In the concluding episode of our two part interview with Jonathan Dawson from Sellchology we talk about management and sales skills that can be applied whatever your position is.
Everything from empathy and looking for the good, to understanding your team and what motivates them.
Jonathan also shares some of his best sales tips and techniques.
Here are the highlights:
{05:44} Fundamentals
{13:02} How to Work with Weirdos
{20:57} Leadership is not about you
{28:56} Pattern Recognition
{45:00} WAVES Technique
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. But listen, I've got to ask this question. What takes you from being a great salesperson saying, right, I want to go into the training world. How does that step happen? I'm always interested in why people like us go from that side. I'm earning good money saying, right, I want to go and teach people how to do it. Well, as I mentioned briefly, my origin when I was 17, 18, by kind of the default nature of I was the first salesman in the company that was a startup, basically. So then when we hired the second person, it was like, hey, John, show them the ropes. And by the time we got to our 20th person, I better have a curriculum for this. I better have something standardized. And we eventually got to 60-something reps across several states spread out across regions. And I'm holding these classes like you better learn to communicate these ideas really well. If you love the training subject, did you fall in love with that? Yeah, of course. Well, I've always been by my nature or temperament. I've always been somebody who loves bringing truth to people and introducing new ideas and seeing how people's lives can be transformed by new information. So I've always been somebody who led Bible studies or led small groups or I was the guy who liked to share ideas. I just believe in passing on information to people. So it was a natural fit for me anyway. But I also enjoyed selling. I mean, I really enjoyed the outlet of taking a total stranger, in this case, door to door, when they're not expecting you to knock on their door. And then within a few minutes, you're now sitting on their couch with them in their home. And then a few minutes later, sitting at the kitchen table and they're taking out their checkbook and giving you personal information because over a period of seven minutes, you gained that trust with a total stranger that didn't even know you're going to show up. I always found that part fascinating. Of course, it's very invigorating. You know, selling is for those who love sales. It's an invigorating thing to have somebody pass on the trust in the form of compensation, say, hey, I'm going to pay you because what you told me is worth more to me than my money. So when I became a sales trainer, though, what happened was so my wife had this master's program is a two-year program. So two years into my automotive sales career, I was relocating because she had graduated was looking to move on for a job. There was a trainer who had come through our market and a bunch of salespeople had gone to his seminar in one of the big cities that I was in the outskirts city. Would someone we would know? No, no. He's not around anymore. Okay. A very small, kind of regional guy. But anyways, but he had a class. A bunch of guys went to it. I didn't get to go because at that time, I was already one of the top guys. So they sent everyone but me and the brand new guy. And when they came back, though, and this again dates me when I say this, I literally said this to a salesperson. He said, what's a cassette? We used to transport music in the olden days. So he came back with a set of cassettes and I burned these because I mean, I just listened to them over and over and over again. And when that gentleman who was the trainer who had the seminar, a couple months earlier came to our town, he had a little private class for just our dealership, our dealer invested in him coming. And we were a small store. So I mean, like literally there's like four of us in a little hotel room. And this guy's teaching, but I had listened to a series so many times that as he's talking, I'm finishing his sentences and I'm hitting the punchline of his stories and I'm all going the guy next to me saying this part's really good. Anyways, when he completed the class, he's like, who are you? And how do you know my material so well? And anyway, so he ended up recruiting me. And so I went into the field selling his training program to Cartier's. So now was a door to door car salesman selling door to door training. Yes. I ended up crushing and surpassing, you know, all of the previous records of any of the other door to door guys that he had ever had sold more tickets than anybody else. And eventually the client who wanted to send people to my to the seminar who couldn't said, Hey, could you just come in and teach it here? And I said, yes. And so I taught an in store class and that led to him referring me to other dealers and they were like, man, we love the way you explain things. And what was the transition from his company to my company? The shift was when he brought me into one of his clients, he had serviced for four years and he brought me in. He's like, I've been there for four years. You go in. And I had the same work that the dealer group had been using for four straight years. And I was teaching out of that book and at lunch, the owner and the general manager said, when did you guys come up with all new material? What do you mean? When I go, this stuff is all new. All the guys love it. I was like, I'm literally using the same book. You have for four years. What I'm thinking, how is this all new? No, but your stories, it's all the stuff you've put in there beforehand. It's how you made it alive. Yeah. And I think that that was that was essentially the feedback was that the way you explain things, you're not just telling us a technique, but you're helping us understand the fun and the mental of the technique, the concept of the technique, the application of the technique, the diversity of application, the same technique so that I can now today, in my current role, if you gave me any word track of any technique or any approach, I can tell you fundamentally why it worked, what the principle was, what an alternate application would have been, the context where it would likely not work, the customer would likely not work with the customer it would likely work the best with. I can do that now and I do for my students, but it's to me, it was about helping people understand why not just what or how. Most as you know, most training is very just tactical, it's not strategic. So it's here's what you say and here's how you say it. And my words are short periods of time. If they use your words, they're your words. If you understand the reasons why you don't have to use my cheesy words, what do you do with these words? I can use, they can use their cheesy words because they understand it's the four fundamentals why people, why anything? Because comparison value scares the urgency. They're not mine, they're not yours, they've been around since, Plato and all of this sort of stuff there. Those four fundamentals, big business knows it all the time. They put it into it. If you understand those fundamentals, why is people who walked out there, they don't change do they, John? Those fundamentals. They're across humanity. Now, when I teach, I teach based off the work of Robert Choudini and I spoke about his work, his work dramatically. It's great. Right. And his current newest work, Pre-Sue-Asian, not just Persuasion, but these fascinating works. But I take my nickname, some of my dealers call me when they introduce me to dealers, they'll say he's like the Rosetta Stone of these other smart people. It's like a book like Robert Choudini's book and I'm the Rosetta Stone. I translate it into car speak. But in my classes, my eight fundamentals is the principle of authority, scarcity, contrast, commitment, lightning, obligation, social proof and exemption. So those are the eight core principles that I will show. Every technique is one of or an extension or umbrella falls under any of these eight things. If they believed you, it might be because of authority. Right. They saw you and perceived you as an expert on authority and they trusted that. But if they're not an authority influence customer, they might be influenced by social proof. This is for example, why some people when they're looking at a movie review, some will want to know what the critics said and others want to know what the average consumer said. Because a critic person is wanting to know what the experts say about the movie. Whereas the person who wants to see what the average Joe on the street wants to say, they're social proof influence. They're influenced by what the man on the street would say. So some mistakes that happen, for example, in a dealership is a manager will come in and take a TO, turn over, they'll come in to introduce themselves to the customer and they'll start the introduction from a place of authority. I'm the manager. But if a customer is not influenced by authority, that statement means nothing to me. And in fact, quite frankly, it could not be opposite effect. You could alienate instead of influence. Yep. Because I mean not, in fact, I may not respect your authority. And so when you start and lead with authority to a customer who's not high authority influence, you may at worst have done alienated and at best maybe done nothing. And so it's really fascinating when salespeople understand these principles and management team do because then they start asking new questions, hey, what kind of influence would be the best way to approach this customer? And then you now change your angle to adapt to with empathy, adapt to your audience, match your customer more effectively. And that reduces the resistance that you might get. What I love about people like yourself and me, and we talk about and have training all the time, we do a whole lot of R and D. Now a lot of people call it research and development. We just call it research, sorry, not research development. Robin duplicate. If there's good ideas out there, we'll rob it and do that. And what I love is when you turn around and say, hey, this is Robert Calv, I call them Calvino. I'll pronounce it wrong. But those eight things from me. I love how you give the credibility to listen to what it is. Let's get in deal as week because it's just the fundamentals that work. I love that about what you do there. And I listen, everyone to listen to this, go and get into yes. Go and download that and have a listen to that. Let some of these work as well. And influence, it is still great, great stuff there. That foundational work. I mean, if every salesperson read, for example, if they all read, how do we influence and influence people? Classic. And if they all read influence, right, the science of persuasion. So they all read that. If they all also read like purple cow. Don't know that. Talk about purple cow. It's mostly about distinctiveness. It's about catching attention, right? It's like you were down the road and you saw a field of cows, but one cow was purple, right? It would be only cow you would notice, it would be the cow you would remember. And we'd eat how you talked about it. Like if you just drove down a road and there was a dairy farm, you would not get to your destination and talk about, hey, by the way, on the way here, I saw 400 people. And I saw a hundred and 36 cows. But if there was a purple cow, you would get to where you're going and you go, there's a farm down there. That's a purple cow, right? So it's like, how do you separate yourself in a field of cows, be the purple one, right? But the idea is just getting salespeople to think that then I would say go givers or givers, sell more is another great book that I would recommend. Rading fans. It's a classic that I would recommend. But if every sales team just read, rating fans and how do we influence people and influence, they would be so much better for it to have some principle based understanding of how people think and how relationships work. Yeah. Let's go on with, we're talking about salespeople. That's what we do. But we spend as much time with managers as well. And I just want to open this up. We just on our last episode of the podcast, we did a bit of a review on the chimp paradox and how we have the inner chimp there and the human. I don't know if you've read the books, Stephen Peters. It's a great book about how to get the best out of a sales team. Okay. No, that's not right. That's how I've translated it for the motor trade. Okay. But the chimp philosophy is all we have this inner chimp. Okay. And the inner chimp wants to have a fight, wants to have an argument, wants to actually wants to win. We need to win. But when the cast, it's not arguing you said before, when the manager comes out and says, I'm the manager, the other man's chimp is, yeah, you think you're the manager? I'm the man with the goals. And they start bashing heads with each other. And the chimp just wants to have a fight because the chimp needs to dominate. It needs to win. And it's all about putting the chimp back into its box there. So it's so much the time is I love selling. I love teaching people how to sell. But so often, isn't there our managers that need to be managing the guys in the right way? What advice do you have to manage up to get the best of their team? So there's a few things that I would speak to management about. Probably the number one or one of the biggest themes that I'm speaking to managers about is about, I call it how to work with weirdos. Yeah. So one of the things I'm most fascinated about about my work with people is that I find most people, in fact, almost everyone I've ever met is a weirdo. They're all weird. They're all wired different than me. They all have different responses to things. They all have different ideas than I would have. Reactions to things. They think thoughts that make no sense to me at all. And when I'm talking to management teams, I say, look, the challenge oftentimes that you have is when you're managing the default that you tend to do is judge another person's weakness according to your strengths. And then you see them in through the lens of this deficit of, and they manifest when you make statements like, when I sold cars, I would never have done this. When I sold cars, I would always do this. And really what you're doing is you're just pontificating about your strengths relative to what you see in them as their weaknesses. But the reality is if you and I sat down and you're a manager and you did that, I could turn around and probably find things that I would never do that you do. And so the reality is when we do that, when we dehumanize a person by seeing them through the lens of their weakness first, it actually gives us, if you will, a type of almost moral high ground and able to nation to not treat them right. A lot of managers talk down to their people with condescension, always at their team instead of to their team. And quite frankly, it manifests itself in the funny story I shared with us to say, man, you're walking through your show floor and you're a manager and you over here on the phone, a salesperson at their desk going, listen now, I've had this conversation with you more than once, here's what you're going to do. You're going to get in your car, you're going to drive here, you're going to come here, you're going to pick up the car and you're going to like it. You're going to do it because I said so. And I don't want to hear another word about this. Get here now, click. And then you say, whoa, what was that? Well, that was a customer. They were telling us they wanted to still shop around. So I just want to let them know that's not an option. Like if you heard yourself, you'd be like, you don't ever speak. Oh, I learned that from the meeting that we were just in where you told me how I have to from now on always and never. The reality is if the average salesperson spoke to a customer the way the average manager often speaks to a salesperson, you would fire your entire team and say, you never talk to people that way. But what managers forget and I'm being a little bit hard on those that deserve it, the shoe fits, if I'm throwing a stone at the pig pin and you squeal, you're the one that got hit, right? If the reality is oftentimes what management does is they forget that their customer now is their salesperson. Your salesperson is your customer. So you should never talk to your sales team in a way different than what you would want them to talk to the customer. And what happens often, and this is the disconnect, is when we were in sales, what we had to do is influence persuade, lead, guide, direct, and move the customer through the process. So the customer voluntarily chose to do what we wanted them to do. We would use any reasonable means to get a person to want to buy from us. And oftentimes it resulted in people saying that, I couldn't believe I bought today, I wasn't planning on buying today. I can't believe we drove all the way here to buy a car from you. But so here's what's fascinating when I tell management. So when you were a top sales performer, which most of them grew up through that, you were a top sales performer, you could get a customer to drive three hours to come buy a car from you. But today as a manager, you can't get any of your people to even park the car on the right spot. You can't even feel out of document the proper way to show up on time. So you used to be a master of influence, but now you can't get anyone to do anything. And the reason why my friend is because you went from selling people on what to do to now you tend people what to do. You went from being someone who used to understand the hot button of your customer, the motivation of what would cause them to say yes to you. To now you have an entire team, sometimes an entire sales team, and you don't understand a single one of their motivations or goals. When I asked the average manager, if I just pointed somebody and say, tell me a current life or a personal goal this person has, that if I was sitting with their friend, they can answer that. No, they can't. They don't have a clue. So when you were selling, you had to understand your buyer, you had to figure out what their wants and needs were if you were going to be truly successful consistently. But now is your manager for whatever reason, that same strength that you had, you forfeited. Why? Because you can. You have a title now. You have to dictate and mandate instead of create desire and move people. So if I had to speak to management, I would just encourage them to have empathy. Remember your roots. You're a sales person first and your customer is your team member. And always look to lead from influence, not from leadership title. That's the thing I would and that's what I speak to most management teams about. How do you work with these weirdos who are not wired like you and how do you increase your influence with them? And of course, using psychological principles or patterns, how do you identify what would resonate with them so that you can activate them through motivation and influence and coaching instead of just being frustrated with them because they're not you. If I said to you, John, it's on your way to work today. So it's what seven o'clock there in the afternoon. And I said, on your way to work, how many red cars did you see? You could guess. You say, I don't know. Two, three, something like that. I said, right, Jonathan, on the way to work, for every red car you see, I'm going to pay you a hundred dollars. How many red cars would you see on day two? You'd see a lot more. And the point for me there is you find what you look for. I see that with management, so at the time, they look for crap and they find crap and he's doing that wrong. He's doing this wrong. He's doing that wrong. Even on basic level on selling. Tell me the reasons why you don't like that car. What's the issue about that? The customer tell you all that. You don't find what's good. And I see what it manages. I'm talking about management. If you find the red car, why not? I tell you what, the Tadaas we call it in our business. When Johnny comes in and says, I've just moved the car out the front and it looks really good. Tadaa! They're looking for the well done top man. But these Tadaas, these red cars, they breed. I say to managers all the time, look for all the good that they do. Look for that because actually, I don't know if you have any nieces or nephews, any young children. The niece and nephew comes here and says, Uncle Jonathan, I draw you a picture. Now they're five or six and it's a picture of a boat. But of course there's an uncle who says, wow, that's brilliant. That's the best boat I've ever seen. Of course, what are you going to see pictures of all afternoon? Uncle Jonathan, you think that's a good boat? Wait, you're going to see this one. You're going to see boots all afternoon until the mom and dad said, Uncle Jonathan's seen enough boats. But what I love about that, the four year olds got an old decibilin, six. They're sitting and thinking, you think that's a good boat? You're only four. I'm six and three quarters. The same thing happens in car dealerships with the salespeople. When the manager says, wow, Johnny's done that well. And the team here, I just urge people to look for the thing. That's bad. This is bad. That's bad. I just see that happening all too often. Yeah. And it goes back to a little bit of what I said. You have some management reluctant to do that. And here's why. When I sold cars, I didn't need anyone to tell me I did a good job. I know, but it's not about you. If you want to be about you, go back to being a top salesperson. Once you enter the mantle of leadership, you forfeit the right for it to be about you anymore. It cannot be about you anymore. So you saying, when I sold, I didn't need to be told this, well, okay. And now what? What does that do? How does that solve anything to be declaring that? So now you mentioned that we end up about the words of praise and affirmation. Another great fight and write off some resources for leaders. Oh, please. Yes. Five levels of leadership by John Maxwell is a great instructional foundational book to understand where you are in the perception of your people, the five levels of leadership. The next one, it's a wonderful resource for is actually the five languages of workplace appreciation by Gary Chapman. This book identifies for you when you talk about, for example, incentivizing them and giving them praise. It actually identifies five ways that people actually receive recognition and appreciation as a way they're wired to receive. That's an interesting thing. So is it fair to say some people are like, oh, no, it's nothing. It's nothing. And some people want to am I on the right track with that? Yeah. So for example, and this is one of the ones, again, as a Rosetta Stone, I translate this to management, I say, look, you may have, when you were successful, you may have loved the public adoration and praise of your management, but you may have somebody on your team who actually does not prefer public praise, but you tend to speak from your natural language. So if your language pattern is public praise, you always comfortable as saying, great job, great job, great job. But of the five languages, here they are briefly language number one is public praise and affirmation. Language number two is acts of service. Then you have quality time, then you have token gifts, and then you have touch. So if I look at those five as a spectrum here, let's say that you are an acts of service wired person. What you actually appreciate is when someone comes alongside you and takes something off your plate, takes a task and helps you facilitate the completion of it. So let's say I'm your manager and I'm a words of praise. So I say to you, Simon, great job, great job, great job. But in the back of your mind, the voice you hear yourself is going, well, if you really think I'm doing great job, why haven't you helped me with the project? I told you two weeks ago I was working on this project to approach this company. And you have it, right? Or let's say, for example, I'm a quality time person. If I'm high quality time, I'm always asking you, hey, boss, have you got a couple minutes? Hey, boss, do you ever have a day? Boss, when you have a few minutes, I'm always asking you, I have a couple of minutes, do you have a few minutes? Is there any way we could get some time together? But your words of praise, so what do you do? You say, great job, great job. And in my mind, I'm thinking, if I'm doing such a great job, why don't you never have 10 minutes for me? Yeah. And so understanding, because they're all weirdos, they're all weirdos. Different weirdos. Yeah, they're all different weirdos. So you have somebody who responds really well to words of words of encouragement. You have somebody else who works really responsible to access service, somebody else to quality time, somebody else to a token gift. You have somebody on your team that if you just stopped and dropped a red bull on their desk with a sticky note that said, keep your energy up. I want to see great things for you today. That red bull. Yeah. That would be enough. I would run through a brick wall because you took the time to give them a gift. Yeah. And then you have other people, for example, if you're a high gifts person, you're always willing to give gifts. But if I'm not a gifts person, you're giving it to me. And I'm like, eh, whatever, I don't like you giving me these things. It's random. It's weird. So understanding the language of your people. So I'm being sarcastic, obviously, when I say that. So money is not the only motivator. Well, we just don't give them money. And that's all that motivates them. No. That's such a common thing. I say to management teams, have you ever put a spiff out there? You ever thrown out a big spiff, a throw out a $500 bonus spiff and half the team ducked so it doesn't hit them? It's just like, they're like, oh, boy, it, you're like, it doesn't make sense. And management's so frustrating, right? Because they're like, Oh, John, we tried this thing one time with our team and out of our 10 guys and only worked with three of them. So we don't do it anymore. And I'm like, pause, stop. Wait, what you just told me is you found what works with three of 10. That's 30%. You've solved 30% of your problem. Now let's figure out what would work with another 30% what would work with another 30%. You might need three different things. But if you had three things that work 90% of the time, you should do three things. Instead what we do is we throw out the baby with the bathwater. We go, we tried that and it didn't work with everyone. So therefore we didn't do it for anyone. And I'm going, no, please don't do that. Yeah. Listen, most people listen to this podcast. They tend to be dealer owners, managing directors of dealer groups. They tend to have manager in their title somewhere. So the manager, listen, listen, I want you to talk to them now. You had three of your clients on stage at NADA. And we talk about different ideas. This is why I come up to you because I like that approach. Now you must have sat down with those guys before and it said, come on, what's on the standard stuff we've worked on over the last five years, 10 years or whatever. Just can you give us maybe two or three of those ideas that people listened to who didn't get to NADA that you thought, wow, that was a really good idea for, he was the younger guy there. Can you say on the panel? Yeah, on the panel. Well, I had Scott Simons, Josh Potts, and I had Patrick Abad. So Scott Simons runs one of the larger, outer groups in the United States, very successful, large platform guy who runs several stores. Josh Potts is the number one Chevy store in the world. So he runs the number one ball. That's the guy. I love some of these stuff. Patrick Abad took over a small store, not a small store, a young store. It had only opened for four years. It only been opened for at the time of year and a half when he took it over. So in a short period of time, in four years, he took it to the number one buying dealership in the entire state, dwarfing the volume of stores that had been opened for 20 years. So those were the panelists. Those are my clients that were on the stage with me. So I don't know which one you were referring to. What stood out for you? Because there are lots of different ideas. You obviously had the conversation with them beforehand. What are these we're going to talk about? So people listen to this who didn't get to it. What was some of the standouts that you've worked on with those guys that are? What I'm driving out is someone listen to this. What can they go back and put into their dealerships now and get a result? Well, so one of the things that we talked about initially in the there was essentially a stack of principles that these these performing leaders were what are eight strategic principles that allow them to become strategic and tactical proactive leaders. So one of the principles we talked about was the idea of pattern recognition. The concept of pattern recognition is just to start asking questions. What are the patterns of our operation? What are things that are happening over and over again? So to illustrate that, I say, for example, if you and I were having a conversation and then the power of an act and I went, oh, wow, the power went out. You're like, oh, don't worry about it. Yeah, it's a let's say it's Tuesday, two o'clock. Yeah, that's normal. I'd be like, really? That's normal. How's that normal? Oh, yeah. Tuesday, two o'clock. The power goes out. But you're like, yeah. So, you know, I have this flashlight now. We'll just I'm like, well, you couple months ago, I was using candles. I'd be like, well, wait a second. That's not a problem. That's a pattern. That's a pattern. Exactly. Right. That's not a problem. That's a pattern. Yeah. It's a pattern because the human being has a incredible tendency for coping. We develop incredible coping mechanisms. So we literally put up with a lot of stuff we shouldn't have to put up with. But our brain is really good at adapting and coping. So what happens is when something happens and it's not good or it's not great or it's, you know, it's even unproductive. We just go, oh, yeah, we'll get to it later. And then it happens again. Oh yeah. Well, we'll figure out a patch for that. And we work with patches and workarounds and all of a sudden it just becomes part of the culture. And we just kind of like accept that this thing, which is not good, when that could be, for example, a personality, you have somebody, this is the joke, but it works. You have somebody that if I tell any management team, go back and fire someone right now. Now everybody write down the name of who you should fire. Nine out of 10 of them will write down the same name. And I'm like, okay, so everyone agrees that this person shouldn't work for the company. But for some reason you built workarounds on how you tolerate this person who everyone agrees should not work for the company. See that to me is crazy, right? That's madness. So pattern recognition is to see things as patterns and not just see them as problems. Because the human brain does a really fascinating thing and experiment with this right now. And managers, if you're watching this, so you're a dealer, try this as an orthotic spirit, see how it feels. Go to any of your team members the day after you listen to this, walk up to any team member and say, I've discovered 10 problems we need to talk about. Just say those words, I've discovered 10 problems we need to talk about. Just say, I found 10 problems. I'd like to go over with you. Just say that, I found 10 problems I would like to discuss with you. Watch how their countenance changes instantly. People's brain freaks out when they hear that sentence. Because the concept of a problem is overwhelm me to the brain. So what does the brain do when it receives a problem? It does two things immediately. It immediately prioritizes it relative to all the other problems in my life right now. I go, how big is this fire relative to all the other fires I have? How bad is this problem relative to all my problems? We prioritize the problem, which immediately leads to we procrastinate the problem. We go, how long can I wait before I do anything about this? And we develop coping mechanisms because of that. Now watch the difference. If I say to you, I found 10 problems, Simon. Your brain feels overwhelmed, anxious, accused even. If I say I've discovered 10 patterns, hey, Simon, I found 10 patterns I wanna go over with you. Your brain becomes curious. It becomes interested. Why? Because a pattern is not an accusation to your brain. A pattern is an opportunity to your brain. So learning as a leader, learning to see things as they are, but not worse than they are. Learning to see them as they could be and then committing to figuring out how to make them so, you have to develop a brain that recognizes patterns. Because if you have pattern recognition, you can go to the next step, which is pattern interruption. You can ask, how do we prevent this from continuing? How do we fix the wiring so the power doesn't keep going out? How do we handle this turnover issue? We've normalized turnover on industry. We're like, turnover is just kind of a normal thing. Turnover is always gonna be, why? Why have you normalized your people not staying with you? That's weird. That's not normal. Or for example, a lack of production. You have some sales teams. And do you know Simon, by the way, because your audience out of the UK specifically, do you know what the actual national average production on a sales floor is in the UK? I don't know that number. I know in the States, but I don't know what it is in the UK. Well, the average number of units of people sell? Yeah, what's a number number? 169 was the last figure I see. Now, that's in a new car franchise dealership. Okay, now to be fair, it's so difficult. Because units of a year? Yeah, that's it. So what does that turn into, Mathematica? That's the 13? That's the last figure I see. Now, if everyone, we work in Australia, Canada, around the world there, but in the UK, that was the last figure I see. Now... We see that it's a sub-15 unit average. Yeah, it is. Because that's 180 would be, you know... Yeah, 180. 200 Club would be a... So you're a lot of dealers would say 200. That's kind of the way you really want it. That's a good benchmark, okay? Yeah, so I think that's crazy. Okay, so I think anything less than 250 cars per person, per person is crazy. So if your store has 10 people, okay, 10 people, that means on average, your store should sell 220 cars a month with 10 people. That should be a normal month. If 10 people, your store should sell, on average 220 cars per person. Should we discover more there? Are we talking Porsche there? Are we talking use car supermarket? We've got to do some more science around that, haven't we? Generally speaking on that. Now, obviously you can say brand and things like that. But let me give you an example or two of what I'm referring to. So in the end, you have that, you have the Mini Cooper, right? Yeah, obviously that's UK brand. So in the States, there's a dealership up in New York that's a Mini Cooper dealership. They're four salespeople. They're collective team sells, all of them combined, sells about 45 to 60 cars a month with four people. That's a good month if they hit 60. Most months are in the mid 40s up to 50 cars. For the whole team, when I'm telling the team that individually they should be selling a minimum of 20 something cars per person, they're looking at me going, how is that even possible? Well, one of the salespeople, his name is Mark. Mark was like, if you say so, I'm gonna just believe you. He got his personal normal average over 40 cars per person for himself individually. So the entire store went to selling close to 100 cars a month with the same four people. And part of it was because he went from selling 10 to selling 40 himself. I have a salesperson who just messaged me yesterday who's at 30 cars for the month as of the 11th of this month. So this is March 11th. He's at 30 cars sold for the month so far. Now that same salesperson two years ago, 20 cars in an entire month would be a great month for him. He's in a town of 2000 at a Buick and GMC store. If you're not familiar with those brands, that is not a high volume store in general. So here's a salesperson who will sell over 60 cars this month, just two years ago, working five or six days a week with sell 20. But now with a four day work week, we'll sell 60. The reality is I think we've normalized nonsense to me to normalize a salesperson being at a dealership unproductively is crazy. There's not another department in your dealership you would ever tolerate that with. If you had a service department that produced zero revenue for a day, you wouldn't be like, nature of the business. If you had a finance department that produces zero revenue for the day, you wouldn't say, hmm, the car business, it's weird. We only do this with our sales teams where we put a person in a role and that we normalize the person being unproductive in that role so that if a person sells 15 cars in a calendar month on 22 workdays, that means that if they sold a car for every of the 15 units, if they sold it per day, that had seven days out of 22 workdays unproductive. Seven, 22 days minus 15 minutes leaves seven days. If they had a two-card day twice, they didn't have seven unproductive days, they had nine out of 22. Nine out of 22, they didn't produce a result while they were away from their families. They were there for eight or 10 hours and produced the zero revenue. How is that normal? Why would we ever make that normal? So I teach Steelerships Mission 22. Mission 22 is based on a 22 work calendar month. It says every salesperson must average 22 cars per person because their calendar is 22 days per month. You must be productive every day that you're there and normalizing anything below that is crazy to me. So that's what I try to import into stores. I want them to stop thinking of things from a perspective of what's average. Well, the industry average says 12 cars per person. Say that out loud one more time so I can hear you. Did you say your goal is to be average? Did you just say that the mathematical average is 12? And my goal is to have an average of 12 because the nature of an average is simultaneous. The nature of it is that summer above and summer below. Why don't you target to be average? If there's an outlier out here doing this, why are you not benchmarking against outliers? Why are you benchmarking against the average? I find this stuff fascinating and frustrating. So I'm on a mission to save the world one sales person at a time, teaching salespeople how to out experience their competition and create raving fan advocate customers so that they can build a business that will one day work as hard for them as they've worked for it. A business where the salesperson is truly celebrated instead of merely tolerated. But in order to build that, it has to be built on purpose. It has to be built with a plan. And most dealerships don't do that. Too often I see a dealership where you put the one guy and listen, we have so many of our clients that are selling 30 cars a month or 40 cars a month. But what's the rest of the team doing? And what is that? St. Chalo's. And I'm gonna get you to explain that if that's okay. Because I love this philosophy. What's that doing to the business? Yeah. Can you just run through that story for me? Yeah. I stopped at a dealership. They were not a client of mine. But I stopped in and on the way in, there was a gentleman who looked like Santa, the stereotype. He was an overweight, you know, Caucasian, white beard, bald head, you know, big man, standing on the point and he just looked like Santa. And I walked in and as I got into the dealership to sit with the general manager, we were talking about his dealership, his business. And we were talking about the growth opportunities. And somehow it came around to this gentleman. And I said, oh yeah, I saw him out there. A guy who looks like Santa. He said, oh, that's funny. His nickname is Satan Claus. Oh, sorry, Satan Claus. Oh, Satan. Satan Claus. I said, Satan, like the horns, the devil, Satan, yes. They're like, yeah, that's his nickname. I said, you have a salesperson whose nickname is Satan? Like, he's like, yeah, why? I says, because everybody hates him. He's evil. I'm, this is the general manager telling me this. I said, you have a salesperson by your own admission who's evil? It's like, yeah. Well, then why do you keep a voice? I'll sell 30 cars a month. I'm like, yeah, but you have like 10 other people that are selling 12. Yeah. And if they also three more, they would replace his 30. And you want to have that member named Satan on your team. What are we doing? But you know, management, again, this is not an accusation. It's just an observation. OK, so this hurts. It means you might want to look at something. But I see this happen all the time that we operate from fear. We're like, well, I can't let this guy go because he sells too many cars. Yes, but he's a cancer. Yeah. Is he a cancer culture? If these cancer cut it out, treat the cancer. It's so love. And that's why I want to play devil's advocate. Because some people say he's selling 30 cars a month or he got to keep him there. But you know what? How is he doing 30 cars a month? What's he doing to the rest of the team there? Yeah. Is he right for your brand there? Because also, people think that those customers are loyal to your viewership often more than Satan's clothes. Yes. It doesn't have a lot of repeat customers. And probably not. Can I ask a question? Did the other salespeople hate him? But did the customers love him? To sell 30 cars a month? I don't know. No, no. And here's how you know that. Because he's out on the point catching up after being there for 10 years. Wow. No, you don't need to do that. That's your clue that your customer doesn't love you. You know, there's a I don't know who to give credit to. But it isn't mine. But it says advertising is the tax you must pay on delivering an average experience. And so when you have to keep advertising, when you're a salesperson in the case of standing on the point, you know, walking up and convincing strangers. And you've been at the same store for five years. And you still, you don't have a book of business yet. You don't have repeats and referrals yet that dominate your business. What are you, what are you, what did you do for the last five years that after five years, people don't want to come back to you. Like you should be free from the law after five years. If you are still dependent on the dealership's traffic after five years, you did not build a business. You were a parasite, not a profession. I love the story. I don't know who it is. You'll tell me your client, but 46% of their cars are sold through social media. Simple things. Let's make sure we do two posts a day. Let's make sure we take a photograph of the car when handing it over. Let's add the customer in. But tell us the story about tag the trade in in. What a simple idea. Do you remember the one? I see the one. And maybe you send a photograph of the car. Take a photograph of the car. Getting the salesmen put it on social media. But then it's tagging in the trade in as well. Yes, so for example, and this is one of my strategies that I teach. And this I think is the one you're referring to. If I remember correctly, what I don't remember exactly what I spoke about in an idea. But one of the examples I often teach is you've got a trade in. You have the ability, while you're taking in the trade, to start marketing the trade. And so what I encourage salespeople to do is the moment you're taking in a trade, you should start doing a post. Hey, everybody, I'm standing here with this vehicle that I'm currently looking at. The customer who's turning in right now is looking to get something a little bit nicer, newer than this. But this is still a great card. Here's why. You could do a walk around, post it on social media, start getting hand raising leads on a car you haven't even taken in on trade yet. By promoting the inventory prior to actually taking it in on sale. Now, I also think that salespeople should do a great job getting the customer to tell the story of their trade, which is a different technique I teach as well. Which is I call it the autobiography of the car. The autobiography is the story of the car and why they are trading it in. So another great option for a salesperson to do is sit there with your customer and talk about it's maybe even with the car. Hey, Simon, would you tell everybody in this video here, you have a wonderful vehicle here. It's a two year old car. It's only got 20,000 kilometers on it. Tell me, why are you even trading out of this? Well, the thing is my family's grown and we're needing something bigger than this. I love my car. It's been a great car. Whoever takes this car off this lot's going to be so happy. Get that autobiography, that story from the customer's perspective of their ownership experience with their car and get that message out there as well. But there's so many things that don't cost anything that are free and just scale a person's business. I often get asked because I work with some of the best salespeople in the industry and quite frankly in the world. Five of my students did over a million dollars last year in personal income, W2. In fact, next week, Simon, if you want to hop on a plane and come down and hang out, you can't. We have our pinnacle summit and at the pinnacle summit, I will be in a room with salespeople who sell 50, 60, 70, 80, 100 cars a month per person individually in that room. In fact, I'll have two people who co-founded the Pinnacle Society with me, one sold 130 cars last month, another one sold over 150 cars last month. Salespeople who regularly sell over 100 cars a month are going to be in that room. People always ask, how does somebody get to a point where they can sell 100 cars a month as a salesperson? And the answer my friend Frank always gives one of these salespeople I'm referring to. Frank says, the secret is I don't sell 100 cars a month. My community sells 100 cars a month more. I just get to deliver them. You need your audience, your customer base, your community, your market to become your advocate, to become your marketing advocate, to generate traffic for you, to become your rating fan advocates who actually want you to win. Imagine having clients that don't just want to buy from you, but they actually want you to win. That's what you want to create. When you create that, you're unstoppable. Listen, wrapping up this, I want to find out how people can find you and get all that stuff there. But I want you to give me, if you can, just two tips, two tips that a salesperson go back in, they've just listened to this now, they've got to work that they can do. And also for the dealer, the manager, what are just two tips that you could leave with them? And then I want to know, goes to how people can find you. Yeah. Are you looking, I just want to ask, I mean, do you want a tactical on the sales experience? Yeah. Listen, the salesperson there, when a customer just turns around and says, I want to think about it. Well, the customer says, listen, I've got a better price down the road. You need to sharpen your pencil. That's not enough of mine. Give them some, give them some meat that can go back and dry. Give them one more tip they can put in the toolbox and pull out at the right time. All right. So a lot of trainers will want to spend time talking about closing and closing is right, talking about closing the sale. I actually spend very little time teaching closing. I spend much more time teaching opening. I think if you can't close something, you can't, really. Yeah. If you need 150 closes, my friend, you probably didn't do a lot of things right in the beginning. Right. So I'm going to share with you a technique I recently developed that is one of my current favorites, one of my pet projects that I absolutely love. And I love teaching it because it's so simple in its approach and so diverse in how it could be delivered. And it's a technique I call the waves technique. And waves is W-A-V-E-S. And that simply stands for some words that you can incorporate early in the process to activate a person's emotional and psychological center to cause them to want to do business with you. And in fact, the word want is the first one that W want. So here's some words that you can consider right these down and I'll show you how to apply them. There's three critical places you can apply these. So the first one W stands for want, A stands for appreciate, B stands for value, E stands for enjoy, and S stands for sense. Does this make sense to you? So want appreciate value, enjoy, and sense. Now let me show you an application for this. I'll show you three pieces in the timeline of the deal that these can be applied easily. The first one is in the introductory phase where you just building rapport and building an understanding of the customer. You can use this essentially as your qualifying step if you want to. And it would sound something like this. I'll say Simon, do you mind if I ask, what made you want to start looking for a new vehicle to begin with? What got you wanting to look at something new? And you begin to ask- Why is it pregnant, changing jobs, blah, blah, blah? Yeah. Are there certain things that you feel like you would appreciate having in your next vehicle that maybe your current vehicle doesn't currently do for you? I need heads up display, active cruise control, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Now you mentioned a lot of things there. Is there anything specific that you see more value in that I need to make sure the vehicle has? What do you see the most value in of everything you just said? The adaptive cruise, definitely, for my life. Okay, fantastic. And just curious, how do you see yourself enjoying that? Is that because of the type of driving you do or where do you think that that would come in and you? Listen, for work, I'm travelling around the UK all the time. But the motorway says too much. I think I'm going to have adaptive cruise control. Yeah, fair enough. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you some options. And if it makes sense to you, I'm going to start with the one that has this package and this option configuration because it'll check off several of those boxes. And then as I show you that vehicle, you tell me again if it makes sense to look at a book closer. So that's an example of waves. In the industry phase, it can be used. WAVES as a way of just getting the customer to open up about their emotions and their motivations. Like it. Now let me apply it to the walk around. Now I'm showing you the car. And I can say this. I can say now Simon, there's so many things that I can show you on this vehicle. But I want to be respectful of your time and the research you've done. Where would you want to start when it comes to looking at this car? Where do you want to start? Now you answer. You just tell me whatever you tell me. I listen to your answer. And then what I say is, you know, you mentioned a lot of things here. Do you feel like this feature here is something you would appreciate having? Is this a feature you would appreciate and get you to say, yeah. So say now, I do have an option for you that would be maybe a little bit less than this one. And I want to just mention it to you. And I want to ask you this question. If I could save you, let's say three to $5,000, which translates into approximately this much in monthly payment, do you see enough value in looking at this one still? Knowing that I have an alternative that doesn't have this, this and this and will save you this much a month. What do you see more value in the savings and looking at this alternative? Or do you see more value in the options and staying with this one? Okay. Definitely need the option. Right. So fantastic. And I tell you what, do you feel like? And then I go through the process. So here again, I can keep asking questions. What do you think you would enjoy? And then, you know, would it make sense to look at this? Would it make sense to go for a drive? Do you think it makes sense to go ahead and run some numbers on this? And I can ask the question. Now let's get to the close. And you're saying to me, price is too high, payments too high. This is outside of my budget. I wasn't planning on spending this much money. I think that's price or cost related. I'm going to say something back like this. I'm going to say, Simon, I got to tell you, I actually agree with you in this case. This payment is a lot higher than I even thought it was going to be. This price is higher than I was. So I go to be, I love the psychology. What is it? Stop agreeing with the customer. Why do we have the argument start with? I love it. Keep going. Sorry. Sorry to cut you off. I just love that. And so I say, Simon, you know, I guess, I guess the thing is this. I personally, I would never pay this payment myself unless it was for a vehicle I really wanted that had the features that I truly appreciated, the things that I saw value in and the thing that I would truly enjoy. And that's the only time it might make sense for you to spend that kind of money. So my question for you is simple. Does this vehicle still have the things that you want? Are these the features that you feel like you'd appreciate? Do you still see value in this? Do you feel like you'll enjoy it? Because Simon, the only way you can make it make sense is if it can check out those boxes. So I can bring it back and circle back to Waves technique. In fact, the way this technique was developed was essentially on accident. Now I recorded myself in the States. We have a thing called single party consent. Single party consent is just a legal term. It just means that as long as one party is aware that there's a recording device present, you can record a conversation. Right? So in most States, we have single party consent, which means I can record any conversation I have with any person as long as I know this recording device. Now the reason I mention that is because I have a recording app on my phone that allows me to record every single customer interaction I have when I'm representing a dealer client. So whenever I'm there on behalf of my client operating as a trainer, I actually demonstrate what I do. I walk in and take the turn and speak to the customer. I always turn on my phone and record everything. Because I want, first of all, I want coverage in case the customer says, well, he promised me brand new tires for life. No, I didn't. And the other thing is I want to be able to show the salesperson who says, did you say to those people? And I say, yeah, you want to? Yeah. Here's the recording. Here's everything I said. But I was in a, it was in a store. This lady was there with her husband and she had, you know, two small kids. And she really wanted this really nice Dodge Durango. And but they were wanting to maybe go with another one that was cheaper down the road. And so it is another one cheaper down the road. And I said to the lady, I said, listen, I can't speak for you. And I can't speak for your budget. I don't live in your household. I don't want to pretend it's my money. It's not. You guys ultimately have to know that whatever decision you make, they can't take the cheese out of the kids macaroni. Right? If you buy this vehicle, you cannot put your kids at risk and your family at risk. And I know that. But I want to ask you a question. I said, you know, I said, I'm a father. I have a little girl. You have two little girls. I said, you've probably heard the expression that that kids grow up not doing what we said, but doing what we did. Right? You can't be a smoker. Tell your kid not to smoke. Right? I said, I don't know about you, but I don't want my kids to grow up thinking that I can't take care of myself and I can't enjoy my life. I can't have anything nice. You have two little girls. If you never give yourself permission to have what you want, you're teaching your kids that they need to suffer or struggle unnecessarily. So I'm asking you the question, is this vehicle what you really want? And she's like, yes. I said, tell me why you think that you would appreciate it compared to settling. She said, well, why? Because it has this. And those are things you personally see value, which is like, yeah, okay, so you're going to enjoy the thing. I said, all right, so here's the question. What makes more sense? Either way, you're going to have a high payment. The other one's going to be higher than your current payment either way. Either way, you're going to spend more than you plan on spending. So if you're going to overspend, doesn't that make sense if you're going to do it, that it should be for something that you want, something that you're going to appreciate, see value, something you're going to enjoy that means that isn't that the only time it makes sense to overspend? And she went, yeah, I think you're right, actually. I said, well, then show your kids that it's okay to be a princess. And I turned to the dad and I said, this is what I do sometimes and I'm just, you know, my personality. But I said, sir, I say all that, I don't really know her. Does she deserve to be happy? Yeah, she's like, yeah, yeah, she does. I said, okay, she just needs you to say that. Can you look at her right now and tell her, honey, you deserve to be happy? Can you tell her? So she feels okay doing this. And they told her and I said, all right, this is what we're doing. She's like, yeah. The waist technique is absolutely, yeah, I apologize. My teacher mode gets in and I. No, no, no, it's great, right. Absolutely right. I was just going to ask a managerlessness. What's one tip you want to manage to go back and forth? Okay, managers. Probably if I'm talking like a tactical thing that managers can do, it's learned to do and go back and do a true one on one with each of your people. Master the art of understanding the motivations of your people. What's that mean look practically? What do I do? Put it on a calendar. And here's the thing I know. For example, this interview only happened because it was on my calendar. If it was not on my calendar, it would never happen. Anything that's important ends up on a calendar. If your people are important and coaching your people is important, you must have a calendar for coaching your people. There needs to be a date at a time assigned to each member of your team that you would like to see increased influence from. And you need to schedule that time with them. Hey, Johnny, hey, Rebecca. It's Tuesday at 2 p.m. I'd like to put a calendar for us to get together. I want to talk about your business. I want to talk about where you're at, what your struggles are, what your opportunities are. I want to talk about your strengths a week. And I want to see how I can help you get to the next level. Can we put down time, Tuesday at 2 o'clock? Put it on a calendar and devote uninterrupted time to mentoring and understanding and your motivations of your people. Ask the questions, hey, if there was a goal at your home, a family goal, something that was important to you that required more money. And the only reason this goal does not yet exist is because you just don't have the financial resources to justify it. Would you be willing to share what that goal would be and what that financial resource needs to look like so I can help you make that reality? Find out what your people's goals are and then impress upon them your commitment to making that a reality for them and see what your people will not do for you when they are convinced of that you will do for them. So I would just, yeah, that's one thing for sure. Go back and be a better coach. Love it. Jonathan, I've really enjoyed this. It's great when we just kick around ideas and there's so many great people now get still here. Thank you for sharing. I love your philosophy to share. Get it out there as much as I can. How do people find you? What's the easiest way to find you, Jonathan? Well, I like to say I borrowed this from my friend Kenny Brooks. One of the world's greatest salesmen, you can Google the video, greatest salesman Kenny Brooks. But Kenny, he says all the time, you can find me. I'm all over the web like Spider-Man. So you can't miss me if you're looking for me. If you just go to Google and just type in Jonathan Dawson, I should pop up. If you put in Cellology, S-E-L-L-C-H-O-L-O-G-Y. If you put in Cellology, I should pop up. But I've got content all over Facebook. You can follow me on Facebook. I put a lot of free content on Facebook. I have a public group on Facebook called Cellology, Automotive Sales and Marketing Strategies. It's a free group. Your entire team can join. There's no cost to be part of that. Put a lot of content in that Facebook group. And those are probably the main ways. Obviously, I've got stuff on YouTube. I've got stuff on SoundCloud. And you have your book as well on Amazon? Yeah. I co-authored a book called Race to the Finish Line. It was a joint book. Much for authors. It came with bestseller. So that's available. I believe you can get that still on Amazon. And then, yeah, just if I can ever be of service, I'm only looking for those that are looking for me. I saved this with all relative humility. But I got out of the convincing business a long time ago. I put out so much content. I just tell the dealer sometimes will reach out and well, tell me how it was. I just like, look, I don't know how to say this without sounding a little bit goofy. But reality is, I don't want to convince you to work with me. I put a lot of free content. Like, if you think my price is too high, don't pay it. Be a social media mooched. Take all my free stuff. Yep. Until you're compelled to do business with me. And then let's do business. But I just want to help dealers who, my perfect client absolutely loves their customer, but loves their people just a little bit more. Love that. Love that. Listen, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time, Nick. It's been a great and such. Thank you so much for the invitation and thanks for the opportunity to share a cell call with you with your audience. Thanks again. 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.
