We continue with our compilation of greatest tips again this week and hear from James Weston, Tom Stuker, David Manchester, Nic Verneuil and Joni Stuker.
The focus is optimism and belief, account management, preparing your business for sale, adaptability and communication skills.
Here are the highlights:
{00:37} James Weston
{03:07} Tom Stuker
{08:53} David Manchester
{15:25} Nic Verneuil
{17:10} Joni Stuker
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 Skipping, I would start by saying thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Today I'm joined by James Weston. Is there any bit of advice you would like to give that just that one little nugget that you'd like to be known for? So if someone says that, listen, James Weston, he taught me all those years ago to do this or do that and I'll tell you what, that has put me in good stead. Oh, there's one. There's one. I think it's belief. Never lose belief. I remember when I was General Sales Manager at Chippewee, we had some enormous stories. There was a launch drawn by a lot of expectation of that site and sometimes probably people right now, you look at what you have to achieve on a monthly basis, is they're going to be a second label. We're going to go back into a regional lockdown, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it's easy to get anxious. It's easy to be fearful, to be concerned, to start self-critiquing in a negative way. I can't. And never do that. Never do that. You can have blind beliefs, but you can have almost invincible belief. For me, invincible belief is the one to go. You've got to remain optimistic. If you're a salesperson, you're customers, you're receiving. If you're a manager, a head would be the second you lose your optimism, you might as well put a stamp on the back of everyone's neck to say they're going to fail because that's what will happen. You have to hold belief in your own ability, belief that you control your own destiny. And I've never dropped that. And yeah, sometimes you sort of be like my finish and all of a sudden you might finish your broadcast. You must go afterwards and think, geez, I'll put myself to you. But you'll come back. You'll come back and you'll fight back. And often to get that belief, you've got to think, how do I top up my belief? And sometimes it's reflecting on previous achievements. Sometimes it's setting yourself a higher level of ambition, hence that sort of job-classable mentality. I love that, by the way. You're all my strive, but you have to set a plan. If you don't set a plan, you've got nothing to believe. You can't waste your time. You've got to set yourself the goals. And the self and yourself are the most important part. If you create your belief, it will cascade and it will embrace it and infuse and it will drive and create passion and belief in those other things. And it's just, just, just. That's great advice for anyone. Absolutely brilliant advice. It's my great pleasure today to introduce Tom Stuka. Now, Tom Stuka is the master of the telephone. Okay. Hey, listen, if you're a sales manager, you're a dealer principal. You're working for a dealer group. Okay. And they're listening to this now. And what tips, what advice would you give them? They could go back and put in place today immediately to transform their team or to earn money now in the motor trade. Well, that's advice I give to any new salesperson is one is master my techniques that teaches anybody how to sell 20 units a month, unless then 10 quality conversations a day. And it's, and for 40 years, I've made the same guarantee, you know, because I'll do a workshop. I'll train 200 people, the techniques, how to sell 20 units a month, unless then 10 quality conversations a day. And by the way, that's based on 16 or 17 days a month. But I'm lucky to two to five percent, give it a good give it a go, right? Because a lot of people just are driven to be successful. But at the same time, I tell everybody, I said, pull your camera out and videotape it. So, so you have proof that I'm giving you this guarantee. I said, I'll get, I'll pay $10,000 for the first person to prove what I just talked to doesn't work. And I'll be 20 times the written a check for 10,000, zero, because the people that do it are making are doing the 20 units, the people that don't are too lazy to prove it's wrong. So that's how it works, you know. But I'll be glad to pay anybody $10,000 approved that the training doesn't work. Simon, you know it that the best thing I can tell salespeople is to start working as accounting executives. Go after every orphan owner, is that a phrase they use in English? Yeah, it is. Yeah, 100%. So, don't go for the orphan owners from five years ago, go for the most recent orphan owners and go backwards. Because the amount of people in a multi-vehicle household that buy two vehicles within the same year is phenomenally high. Because dad gets his mom wants her, his mom got her his dad wants it. So work the household, work the household, right? Turn your CRM into an ATM. So in other words, if you have a thousand customers, they own those households, own about 2,000 plus vehicles on the average. So make sure that every single person in your CRM, you take a good look at that household. And in your notes, do you know how many drivers, how many vehicles, who's next, who drives what, who's most likely to be in the market next, where, when and why, I mean, are you prepared? Are you managing the people, those 1000 customers? Have you sold them or somebody else? They bought from your dealership or happy at one time and they wouldn't have made that decision. And all you got to do is keep and touch. There's a basic loyalty and, and, and they're local. I mean, that's the best people you can talk to on a day to day basis. Build relationships. Are you going to sell every one of them? No. But are you going to sell more than the next guy? Yes. Because 1,000 people, 1,000 households. The people you have a better chance to sell anybody own 2000 vehicles. Those vehicles are traded or there's those households are buying 500 units on the average year. The people that bought from you were happy at one time and all you have to do is manage them like a good account manager and they're buying 500 units a year. That's 33 a month, isn't it? Yes. No, it's 41 and some change. And some change it. Yeah. 41 and some change. So how many of the 40 can you sell if you keep in touch? If you know what everybody drives, you have a relationship with them. You're their guy or their gal, right? And you're the one that they go to in the car business. So you don't have to worry about carbana if you build relationships because that's the one thing that will always beat a carbana is relationship based selling is that people still would rather do business with people. I mean, we all got the same prices. We got all pretty much match anything. But the relationship, the trust level is what will separate you in the future. And it'll be those people that survived the car business. The ones that worth those 1000 households that buy 41 units a month and sell half of them plus get another 20 from referrals and sell 30 to 40 units a month. And that dealer will never let you out of this site. They'll keep you no matter what it takes. And that's what you want to do is build a relationship forever in a dealership instead of just being one of those guys that's going to eventually give it, groomed off to the side or renegotiated a paid plan for 100 hours a car. Listen, I love that. It's an account manager. That's what people have to be there. Look after that. Yeah. Anyone can sell one car. It's not that it's selling them the next car, next car and family and friends cars. I'm really excited today to be speaking to David Manchester. If you're selling a house, you're probably more than one person looking at it. So with that in mind, how do you achieve the same thing selling a car dealership? I'm sure you can't just put a four-sale sign up outside. Otherwise, the impact it's going to have on staff, on customers and ultimately the business. Where does investors start on that trying to get more people looking at it? Well, it's exactly like selling a house. I'm quite right. But what you can't do completely, as you say, is put a sign up outside or advertise it. Unless all the staff are aware, in some situations when a dealership has been turned on, they are managed by a manufacturer. They'll give them maybe a two-year notice, quite a lot of slantiest dealers that have had that happen to them recently. And some people have reached the age in their lives where they don't want to carry on. So they may have told their staff, they may not. So the first thing I establish is is it a confidential sale or is it not a confidential sale? If it's a confidential sale, I will talk to a list of targets. I'll put together a list of target dealers. I will ring them up and say, would you be interested in a British manufacturer in Kent, let's say? So there aren't many British manufacturers left. And then if the people say yes, then I will send them a confidentiality agreement, 12-page NDA, in the sale sign. And then they'll get full detail to the business. So first of all, we establish a target list of maybe 25 to 30 businesses, both alternative use and continuing use. And then we'll approach them. I'll approach the principles, most of whom I'll know anyway, and determine their interest. If they're interested, NDA, then they get the full details. And then I'll conduct the audience normally out of hours, so nobody in the business will know what's going on. And then we'll hopefully get two, three, four people on a short list who will bid against each other and drive the price up. The alternative use is important if the dealer owns the property freehold. He may say, David, I don't want to make all my staff redundant and close the business. But the alternative use bid is important because it's generally higher than a continuing use bid. And I'll give the price up for continuing use buyers because I will share that information with them. And they will know that they've got an exit to a supermarket, a care home, retirement home, self-storage, if they decide that they don't want to be in that site anymore. So I know it's got a future value. So the alternative use is that the values of alternative use tends to be higher. Did I understand that right? It is. Yeah. As we spoke about earlier, normally a motor trade business is a low margin business. And those uses I mentioned will generally deliver a much higher amount of revenue for the property. Okay. And as a no-no, do you find that difficult sometimes with the emotions of a business? I mean, even buying the selling houses, sometimes people get emotionally attached to this is where we had our babies. But surely for the investor, this is their business baby. How do some of them feel about a block of flats being put on their baby? Do you have to really manage the emotional side of it? That's one of the most difficult things for the vendors to deal with. And especially when it's been a family business. It could have been, they could be the second or even third generation owner of their business. And they feel like they're selling the family's crown jewels. They feel like their father or their grandfather would turn in their grave. So that and then if you bring other family members into it, sometimes I've had three brothers involved and they've got three families, their wives, their children. And it can become a complete nightmare. So the emotional side of that is always underestimated, but always a factor and a consideration. I explain to people that they're going to feel very, very different about what they're doing. So it's something our managers are going along. Yeah, okay, it must be. Now also, someone's an investor sitting there thinking, right, I need to exit. This is my opportunity. I want to do it where the profits have been high. I don't know if I want to go through the supply issues going forward. The question I have is currently in our company, Symco Training. Thankfully, we've been going for 21 years. We've weathered the COVID storm. And at the moment, I'm looking to invest or acquire other businesses, training companies or allied industries within our businesses, what I'm looking at. But I can say it's really hard to buy a business. I've looked at three or four different training companies at the moment, within the motor trade, without other allied industries within the motor trade. And it just seems that these people haven't prepared the business for sale. To me, these companies are on a centric. You remove the owner and you think, what's left here? And they just haven't got any idea of preparing the business for sale. Is that something that you really start looking at, preparing that business for sale? Do you start from that level there? Or is the business already prepared for sale when you get involved? Well, generally, I advise people to start preparing for their exit as soon as the thought process is their mind. And I say, the earlier you prepare, the better the outcome. So you spot on there with planning for alternative use is critical. Because most big planning applications will take 18 months minimum, some cases three or five years if there's an appeal. And I did mention to you that I'd started planning, doing planning applications on my dealerships five years before we could even exit, based on the contract. And that paid dividends. So my advice would be to any owner investor is always consider when and how you might want to exit and start planning that now today. Because the earlier you do it, the more you will get. It's my pleasure today to introduce Nick Vonnoy. And why pronounce that right? Excellent, Simon. Is there anything you learned in the first three months that you think says relevant today for someone just starting in their business career as it was when you started? I think I just use the word adaptability. I think that's key. I think that's probably the foundation I draw on the most. Probably it predates my professional life. In my case, it's really grounded in me as a human being because of having moved so much. But adaptability and intellectual curiosity, just wanting to learn. Learn from any situation, approach anything as a learning opportunity. Engage, talk to people, listen to them, debate, argue, disagree, shout at each other, whatever it is, but don't be a passenger. I think that's the main thing. And if you approach life that way, I personally strongly believe that you'll get the most out of life. I love that phrase, intellectual curiosity. Just be so curious and just ask questions all the time. Yeah. And I said this to one of our graduate students last week. She was asking me for career advice. And I said to me, it's deadly simple. Ask questions. Don't accept no. Usually when people say no, it's that they're struggling to find an acceptable answer. So challenge them and ask the why and the why and the why and the why. And when you get to that awkward moment where the other person no longer wants to engage, chances are you're just scratching at the surface of a business opportunity. You know, there's probably something there that you've unearthed an opportunity. And then you just need to take risks and go for it. Yeah, great advice. Great advice. It is my great pleasure today. I know I always say that, but honestly, it is this time. I'm with Joni Stuka. You're a dealer listening to this, Joni. Can I ask you? Let me ask you in a different way. Let's say you go and buy your own dealer group or dealership. Okay. Over the next two years, what would you focus on? Now, I'm sure you probably answered lots of it throughout this podcast, but if you are this, I'm driving that, if you're the manager listening to this, if the owner listens to this, what should they go back and focus in on their dealership or their dealer group now? We'll be very, very careful about titles because what we do is we have a title manager, then I'm an assumed authority of. And it's really hard for sales managers to say, like, I don't know how to overcome that objection. I can't handle it for a while. I have no idea how to go to, oh my God, my favorite, a manufacturer. Send to your list every month, gentlemen and women, and most of us what? Circle pilot or we attempt and do a brutal job of like, like, oh, I see your release is coming to term in two years. You want to come in now? I mean, like, what? Communication skill is in those four things. More important than anything. I don't care. I don't know anything about cars. Why am I hired? Oh, I'm a general motor circuit better. I don't know their cars. I mean, do I care? No, I care about people. And I need to understand that what? Tell us your question. Sorry, your general motor's key vendor. We don't have that. You're, can you explain what that is for a second? Yeah, so there are a certain few and, you know, pretty lucky, but you're a chunky vendor. So in other words, dealers can actually, they go to the site and you're recommended by them. Okay. They earn, you know, money and things back and forth by utilizing people like myself in 19. Okay. So it's important and it's huge. But I would look back and feel me and I would, I would test my skill set. And if anybody listening, I'm happy to provide those testing for them. I have it for every resource, every opportunity and also how they manage people. And then I created a really great daily work plan to work, shoot for sales associates. Because the biggest thing that happens to in stores is that you've got this, let's say a great customer care team generating all these leads. Awesome. What do you see your salespeople doing? That's sitting there, what on their phone waiting and then stop that. So BDC never meant do not call. It means everybody get better. All right. And you have to look at your schedules and note this, please, never get anyone. Don't go in your serum as they will. After 120 days, you mark them lost. No, and they go away into the, are you kidding me? No, no, no, no, no. They for them to follow them up in 2042. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they go like, are you the market like, I'm all my good. So, like I said before, whether they buy or not, it's every 90 days. And then I look at my service side, which is huge. I'm really, really worried about a lot of dealers because they're not going to have that service retention without a lot of smart work. And they cannot expect advisors to do that because if you think sales associates, they'll take the phone, wait to get an advisor on that, right? So it's important that we actually set a pattern to build our business. 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 link to it. Thank you.
