Welcome back to another episode of our book club, with Jason Cranswick. We discuss Good to Great, How the Might Fall and Built to Last by Jim Collins.
The first book, ‘Good to Great’ looks as a number of companies and how they were good and then out performed the market 6-10 times. The second then looks at how some of those same companies then failed, and the third, does what it says on the tin.
There are lots of learning points and inspiration in all three books, level 5 leader qualities, doing things for betterment of the company not the individual, getting the right people on the bus and not resting on your laurels.
Here are the highlights:
{05:46} The Leader
{12:28} Right people on the bus
{22:29} Undisciplined pursuit of success
{25:00} Motorola
{28:23} Cut your losses
{31:31} Complacency
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 will start by saying thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Hi, welcome to another episode of Selling and the Motor Trade. Today I'm joined again with Jason Cranwood and we're going to be talking about the next book and our series where we've been reviewing these books. This time is not one book. It's actually two stroke three books. Here's the books by Jim Collins and the book we're going to start with is Good to Great. So firstly, welcome back, Jason. Skipping good to see you as ever and different locations today. But yeah, great to be back on the book club. People listening to the podcast, Jason's at his lovely Kia operation, which is the second largest Kia business in the world. The only one bigger than that is in Seoul. He's looking on the window on the M4 motorway and it's getting close to busy traffic. Everyone's going down there and it's just a sensational view where you are there. Jason, I go thank you for this book because I've heard about Beech Great lots. It's followed you for 15 years as a slightly live 15 years here. Where did you first come across the book? Good to Great. So it's interesting. If I go back to the time when I worked for Volkswagen Group, so I was in a corporate environment and obviously encouraged to broaden our knowledge base. Good to Great was a reference that many people have used. And I remember reading the Good to Great book and thinking, well, that's really impressive because I'd like to attach to that. I'd like to be seen as being one of those. Interestingly, I had quite a strong mentor in my life, one of my bosses who actually referenced Good to Great in a conference. And funnily enough, I had the confidence to go and doorstep him before I worked for him and say, hey, I hear you about Good to Great. But actually, there's an even better one in the series, which we're going to talk about today as well and we'll maybe expand on that one later. But yeah, it's probably 15 years. It's sat with me now and the lessons are still as true now as they were there. Yeah, so true. So the premise of this book, what I love about this, this is not just the business guru who sat down and wrote what he thought was a good idea. The research that went into this was five or six years. He had a whole lot of university students helping him on the research. They would get together and debate and argue which company was good to great. So what they do is they found, narrowed it down to, I believe it was 10 or 11 companies in the end, 11 companies. They said these are companies that were good companies, but they've actually outperformed the market by six, 10, and 12 times. And what was their transformation? So we're going to identify exactly what they did. Now, I can say some of the companies have gone from good to great, back to good, they'll maybe have some of the mighty have fallen. And that's something I didn't realize. I expected all these companies still to be the apples of the world, the Tesas, and still there. But some of these companies fall into his second book, How the Mighty Form. Which I thought was that really blew me away. I wasn't expecting that. Yeah. And it's interesting because we spoke about this when we were picking the books. Good to great is one that people are really comfortable to attach to. And I think there's a lot that people sort of walk away thinking, oh, I'm just like that. I think how the mighty form, which is the second one, is probably an even more powerful message. And certainly for us in our industry is one that we should remain alive to. And it's interesting because going back to that comment, I said, it was my boss, Audi, Martin Sander, who presented the good to great philosophy. And I bought it. It was that bought into that. But I said to him, we should really look at this other book in the series because if we don't dare to learn from the lessons of those that didn't go to great or didn't stay great, then we run the risk of the naivetors. And we're going to see all the capitulations, maybe some others have followed. And actually it's a very, very strong story. And one that I certainly Martin firmly bought into when I introduced it to him as well. So that's the one that I prefer out to the pairing of them. Yeah. But I think anyone who thinks just goes straight to how the mighty form, I've got to say, I think you really do need to read good to great, there is a third book in the series, which is the one he wrote first, actually, built to last. I picked this up in the Good to Great. He said, I've actually written these the wrong way around. It should have been from good to great first. So that's where I do it. People read that first. Then I haven't done this yet, but I will go in afterwards and read, built to last. Okay. And then how the mighty falls. So the trilogy would be great to see how that comes together. Yeah, let's focus on the good grades to start with. He talks about firstly, the leader. It keeps them talking about the simple, the level five leader, level five leader. And number one is highly capable. You'd expect that. Number two is that team play. I think he called it an effective manager is number three. Number four, someone who can aspire others and Jason, I'm sitting there thinking, yeah, I'd like to say, I'm capable. I'm a team player. I'm an effective manager. Yeah. I definitely inspire other people. That's what we do for a living. Yeah. But there's number five, humility. Keep it a drive. It's the, it's the company, not me. And some of the stories about that is like, it's for the greater of the company. Yeah. And let's put that forward, not the, and what really kept on for me with the lead I occurred to story. I saw the motor tray when I got his book to start with, because this was the man that had Chrysler and he was a genius and it's the Ford Mustang guy. I don't know if I'm pronouncing his surname rights. The eye coker, is it? Yeah. Yeah. I cook. And so I read that book to start with. I thought, Oh, he's great. He talks about how yes, it was all about him. Okay. Yeah. He turned the company around to start with. But then he went on a tour of how great am I and talk shows and wrote not one, but two, all the other, all the biographies that it's all about him. Of course you've asked for that 10 years down the track. And where was Chrysler? Yeah. And a whole lot of pain. Yeah. And it's interesting because you use that word. And it's one that I think you, it is very strong, that one of humility and the willingness to help others and the willingness to take people with you, because there are some, you know, really illustrious and very powerful and successful leaders. But we're working businesses that rely on the input and effort of others. And you know, that point of humility in parking the ego at the door is, you know, super, super important. And, and one that I think, you know, when it's firmly understood and embraced is a really, really powerful aspect. Well, I, I struggled with that a bit because I thought, how many great companies out there are led by personalities, Elon Musk, personality, Richard Granson, personality. But he went on to explain, I was struggling with that when I listened to the book, because I, I listened to this book driving around the Alps. I know that you use chats to refresh your memory on the book. Because I didn't cheat. Well, you've been studying the book for 15 years, to be fair. But actually, that's important. Don't learning styles change. Yeah. It's absolutely. And you might certainly think you haven't got time to read this book. Actually, aren't there so many different ways to get the key knockets out of this? There are. And it's funny, you know, I was, you know, as ever, you know, I was sort of moving at pace and suddenly thought, right, I really do need to go and make sure that I don't wing it with Skippy. And it's just going to remind myself of some of the points in the earlier book. Yeah, you know, you something like chat GPT and you asked, you asked some questions and then you build on it. Suddenly, yeah, it's just a response. And it's funny because, you know, I'm new to it. You know, it's the last few months I've been using it. It's quite incredible when you use it. And to your point, you know, different learning styles, if you're so busy that you haven't got time to read the book and do well, go and try and find out what you would have learned. How do you read it? Yeah, first book, what are some of the key learning points that you took out? All right, I was new to this book. I'd heard about it lots. I've read snippets. It's amazing how much I knew about it from other books, if I'm honest. Yeah. But what was some of the key learning points that you took out of that first book? I think, I think for me, you know, there's this tour story you've had on it before kind of the leadership and the authenticity, but humility of the leader. I think is really important. I think that whole point around culture, and you know, there's that narrative of, you know, culture, Trump's strategy every time. And I think that's the bit we all aspire to, is creating a culture which is high performing that is long standing. I think what that also comes back to, and it's a bit that people don't like sometimes is that brutal honesty, you know, that absolute candor, the willingness to really hold yourself to account and hold others to account. And I think those are things that are absolutely central to the good to great philosophy. I think there's lots of different ways of us interpreting those. But for me, those are probably the two or three key points. And the other one, and I hadn't remembered this until going back and refreshing memory. In good to great, they talk about the flywheel effect. You know, we've spent about this thought about being in flow. Yeah. Well, flow is similar to flywheel is it becomes self-sustaining. So, and that's a big, the flywheel effect was a, you know, that's a, that's an Amazon reference point as well. That's so true. You know, it kind of, you know, success, brees, success by ade, brees, behavior, you know, that compounding effect, the flywheel. Just to describe the flywheel, he said, imagine that getting the business going is a huge big flywheel. It's not one big push to get these companies to go from good to great. He said it was lots and lots and lots of bushes all in the same direction. And when it started going, the flywheel, almost, you don't have to push it. It's hard. It's hard to start. It is hard start. But once it gets going and everyone in the right direction, it's easier to maintain it. The flip side, I know I've been guilty of this, is don't you call it the doom wheel? The doom wheel? That's the one? Yeah. Go and have a look at this. Look at that. Look at this idea. Look at this idea. And it's like, hold on. Yeah. But it's funny, you know, I've often spoken about trying to achieve momentum. And that's a word I always struggle with momentum in our industry. If you can get momentum, which is the snowball effect, you know, where it builds. Whereas quite often we end up with velocity, which is, it looks similar, but it just have the compound effect. It doesn't have the the sort of organic process of building. So I think, you know, to aim to get momentum rather than velocity, you know, velocity is like the firework guy, momentum's the snowball. And I think that's what somebody's business is managing to get to other stories I really got from it, that hit home for me is get the right people on the bus. Yeah. And the wrong people off the bus. Yeah. But also, that's more important to where the bus is driving. Yeah. It's like, oh, hold on. As a leader, I run my own business. I need to meet the bus drive and say, this is where we're going. And it's like, no, no, no, the good girl at great companies got the right people on the bus first. Sometimes they didn't even know where the bus was going to. Yeah. Yeah. But get the right people there and work out where you're going together with the right people. But equally, get the wrong people off the bus quickly. Yeah. And that's so true. And, you know, well, in this day and age, it's hard to do. You know, I think Collins talks about it is first who, then what? Yeah. You know, and if you've got the right people around you, then actually, you know, many things are achievable. The wrong people around you, then almost nothing is achievable. And, and it is hard. And we all run, you know, our scale teams, we're under pressure to make sure we've got enough productive and we can have the human resources in our business to to meet our daily demands. But I think that willingness to not accept people who don't share your values or your willingness to be prepared to do without, then to have the wrong person, then, you know, that's, that's, there's something in that there is something in that. Yeah. Something else I want to say, a good friend of the show and we interviewed him previously to this one at Dash Gupta. I know, you know, Dash very well. Dash has gone to another industry. And on the, when I was interviewing him for the podcast, said, how are you finding the differences between the two? And he said something that just hit me to the eyes, said, Simon, there are great people in my train. They have seen selection of people in my train compared to other industries. Sometimes we just don't realize it. Because you think about it, head of business, a general manager, a dealer principal, what if they're called in that particular franchise? How many profit centers do they have to look after? Okay. The margins we have to deal with there. Okay. The, in normal times, the return on sales, you're achieving compared to some of the other businesses there. He said, you know what, there are great, great people in the motor trade. And I got to say, sometimes other industries don't see us that way. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's fascinating. I was talking to one of the colleagues here this morning, who's joined us in the last three months. He dropped out of university at end of his first year. He didn't really, he realized he didn't want to do that. And then went and worked for a family member and state agency in did that for a couple of years and did okay. But again, realized he didn't really want to do that. And then he came to us about three months ago and has been working really closely with the, you know, our team to become established here at the care business. And he's absolutely flying. But he's found the thing he loves. And, you know, as said from this morning, the interesting thing is not failed at what you did when you left uni or left the state agency. You just sometimes it's easier to work out what you don't want. Yes, you do want. And it's great. It's now found his niche. So, you know, I think our industry, I've been in the industry since 89, you know, 35 years now. Well, much is it a noise that the GB is out me sometimes. Actually, I can't think of another industry that I'd rather have been in on that journey. Yeah, that's true. That brings me to the second point I got from the hedgehog effect. Yeah. So there's a story that this is one of the stories I've heard in so many different times. And people listen to this, you may have heard this. There's a fable about a hedgehog and a fox. And every now and then the fox comes along to try and eat the hedgehog. And the fox is cunning and runs around and has a different way than never gives up and keeps on going there to see, can I get this? And every time the hedgehog thinks, here we go again, the fox turns up, rolls itself into a bull, has all the spikes there. And no matter what the fox does, it can't do anything. The fox gives up and the hedgehog goes about its business. Okay. And he says, the hedgehog philosophy, all these good to great companies, they found out their hedgehog idea and three things. If I get this right, it was, what was their passion? Yeah. The actual was so high. And that's your man with the estate agent. Hopefully he's found his passion there. Yeah. Number two, what can you be world class at? Yeah. Absolutely world class. And then look at the economics side of it. Does it stack up? Yeah. And I suppose, what is Meribani's hedgehog? Because it's quite different. Their hedgehog is going to be different to what North Way, RIG, HBO, hedgehog is. Yeah. I mean, we're very lucky that we've got a very strong global shareholder, massively diverse, but passionate about automotive. I was with our colleagues from Japan last week and looking at what our business strategy is and our business strategy for a digital world is different to just the digital strategy. And the great news is our shareholders very keen for us to keep growing. But do you know what it actually reminded me of? Slightly different reference point. That whole hedgehog concept is a bit like Icky Guy. And Icky Guy is a Japanese philosophy of that kind of a line to that as well of do something that you are passionate about. Do something that you can really be great in and actually find a way of being economically rewarded for doing it. And if you can find that, then the likelihood is you will find your place and you'll find your balance. And that's what I think so many people are looking for. That's something that just resonates with me in terms of a point in good to great that links back to kind of a philosophy of our parent company, which has stood them well for 170 years. Yeah, really good. So you've got to read good to great to start with. Any other things? I think they're the main bits I got from that. The doom loop, the flywheel definitely stood out, the hedgehog, the bus for me is probably number one right people in the bus to start with and let the team decide where the bus is going there. I love it. I bought into it. I know as a business leader, I struggled with that. I thought I'm the bus driver. This is where we're going. My bus. Yes. But again, isn't that the complete opposite of level five leader? Level five, a leader wouldn't say that. Hold on, where is the bus going? So that's a great learning point for me. Yeah, exactly. And I think the other sort of closing point and good to great for me is don't be complacent because even the ones that went from good to great couldn't just rest there. And they've continually had to innovate and improve and evolve. And some of them stopped at the finish line. And the finish line is really only the starting line for the next races. And there's a few that although they were deemed as being great businesses, 20 years ago, actually have capitulated because of change in their industries. So don't rest on your laurels. And one other thing, I know we need to finish that book up. I'm looking at the time, but I can't remember the general who was in a Vietnam war. He was tortured more than anyone else. He was locked up forever. And he tells this great story about where the people who didn't make it said, yet 100% said, what was it that you had to get through that they didn't have? He said, they had optimism. And again, this is one of the times I'm driving around the Alps and saying, no, optimism is good. Okay, I built my business. I'm being optimistic. He said, no, what happened is these people were too optimistic. They said, we're going to get home by Christmas. Yeah. And when Christmas didn't come. Yeah. Oh, no, we'll get home by Easter. Now, be next Christmas. And the guys that were optimistic, actually, they broke their spirit. He said, what I had was knowing this will end. We're in the dark place. That's where it is. I don't know when we're going to get out, but this, let's make the best of where we are now. And again, yeah, in the moment, stay in the moment. Being in the now. Yeah. Stay in the now. We sound like gurus. Far from that. Far from that. Now, the book, How the Mighty Fall. My favorite. I've got to hear it. Great. Great. Now, some of the same companies, though, were there. Listen, I got to say, this one here, Jason, you know that personally, Em and I went through some challenges. Emma was diagnosed with cancer. And what really hit home was the first story for me, where he talks a story about the electric parts. Him and his wife is doing a marathon. And she's so much fitter than him. And she's won so many world championships and so forth. She powers up this hill. Okay. He says, there she goes again. Gets her into the vendor and she stops. She's throwing up. Okay. And from the outside, she looks so healthy and she's so fit. But what was eaten away was, of course, breast cancer. And he said, that's what happens from these companies went good to great and have the mighty form. It spreads quickly. And you've got to look for the signs quickly. And I'm thinking about this as we're talking. We did, who moved my cheese. It was all about reading the signs, wasn't it? And taking sort of camps, measures, and corrective actions and learning. We've spoken about a few books so far, which we've all linked back to sort of balance and flow and so on. But I think for me, with how the mighty fall and partway through it, there's a really interesting illustration to bell curve. And it shows the different stages. And the first one is that sort of hubris born from success. So almost buying into your own hype. And then it goes on to that undisciplined pursuit of more. Well, it must be, we must be amazing at this. And this is characterized. It's us. No luck. It's us. Yeah. Yeah. This characterized by post COVID economics as well. So true. Everybody became a hero. Yep. And then right at the top of the bell curve, there's this point where it's that denial of risk. So it's kind of that compound of ego and hubris and kind of the lack of discipline and just believing you can do more. And suddenly you get to the top of that bell curve where if you don't change the direction there, reality is you just go over the top of the bell curve and it's then a free fall of grasping for salvation as they call it. And at the end of the day capitulation, I think there's a lot in there. I've tried to use that in a number of settings before and it seems to have worked, where we start putting measures in. We start to be honest about what got us here. We kind of part ego at the door and try and make things much more generous and have that sort of collegiate approach. And ultimately try to make sure we're looking for the science rather than just believing in our own ego. It is arrogance that goes into sometimes. Do you know what? I think in our industry, putting it back into automotive, I think the arrogance has got beaten out of most of the industry. There's definitely a tailwind many people have had. And I think this economy over the last year or so has leveled things out again. But I do see when I look at some great businesses that I admire in our industry, typically the ego got part. The Arab that's got dropped. And there was a real focus on having brilliant basics and really sounds cool processes. And that's what I'm trying to achieve in our business today. Yeah, the arrogance I talked to is the, I love this because Motorola is one of the companies I could really get my head around because Motorola was huge. In the 90s, they had like huge market share. They went through from five billion up to 27 billion. And that's a huge revenue term around there. So they decided they started believing everything they touched turned to gold. That's when meant by that arrogance. It's us. It's us. We're doing it. The story he talks about, he comes out with a star tech phone. I remember this at the time, this great phone that was analog and long come in this thing called digital. And they're arrogance at Motorola would say, Oh, hold on, we've got 43 million customers on analog. Digital's not right. This is the phone. They turn around and say to one of their suppliers, okay, if you want to sell our phone, okay, we'll let you sell our phone. But 70% of your phones have to be a Motorola product. If not, we're going to pull your contract. I mean, that's gone from confidence into arrogance when they just think they're going to do it. Now, of course, they were number one at the time, 50% market share, 10 years later, I've got my fingers written down here, 10 years, 17% market share. So now Motorola does anyone have one? Well, according to chat, GPT, as I'm looking at it here, Motorola no longer operates in its original form. It doesn't use it was split into different sections. Yeah, mobility was bought by Google. So they probably thought, Ah, we've got a lifeline. And then suddenly it's been sold on again. So, you know, I think that's a really good example of, you know, if you're on that downside of the, of the, you know, the risk of denial. Yep. Well, then they went into risk it or not. But then they went to looking for the safety blanket. Do you remember the story where he was absaling when he was young and he panicked and he went and reached for the rocks in front of him? Not the rope. He should have gone for the rope, be rent for the rocks there. And if it wasn't for the instructor, I'll write these stories down because I remember this, they developed this thing called the, the Aridian phone, because one of the executives went on holidays to Bali and she wanted to work while she was on holidays. But of course, there's no phone signal. So it's been 70. Instead of just testing this, okay, $750 million loan to go and develop this thing. Yeah. Okay. And it's not working. They're betting everything on it. But of course, they're Motorola. Okay. Of course, this is, we know what we're doing there. Okay. In 1996, they had a chance to grab onto the rope and get out because they're about to put 66 satellites into space. I don't know what that's going to cost, but that can't be cheap. So the had a chance to do that was it. No, no, we're going to do it. And by the way, this phone was retelling at the time in 1996 for $3,000. Wow. That's a lot of money in 19. A lot of money. 96. And it costs you, it's only a $7 a minute to speak to it. It's $7 a minute in 1996. Okay. But no, they had a chance to pull out, but they went, no, no. And what I learned from that is, can't your losses, you go and go down that use car business there and it's not working. Have the ability to say, you know what, that's not right. Okay. Great. Skip, I was having an exact in this conversation with one of our colleagues the other day. And we were looking at, we were looking at a situation we did a bundle of registrations at the end of the last period really to try and keep the numbers flowing with this particular manufacturer. And what's happened is, is they've come out now with an even better deal because the pressure's even greater than it was. And the managing. This manufacturer wouldn't start with a H and finishing on that, would it? No, it didn't. Oh, sorry. Okay. No, okay. No. And, and they came, said the manager came to me saying, you know, what I'm going to do is look at all these cars that now have bed. Yeah. You know, this is, if you're playing poker, and I'm not poker player, necessarily, but you don't play poker and you don't put the next lot of chips in based on the fact you put a load in already. Yeah. You put your chips in based on what you think the net sets of circumstances are around you. Okay. So do you think you've still got the right hand or do you think others in front of you've got better hands? So I said to him, look, you know, how do we turn this now into an opportunity? You know, so, okay, we might still have half dozen of those. But actually, it's this new deal, even better, which means we can wash through the points we had and go again. Yeah. But it was trying to clear that mental block. And I think that what I was trying to encourage him to do is not be risk of us, but be risk of wet. Yes. And the fact we're, unfortunately, we're in a risk business. You know, every day we have to make decisions. And as I've said before, I work on a principle as long as more than half of them are right, then I'm okay. Yeah. I can't minimize the wrong ones, but it doesn't stop me making decisions. But it is that willingness to take some risk, but also the willingness to not just foolishly follow your last hand or your last bet. It is. I love the analogy. It's chasing the losses. For me, that's what Motorola did. They've already put 750 million in. Someone had to say, oops, I made a mistake there. And no one wanted to put their hands up and say, we got it wrong. If they hadn't done that in 96, Motorola would still probably be competing with Apple one guess. Yeah. But the interest, you kind of hit nail on that, though, that what happened with Motorola is something even better came along. So much as they'd made investments and they tried to make innovation, they got trumped. You know, someone else came in with something even better, more innovative, more compelling. And actually, it didn't matter how much they'd spent. Someone else was doing a better thing. And I think we've all got to watch out for that one. We've got to make sure that we are to the early point. We've got to make sure we're on the right bus. We're going to make sure that we are keeping our antenna up for changes. We've got to look for those that are coming into the market and learn from what they're doing and make sure that we stay one step ahead. Well, what I got from this one, and it just screened out through almost every chapter. It wasn't the complacency. Now, I thought the companies went from good to great, and they sat down as fat cats because I've seen that in the mode trade so often. A salesperson has been in one place for a long time, and I've got my customer base, and they're just coming back to me. And I'm not going to do these prospecting stuff. I don't need to do what all the new guys do. I'm not going on the training course. I'm not going to see it now. Videos, I don't need that. That's videos. I sell lots of cars, but the world changed. You get your young persons come in from their state agency there for two years, starts their three months into business, understands as a sponge. Video does work. This is how we do it. And I thought it was complacency that killed most of these companies. It wasn't though. It was actually, if we were failure, was trying too many different things at once. The Roblomade company, again, this is going to, I don't know, in America, I'm sure they were huge at the time. But the story over me is, Jason, is this over confidence? It must be. They decided to launch a thousand new products a year. They walked, one of the executives walked around the London Museum. There was actually something in Egyptian Museum there. And they said, oh, there's some good ideas the Egyptians had. Let's see if we can make some of that stuff that the Egyptians did, modernised. One day, trip to London Museum, they come out with 11 new products. It wasn't a lot of R&D on that, was there? But actually, that's where they had the first loss, because there's so many different products. And again, and again, these companies tried so many different things. Instead of going back to their hedgehog, what's our core idea? What are we bringing that? Yeah, and I think it is pulling it back to core. I'm sure my teams are going to sick of me talking about core process. And actually, I think there's a reality of if you don't understand what the essence of success is driven by, then how do you deserve the success to come for the long term? And what I'm trying to do is get our business to recognise these other steps you should take as a minimum. You can do more, but please never do less. And actually, here's some of the disciplines that have stood the test of time. We should still do. We'll now do it faster, or we'll do it digitally, or we'll do it in technicolour. But actually, selling cars, parts and hours, whether you're doing mainstream premium luxury, a lot of the component for us is still the same as what we remembered. I'm going to give you a really quick insight, though, it was a real learning point I had about a month ago. So we've got a lot of colleagues that have joined us post-COVID. They've come in, joined the industry in the last couple of years. And we were going to run sales of it. And I said to our heads of businesses who've all been in the industry quite some time, I said, tell you what, let's run one of those men from the manufacturer events. And they, of course, say, oh, you have great idea, great idea. They always work. And they went back to the sales team and almost without exception. The sales team looked back and then watched a man from a manufacturer event. And they go, now, these guys have operated in the pre-COVID environment where these things were normal. Yeah, it looks like, oh my god, we've got to literally build it up from the baseline up. And they got it done, but they got it. We know they can't stop you. They're going, oh, let's do one of those. And people understand. So there is a real risk of trying to do too much. Yeah. And the other one is there's the risk of innovation fatigue that we're trying really hard to find the next thing that works. And there's a lot of colleagues that will struggle to absorb the last thing first. But I think if we can all try and be brilliant in the basics to use that cliche, then actually it naturally follows the path of the kind of good to gray or avoids the pitfalls of the houndomighty form. So there is something in that probably massively over simplified it. But I don't think you have. I don't think I mean technology, for example, I think technology is absolutely brilliant, but it's not the one single bullet, the golden bullet or whatever the silver bullet, the silver bullet that it's not the one thing. Actually, it's going to just accelerate what you're doing. It's going to make it so much easier. It's a tool. It's an accelerator. It supports. It's an assisted process. A bit like me jumping onto chapter GPT to remind myself of some of the key points of the book. I still read the book, but it was great. Reminded me. You listened to it while she driving the car. That's how that works for you. It's a great learning aid there to do that, to go back to it. But you still have to know the basics in that. I don't think you're a work as well if you hadn't read the book. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. From start to finish. These are powerful learning sorts. And I think both of them, you're right. You've got to read them in the right order. Good to great. Before Houndomighty Foul, don't try and jump to the end. But actually, there's some fascinating lessons in there for us all. I think there are just great books. And for the motor trade, it is just, I think every manager really should get those books at the moment. Great. So listen, thank you again for this. I've got to tell you, that was when your books, this time, I want to throw in one of my favorite books. You come across influence, Professor Robert Sheldon. No. Okay. So Professor Robert Sheldon is influence. Okay. What influences people? Okay. Why do people tick? Now, this book is not just sales and the salespeople love that. But influences, how do you manage people? How do you get your children to clean up their bedroom? Okay. Professor Robert Sheldon, and there's so many great stories in there from Coca-Cola to politicians and how they use it to influence people and advertisers and big business and advertisers. They influence people all the time. So, and there's some great little comments in there like, four out of five dentists recommend Oral B. That's just a great influence. If four out of five dentists did it, good enough of them must be good enough of me. And how that actually did it in the book is quite amazing. So, I'll look that one up. And there's a similar one I've read before called Nudge, which is a similar thing, kind of behavioral science. And how do you nudge people in a certain direction? So, yeah, I'll look up influence and we'll have that as the next one. And remember, influence, not manipulation. That's what there's a fine line sometimes, but our job is to influence staff employees and what makes people tick. So, is it a carrot shaped stick? Carrot shaped, well, I'll tell you what, it's, it'll talk about little things in there like, people don't buy what we want to sell. People buy what other people want to buy. So, you can force someone with a stick all day long to buy something. They won't do it. But if other people are doing it, I'll do it. And it's ties in perfectly with culture. It does. It does. Absolutely. Give it away. All of your great training secrets now. Hey, that's it. Listen, thank you again. I really enjoy these times. And I want to leave it with this. It's one thing that I'm loving about this. I read business books all the time. Jason does. And this is why we started this. But actually, reading this book, knowing we have to come and talk about it, it's forcing my learning to go to a newer level. And just remember this, if you go and read these books as a manager, go back and teach the people in your business the ideas from this. Because if you know you have to teach it, you'll learn it a lot better. Anyway, we'll see you next time. That just leads me to say that all details of this episode and other episodes on the selling in the motor trade can be found on our website simcotraining.co.uk. Go there to get a copy of our book, Words That Sell Cars. Go there to sign up to a free trial of our sales fitness online sales training program. Easiest way to get hold of me is Simon Bowkett, food LinkedIn. Thank you.
