In this episode we speak to The YouTube Diva herself, Elise Kephart.
Elise now runs her own sales training organization in the United States, and in this episode, she talks us through her very first car sale while still working unsociable shifts at Starbucks, and the long road to success that followed from that first paycheck.
She talks us through her competitive nature and how it has absolutely brought her success and notoriety in this business. Having a game plan is key.
Simon also tells the story of his first experiences in the motor trade after backpacking and running out of money!
This is the first of a three-part interview with Elise. The others will follow over the next few weeks so watch out for those!
Here are the highlights:
(02:47) That first phone call
(04:22) Hey, let’s sell cars!
(06:59) The Starbucks recipe
(10:13) The buzz of selling
(18:10) Getting that gameplan right
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 inspiring and insightful training, but are equally as happy to demonstrate these skills and techniques with real customers in your own showroom.
We believe in order for sales training to be effective and in Simon’s words ‘real world’, it needs to be tried and tested in the only place it matters the showroom floor. There is no room for theory when your goals are for your team to sell more cars, hours or parts and retain more profit. In dealerships around the world the focus applied by many of the sales executives is to try and sell a deal. Symco specialise in getting your teams to focus on selling themselves, the product and then supporting this with the deal.
To find out more visit www.symcotraining.co.uk
Welcome to the Selling and the Motor Trade Podcast, an association with Symco Training. This is the weekly podcast where we share best practice tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service department and generally put more profit into your dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Bowkett. As some of you probably already know me as Skippy, I will start by saying thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Hi and welcome to another episode of Selling and the Motor Trade. It's my pleasure today and actually I've been really looking forward to this interview for a long time. It's a lady called Elise Kepart. When I first came across her, she was known as the YouTube Deaver. I was at the National Automotive Dealers Association and there was a guy called Jim, Jim Ziegler and I thought Sean mentioned her as well. Sean Bradley was talking about this lady called the YouTube Deaver and she was working at the time I believe in a Honda dealership in California and they were talking about what she's doing, how she was personally brand herself and I thought, wow, I love the idea what she's doing with video. Let me tell you, Elise Kepart now runs her own sales training organization in the United States and I'll get to you. She knows her stuff. There's the old cliche, those who can do, those who can't train but let me tell you, following Elise on social media, I know she is someone that will take the call in the sales department. She'll go out and second face and she actually knows what she's talking about. So, listen, Elise, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast. Thank you for having me. This is really exciting. So Elise, can I ask you then, why cars? I understand you're a barista early on in your career. Is that right? Yeah, you know, it's a funny story. Rewinding the tape pretty early on, I actually did grow up around the car business. So my dad sold cars and was, did F&I and was a manager, like pretty much my whole childhood. But it's not something like you graduate high school, you're all, hey, I want to get in the car business. I just, you know, I was living down in San Diego at the time and I was actually dating somebody who had started selling cars for the first time. And I remember I was on my Starbucks break and it's like, this is when the flip phones kind of went like this and he sends me a text and asked me to call him. This is when people like spoke on the phone. So I call him on my Starbucks break and he tells me that he made like $1,800 his first commission selling a used Nissan Titan truck. And I like had to get like a double take because that was like my whole month's worth of income just about like working at Starbucks with tips and like a second job kind of waiting table and posting and stuff like that. So the next day I kind of was like, well, if he can do it, like this is just inner competition me. I was like, yeah, if he can do it, then I could do it. So I actually took the bus. I don't know who does this for a car sales job. I took the bus because I didn't, my car wasn't really in working condition at that point in my life. And got turned out at like three Nissan stores and then I walked into a Ford dealer, a Ford and Hyundai store. Heller for it. It's in it or their group one store now, but it was an S. Kindito and they hired, they hired me on the spot. And that was like that. That was the first time that I just got into the car business. And then I think when you sell your first car, it's kind of over at that point because it's just, it's just high almost that never goes away. Oh, isn't that so true? When even with like what we do now, I don't sell cars, but I still sell. Yeah. Right. So if you have your own business, you have to know how to sell. And it's just a high. Yeah. When I think you, it's not like, oh, I close somebody. It's, it's, I don't know, maybe it's maybe it makes you like feel like you're helping, you're helping somebody. You're solving a problem. It isn't so true about the jumping in the car and your case, the bus going and knocking a few doors. So so many times get people out. How do I get in the car business? I said, put a suit on. Okay. Get dressed up. Good. Go knock them. So you're by the end of the day, you'll have a job. And I just don't know if the young generation does that sometimes anymore. Yeah. But it's so many times I know people, I did that when I first come to the UK from Australia. Now I sold cars in Australia from 17 years old. Well, I was a backpacker. You know, we were just trying to travel around Europe. We ran out of money. Me and my mates said, right, let's go and sell cars. And like yours, it was like knocking or we didn't have a car and need a job, need a job. And you know what? Where else? What are the industry? Could you earn the money you can selling cars and get a job? Yeah. And they won like that. Right. Especially at like a, yeah, like a younger age. I feel like, I mean, it's, it's the younger age I feel like is more and more growing up into this world of more than it's more of a world like this, where you don't actually, you know, so much of sales, I believe is you have to use your own voice, right? Or, or, or if it's faced with the customers in the showroom, then so much of that is face-to-face selling. Yeah. Anything that you're doing like this or like this is just behind a screen, right? There's a, there's an extra overt part that you have to, that's part of the skills that I believe that a lot of times the younger, like they're, they're almost like afraid of the phone or it's like it's not there to them. It's like a telephone. Why would I do? Why would I, why would I want to talk to the customer on the phone if I could just do it over text, but they don't understand the psychology of that's part of sales, you know? Going back to part of sales. Starbucks. Yeah. I have a good grounding for you because again, you're not to wreck sales, but you're speaking lots of customers, angry customers, you ought to calm down and anything really, was it a great grounding for you? You're, you're also dealing with customers. Like I always had the opening shift. So you're dealing with, with people that have not had their caffeine. Rummy. And, and, and, but yet they're up at four thirty in the morning with like a five in the morning, right? When you opened like on, on routine. And I remember at that age, I was wondering like, gosh, like what are like these people are always like, you know, here every morning and they're there, they have things very specific their way, like they're drink, right? But now that was now that like a place where I'm at in my life, it's like I'm, it's almost like I'm on the other side of that. We're like, I need to like, I'm, I'm there at routine. But I, but I, but I take it in perspective of like, I think it's, it's a great company where it teaches you like hard, where it teaches you hard work and a lot about a lot about just, I mean, one of the reasons I think Starbucks is so successful is because they have a recipe, whether it's their culture, their employee culture, right? Or, or their drinks, whatever they put in their drinks, right? To get people to coming back. But one of the things that you learn is like, obviously, and it's depending on where you live, there could be a Starbucks within a mile of each other, right? Yeah. So to a person that's like waking up at the crack of dawn to do whatever they're going to do for their day and they've got to have their coffee, like they have two, two or three choices sometimes like what Starbucks they're going to go to. And it's all within the same driving distance and the prices are the same, right? And then the drink recipe is the same. But like what is going to trigger that person to go to one of three Starbucks choices within the same driving distance. Yeah. And it's the experience. It's the people. It's really, it's like that's the core part of it. Yeah. When everything else is similar, right? And so that's, I've kind of always taken that with selling cars or what I, with what I do now is, is I want to be the, the, the company or the one that, that people choose to go to. Listen, that's good advice over here. There's lots of talk about the agency model that's coming in. I know it's just starting that conversation with the states, but let's see what happens there. We've got people that have already started it and it's, it's definitely coming. And a lot of people are, I think it's fair to say investors are nervous, but you know, it's like the Starbucks approach. We eat people still buy people at the end of the day. They're still going to need us to, to sell the actual process. It's the experience that you talk about then. Yeah. I mean, I'm, and I'm honestly very confused because I've, I've tried to make Starbucks coffee at my house. I've tried the Keurig version. I've tried the coffee pub version. I've tried the beans and the, um, the French press version, right? Yeah. All the same beat, but no, it is just not, it's, it's just not the same. So it must be the, it must be the experience of the people unless there's something. And I'm, I'm, I'm sorry. The magic source. I'm, I'm sorry. Right. So this definitely separates the motor traders. Do you remember the first car you sold? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Down to like the color, the couple, it's almost like a movie reel in your head when you replay it. It was a 2007 Hyundai accent and this was in 2008. So like the body style, I think had just changed over to a little bit more rounder of a version. So, but it was a used car. It was a little four door accent and that baby blue. I don't know what the official color was, but it was a college student and her parents. And, um, you know, my first commission was almost, I have the stub. It was almost, it was like $797 like eight, almost $800. And, uh, I remember my manager, like, you know, he was, it was like in that back car business office and he was like pushing this deal over to finance. And he's like, well, this is going to be a lot more than your Starbucks tips and like seven, $800 for me. And that was like the high. That was the first like, what's like, because you're, you're, I'm used to that being like, okay, I'm going to get a check from Starbucks in two weeks after working all these shifts for like, you know, $912 like, so, uh, it was kind of crazy. Isn't that buzz of selling? So it stays with the rest of your life, doesn't it? That buzz is nothing like that. You still get it. And so listen, when you were selling cars, what was one of your greatest days in selling? Now, I've seen your videos. I've seen where semi testimonials. I've got to ask about Justin Timberlake as well. Okay. Yeah. Right. What's one of your greatest days selling cars? And, um, I always had a really big, um, a really big, like just competitive part of me again, when I sold cars on, who can I get to drive the longest in Pat, like the longest distance or fly on a plane, the longest distance to buy a car from me? Like that, that was, that was, yeah, because it's like, you know, most people would be like, oh, this person lives all the way, like in Timbuk to, but like my mindset, I remember at that time was like, well, like if they lived all the way in Timbuk to how many Honda dealers do they have to pass? Wow. Yeah. And I'm going to beat, right? Then I'm going to, that, like, I'm going to, I'm going to win over just in that customer's going to sit through traffic for me, right? They're going to, they're going to do all the, all the stuff. Yeah. You bid with me. And so, um, you know, the longest and it kind of, it was, it's, it's crazy how it worked out. This, uh, it was a couple that lived in Maryland, but they were buying like a house in San Luis Obispo. It was getting built and it had to like all of it had to sort of be planned around just the right, the right car, you know, and the right timing to for it to make sense for them not to go to like a bigger, you know, fly into LA, for example, you know, get something there and then just drive it up. Cause where I live, it's kind of like in between Los Angeles, California and San Francisco, California, those are like the bigger towns and then San Diego is like, you know, much more south. So I'm kind of in the middle of all of it. And, um, and rumor has it. I remember at that point that like, oh, you can get a better deal if you drive up to the bay or if you go down to Los Angeles, right? So that was a really feel good deal. And then even just like the customers, um, you know, there's, there can be so many negative stereotypes and use spicy, you know, I'm in these car groups, these, these car groups, these days and Facebook where, you know, you, it's the car business. So you're, you're just going to sort of scroll and accept like some of the craziness in it. And, but a lot of a lot of, uh, I think stereotype is aimed sometimes at Asians or sometimes at like, um, at, at, like, with, you know, people with like a native name, like that they're going to be these really tough customers, right? Yeah. And, um, it's joked upon and it's, it's kind of it's like, I'm not trying to put a label on, but, but it's, it's, it's a, it's an unfortunate joke, I guess, within the, the Carlingo talk. And so, um, though like customers again that, um, but that in California, like you have a lot of, you have a customer, you know, that live in the Bay Area or Los Angeles of that nationality. And so like that was just another, I always just like to go against the odds and be like, okay, well, what, what's like the toughest situation and how can I, how can I like, how can I beat the odds and how can I still. I love that competitor. I'm not, I'm not heard of that way. The furthest away to get someone to come and buy from me. Yeah. I love that. I, when I started, I was in a Holden dealership, which is a General Motors product in, uh, Townsville, North Queensland. So, um, not Brisbane, not a capital. It's right up in the, the point. Yeah. And, uh, up there, Tony Island, my first boss was saying teachers are the worst people. They never make a decision on the day. They'll just go and think about it and they'll come in with spreadsheets and all that. And I remember that competitiveness like, I'm going to fucking get this teacher. I'm going to get this teacher. Forget the profit in it, Elise. I just had to win to get a, get the deal from the teacher. Now, I don't even, I made stuff all profit out of it, but I had to get the teacher on the day because someone said, you can't do that. They went buy another day. And I love that competitiveness. I mean, it's, I carry it over into what I do now with, when conferences started to come background, so I did this at NADA this year. I'll pick a blind dealer from the audience and then I'll, I'll put my own feet to the fire. And I say, all right, I have 15 minutes. In five minutes, I'm going to get a customer blindly from your CRM to pick up the phone for me. And I'll have 10 minute conversation time. And you're going to hear me close an appointment for you that's going to show up. And that's kind of a, that's a ballsy move a little bit, right? Like to do, because it's like, oh, wait a minute, wait, we just talk about this stuff. We don't actually like, we don't actually like, no, no person would do that. Like knowing unless, unless you knew really what you were talking about it and you have it like, and I think that's, I love it. That competition, I still carry is over because, yeah, not nobody does that. So that's another thing. I love that. You can't do a teach. That's the truth. That is the truth. And I just love that when you're in a dealership, where you actually make calls with people live. And at least you've been there. You get the sales people around there waiting for you to fail. And I'm going to tell you this, there's a trainer, we're a small company. There's six of us. Okay. Yeah. And I had a trainer that was a great guy. He knew his stuff, but would never make the call live in front of that team. Because he said, if I fail, my credibility is gone. I said, trust me, it doesn't. If you cannot make an appointment with every customer every single time there, sometimes you will fail. But then you turn and say, I got that wrong. What should I've done? Okay. And then guess what? You learn from it. They learn from it. You're, you're a specked from the people you're making the call. Will go through the roof. And I'll go tell you, it does work. When people see you pick up the phone there and actually goes, let's make appointments from the CRM. Let's make it from the database, from the service department. And again, you know what you do. You look at the ones that. Yeah. I mean, I have it down in my head and I broke it down before the phone call. I have 12 scenario. I broke it down before I did this. Like, you know, I said, there's 12 reasons that I'm crossing my fingers on. That don't happen when a customer picks up their phone. And I kind of went through just a quick summary of them. And sure enough, the first cuts, the one chance, it's like M&M like live, right? And the one lady that picked up was one of those 12 scenarios, but it's kind of like an asterisk to it because it's the objection of, I'm at work right now. Can you call me back? Right? And it doesn't mean that it doesn't mean that I'm crap. They said that I'm done on this phone call. It means that I have one chance to move past the subjection properly. I can't like, you know, dance with the same objection, meaning I can't, if a customer says no, if I move past it and they still object to it in the same way, like I'm at work, you know, then it's better for me at that point to hang up. So for sure enough, she said, oh, yeah, that's right. But I'm at work right now. Can you call me back? And it was like, oh my gosh, it was crazy because by, I mean, at the end of the call, I still got the appointment, but it was all down to like literally that much of a, just a math game almost for me the way I break it down. I love that. But if you make enough calls, and I know that if you make enough calls, you know what the maths are, what the numbers are, you know, you're going to get people who was going to say one of those 12 things. You know the objection. And if you know the objection that's going to come up, you know, has deal with it before it comes up, you got that game plan, right? Yeah. And I, I almost, you know, one of the things that I really dove into over the last, probably since the year 2020 up is the psychology of a text message, you know, to the point where in the same way that we have reasons for what we do face, what we say or the psychology of what we do face to face selling or phone selling, breaking down the psychology of a text message to where you can get a text message to where at the end of the text message, the customer saying, yeah, hey, it's cool to call me. Then those 12 scenarios, pretty much like all out the window, right? But they're not going to tell you, take me off your list. Yeah. If a text message, they just said like, hey, yeah, cool. It's cool Simon to call me, right? So, so it's almost like you, you, it's almost like this extra little category of, of when you get engagement over a text or email. Are you, are you training on the right process? Do you know how to? Can I just, yeah, I just want to get you views it. For me, text is better than email now. Emails are adorable. Emails go into spam and junk and a text, it's just there. I mean, you and I before this, we text one another few times done because you know, you read it straight away done. Give me four minutes. Not a problem. I'm here. You get on when you can. If that was an email, is that going to be as instantaneous there? No, absolutely. You know, it's so interesting for me to break down, I feel like the consumers, the dealer relationship and, and the B2B or like vendor to dealer relationship or, or my, you know, the reactions, I guess of, of like, for example, on my website, dealers will gladly give me like their real phone number. I don't, I, not, not a one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and just an email, right? Yeah. We see that all the time, all the time, all the time in, in the consumer to, to dealer world. There, there's a company that is like a text only. It's like a, it's, it's, it's true car. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them, but they're, not with true car. No. Okay. So, so they, they have a service where they tell the customer, hey, you know, you only will be texting with the dealership. Like they can't call you. And so from the deal, when the dealer signs up for that program, you can't, you don't have the customer's real phone number. Right. Like if you try and call it says, Nope, this is true car and you can only text this number. Okay. And it's, it's, and it's kind of crazy the way that I unfolded that, but I look at it like, all right, in that case, I actually take my chances and I go to the email and I, and I use the right process in the email to get the real phone number to text them, to take the text to a live phone call. A mast phone number where I'm just having a pen pal conversation and I can never at the end of it say like, you know, hey, I know your day is busy, but just to make sure the rest is, is, is correct, you know, lined up correct. Are you free for me to call you for a quick two minutes from the store? I can't say that if I don't have the customer's real number. Right. So I believe texting is like that one step. Like you said, that's, that's farther along almost in this process. Like, but there is a bucket I find of where you have, you don't have the real phone number and you only have email. And so you have to almost have to, it's like, you got to progress that to getting the phone number to text and then text to a phone call. It's your clothes. It's, it's earning the right each time to go the next stage, isn't it? Yeah, it's like, if this is, if this is like Tinder, right? Like, girls, females, I mean, I'm not on that, but I figured out very quickly how it works. Like females are not just going to give you their number right away. Right. Like if you go into their DM, so that's kind of like a, an internet lead, right? And, and you have to, they have to, they have to like you enough to actually like evade this, their real phone number to you. And like, they're actual like, you know, on those apps, you could be any, anybody I think that you want now these days, like, so it's almost like this. Yeah, this, this similarity in getting the trust wall to break down for the customer. That's why they don't give you the phone number in the first place. Like, they don't trust it. No, but it's, it's, it's very interesting to break down because it's like they, they put that much effort. So I'm in into like changing their name and like a weird email, like, you know, just stuff that's like, if you, that energy that people use for like, he's very creative things, just like use it for the greater good sometimes as so much. It's almost like a compliment, right? They, they just trust you that much. They went to that much effort to, to, to not, because their guard is so up against you right off the right off the bat. So like, who wouldn't love car sales, right? Like, right off the bat, you're, you're not, you're like, some people aren't going to have a negative stereotype of you right off the bat. 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.
