Our 250th episode! For over 5 years, we’ve been the No.1 podcast for automotive sales and management training. In total, we’ve delivered 5 days, 3 hours, 55 minutes and 33 seconds of advice, news and stories from some of the biggest names in automotive.
Today, we’re back for part 2 of my conversation with Chris Cormier, Mercedes-Benz Head of Sales. We’re talking about what keeps customers coming back for their 2nd, 3rd and 4th car, and how to lead a veteran team without burning them out.
We discuss radical transparency on numbers, a culture of two-way feedback, and “wow” test-drive moments that buyers never forget.
We also get honest about AI. Where it helps (data in, insight out), and where humans still win (trust, handovers, accountability).
If you’re stepping into your first leadership role or looking to get the most out of a seasoned team, this one’s a must-listen.
Episode highlights:
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
Time, welcome to the Selling and the Motor Trade podcast in Association of Car Without. The online car-changing destination. Together we share tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service department, and generally put more profit into your department, dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Bowkett, or some of you might already know me as Skippy. First thing, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. So hi, welcome to another episode of Selling and the Motor Trade. Listen, we need to continue with Chris because we didn't finish the conversation last time and there's so many good ideas that we need to kick around. Chris, welcome back.
Hello, Simon Hader. Yeah, really good. So in that sales team and your current sales team, what gets celebrated most and why? Is it just the sale? Is it the CSI or the customer satisfaction index for this net promoter score? I think Mercedes-Gortler, what gets celebrated most and why? The guys around now, there's a core of the team here that have been in for a very, very long time. I handed out a 25-year service award on Friday to a Jack Call Sunday. So they're really maturity, like on trust, to the team that I was at at Ruxy. There's four or five of them that are very on time. They're selling customers their 10th, 12th, 13th cars.
By the way, sorry, I just have to jump in there. If you're new, listen to this podcast, just listen to what Chris said there, okay? It's not just selling one car, okay? It's selling people their second, their third, the fourth, 25 years in one place, selling a customer their 12th car. That's where, don't you hear it sounds people all the time, they job hop all the time. I think, what are you doing? The people who do really well, they sound one place forever, don't they? Sorry, I just had to jump in there because we hear this all the time, Chris, don't we? But then you get the new guys just think, hold on, I'm going to go to another place for an extra $5,000 basic on the wage or something.
What are they doing? Yeah, I was not known everybody in my time in Korea that have been in place as long as these guys. Yeah, 25 years. It's a real wow factor for anybody that comes here is the fact that maybe somebody in 2010 bought their used car from Nikki and they're going to come back and buy an other one from Nikki or maybe look like a five or six between them. So this is a real familiarity, but in terms of what we celebrate, I make a point of making everything visible. So I share the budgetary requirements every month with the team, I share the news of what's going on, we share our weekly auction results, we share each other's results, we make it really reversible all the time.
And we're trying to celebrate wings within the team at a minute because what we need to do here is to these guys have seen owners come and go, they've seen management teams come and go, they've seen, they've seen, they've been here the whole time. So what I need to bring here is consistency and build up that team effort again, where they're not just serving themselves as they become good at doing that because they had to, they now willing to be part of something bigger than themselves again and recognize that they have to be vulnerable and take some risks and that's okay and they're in a safe environment. So we're celebrating stuff between members rather than any of the big stuff at the minute.
So I'm going to talk about your training consultancy background because I'm always curious, why do people like us? Now, I've only ever been a general sales manager, I've not been ahead of business or anything like that. And then I went into sales training because I had a experience where a trainer turned up my dealership and quite frankly, he was crap. And I thought I could do a better, the arrogance in me, thought I could do a better job than him. So I've had a question, what makes someone like you go from into training consultancy to start with there? And then also having gone through that because I think there's one advantage of course, we couldn't do this, but if I had a brand new sales manager, I would love to sit them in my car for three months because they see so many different dealerships.
They seem to be good, the bad and the ugly and you learn so much. So I want to ask, what have you learned from seeing lots of different places that's helped shape your leadership style where you are now? So I think perspective really more than I think, I think I mentioned earlier, you know, working for different brands, working at different roles, you do different things, certain vision perspective, and you get to see a real wide breadth of what to do and what not to do, what works and what doesn't work. And sometimes actually, when you see things that maybe you don't like on the face of it, but then you see the results that maybe something is producing, it kind of opens up your acceptance.
So there being other ways of doing things, more ways than wanting to get results and certainly working in training development, I moved about an awful lot and I've been all over the UK and parts of Europe reversed at the teams of people. And I sat in rooms, I probably shouldn't have been sat in actually with really significant stakeholders as manufacturers, feeling a bit, wow, this is not incredible. But just a different perspective, yes. So the perspective of a retailer, someone's saying the car on the floor here today versus the expectation of somebody at the same event at office. And we sometimes do that, we do a bit of visualization. If somebody's doing something that maybe isn't desirable, we'll talk about closing your eyes and imagine the offices it's good, and imagine the people coming back from their lunch and can you imagine them doing what we just did?
I know, okay, I'll get it. So yeah, just perspective, the biggest thing that I think the different jobs of the economy. So let's move forward. AI, there's not a single conference haven't been to recently where I talk about the AI revolution. We go to the National Automotive Dealers Association in America regularly, I think 26 times have been out there and so many companies now are putting AI at the end of the name, we should be simcotraining AI. Because that's what laws do. Is AI, is it going to replace sales people? Are we going to have these companies out there? And I know Ben from N-PAL will be screaming at this now because he's a fan of the podcast and listens and saying, yes, it can do it really well.
I don't know if it's there yet. I don't know if it's ever going to replace it. What's your views on where AI, is it going to change our sales process? Are you going to have 25 year sales people or will just have Colin, the chat chief, who are replacing? Yeah, I think that's a question. That's a big question. We've been talking about the end of sales people for years, I think we've mentioned the area, you know, I remember the rock harvest in Southern London where it came to the end, just saw when people were just walking in the biological without talking to a single human. I think the OEMs would love that, by the way.
Yeah, of course, but it won't. Because, and people make references that we don't, you know, if you go to John Lewis, you just go buy a toilet, don't need to talk to a sales objective. I think it's so different. The model that we operate with they need to have somebody to check what we think you know. So a consumer can do lots of research, how they can do lots of things, lots of understanding, finding out. And often they turn up knowing what they want. But they do want to check. They just want to check what they think they found is right. And then of course, we've got the past exchange and we've got the finance and the right way to do it and all the other bits that we do.
And I think still consumers of cars, certainly, they still want to be able to go. It's not how it went. They want someone to be able to go. Yeah. This is not what you're saying. And when someone to yell at me, someone to take accountability, if it goes on that, exactly that. And in terms of AI, where it's such a, I think we're so early on in its existence and what was. And it is moving very fast to be fair, very fast. Yeah, but it's, I think where we'll be in five years, I don't know. But at the minute, what I see of AI is the way it writes descriptions for vehicles that we say.
Some of my team members here have used it to write emails to the team. It's so obvious. It feels impersonal. It looks like you. But there's no better way to say, I didn't bother, I don't think, than getting an AI bot to write a message to your team. So I just, I just, I'm not sure it's ready to replace the human. But at least probably got a place. I think I was listening to a podcast. Is it Mo Gaudak on his, he's an Egyptian mathematician, famous for another called Soul for Happened. Yeah, what a great, great, great writer. I'm currently reading Unstressable actually, which is not what it is. But he talked about AI and sort of said, because I think he's the chief AI officer for Stephen Bartlett.
Yeah, so he's working for him now. And he said, if it's data in data out, then it's like, it's brilliant. Like, is it just organized it? And I have used it actually for some Excel work and bits of things like that. But where it can do, why are you creating that? Coding. You don't have to learn code anymore, because it can actually write computer code. You put in English, what you want a program to come out of. It goes off and says, it generates it. And I've had some problems with my kids with it. It's already done some cool stuff. I don't know with homework or whatever. But when it comes to actually interacting with somebody in a personal manner, I just think it's always going to appear a little bit fake.
Yeah. Well, my concern is that there's companies out there like Podium and NPL, and they're trying to take that digital inquiry and either book the service or actually just make the appointment or deal with the customer there. My concern when I read some of these things, yes, you've got a D Americanizer. Yes, that's so easy to do. But even if you get it, and it is getting so, so good. Okay. But then we're going to hand it over to John, a sales person that's been working for 25 years. And suddenly you've built this relationship with this box, and then John takes over whenever you hand it over. It's almost like, hold on, you've just changed the whole way you're dealing with an email now.
That's a challenge they need to overcome. And the other thing I heard this, can't remember where, but they have planes now that can take off, do the whole flight and land without the pilot touching a single control. But Chris, are you ready to get on a plane without a pilot sitting up the front? I'm not. I'm not at all. We want the pilot up there for when the shit hits the plane. You'll be electric planes are high. Yes. It will be. Now, having said that, I love the idea where AI can help make the human better. And I with targeted training, we use it for that now because we would turn up and normally train a whole sales team.
But now we can listen to all the calls. AI can listen to calls, identify where Jenny needs to be improved, identify where Bob's doing things really well. And that, the data in data out your dead right, once we can listen to every single call, once we can listen to every email backwards and forwards, we can identify what Jenny and Bob's doing right and wrong and where they can be approved. I think AI is great to have targeted training and great results there. Will it replace us? Well, I hope not, Chris. Now, again, if you'll listen to this podcast in 2035, and you've just gone to Watertown, Chris and I, at McDonald's saying, is that eat here or take away, sir?
Would you like fries with that? But I still think we're going to be there. Don't people still buy people? I think so. I think it's really important to have that person touch as the relationship, for someone to pick the phone up to and to keep picking the phone up to you. As I've just mentioned, you're over here at Brookton, you know, that relationship goes so far. Well, it's creating that wow factor. You've got a sales person at 25 years selling people, life long customers, 12 times they bought a car, they've come in there. Humans can do that. Okay, but how do you coach your team to let them understand that it's not just one off?
How do you create that wow factor is what I'm driving at for a customer? Here itself is a wow factor. The place is a wow factor. People have not been there. It's absolutely. It's a you're walking there. You can't help but be loud. We've adapted some of the team. We've got some star experts here that previously made the answering product questions throughout the day. We've shifted their focus into a more handover role. So we're doing that. We've got a lot of the handover. They here get four cars in it. You know, we're really privileged. It's got an opaque glass window that you can uno take at the push of about to reveal a car. I said, you know, if we've got the tools around us, one of the things I actually realized very quickly where I got here was we weren't probably using the tools that were around us as well.
So we've got we're a business within a business here. We're a retailer in one corner of Miss Evans World and I had a great relationship and a weekly meet with the guys that run the same expense world. So we've got a driving team of Charlotte heads up the business here. We've got a catering team. We've got a driving experience team. And we have got a good involvement with them. And so one of the things I put together is the ability to utilize some of the experiences for test drives without paying for experience. So if somebody is they do like a G class off-road experience here, for example, it's 280 pounds. That's a picking rough number out of the sky.
We've negotiated a 30 minute quick experience for our customers, which costs us 70 pounds. But when you sell in a 150,000 pound G class, to be able to send someone out to Waveridge on the road and then give them 30 minutes wading through one point through the use of water and don't show them really what the G class is all about. They might never use their car for that, but they'll never forget that visit and it'd be worth 70 pounds to get that sold in it. So no. It's great for you to do that because again, we work with Taylor dealers and people get the JLR experience afterwards. But I always think it'd be great to do it beforehand, the Porsche dealerships, you go and buy the lovely Porsche 911, you go to Silverstone and the Porsche center there, but again, afterwards.
But you've got that ability to do that. That's sensational. It was really unique and it wasn't being leveraged before. I'm not going to lie. We're not doing loads of them. It's not right with the hundreds of these experiences all the time. But that wants to seriously think about buying a really expensive family in the same as AMG or G-PAS. Then we will endeavor to try and create a really amazing experience of them to come and test it and experience it in a way they never would be able to if it wasn't for us. Do you measure the closing ratio from the people that you've done that to? It must be through the roof. To be fair, I think most people that come here for that kind of product are probably very serious anyway.
We haven't measured it in detail yet, but we've certainly had some emails in to say what an incredible opportunity that was and couldn't do that anywhere else. Thank you so much. We've got some real positive feedback. It's the start of that creation of a wow fact, but the time we've done that, and then they've dealt with Joe Lopez who's been here for 20 years or whatever, and he's the number one AMG top-end vehicle sales person in the UK. He's been really really consistent for them and been a great communicator. Then they get the handover experience in a bay with their name on the wall with a star expert that knows about every button in that car.
It's really hard after all of that to not say five star, five star. More importantly, actually, once you've put in credit in the bay and kindly, three heads will hiccup to happen in the atmosphere. A car gets held because of the technical issue or if things happen, don't they? With the modern car. If your customers really, really happen, they have to give you. They let the mistakes and the problems unfold and you earn that relationship. So I suppose it's all cut there. Yeah. It's like a favourite restaurant that we love to go back to. We go back there because we know the people. Of course, the food is brilliant, of course, but you'd forgiven one bad starter, wouldn't you?
You've forgiven one bad. Capucio comes out, that's cold, whatever, you've forgiven that because of everything else is so right. And they've earned the right to get away with that one bad starter. They do. I'm interested about yourself then. As a high performance, head of business, head of sales, how do you maintain your work, life, balance? How do you prevent people from burning out is what I'm really driving out here because Motor Trade eats people up and spits them out. The hours we work, now compared to hospitality, it's probably nothing. But, and I only know the Motor Trade, that's what I've done. How do you yourself firstly get that work, life, balance right? And, well, do you?
I don't think I get it right sometimes. I wish I would get it right, but I still struggle with that. How I do it versus how I do it with the, sort of look off that aspect with my team, probably different, I suppose. So, again, it's about environment, isn't it? If the environment is, if it's a greater, difficult environment to exist in being, nobody's going to enjoy coming here, I really subscribe to that. Your culture is how your staff do it on Sunday night. I really don't like that. I like that thought. And, actually, if you think about that and then let that drive some of your behaviour with your team. I love that. I'm going to go back and write that down later.
It's so true. It's really, I'm thinking, I think, but it really resonates with me. And I thought, yeah. How do I, how do we make Monday mornings easy for people to come and get going with them? So, I challenge the guys here to manage them a bit. And what David's done, actually, David Rimmers, our sales manager, done away with Monday morning meetings. So, we have a management get together. We do our forecasts and we look at last week's performance. But the sales guys get to just come in and get their sales together after weekend. And, and, and, and, and, they're getting a week going up their pace to a point. And then we actually only have a sales week on how to choose their final.
So, they, we have a quick catch for the choose there about what we look like and then a quick one on a Friday just to say what the weekend looks like. That's really working. So, you know, that was feedback that they gave. And they said, we don't really see the value in getting together every day. It feels like we're doing wrong. But Chris, you're asking for that for you? Yeah, that's important. But how many measures don't they? Okay, they don't ask for that constant feedback back from their team. Yeah, I go. That's all we've got. They're using opinions. You know, we said, what, what, how do you measure your own success path to sales board?
Last week, I sat with that core team of people that have been a very long time individually. You won't have coffee in the sales bed world. Just the way no notebook, no laptop is just how you doing, what's going on, how do you feel it is, you know, what could we change, what's going well for you? Just a real genuine one to one, if you like. And to have one of those, even though things that's happened in this business, that one of those experienced long-serving people say, you're a breath of fresh air, is that's it on there. I, you know, that's it for me. I think if you can say that to me, then the environment that we're creating is good.
And without their feedback and give, how can we possibly develop and move forward? Yeah, yeah, that's so, so true, so, so true. And listen, I, I won't change gears now. I won't go back to your proudest moment in your career as a sales leader. Is there any particular achievement, awards or anything that you're most proud of? And what made it so special? It's probably not an award itself. It's always been a bit, I've never won any awards, I'm honest, I've not got any glassware on the shelf. But I think the thing that I am most proud of or the achievement I'm most proud of would definitely be what we did with the team I've actually.
That's the BMW team that you started for a scratch. Yeah, because it was just that seeing so many people develop so quickly and so well was a real achievement. The achievement, not just for me, but for the retail managers that were all surrounded with me. The fact that they're still there, the fact that I was able to leave business and they didn't need to put another GSM back in there. Oh, that's a big one for me. That's brilliant because you should make yourself not leader there. If you were actually, you had to be working on the business, not in the business to achieve that. Exactly. I was a support if they were away or off or whatever, but again, I shared everything with them, I made them aware of everything, I never kept anything to myself.
I still like sometimes leaders or managers hold on to certain pockets of knowledge to make sure they retain some kind of power and leverage. I've never really subscribed to that. I'm really comfortable with one of those because past me and it does better than me than Brian, but I'll put my hand up and say, hi, five, all's well done. I think involving them and showing them and the fact that they're still operating really well there is a real thing for me in terms of pride. I still talked to them on the phone. I get the old call or I call them. We recently helped each other out with some famous and chairs for an event, but they're a good team of guys.
Really, really proud of what we did there. We were able to support them actually just before I finished that. There's a fan of scorecard in the BMW network. When I got to that business, it was quite low. It was 132, 134. By the end of 18 months of that meeting, we climbed it up to 16 in the scorecard. It just felt like a real achievement. We know who got to number one or top 10, but the guys just did a great job. The turn range money. For people who don't know what a trade plan is when they started. That's the thing that really isn't it? What about the flip side? This is a shameless plug for our first 90-day sales training program.
What we say is that the skills that people learn in the first three months, good and bad, it lasts them for their lifetime. Can I ask you, is there anything that you learned your first three months in the motor trade that says relevant now as it was when you started? Probably having a positive attitude. I don't mean that in a real cliche kind of way. What I mean is that, why are those over? I'm actually going to tell you this so much. We always have to say there's quite a lot of average people around in our industry. Actually, to shine, if you just do what you said you're going to do and be consistent and you show up, you're a good way to be in bit there in the lot.
I learned that earlier. I've been at apprentice in 1996 in a commercial vehicle workshop where the pit needed to be shuttled out twice a week and the oil room actually the coal line is out to be jet washed. It definitely taught me a bit of resilience, a bit of go-go, but of showing up not getting beaten down by the negativity. I think you should imagine that about what I do to avoid my own burnout. I actually, I've learned, I don't know if I've learned it or I've trained myself or if it just happened, but I don't really consider working. Life is separate things. I've learned. How do you mean? This job for me is like a lifestyle.
I think you're either doing it and loving it or you're not. I love it. I literally, I love it if we did it. I love it when we don't hit targets. I love it because we can learn. I love it when we do hit targets. I love it when we have to do accounts. I love it when we're doing budgets. I love it when I have to stay late. I just love it. I think I've learned over the years to be comfortable in the uncomfortable. I don't have a feel-all burnout. I don't feel like I need a break or I go away from it because I do. I've got four young girls at home from 16 to 7, three of them play football, so they keep you really busy.
It's just like, I don't, I was talking to Andrea. She's out here assisting here. It's four and every Monday. She says, how do we tend? I'm flat out. I was pressing here and getting there, football there, that game right and this game of stalking. It's just one life. Why is there a difference? Until I think if you look at work and you don't like it, you either need to learn to like it. I would get another career. What will change? Make a change because it's, they won't certainly well with it otherwise. That's true. Why stay in a career? You don't enjoy. People do though, don't they? But yeah, I thought you were up. Listen, this podcast is all about learning from other people's experiences.
Can I ask the flip side of that? Are there any hard lessons along the way? Anything that you've learned that you wish you knew earlier on? Someone else can learn from maybe your mistakes, maybe my mistakes. Any hard lessons learned along the way that you wish you'd had your time again to do differently? I think it's relative. But certainly that servant-old style of leadership probably wasn't cool when I first became a sales manager. It was a bit, back then it was probably a bit egotistical to have that role. You get a nicer car, a bit more weekend or those kind of things. And there was a bit of an eluthness to the role, which in hindsight is about it.
I think it's not cool to be important anymore is it? But I don't know that I would have been able to know that back then. It didn't feel like it wasn't where we were in business back then. But certainly looking after people, I wish someone had shown me that a little bit more thoroughly early on. I've always been into helping people and coaching and trying to provide the right guidance. But I definitely could have done it better with my teams I work with nowadays hourly. But don't we have to go through that to learn how we could have done it better? I mean some of the stuff I did early when I first job as a sales manager, a cringet.
Now, was it the industry at the time? Yeah, was it my insecurity, if I'm brutally honest? Because you're just starting to always get thrown into the role as a sales manager because it's like, oh, Jason's left, we need someone to do it, you'll do. I remember thinking shit, what the hell do I do now? But he's all expected to know then because you've got the badge now. Yeah. Unfortunately, that doesn't generate good behaviors. It doesn't generate because that's been that breathing that whole keep it to yourself because it's your power at your angle. Whereas actually, if you make it all right, well, God, I said, David is our sales manager here at the minute. And he's new to the wrong.
He's a great guy, great personality and does a good job, knows the job technically. But I just keep making it okay for him to not know the answer, but it's okay. Let's get together. Let's find it. Because I don't want him to feel like too much expectation that starts driving those behaviors that I regret from my own sales I hope to see that today, hate to see it because it wouldn't go well with the experience team that we've got here. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I could go on and on here, but I suppose I just looked at the time there. So I want to wrap this up by asking, okay, lots of people will be listening to this podcast because they're just moving into their first management role, be it a service manager, being a sales manager, a head of sales, even a head of business.
What advice would you be able to give to them? What's the one thing that maybe someone's told you in the past or you've learned when you're just because someone's listening, they've got a whole new team, they're just going to have to measure and manage. But they've never done it before. Any advice you'd like to leave them with? I'd say creating a diamond where feedback is fruit flowing, both ways in all directions, only trying to feed back. You really need people to feel free about how they feel what's going on to talk about things openly without it, without there being any negatives to having the conversation. I think all of that, any conversation about how a department is operating is good conversation.
And I'd say probably identify who your stakeholders are and what they require very quickly and understand that. Chris, I love this conversation. How do people reach out to you? Is LinkedIn the easiest way for them to find you? Yeah, or if you can take the time to drive to the same as Ben's Well and kind of skid around a race track. But definitely LinkedIn. I think I'm on there as Christian calling me as my full name. But we've definitely found me on there for sure. Yeah. Well, listen, thank you very much for that. I really appreciate it. So skipping a good day. That just leads me to say that all details of this episode and other episodes on the selling in the motor trade can be found on our website simcotraining.co.uk.
Go there to get a copy of our book, Words That Sell Cars. Go there to sign up to a free trial of our sales fitness online sales training program. Easiest way to get hold of me is Simon Bowkett through LinkedIn. Thank you.
