A highly requested topic this time, handling Paint and Fabric Protections objections.
We a look at techniques to help explain the benefits to your customers, and also give you or your sales team confidence in the product.
A great listen for your next sales meeting.
Here are the highlights:
{01.19} Posh polish
{04:28} Application
{06:12} Manufacturer Approved
{06:53} Profit isn’t a dirty word
{09.06} Chanel No.5
{10:54} BBC Panorama
{16:59} Comparisons
About Symco Training:
Symco Training was founded in 2000 by Simon Bowkett and it was his belief that the business had to offer its clients something different. That difference was clear to Simon from his days in the dealership when he experienced many sales trainers who had all the answers, but were unable, unwilling or both to actually show the delegate how they could be implemented. It remains the ethos of the business today. You see, Symco only employ trainers that are committed to delivering not only in spiring and insightful training, but are equally as happy to demonstrate these skills and techniques with real customers in your own showroom. We believe in order for sales training to be effective and in Simon’s words ‘real world’, it needs to be tried and tested in the only place it matters the showroom floor. There is no room for theory when your goals are for your team to sell more cars, hours or parts and retain more profit. In dealerships around the world the focus applied by many of the sales executives is to try and sell a deal. Symco specialise in getting your teams to focus on selling themselves, the product and then supporting this with the deal.
To find out more visit:
Welcome to the Selling 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. Do you have an appetite for an open sales training program? You see, we normally run our sales training programs for dealer groups or manufacturers so we can get enough people in a room to make the training cost effective. But every year I get lots of people saying, oh, I've got one dealership or I've got just two dealerships, I've got three salespeople that could really go through your training program. And we're often saying, I don't know how well it's going to stack up for you. Now you have options. You could also go to Amazon and get the book Words That Sell Cars. It's a great book and we have lots of clients give that to every salesperson when they start in the industry. Of course, you could always go to our signature sales fitness training program. If you listen to our podcast, we plug that all the time. It's cost effective because it's only £299 for three months of digital online training that gives your salesperson a great start in their career. You could do that. But what is an appetite for an open physical training course? Now guys, we have to run that course interactively. It's not one of these courses where your salespeople sit there, cross an arms, just listen to it and board throughout the day. It won't be death by PowerPoint. So that sounds like something you'd be interested in. Go to our website. It's simcotraining.co.uk. Look for the tab about open courses and you get all the details you need right there. Hi, and welcome to another episode of Selling in the Motor Trade. Again, thank you for everyone who's subscribing this. Most people subscribe and you actually get the notification every week when it comes out. People haven't subscribed. It's Thursday morning, six o'clock. The new episode comes out every week. Easiest way though, just subscribe like most people do. Because everyone tells me it's the easiest way it comes through. They know straight away they've got it there. So I urge you just go and subscribe on Apple's Spotify, Amazon Music, wherever you get your information from. But this is a request today. I actually had this from a salesperson saying, listen, can you give me some ideas on how to overcome the objection when people say that the content and fabric protection is just a posh polish. So we're talking about super guard, guard ex, life shine, whatever product you're selling. So if you're selling diamond bright, now I'm sure all of those manufacturers of those products will say ours is better. Our ceramic coatings, better than their ceramic coating. And you know what? We probably do the same thing if we were them. But I'm going to assume for the purposes of this and Victor Kooten, please don't get upset with me, but I'm going to assume they're all the same product. I'm not going to talk about the specifics that life shine has the glass cover. Diamond bright doesn't. Okay, guard ex actually it's got a lifetime warranty and super cards only got three years, but or if you go to carbon, sorry, carbon, who I'm going to talk about ceramic coating, it's a lot longer. I'll let your providers or your paint and fabric protection deal with that. In fact, if you look at our value added program, our value added course, our VAPs. Okay, a value added products, how we teach that, we'll talk about the specific product that is in your dealership when we do that. So if it's car care plan on your your gap, your RTI provider, whatever it is, let's just look at objections. And this sells person, you had a few objections, which I get because I've actually thought them as well. In fact, if you're listening to this, maybe your salesmen is just asking, I've listened to it because your penetration of paint and fabric protection hasn't been the best. Okay. I know that I didn't sell this product because I didn't believe in it. And that's a real issue because you know what, I'm not one of these people that can sell something I don't believe in. You'll meet salespeople that can sell sand to the Arabs, ice to the Eskimos. I'm just not one of those. If I don't believe it, I really, really struggle to sell it. I've got to believe in the product to start with. Okay. And I'm going to say I didn't believe it and here's why. I've had lots of valotazs. I could be honest, I started washing cars when I started to motor trade. I've told salespeople it's a load of crap. But think that's true. Why might your valotaz tell you that paint and fabric protection is a load of crap? Think it's true. If you sell a whole lot more of it, guess what your valotaz has to do or your detailer in Australia? They have to fit it. Okay. It's going to take a while to apply it properly, isn't it? So you're just giving them more work. And also your valoting department, your detailing department, if you're in America, okay, they're going to have access to chemicals that you can't buy from Kmart, from Helfords. Okay. So actually it might be more important for your customer than it is to the valotaz who has access to all of those chemicals there and then that they could get stains out of the carpet or the seat in the car that they might not be able to. Okay. But also, I know what some of you are thinking, yeah, you ain't seen my valotazo though. They don't even fit it. This comes straight from Pete Beck from SuperGuard. Hi, Pete. Thank you very much for this. Now Pete turned around and said, you know what? And I'm sure Gardex, all of them are exactly the same. Okay. So you're providing this product to make sure if your uncles with this one. But even if your valotazo doesn't fit that product, they don't fit SuperGuard. Okay. They just like wave something. I said, yeah, yeah, it's done. All right. And the customer spills that milkshake in the back of the car, the Ribena. And they get a stain in the seat of the car. Is your customer covered under warranty? You know what? They are. And SuperGuard, they will come out and repaint a bonnet if they need to. They'll put a new secret guard, even if it wasn't applied by your valotazo. I said to Pete Beck, really? Why? He said, skip it. We have to. Because you think about it. We are approved by Toyota Lexus Maser. Okay. If the customer complains to the manufacturers that I bought this product with Lifeshine and it didn't work, it's a lot of shite. They might pull our approval and it cost us fortunes. Now, we know that the valot hasn't done that. So what we just, we'll just repaint the bonnet if we need to. We'll put a new seat in if we need to. Now, they're not stupid. Pete then says, we'll go and grab that val and say, oh, come here, you little bastard. Okay. You haven't fit this, have you? And I'm sure they'll have a conversation with your senior management team at some point. But rest assured, your customer is covered. It's next thing. Does it actually work? You know what? It has to work. Think it's rude. Do you think your manufacturer, say it, Volkswagen Honda, would allow us to sell a product on their car that doesn't work? Would they? No, of course they wouldn't do that. Okay. It has to work. Otherwise, they wouldn't allow us to sell it. Okay. Very quickly. Wouldn't be so easy for someone like, okay, a Mazda to say, right, that's it. You're not allowed to sell that product. Any Mazda dealership anymore. If you want to keep the sign above the door, Mr. Paul Brierley, you have to do it. You have to stop selling that. Spray it away. We've stopped selling it. So you have to work. It has to work. Okay. Now, I know the other thing that locks itself, people tell me is Amazon. Do you know how much profit's in it? It's huge. Aren't we ripping off the customer? Now, I'm not going to tell you what profit margin is in your product, but you know what? I'm guessing it's really good. But profit's not a dirty word. That's what we sell it as dealers. Okay. There is great margin in it. Hello, Vah. Don't just have a look at how much we buy the kit from from Gardex and how much we sell it for. Because what we often forget is we have to pay you if we sell that most cases. So many times your business manager might get paid a tickle on it if it's sold. Your sales manager might get paid a tickle on it because if the profit goes into the pot and if your sales manager is paid on the profit of the whole department, we have to pay VAT or GST, depending on what country are, on any profit we make in it. We have to apply this product properly. What? Two hours to fit it properly? There's some labor time there. Now, again, you'll sit there and think, well, we don't pay our validators that much. Well, okay. Compare it to your technicians. We will sell a technician at an hourly rate a lot higher than what we actually pay them. Just think whatever your labor rate is with your technicians. What is it? Is it $200 an hour? Is it $180 an hour? Whatever it is. Now, your valorter, we might try to add half whatever we can get for the technician. But if it's two hours, that has to be added into it. And also, how do we look at the profit margin and lots of other products that you and I buy day in, day out? And think about a can of Coke. Now, not the bottle, not the tin, just the liquid in the bottle. How much do you think it costs to produce? This is an American sense. I heard five cents. Do you think that? It's only sugar and water. Okay? The rest of the cost is a marketing distribution. That's where it is. Think about Chanel number five. Okay? What are you going to pay for 100 mils of Chanel number five? What is it? 100 euros, 100 pounds, something like that, 150. I don't know. I don't wear a lot of Chanel number five. Okay? Now, the liquid in the bottle, not the bottle. Not the latest Hollywood actor or actress. They've hired to shoot that little movie at Christmas time. Not all the little gifts they give you when you buy that Chanel number five. Just the liquid in the bottle. In euros this time, what's it cost? I heard five euros. You think about all the products you buy. I know someone who works for PC World in the UK. They sell extended warranty guaranteed by geek squad. They were the underwriters of this warranty. The warranty they were selling for something like 300 pounds. So it's a thousand pound laptop, 300 pound extended warranty. How must he tell me that they're buying the extended warranty from geek squad? 15 pounds. That's huge. Why? Because modern laptops, they're all solid state, I believe nowadays. There's no moving parts. So if something goes wrong, it's often a software issue, not the hardware issue. There's huge margins. Oh, actually, think about that cost of coffee. You had all the way to work this morning. That Starbucks. Again, I heard it costs more for the cup, the stirrer, the little napkin that it does with the liquid in your cup of coffee. Huge margins in it. I go, oh, the funniest one is, are you listening to this on an iPhone? Now, you can go and search this yourself. This was on BBC panorama interview. Goodness me, it must be about eight or nine years ago now. Whatever the phone was at the time, eight or nine years ago, they were retelling it for $999 in the US market. There was a big controversy, if I could say that word, at the time, where there were sweat shops in China. The conditions were so bad that people were throwing themselves off this building and telling themselves, horrendous. So what did Apple do? Do they improve working conditions? Did they improve the pay to the workers? No, they actually put up nets around the building to stop the workers killing themselves. Can you imagine being the manager there? Okay. So no, no, no, come off the net. You've got a few more iPads to build first. Come in then. Okay. Now, in that BBC panorama program. So again, eight or nine years ago, something like that. The phone was retailed at $999 and the cost of it to make. Now, this is just screwing it together, not research and development, not distribution, not marketing was $6. Now, wonder Apple's the richest company in the world, $6. So actually, don't be put off by profit. Profit's not a dirty word. Okay. So let me go and say, oh, no, but hold on. I'll buy a super guard online. You know what? If your customer buys a super guard from eBay online, tell you one thing I can guarantee about that product. It's stolen. Yep. You're right. Super guard will only sell that product to a franchise dealership. Okay. Life shine. You might say, oh, I go into health and there's lots of life shine products there. You're right. But actually life shine the burnt protection, the fabric protection. They won't sell on health. Because they don't want to devalue their brand, their product. Okay. So those are a franchise dealership. Okay. I know that specifically for super guard. Listen, a life shine, I may have that wrong. I've not spoke to those guys in that, but I'm sure if super guard is doing it, guard X would probably all of them would do the same things. But gain, take the lead from your reps that turn up. Okay. So don't let that put you off. All right. That works. It's to work. Manufacturers wouldn't allow us to sell it otherwise. Okay. And for me personally, I got two kids that like mountain biking and football and money boots. For me personally, the inside is probably more important than the outside sometimes. Okay. And you might be asking, is my car got guard X on it? Yeah, it has. It absolutely has. If you ever see my car in the dealership there, I started washing cars for a living. So I don't like cleaning that often. So I do get the inside is probably more important for me than the outside because it's my mobile office. Okay. So that's the person have a bit of belief. Okay. Now I'm not going to talk about how to present it. Okay. You've all got the cards that you can use in dealerships. If you're watching this on a video, we've got one of the life shine cards here. You've got the diamond right there have those little bit of fabric that you can show them one side the other side. You can do the upside down cup on the bonnet. There's so many different unique ways that you could present this product. Okay. If you want to know the coolest way to present it, okay, there is a man in an Audi dealership in Dublin who I've got to say is one of the best ways I've ever seen presenting it. But I'm not going to steal his thunder because he wouldn't want everyone else to know about it. But there's lots of ways to present it. Let's just talk about the objections when people say, no, I'll leave it. Let me just give you a few that you might want to try. Don't use all of these obviously. Take the idea, twist it, change it, make it right for you. And this is just part of our sales fitness program. Oh, sales pitch. This is a sales pitch for you sales managers. If you like some of these training ideas that we do here on the podcast, go and have a look at our sales fitness training program. This is where we take people through a structured process for the first 90 days in their business. If they have been selling for all, we take them through the masterclass. We talk about customers' first contact and today's service advisor. We price them really cheap. It's $2.99. So you get three months of training effectively, 100 pounds a month. And it's something that all other clients put their people through after we've done training with them in-house, okay? Because it drips feeds the ideas all the time. And this is not a bit of a taster, a lot of it is. Clearly, we're not going to give you everything here because I'm not silly. I want you to put your hand on your pocket and pay for something, okay? Let me give you some ideas on objection handling, okay? If someone says, if it's so good, why don't they do it from the factory? You'll hear that from a customer. They think it's true. It's actually a bit of a silly thing because that's kind of like saying is that if adaptive cruise control was so good, why didn't they put it on every car? Okay? If the heated steering wheel was so good, why don't they fit into every car? It's going to be some limit there, okay? But you will hear customers say that. This is how you might want to respond to that one. Asking as they can't, Mr. and Mrs. customer, you see the car gets delivered with protective plastic all over it. When that's removed, it leaves a glue residue which has to be acidically removed. This product has to be applied after the final polish, the final clean of the car to lock in that showroom shine. But I think what you really ask me is this something that Honda recommends? Now, not only does Honda recommend it, but every manufacturer in Europe that I know of recommend some sort of paint and fabric protection nowadays because cars are all painted in water-based paints, not mineral-based paints. You might want to try that one or you might try this one. No, no, no, I'll leave it. Yeah, okay, Mr. customer, but you think about it. You wouldn't go to B&Q or Bunnings or Woody's and buy a £5 £5 fence post and not protected with creosote or cuprenole or runseal or bowing that's been pre-pressure treated. Why would you spend £30,000 on a car and not protect that? If we don't protect a £30 fence panel, doesn't make sense to protect a £30,000 car. That makes sense, doesn't it? Quick one, I like that one. I tend to use that for the older customer. You've got a younger customer. Now, again, it doesn't have to be old or young on this one. You pick what's right for you and your customer. So with this one, you see a customer comes in and they put their phone down on your desk. And they say, no, I'll leave it. My turn was like, okay, Mr. or Mrs. customer, but can I see a cheeky question? Couldn't help but no, she got an iPhone there. Okay. Let's watch that about a £1000 product, something like that. You've got a £1000 product and you protect it with an iPhone case. A screen protector as well, I see on that one. If you're going to protect a £1000 product, doesn't make sense to protect that £25,000 car. That makes sense, doesn't it? Quite like that one. Now, check to make sure they have a cover on their phone. If they haven't, clearly don't use that one. Or you might try this one. And Mr. and Mrs. customer, can I ask you a cheeky question? Do you have a do-o-mat at home? Most people do because they want their feet because they don't want to take all the crud of the day into their house. But I don't know anyone that carries around a do-o-mat and they wipe their feet before they get into their car. So all the same stuff you don't want to take into your house, just dragging into your car. Doesn't make sense to protect your car, that $50,000 investment? That makes sense, doesn't it? Or here's my go-to one. And by the way, there's lots of these. I'm just giving you a few that you might want to try. This one is the sofa. It's my go-to one. And I think I have to thank Pete Beck for this one. People who know Pete Beck, he's had him in half and it says super carb, legend in the industry, I think. I know he listens to the podcast regularly. So with this one here, people turn around and say, yeah, I can't miss a customer. But you know what? You go to DFS, you go to Harvey Norman and you buy a £3,000 sofa. And people spend 300 quid protecting a wife's gots garden. But you think about where's the sofa going to live? It's going to live in a warm, dry living room. And you know what? You're never going to part exchange it. It's going to end up in a skip when you give it some charity shop. Your car is going to live out there in the cold and the snow and the slush. And we all know that salt is corrosive in winter. And you know what? You're going to part exchange your car and get that of value back for it when you bring the car back to us in either two or three years time. If you're going to protect that £3,000 sofa, doesn't make sense to protect that £3,000 car. Guys, they're just a few little nuggets you might want to try. Again, contact us if you want to know anything more about the value added products and how to sell them effectively and ethically in your dealership or deal a group. Contact us. And again, thank you so much for all the people subscribing. We really do appreciate it. 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 programme. Easiest way to get hold of me is Simon Bowkett, who linked in.
