In this episode we are joined by Nick Hill, Managing Director – Big Marketing. We discuss Nick’s background, and his journey to build Big Marketing.
The key to marketing is having the right mix of medium and stopping any leakage before you spend any more money.
Here are the highlights:
{06:05} Fast moving industry
{13:32} Self promotion
{15:04} Direct Mail
{15:25} Virtual SMS
{20:22} Plug the gaps
{26:04} Everyone is important
About Symco Training:
Symco Training was founded in 2000 by Simon Bowkett and it was his belief that the business had to offer its clients something different. That difference was clear to Simon from his days in the dealership when he experienced many sales trainers who had all the answers, but were unable, unwilling or both to actually show the delegate how they could be implemented. It remains the ethos of the business today. You see, Symco only employ trainers that are committed to delivering not only in spiring and insightful training, but are equally as happy to demonstrate these skills and techniques with real customers in your own showroom. We believe in order for sales training to be effective and in Simon’s words ‘real world’, it needs to be tried and tested in the only place it matters the showroom floor. There is no room for theory when your goals are for your team to sell more cars, hours or parts and retain more profit. In dealerships around the world the focus applied by many of the sales executives is to try and sell a deal. Symco specialise in getting your teams to focus on selling themselves, the product and then supporting this with the deal.
To find out more visit
www.symcotraining.co.uk
Welcome to the Selling and the Motor Trade Podcast, an association with Symco Training. This is the weekly podcast where we share best practice tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service department and generally put more profit into your dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Bowkett. As some of you probably already know me as Skipping, I will start by saying thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Hi, welcome to another episode of Selling and the Motor Trade. Today, I've got Nick Hill, who is the manager and owner of Big Marketing. I've got to get Nick on here today because one of our clients and Mr Wiseman, I know you listen to this all the time, was raving him about what Big Marketing is doing for them and the change in marketing companies. I thought, we've not had a marketing company on the podcast. We talked to lots of different other training companies. We talked about the sales process. Nick, this podcast is all about selling more cars, selling more service. We talked about the sales side of it. But I wanted to get you on because I suppose marketing is the other side of the sales coin. It's the same coin. Nick, thank you very much for your time today. I really appreciate it. My pleasure, nice to meet you eventually. Okay, so for people who don't know you, tell us a little bit about yourself, Nick. How did you get started with Big Marketing? Where was your start in the motor trade? It wasn't motor trade for the start. Initially, I was a typical little salesman doing a working out of the walks of dealership as a transaction manager. I left there and went to work at another Vauxhall dealer, but as a salesman, it didn't last very long. At the time, I had a little sunbed business being a little entrepreneur. I used to sit in the office taking bookings for my sunbeds. I was saying they wanted me to leave. But I understand. So then went from the car industry into newspapers selling space to the motor dealers that I just loved. There's something about the motor trade that is very special. And being in that environment, typically a newspaper boy going to see my dealers every week and seeing what advert they want and helping design it and bloody, bloody, bloody blast. I really enjoyed that. Worked for a really good newspaper in St. Albans. In those days, you'd have a 50-page newspaper of just motors. And then the paper around. Yeah. Obviously, they don't really exist now. No, I don't have that time. I don't have time. So did all that. That was exciting. Then I was invited by some friends of mine who worked in the newspaper. They were starting up an agency. It was very new in those days. A company called Clee Bromarketing went to work for them, was on commission only. I had to pay my insurance and everything else. That was hard, but ended up earning a fortune with them. And I think they thought, well, we can't keep paying in this. He's earning more than us. So they made me a director at a very young age. I really enjoyed. But really sort of found my spark there. I suppose like a lot of young kids these days, no one really knows what they want to do. And the schools don't really help do they. They should perhaps throw people into five different jobs that they can experience. So they get a feel for where they want to go in life because I had loads of jobs. So true, isn't it? At 16 years old, you go to the side. What do you want to do for the rest of your life? I'm 51 now. I don't know if I want to do it. So you've got to enjoy what you're doing, life, because you spend a lot of hours doing it. When I first started up, when I worked at Clee Bromarketing, I left 80 years just because I was growing out of them in effect and started up myself with a friend of mine who has got a dealership called Anthony Betts. Ah-ha, Mr Betts. Correct. And I've known... They haven't bought Vernon. Evan's all short. I've said... Early. First, I used to deal with Dan Port Vernon as a group. And that's when Anthony was leaving Dan Port Vernon's and was starting up the dealer when you become a dealer and you pay 50 grand a comp- I don't know. I can't. I'll take now. That's how I look. Yeah, sponsored... One of the sponsored dealerships were... Yeah, they started them up years ago. And Anthony needed some investment. I said, yeah, I'll invest. I invested with him and for years we worked together, you know, having part of each other's company, moved away, did my own thing. You know, things just naturally progress and you want to do it yourself. Then started up big marketing. Never looked back, really. I mean, so you've got that depth of knowledge there from being transaction manager, being a salesperson, working with dealers all the time. I didn't realize you were a dealer owner as well. That must give you a different insight when you're dealing with your clients now. Well, you realize everything's yesterday? Yeah. But being a... I don't know if you'd call it. If I was young now, people might say, you've got HDHD or whatever it's called, you know, because I can't sit still. But that's always been the way I am. And, you know, I've always been the person that calls back people straight away and, you know, I'm on it straight away. They get it yesterday. And it's so worked in the industry I was going into. And the nice thing is you, as that person at the MD, it sort of rejects through your staff, you know, and like you said, with Chris, you can work with agencies that have a very different perspective of the motor trade and do things when they're ready. You know, so, you know, the difference is with someone like Chris, what he's experiencing is the people there for him throughout the journey. And he'll get a call back in that day in effect, perhaps he's not used to that. And he'll get artwork and visuals and ideas within that day or the day after. So if you're not used to that, it's like a miracle. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously dealers really appreciate that because it's a fast-moving industry. They've got cars to sell, things change every day. And they need to be reactive to that. Yeah. And it's fun. You know, we put on events for Chris and different dealers, you know, like the VIP events with portals and everything. Okay. So tell us a bit about your business then. So marketing, and again, I don't know anything about the marketing world. So traditionally, for marketing is all the printed sale material. It used to always be newspapers. It's now paper click. It's now events. Tell us about big marketing. What do you focus on? It sounds like Simon, you need my help there. Okay. Yes. Well, it's a good question because I suppose the only marketing that we need to is this podcast. Yeah. Could we call this podcast? This goes out to 5,000, 6,000 people every Thursday. And I suppose as a training company, we don't really look at the marketing side. I think the thing is because of the experience I have in the motor trade and knowing inside out and obviously my team do because I've been here so many years, you have the ability from a dealer to get information and adapt it to the most exciting for a customer. So it's obviously getting a message where they'll just give you things and you go, okay, well, I can change that. And awesome questions. Can I amend that? Can I tweak that? I think that would be better. You know, whether it's a deposit or whatever it is, we know what we're doing. So we can make a difference on the appearance of their offering and then know the mediums to use the work the best. So there's not a case of just saying, well, you need to do this, this and this. Obviously, we get excited about using all the different things with platforms we've made up or use to give a result because as much as we're wanting to make it living and we all are, I get more satisfaction of people like Chris going, well, Tracy runs his marketing department and loads of other dealers and marshals and everywhere else going, thank you. You're amazing. And that's everything, Simon. The money's irrelevant. If I can get someone excited even by turning a brief round in the day and getting a visual back to the maker, oh my God, that you did this so quick. And that's amazing. That's all I want. Yeah. You know, I'm able to get their message out to marketplace and generating worries. So you've dealt with lots of businesses. I suppose like we have as a training company kind of from the outside, but you know, I'm enough. You must see the good and the great. You also have the ugly from your experience, what separates a great dealership or a business owner or something like that from the, maybe just the good. Is there anything character traits stand out? I mean, very luckily we have amazing relationships with all our dealers, like their friends. I mean, it's just lovely. I mean, it makes the job very easy. And I think it's because you do a good job. They appreciate it. I think the most frustrating thing with dealers is a lot of people think they can do marketing and people won't listen to your advice of what you're suggesting. No, it's a bit like VIP events. You know, everyone says, okay, we're going to plan this. We'll do these e-shots. We do WhatsApp's virtual SMS is, you know, part of the media comms. But what they don't realize is we're sitting there in the background, monitoring their appointments and without them even knowing if we don't think they've reached the benchmark of appointments that we think is satisfactory, we'll send out more communications without them even knowing. So they hit where they need to hit. But the nice thing about that, Simon, is you've got people you deal with who trust you and you can just do it. It's not a problem. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, it's very rare to have a dealer group. We don't get on with or we don't get on with the people. It's just this part of it. You get some people, but the relationship doesn't last. You've got to trust your agency in what they say and what they do. But generally, most people are lovely. I mean, the motor trades fickle. There's everything about it. I remember being selling cars myself and Saturday was such a buzz day. And being a younger salesman, I used to remember talking to a customer and then the 2P would run across the floor in between me and the customer. We'll both be looking at it just because one of the salesmen wanted to pull a prank. So it's a very close industry, but a lovely industry. Very hard now, I'd say, compared to the last 10 or 15 years. Yeah. So big marketing's been going for 25 years, I'm guessing. Because there's a big 25 behind your head behind me. Yeah, behind me. So in that last three or five years, you've seen huge changes. Do you see agency as a challenge for a marketing company dealing with the motor trade? Do you see that coming in? What's your views on that? I don't know. Simon, it's a difficult call. I see a lot of manufacturers trying to do everything themselves as they have done before in the past in those different areas. And they always seem to fail because they can't do what the dealers do. It's impossible. So personally, I can't see agency lasting. I think they'll all try and they'll all fade away and everyone will be back to normal. As we're recording this podcast, JLR has publicly said they're not going to be with agency now. And our great friend has shown Suzuki has said it's not for them. Now, I know that what Suzuki hasn't got a huge market share to affect. But if people start to say, no, I just wonder is it still going to happen now? Having said that, the above is still full steam ahead with it. It'd be interesting to see how that plays out. I was just wondering how that might affect the marketing side of it. Will that affect what you're able to do? Well, Mercedes, I think, started doing this and said to all their dealers, no, we're doing the marketing, bloody, bloody, bloody, and it all fell apart. They suddenly didn't have a presence. They weren't pushing what they needed to push. And I think Mercedes pushed back a little bit and given more control back to the dealers to do their own marketing. So I think everyone needs to stick what they're good at because that makes everything work. The dealers are good at making cars and doing their national campaigns. The dealers are very good at promoting themselves because it's their livelihood. You suddenly take that away. It's not their livelihoods and they're just getting paid per bonnet. You know, it's mostly sales on stocking loans, et cetera, the way it works. But it takes a bit of the feel away to working, I get 600 pounds a car. Wow. When I could be 1200 pounds a car. So, you know, dealers are what they are in the nature. They're hungry for business. You know, I think the agency model just takes it away, but it's just manufactured trying to be in control, I'd suggest. And again, in that last 25 years, what significant changes have you seen? Clearly email was not a really a thing 25 years ago. Now everybody starts that way, doesn't it? It's email, phone. Occasionally people still walk into a dealership. But it's that's ripped on its head. You used to say people would walk in, phone in, maybe this new thing called email. Now it's email, phone. And if someone walks in, I don't know, people still do that. How has that changed your approach? Well, we're still very, you know, everything that's adapted now to digital. Obviously, the demise of newspapers of their days, things become less personal, I think. We'll talk to dealers and we'll suggest various items to use, you know, because there's still a place for direct mail. Obviously, because there's not a lot of direct mail going out. Yeah, right. So, you know, it's sort of turned on its head a little bit where you can use direct mail to a good piece. I mean, you know, there's WhatsApp campaigns now that work really well and we get bigger conversion rates than the average SMS that people used to do. Are we embedded virtual SMS? Is there like a storyboard? People can go through and book what they want. But yeah, it's, you obviously still get people walking into the dealerships. But I still find a lot of people, Simon, want to touch and feel a car. Yeah, so true. Let's just have a look at Cal doo, what's happened there? The Covanna in America, their share price plummeted. I think they're recovering now there, but it's, I think the idea that people will just go to a mouset, a house, I think, with the phrase. I think very quickly people learned that. Yeah, in Costa house was that was that? Kazoo was that big motoring world? Could be big motoring world. I think it was. I think it was. And don't quote me on that one. It's great phrase. Now, it's the house. Okay. Yeah. But you know what, I still feel people in the touch and feel and drives the car. I still think that sounds person is going to be part of the process. Probably more so on the agency because if the only differential is the people I'm dealing with. So surely we need to market the business, the family owned business, the sales person, the knowledge they, because a price is not going to be a factor at all. Why should we go to one business, not the other? Price and service, isn't it? Yeah. You know, I want to buy somewhere where if I have a problem, I can let them look at it easily enough. Yeah. And I like a relationship. Yeah. People buy people. Don't they? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. You mentioned something virtual SMS is. Sorry. I can ask you an even question. What's the virtual SMS? Oh, it's one of our special taglines, Simon, to make it sound fancy, but it is fancy. It's especially made to mobile phones. It's like you create images and pages and offers and you get the message come up and you phone, you can just scroll through the different adverts and you can say, yes, I'm interested, request to call back. Okay. You know, and so with the IP, you can book your appointments through there, the whole journey. It's all personalized. And the different we came up with and same with the WhatsApp, that really works now. Yeah. WhatsApp is getting a high hit rate than text, doesn't it? I suppose everyone just WhatsApp is nowadays. Yeah. And because we can do this picturing now, so I can actually do it like a virtual SMS with images, it changes it completely. But everyone's got to remember, you know, marketing out to customers, retailers with the retail is a case of getting the right mix of mediums. You know, people, I'd say to a lot of dealers, you know, 48 sheets are still strong. Yeah. You know, the poster sites you see out because they bring you out of where you are and suddenly and everyone recognize the 48 sheet as top end people are using them as in the big boys. Yeah. It suddenly gives you credibility as well. I mean, there's loads, Simon. Listen, when you've done it for so many years and you've dealt with so many different people and all the results you've ever got, you know what works, it's in your head. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's nice just to go along and try and help people. That sounds like you. That sounds good. No, you do a fine job. I always listen to your cast up on really interesting. Well, it's just one of those things that give people the knowledge given that and we don't try and sell ideas at all. Okay. What we're doing, it's amazing how we can just come to you. And that's why I want to speak to you because it's the marketing is one full side of it that we've just not talked about on this podcast at all. So someone find, you know, well, we're doing it now. We've fixed it. So, so advice, someone's listening to say, deal owner. Okay. Maybe the head of business, a general manager and they're looking at their marketing. What advice without being a sales pitch, don't just say come and deal with us. Okay. I'm sure the world. What advice would you give to that manager when they look in their marketing? Where'd they start looking at their marketing approach? Well, most things will start it at the beginning of a financial year or their quarter. There's quite a lot to do, Simon. It's not a case of now, there's a lot of planning to do when you're putting up schedules, you know, when you deal with big groups and little groups, you need to put plans together for the years in the things you're definitely doing, the things you're going to do there at Hock, you need to allow for. But with the motor trade, it's so, you know, as I said, it's so different. Everything is yesterday. So as much as you'll have a planner, things always change and you'll have an emergency to deal with and you need to get it sorted. So, you know, and there's so many different variants. Everyone says about marketing, but you've always got to remember. You know, we can do some great marketing. Those have been queries. Great. But there is that funnel of there's not wasting queries that were already coming in. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not a case of our spending money. It's looking at the bigger picture and going, well, let's plug that, plug that, financial and yours are they sorted. So trying to automate loads of different things so people can focus on their core jobs, like a salesman, you know, calling customers back as we know. That's the struggle sometimes. If it's yes, it is. I suppose that's where we take over. When you get the people to come through the door, so pick up the phone and send them the email. So you have to still get on it straight away. I mean, I've always said so. I mean, if I was to run my own dealership, and I sort of virtually did, but didn't, I'd always have like a person or two people that would, that would take every inquiry, whether it was a walk in, whether it was from reception, a call in an internet inquiry and have those two people literally going around the whole dealership chasing up salesmen. What have you done with this? Where are you? So everything is accountable because they inquiry to the cost of 50 pounds and yeah, it does. It's blown. Would it be just 50 pounds now? It's got to be more than 50 pounds. That's not going to be more. I mean, an auditorium inquiry could be 150 pounds. Yeah. Yeah. So it's plugging all the gaps first. Let's look at leakage. Yeah. People can improve what we have already. There's sometimes people have loads of inquiry, Simon, and don't need to do loads of marketing, but they've just got so much leakage. Yeah. Yeah. So it's dealing with that first and then, you know, dealing with what we've done. It's not a case of just spend, spend, spend. Yeah. You know, economy is a scale. Also, I couldn't say after COVID-19, you didn't have to be a genius to sell a new or new scale. I suppose it was a limited supply market. Okay. So it was a full market and the whole sales process, Nick, was, hey, is that car available? Okay. Yes, I want it. And the sales person was saying, yeah, it's available. Buy it now. Otherwise, it got three other people want it. And the sales process went out the window, but also marketing. So events like your VIP events, I know Rhino does and stuff like that, how it was just stopped. It's now turning into a push market. And I want to get your views between now and in view. The client you're speaking to, are they saying that they're getting more and more of this push market? Are we coming back to the pre-reg situation? Are we getting people saying we need to be selling EV to get our mix right there? Is that what you're seeing out there? Yeah, I think it's all going back to where it was. I think it's all going back to when there were mega deals out there. And I think EV situation doesn't help that. So I think long term, there's going to be push, push, push, deals, deals, deals, and it will get back to where it was. Most things are a circle. Everyone enjoyed COVID. We didn't have to, we were all just taking through that journey. But now it's getting harder. Now the stock is coming through and people have got loads of cars. They have to have a way to get rid of that. I assume the manufacturers start off with the best intentions of we need to keep this rate. We're not discounting, but you're suddenly seeing 0% here and this amount of this. And yeah, I think it's all changing now. I think there's more urges for events and a different way of doing events, to be honest. But I can't say too much, but there is something coming that's completely different. I think there's time for that. And there's no disrespect to other people that, and I've said this is first marketing company, my apologies. We did speak to the guys Rhino probably three years ago. And they were probably no one just for events. So I don't think they're a real marketing company. They do just events from what I understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Events, have they had their day? You still do events? No. Okay. No, I think you'll always have events. I think the problem is with it. Now Simon's most dealers or GMs rely on that big figure for September. And not doing an event is like not doing or to trader. You know, it's one of those things you go, God, I don't want to do it, but I'm going to have to just to hit that number. They're so used to it. Yeah. But as long as you know, I mean, it will always give you that number. The suppositive for the registration month, March and September. But you've got to think about the rest of the year. You know, it's not just those months as the bill and end or you've got to keep creating excitement for customers to bring them forward, get them out of their finance earlier and turn those into deals. It's just it's looking at every single area. Most people just give us a budget and say, get one with it. You know, we'll put a pan in place, but we'll go and see them and see, like I said, the leakage. So many holes to plug. But it's exciting, Simon. It's no different to your job. I suggest you love what you do. I am one of those people. But I said, rather, given with this, that I'm 51 now, I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't want to do anything other than this. I still love the motor trade. I love the people. I still get the buzzword day in, day out. And you obviously had that same thing as well. I'm old and you know. Thank you for that. Thank you very much for that. So listen, look, how do people get pulled in? Okay. If they hear like, hold on, I like the idea of some of these events. Do you work just with bigger groups there? Or do you do one-off stuff with people? No, listen, I think you care as much for one as you do 20. You know, everyone special. And there's always a job to do. I think it's so rewarding going in and, you know, I suppose it's like people that have been in the motor trade doing a bit of consultancy, to be honest, even though it's not, is going out and finding other problems and putting them all right. And then you're starting a nice, clean journey. And everything's a positive journey then. You know, I love it. You know, it's really rewarding. Yeah. Do what you do and get thanks from people. And there's no different to you, Matt, when you do your training, I'm sure you'll make a difference when people are training and you're training people and sell people who go, I use that yesterday or whatever. And it worked. Yeah. I listen, I could ask, do you think there's a future for the motor trade? Would you want your children to go in it? Now, I know the answer to that because Nick, your son has started the motor trade. He has, bless you, started to work at Braille's Hyundai. Very good. Very good. And loves it. You know, he was, yeah, really enjoys it. He's doing well, or she was doing well. I've not had any bad reports. And he's still got a job. So he's doing well, but the nice thing is he enjoys it. And you know, everyone forgets in the motor trade, most things you do in the motor trade is if you want a career for life. Yeah. In 2024, when we were recording, you can still make very good money in the motor trade. Really? And sometimes compared to the national average wage, I think, is some of them at 36,000 or something like that. Yeah. A salesperson can still earn the 40s, 50s and more. I'm talking about averages now. And sometimes we forget that the motor trade is still very well paid without having the qualification of being an airline pilot or the child of the accountant or something like that. Yeah. And then you're going to, if one, you don't know what you want, you want to try something different, you like cars, et cetera. And you're not overqualified. You're not counting the level of qualifications to get into the motor trade. And it just works. But also the skills that we learn even selling cars, I think in any business helps. Simple little things like we were speaking of Dash Gupta previously on the podcast. And he said, things are used to still make an appointment, not when do you want to come in? You're going to be an excercer a Friday. That's no different to your business or so many other businesses. So the basic skills I think your son will learn will help him on in the industry. You want to go into it. I think everyone's got to remember Simon, it's all about your stuff. You've got to treat them lovely. You treat them lovely. You get lovely back. You know, as simple as, you know, you should go to work as a boss as the same as you are at home and look after people. You know, it's such a simple thing to do. Be nice. Yeah. Yeah. So how many people do you have to look after on a daily basis? Well, as in customers. No, your stuff. How many internal stuff do you ask? We've got about 17 now. We had a lot more at COVID, but obviously COVID had to hit on everyone. Yeah. And it's growing nicely again. So that's really nice. Yeah. And I just stare now, Simon, I'm, you know, end of the ship just helping people do the best they can to their customers, advising them obviously with knowledge that I know of what to do, how to do it. Yeah. And it's marketing the young persons game now as your seer. But do you need that creative young person's spark that? I think it's just general overall knowledge of the motor trade is the most important thing because you know what their needs are. And to have a creative head and think outside the box is always coming up with something Simon that the customers will go, I'll buy into that. I look at that. It's no given to me walking down the high street. I was walking down the high street normally and I was walking down the high street in a Batman outfit. You'd remember that for the rest of the day. Yeah. Yeah, you would. It was just standing out enough to make a difference and not blending with everyone else. Well, listen, I know you've got another meeting you got to go to. I really do appreciate that. How do people get holding you, Nick? What's the easiest way to get hold of you? Just go to the internet or the website www.bigmarketing.co.uk. I'm cool with some of our lovely customers that are happy and speaks to them and they're too. Well, I know that Chris Myleson was raving about what you're doing. And Mr. Brailey, AWR again, one of our clients. We have a lot of shed clients actually. So again, which right? Yeah, we do. Yeah. So yeah, it was nice because I get feedback from what you guys are doing. That's positive and you obviously get the same. So it's really nice to be able to say to you today, you do a good job. And thank you for telling me I do a good job. Well, it is nice to hear that. Listen, thank you so much for your time. You do a pretty shout out. It's been a pleasure. Lovely to see you. You too. 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, food linked in. Thank you. Bye.
