One Line to The Gatekeeper, That Gets Your Call Put Through

Ever been told to go and prospect local businesses and thought, right, where do I even start?

This one is for you. Simon Bowkett takes a client question about local business users, the buyers who are not quite fleet and not quite retail, and turns it into a step by step approach you can use this week.

It begins with a business you already look after. From there you find their competitors, use that connection to get past the gatekeeper, and give the decision maker a proper reason to meet you. Simon also shares the referral question that gets customers introducing you themselves, the voicemail messages that actually get returned, and a simple idea sitting in your own accounts department that almost nobody uses.

Practical, honest, and built for a busy week on the forecourt.

• Where to start when you have been told to go and prospect local businesses
• How to use AI to build a list of a customer’s direct competitors
• What to say to the gatekeeper so your call gets put through
• How to ask for a referral in a way people actually answer
• Why your dealership’s supplier list is full of easy appointments
• Three voicemail messages that get a call back
• Handling the “we already have a supplier” brush off
• Why face to face still beats email and LinkedIn for this buyer
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Simon Bowkett is the host of Selling in The Motor Trade and the founder of Symco Training, which coach sales and aftersales teams across UK dealerships. He runs a small business himself, so he knows why these buyers go quiet and how to bring them back. The whole episode is built around a real question from a client.

Share it with anyone on your team who has a local business patch and is not sure what to do with it.

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 visitwww.symcotraining.co.uk

Hi and welcome to another episode of Selling in the Motor Trade. In partnership with Kizana, improve your margins with real-time, data-driven, retail valuations backed by the largest rule of data set in the UK. There are an evidence-based guide valuations for main dealers, car suit markets and independence, along with sim code training, where we took about training in the real world, what's happening in the market today, not 10 to 15 years ago. Together, we're going to share tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service and parts operation, and generally put more profit into your department, dealership or dealer group. Now I'm your host, Simon Boca, or some of you might already know me as Skippy. Firstly, I just want to say thank you for the people who died right from the beginning of this, because we're past 250 episodes now, and interviewed so many great leaders in the motor trade. Thank you for taking the time. For people who are new to this, please ask you to subscribe. You can't believe what it does to the algorithm and gets this podcast out to as many people in motor trade as we can. Overcoming objections, I want to think about it, getting salespeople to do what they should do with managers on first, second, third review. But I was actually asked about one of our clients saying, what do you do with local business users? Now these, the local business users, these are people where it's not quite fleet, because the fleet sales is a big old task. It's not quite retail, it's kind of mixed between the two, and can you give some ideas on that? Yeah, by all means we can do that, but actually sometimes it's closer to a resale sale anyway, because you've got that user, chooser, is kind of like a retail customer. And the person who drives the car is definitely an influencer. You get big, big old companies, okay, and whatever car they're in, it's maybe they haven't got any choice. So anyway, I want to talk about that local business user, and you've been asked maybe as a salesperson go away and prospect, where do you start? What do you actually do? Well I tell you what I love to do with that person, okay? It's firstly, I want you to find out someone that you've very supplied, vans to, cars do, one of the businesses that's probably, I don't know, a 10 cars, something like that. So that's where you want to start off with someone you've already supplied with, and we're going to bounce from one client to the next, okay? So the first thing we can do, oh, and by the way, I'm going to give you at the end of this, probably one of the best ideas ever to get through to a customer who will have to take the appointment, you'll have to turn up. Now first things first, what I want to do is I want to try and get face to face with the decision maker, okay? What are the chances you just pick up the phone and say, hi, I'm Simon from XYZ, Simco Motors, I want to talk to you about some of your vans, some of your cars, and we're right thanks, okay? At the moment, we don't need anything. Getting through to the right person, the decision maker is going to be hard work, and also why is the decision maker going to want to talk to you? That might be hard work. So let's go back to start on this first approach. So we're going to find someone with supplied vans to cars to whatever. Let's call them Billy Bob's plumbing supplies, okay? And they have, I don't know, six vans, okay, and they're a good client, okay? So we're not just going to ask Billy Bob for a referral. We're going to do something slightly different. We're going to go to chat, Claude, whatever AI you use, and we're just going to find out who is Billy Bob's plumbing supplies, direct competition. And you want to find exactly who they are, okay? And the reason why we're going to do that is if you can find out their direct competition, they're probably going to know each other, okay? Listen, we run a business, a small business, and we know who our direct competitors are. Okay, I know the other podcast out there, and they'll know of us. That's just how it works, right? So Billy Bob plumbing supplies you've supplied to. You asked Claude one of these AIs to find out a list of their direct competitors. And let's say it's Ace plumbing supplies and Delta plumbing supplies. Now again, if you just get on the phone and try and speak to the right person there, getting through might be hard work, okay? Getting to speak to the right person might be very, very hard work. So what we do is we get on the phone, okay? And we speak to Ace plumbing supplies. And we just say, hey, it's Simon from XYZ dealership, whatever your dealership name is. I just want to get who's the right person to speak to about supplying vans to your business? And I'll say, well, it's Dave. Now what I want to do is try and speak to Dave, okay? But Dave needs some reason why he should take my call, okay? So you can actually do a suspect call first and get Dave's phone number, or like me, I just go straight through then and maybe go for the jugular, okay? But then what I'm going to do is phone back or do it there and then and say, can I speak to Dave? You know the gatekeeper is going to say what's it regarding? And what you're going to say now is is regarding Billy Bob plumbing supplies. Let's think this through, Dave gets a message. It's Simon's from XYZ car dealership regarding Billy Bob plumbing supplies. They know who Billy Bob plumbing supplies is. Do you think they're going to take the call? Or if you have to leave a message, he's not here at the moment. Greg, you can leave a message at Simon from XYZ car dealership. It's regarding Billy Bob plumbing supplies. What's a curiosity is going to go on in Dave's head. Do you think Dave might call you? Do you think you might get to the next stage? I think you absolutely will. And when they phone or if you go straight through to it, okay, say, hi, Dave, my name's Simon from XYZ car dealership. How listen, the reason for the call is we've just supplied Billy Bob plumbing supplies, five vans, three vans, one van, ten cars, and we've really reduced their time and money running their fleet. What I want to do is come along and tell you how successful it has been for them and how might be for you at ace plumbing supplies. So it's a good time for us to get together and show you exactly what we might be able to do. Would that be later on this week or would next week be better? Now there's only two reasons that business person will want to speak to you. It's to save money or save time, but can you see how we bounce from Billy Bob plumbing supplies? Okay. Now that works multi-faceted ways. If you leave a message, you'll get a call back. But when you actually speak today for ace plumbing supplies, sorry, what's it regarding? Okay. What I want to do is regarding Billy Bob plumbing supplies. Again, it's such a simple approach. Hi, Dave. I'm Simon from XYZ dealership. Listen, we've just supplied Billy Bob plumbing supplies, their vans, or we've been supplying them for the last 20 years or whatever it is, how well you know the person. Alice, what I want to do is come along and tell you how successful it has been for Billy Bob plumbing supplies and why it might be successful for you. Alice, when's a good time for us to get together? Would that be later on this week or maybe next? It's not, could we get together? It's when's a good time. Now, again, I'll tell you in the social media world, in this internet email world, guys, I'm still a huge advocate for the local business user, go and see people face to face, touch the flash as they say, shake their hands, okay? Look them in the eyes. It's not just sending out emails. It's not just LinkedIn approaches. It's not just doing all that sort of stuff there, okay? And by the way, there's a lot on LinkedIn. There's a huge story on LinkedIn as well, we can do, but you could use the same format when you're using a sales navigator and how to get out to different people, okay? That's another way you can do it, but this is the basic message to go from one to the next. Now, let's think about the objections you might get. Oh, no, no, no. We've got someone that we get, supplies our vans. No, no, we deal with someone that we buy all our cars through. Now, objection handling is, you know what? That's exactly what Billy Bob plumbing supplies said until we found out that we could actually be a little bit better than the current supplier, or we save them more time than what the current supplier is. Listen, what I want to do is come along and explain exactly what we've done for Billy Bob and why they decided to come and work with sim code car dealership. So when is a good time for us to get to go and do that? Would that be later on this week or maybe next thing? Now, here's another one you. This is almost referrals from Billy Bob plumbing supplies, okay? And this way I always wanted to have someone that's happy to help. Now everyone says, no, no, of course you help, you of course you help. But when push comes to shovel, people actually do it, okay? I personally really want Billy Bob plumbing supplies to give me permission to use this. But it's a great reason to go and speak to them. So how do you speak to them, okay? A couple of ways you could do it. Number one, you could just turn around and say, I don't know, it's George from Billy Bob plumbing supplies. I don't know. Why am I not calling him Billy, okay? Yeah, we're calling Billy from now on. It's Billy from Billy Bob plumbing supplies. Hey, Billy, how are you? I hope everything is good with business, house business at the moment, okay? And then here's the referral request, hey, Billy. If you and I swapped jobs tomorrow and you were selling vans for a living, you were selling pickups for a living, you were actually selling cars for a living, can I see it? Who would be the first company you would speak to about selling vans to? Hey, listen, if you and I swapped jobs tomorrow and you were selling vans for a living to local businesses, if you and I swapped jobs, who would be the first person you'd speak to about selling vans to? You've been amazed. They say, are you going to speak to Joe? Why is that? Well, Joe, that's where we get all of the X, Y, Z from where we're a supplier with him and he was saying the other day that they're struggling with it. Great. Okay. Hey, listen, you'd be able to give me an introduction into Joe to make it easier for him to take my call, wouldn't you? Just by asking, you'll be amazed how many times the business people understand what you're trying to do. They've done it themselves. You've been amazed how many times I'll pick up the phone, okay? And say, hold on. Let me introduce you to him now, okay? Because I think in that business world, lots of people want to help. They understand what you're doing. In fact, prospecting in the local business world, I love it even more than retail customers because retail customers are bombarded with, okay? Yep. I'll phone you if I wanted a car, leave me alone, count reviews and all that stuff there. Count reviews, they still really work, maybe, maybe there's a place for them, okay? We get some go training. They think they're so much stronger ways to do it and you'll have to come and talk just about how we do that in the retail world. But in the local business world, this is just a nice way to do it, okay? Now, if you were nice walk drops, in fact, I learned that from a very good friend of mine, Roger Kunliff. Now, this is going back to 1995. We're in the Nissan dealership in High Wickham and we had to go and sell a whole lot of the micros to body shops. And there was a deal, I can't remember the exact figures on this, but it's, we needed something like 50 cars or 100 cars for this deal to stack up, okay? We went to a local business, this local business, they wanted, I don't know, 25 of these loan cars. I can't remember the exact numbers, okay? Maybe the numbers sound too high at the moment, okay? And Roger Kunliff, I've got a thank for this. Okay, so Roger, we've got this place. They want 15 or whatever it is there. And Roger said, listen, you've got to ask him, who else does he know? What other body shops need vans? And I tell you what, not vans, sorry, these curtsy loan cars. And I tell you what, the doors opened when I turned around and said, hey, listen, to get to this particular number, okay, these are the number of units we need, okay? Hey, listen, who else do you know in your world that might need to use potty shop loan cars? I promise you, that afternoon it was an eye-opener where he said, right, come with me, okay? We jumped in his car, he drove me to his Berlin laws place, he said, right, we found out where we're going to get curtsy loan cars, this is the guy. He then took me somewhere, I promise you, there's three or four different places he took me to, he walked in there because he wanted to get to this magical number to get the monthly rental to where he wanted it to be. It's kind of like the same approach that we're doing now, okay? Now this is multifaceted, this is Billy Bob Blumming's supplies getting to ACE, to Delta, to all these different places, okay? Let's go one stage further with this. You can use chat GPT or AI to find out who these people are. But we said before about LinkedIn, let's use exactly the same approach with LinkedIn sales navigator. You find out someone that you're actually working with, okay? And then what you're going to do is you're going to, and this is not a course on LinkedIn, okay? You need to come and speak to us and we'll show you how we actually do this. But actually when we do that, okay, we'll actually go and sales navigator and we'll find out like companies, we'll find out similar companies in that area there in the region with the number of employees, the size of the business there, and then you can reach out to people on LinkedIn sales navigator. Now with LinkedIn, you can't blanket post out lots of different things. That's why this approach works so much better because when you do a message, you want to actually connect with someone, hey, this is just regarding Billy Bob Blumming's supplies, okay? They might take your request to want to connect to them, absolutely, because never forget, people know who their direct competition is, okay? Now here's another one that you might use this approach for, and I told you I'd tell you this right at the beginning of this, and for me, this is just gold. The bought ledger. Now if you're a local business sales person, listen to this, I want you to go out and find out who your accountant is, okay? Of course you know who your accountant is, maybe not, okay? But then your dealership, your dealer group is spending lots of money with people every year, every month on suppliers to your business, and they're supplying lots and lots of different things, from coming in, servicing the air conditioning, okay? Taking away tires there, there's so many suppliers you're dealing with. If you pick up the phone and speak to the supplier, yeah, I reckon they're going to take you cool? Absolutely. Now, I don't want you to use this as a gun to someone's head, but if you've got that bought ledger list, okay? You're going to get through to the right decision maker, because if they supply you goods and services, and say, hi, I want to speak to John, it's Simon from XYZ car dealership. They'll take you cool. And then there might be, hi John, you do air conditioning servicing, you've done the XYZ for our dealer group, the poplants, the lawns, the whatever it is, and this is what I want to do, is come along and talk to you about your transportation needs, okay? And actually, what we could do, it might be able to help your business. Listen, when's a good time for us to get together? Is that later on this week, or maybe next week? I tell you what, they're going to take the appointment. And you know what? It's a great way to start practicing, talking about how they get their transportation needs satisfied currently, okay? So that's something else you might want to try. Now, the last bit on this one, you're getting through to the right person, voicemail. Voicemail is hard work, because if we go all the way back to ace from, ace plumbing supplies, delta plumbing supplies, so many times you'll get through to voicemail, don't we all use voicemail, as a way to screen good calls. I know I do. If a number comes through, I don't know who it is, guess what, hold on, say I'm not sure what that is, let it go through to the answer machine and we'll see what we can do. Do they always call you back? If you say, hi, Simon, I'm calling from XYZ car dealership, would you please give me a call on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you got no chance of them calling you back, okay? Right at that moment, they wanted a van, they needed a something, it's going to be a long shot, okay? Very long shot, but you might actually do the curiosity call. You might also want to do the hang up call. You might try something like this. So you get through to ace plumbing supplies and let's call this person John. So you can go through and just leave a message like, hello, John, my name's Simon, I'm calling from XYZ car dealership. Could you please give me a call regarding Billy Bob plumbing supplies? Done, he's going to call the back, okay? But if you've been speaking to someone and they're ghosting, yeah, okay? Don't just say listen, I've sent you through a quote, I want to make sure that that's, see if you're having other questions, please give me a call, they're not going to phone. So what I want you to do on a voicemail, on someone you're working with, is just leave one of two messages. One is just good news. Hi John, it's Simon and Coler from XYZ car dealership. Would you please give me a call? I've got some really good news for you, simple as that. Don't tell them what the good news is, leave some curiosity there. Now of course, if you use the good news message, what are you going to have to have when people phone? Good news. Now good news is not always extra money, a better rate, a better deal. Getting the supply of that van sooner on later, okay? Now they'll be great if you have got it. Don't tell them you've got a better deal. Don't tell them to get their car sooner, wait till they're speaking to you. In fact, retail people, if you're listening to this, okay? If your sales manager says, let's give the customer an extra $100, an extra hundred pounds there, okay, don't give that extra money over the phone, okay? Always say, when's a good time to drop your trade in to us so we can have a look? Actually, I've got an independent bar, we might be able to pay you a little bit extra. Get the customer into your dealership before you give the extra money, because actually if they've got the extra money remotely, they're off to maybe your competitor. But let's go back to local business side of it, okay? Listen, I've got some good news for you. Good news might be, listen, that car you're looking at, it's got the roadside assistance on it for the full five years, not just three years. Did I tell you that when I was running through it? Yeah, you did, Simon. Oh, I'm sorry. Couldn't remember what I told you not. Now, listen, good news is that car's actually got the, I don't know, the heated and ventilated seats on it. Did I tell you it's also got the ventilated seats on that one? Yeah, you did, or no, you didn't. Great, okay, listen, I just didn't want you comparing it to another vehicle, not realizing it's got the heated and ventilated seats. There's got to be some reasons, good news. But here's the last one. I'll tell you this off the record, okay? And it's a bit sneaky, but I'll tell you what, I've got such a soft spot for this one, because it's worked so well in our business, okay? You'll know what the stumbling block might be with the customer. It's often, monthly rental, it's delivery date, okay? Or on local business, maybe there's a trade vehicle, that's not quite where it needs to be. Here's going to be your call, ring, ring, ring, ring. Hi, you're through to Ricky. Leave a message. I'll get back to you if I can be poisoned. Hi, Ricky. It's Simon calling from XYZ car dealership. My phone number is 07949-240-550. That's 07949-240-550. Listen, the reason for the call is I know you're hoping to get more for your trade-in. I speak into one of my independent buyers at, and on the end, end, I'm going to hit the hang-up button. Your customers heard half the message. He's heard something that's close to his heart that trade-in figure. The phone's cut off. Is there some curiosity going on in there, okay? Or delivery dates, okay? Ring, ring. You know that's the issue. Ring, ring. Hi, you're through to Mike. Leave a message. I can get back to you if I can be bothered. Hi, Mike. It's Simon calling from XYZ car dealership. My phone number is 07949-240-550. Now, I'm sure your phone's told you that. Now, listen, the reason for the call is I know you're hoping to get this before the 16th of August. I speak to no supplier, and I promise you, that curiosity, they're going to call you back. Now, please be careful with a hang-up call. I personally might use it only once at the death, okay? And just leave that there. It's almost like the final, it's not the final, we've got another final final one after that there. But actually, that curiosity there might getting them to, oh, no. Or at the end, Chris Vos never split the difference. His final approach on this, I really do love with the local business users because, guys, if they're running a small business, listen, we're a small business, we have six cars, so we're the size of business that you're looking to deal with, okay? They're busy. They've got so much on, okay? And they are spinning plates left, right and center. It may have just gone to the back of the priority. They still want to get those vans changed, but it's not a priority at this stage because actually the printing press is broken and that needs to be fixed or whatever challenge they're having with that particular time. So here's what we can do. This works better on a voicemail. You can send it in an email or a text, but honestly, voicemail, this one works a lot better, okay? And it is ring ring, how you're through to Bob, leave a message, I'll get back if I can be bothered. Hi, Bob. It's Simon and Colin from XY car dealership. I'm closing down your inquiry that you made with me on the 16th of July. I hope you're hot with whichever van you went ahead with. If there any reason in the future I can help you, please feel free to reach out to me. I've been more than happy to help. Thanks again. I really appreciate the opportunity. Simon. Let's just have a look at some of Chris Foster's psychology there. I'm closing down your inquiry that you made with me on the 16th of July. I promise you, the person hearing that might not realise how long ago it was, but more importantly, you're closing down my inquiry. Don't you dare take something away from me, okay? I'm closing down your inquiry that you made with me on the 16th. I'm happy you're happy with whatever van you went ahead with, okay? Because so many times they may not have at this stage. You'll get people thrown in the back up and say, oh, sorry about that, Simon. No, no, no. We're still in the market. We've just had XYZ challenge that we've been dealing with at the moment, okay? But also, if they have bought commercial vehicles from somewhere else, has that salesperson stayed in touch with them? Well, you, the person they didn't even go ahead with, stayed in touch with them. It might get that other opportunity down the track there. I hope you're happy with whatever van you went ahead with. If any way in the future I can help you, please feel free to reach out. Thank you again for the opportunity. Really appreciate it. You might just find out if they're still live. We call it the final sweep up. Hey, try it on, email if you want, but we find that works better if it is text. Now the other thing with local business guys, okay? I want to talk to you about, it's not a quote, you do a full proposal when you send it through to these people. You won't talk about the return on the investment they're going to get, because they're dealing with it, not from a business point of view. There's so much other stuff that we haven't got time to do on this there, but I suppose today I just want to talk about getting through to the right person. If you get through to more and more of the right people, I promise you guys, you'll sell more and more to the local business user, and I'll tell you what, it's untapped. So many other car dealerships are just not doing this. The local business user is just waiting for people to inquire with them, it doesn't work that way. We've got to go out, okay, and be proactive with this one. Oh my gosh, I hope that gives you some ideas there. Feel free to reach out to me, okay? Ten is probably the easiest way to get hold of me, Simon at Simco Training. Listen, just send me an email, Simon, at simcotraining.co.uk, and just give me a phone call. It's plus 447-949-240-550, and if you're a local business sales person, I'll kick around some ideas with you for your business and show you what I'd be doing and how might just help you get to where you need to be. Anyway, that about does it for now, we'll speak to you next time. 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 Bokett through LinkedIn. Thank you.