this is true. I was working for a man called Roger Kumbloff. He was the dealer principal in a Nissan dealership in high Wickham. I was the sales manager there at the time. A guy turned up to do some training with missiles people. OK? And we had various people over the time. This person come directly from Nissan. OK? And bless this guy. It's not his fault. And if you've been on a train, because you've heard this before. But this guy was about to teach my guys on training in the real world. OK? And I said to him, and hey, when's the last time you actually sold a car? Which I thought was a fair question. And this guy said, well, I've had placement. And guys, I was in the country for probably 18 months at that point, something like that, maybe 12 months. I don't know. But I've never heard the phrase placement before. Maybe placement was what the British called a business manager or some handover specialist. But it wasn't. Placement for this particular young lad worked out. Sorry, it wasn't that young to be fair. It's probably my age. But placement worked out that when he left university, he got a job with the OEM. He went into a car dealership for two months to learn how the process would work. And I was a young cocky sales manager back then. I saw a great, was that two whole months, was it? Oh, well done. Now you want me to teach my guys how to sell a car? Guys, you know it's like when someone comes from the manufacturer, sometimes we've got to tell them what they want to hear. You've got to get the right tick on the right box for dealer operating standards and stuff like that. That's what I did with this guy. I said, OK, sure, in that two months, you sold lots of cars. And guys, I lost the will to live. When he said, oh, no, no, I wasn't down at that level. I was up at your level. Well, so you're not sold cars. Now, listen, long story short. And if you want, go and listen back to the beginning of the podcast series and you hear the whole story there. But that's how I got into training. OK, I got in training because I actually kicked the guy out of the dealership. I had to phone up and apologize to his boss. Thankfully, the company I was working for at the time, they backed me. There's a guy called Mike Thompson, again, a fan of the show. I'm like, how are you? Hope you're back into my own stand at the moment. He backed me. OK? And he said, no, no, no, we're not getting rid of the Simon. He's a great sales manager. But part of the deal is I had to phone and apologize to this guy's boss. He said, why did you kick him out? Because he can't do it. He said, you reckon you could do a better job. He said, stand on my head. It's the how. And here's the key that makes a great trainer. I'd show them how to do it, not tell them. Show people how to do it. Think about this. If you're all learning to fly a plane, do you think I'm just going to let you read through a PowerPoint presentation of how to fly a plane? OK? Go through all the knowledge there. Go and do the commercial pilot. There's 15 different exams you go to to get your ATPL, your airline transport pilot's license. But you see even a private pilot's license. There's still 12 exams currently, I think, someone's done it years ago. But you're not going to read through all that stuff. I'm going to show you the keys to the plane and say, there you go. Good luck. Crack on. No. Now, make sure you read the knowledge. You know the knowledge. And then someone will show you how to do it. And then you'll do it. So to take off, they'll say, right, this is what we're going to do when we're going to take off. They have dual controls and most light aircraft. OK? And what they'll do is they'll go off, OK? Show you how to do it. They'll even say, follow me through. And then after that, they say, right, you have to go, and I'm going to follow you through. That's what a great coach does. They'll show people how to do it, not just tell them. But now I'm talking to the sales managers, the business measures. Be honest with me. Are you one of the guys that you're nervous to go and speak to a customer? For fear, you don't close the deal and you lose all credibility in front of the sales team. Is that you? Guys, when I started as a trainer, that was me too. In fact, I do speak to customers. We still speak to customers as much as we can. It keeps us sharp, keeps our training relevant. But go tell you what, we have rusty sometimes. And I know I'm rusty because I'm not doing it as much as I'd like to. I'm trying to run the company. I'm trying to do the run, the podcast and all that sort of stuff. That's just natural. And there's a fear that I go out there and I fuck it up. But what I always say is, hey, guys, I'm a bit rusty. Let's go and try this technique there. A little secret. People learn more when I stuff it up than when I get it right. Anyway, not that I'm trying to stuff it up, bare in mind. But the credibility goes through the roof because you know what? The amount of times I get people saying, wow, a trainer that actually phoned a customer. A trainer that's actually gone and spoke to a customer. Your credibility goes through the roof because let me tell you, it just doesn't happen. OK? And you know what? You're credibility goes through the roof. They know you can do it. But you've got to have the knowledge to do it, to start with. And bare in mind, you are probably going to be a business manager or a sales manager or an after sales manager because you were good at the job. That's why you got the position. OK? So actually, as a good coach, go out and show people how to do it. Just don't tell them how to do it. Don't worry about your credibility. Because what will happen is when you go out and stuff it up, OK? You go, oh, got that wrong. What should I have done? Let's try it. And next time, you won't stuff it up. OK? So what makes a good trainer, a good coach? They're some of my ramblings, OK? So if you've got to this, chances are you might want to be a trainer. Here's a challenge. I'm looking for a great trainer at the moment. I want a great trainer. I find it really hard to find someone. So if you've listened to this and you're thinking, yeah, I've got the knowledge there. Yeah, I could be a trainer. If you've ever settled on that train course, they could do what he or she'd done. OK? Actually, have you ever settled on a train course and think, good, it's me. That was crap. I could do a lot better than what they're doing. In fact, even now, if you're listening to this thinking, I'm shit, I could do a better job than that. I want to hear from you. So do me a favor. Reach out to me. OK? So there's so many different ways to get hold of me. OK? The easiest way is send me an email direct. My email is really simple. It's simcotraining as a dot code dot UK. And Simon is just Simon at simcotraining. If you do it to office or something like that, that'll get through to me as well. OK? Here's my personal cell phone. Cell phone. Listen, it depends on what country you're going to be. Mobile phone. OK? Listen to this. You're going to have to write this down. OK? So it's plus 4, 4, 7, 9, 4, 9. 2, 4, 0. 5, 5, 0. I say that again to you because you're probably looking for a pen now. You're ready? It's plus 4, 4, 7, 9, 4, 9. 2, 4, 0. 5, 5, 0. And just say, you know what? I think I could be a trainer. Send me a WhatsApp message. OK? Send me a little WhatsApp video of you and say, why you think you could be a trainer. OK? I want to see that you could communicate. Think about some of the stuff that I've talked about here because that's what I want to see. And also, that's my personal email address. That's my personal mobile phone. So you can get through to me, which way you want. OK? Even if you want to pick my brains, OK? If you're one of our clients, guys, I love you the bits, but I'm not going to employ you. OK? Because it just would not be right. OK? And also, you really need to be based in the UK. I know we're doing more and more work remotely. OK? But I really want to be based in the UK because we'd like to get our guys together as quick as we can. The life of a trainer can be a lonely one. We're out on the road lots there. So we want to want to choose that as much as we possibly can to start with. OK? So, listen, they're my rambling to what makes a great trainer. But I'm going to ask you, what do you think makes a great trainer? OK? Let me know. Send me a message there. OK? In fact, we know we get lots of trainers listen to this as well. In fact, some of the other days, all my content just comes from skippy. Anyway, you know, it's really loving. Someone the other day turned around and said, Oh, I've heard this new technique. OK? And it was clearly one of the podcasts that we listened to. And it is a man that was doing some work for an OEM. I won't name names. OK? You know who you are. OK? I love you the bits. Don't be upset about this. OK? Just give credit when you use the information. Oh, OK, tell you that's the other thing a great trainer does. OK? We'll turn around all the time and say, ah, I stole this idea from David Martin. It's on a scale of one to 10. Is that technique there? Oh, I stole this technique from Brian Nusted. Oh, I stole this technique from a self-stress working in a partial dealership and Hastings. We always give credibility to who we stole the idea from. For two reasons. Number one, it's true. I think it's right. But here's the real reason. It gives it more credibility. If I turn around and say, I'm the best sales train in the world, right? You go, fuck off. Who do you think you are? But if I turn around and say, you know what? Peter Smive said, Skippy, you're one of the best sales trends I've ever seen in the motor trade. If you're working for Peter Smive in the Swan's Way group, wouldn't that second approach give more credibility anyway? Peter, I know you listen to the podcast as well. I'm name dropping lots of people. Listen to the podcast. I appreciate you all. Because if you are interested of being a sales trainer, not just a good sales trainer, not someone's looking for an easy life. Oh, that's the other one. Makes a crap trainer. I'll tell you all the secrets. If I do interview you, okay? And I said, tell me why you want to be a trainer. Good question, start with, right? And when I hear someone say, wow, I'm looking for an easier life, okay? Because you're working the motor trade. It's long hours and I want to see my family. So I'm like, goodness, how long does this interview have to last? This is one of those. You managers out there, have you ever interviewed someone? You think, where's a good time to stop the interview? Because I want to get out of here. Let me tell you, training, if you're looking for an easy life, is not for you. What I often do to those people is I just read through our schedules of where we are. Because sometimes people see a sworn-in to dealership at nine o'clock, sworn out at six o'clock and think, wow, what a great life there. Not realizing that that person's grabbing a plane to fly to Dublin, to pick up a hire car, to drive them to Cork, because they've got to do some work with Bill Keery after that. Okay? So listen, I've got to tell you there, if you're looking for an easy life, maybe that's not the right approach to you. But if you're looking for a rewarding job, let me tell you, there's nothing more rewarding than when I get those texts and emails. I get them through regularly. And people like you saying, hey, Skip, thank you very much for this technique. That technique. In fact, there's a guy called Jonathan Wright. Again, I'm trying to name drop every one day. I can think of watching and listen to the podcast. Jonathan Wright, I trained him. He's a new client we're doing some work with next year. And I just come back from seeing him. And he said, hey, listen, the reason why he is you trained us 13 years ago. And he said, I still remember when you talked about feasible, flexible. I still remember the saddoms and the miters touch you talked about. He still had the workbook from 13 years ago. He said, that's one speaking to you guys because your training was so effective because it was memorable because I still remember it now. Okay. Bit of a ramble there today. I want to leave you this one thing. A great sales trainer is just a great coach. If you're a great sales manager, a good coach, you're ahead of business. That's a great coach. I think you make a great sales trainer. Anyway, listen, thank you very, very much. Okay. Send me through a video. Tell me, could that be you? 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.
