This quick bite episode is ideal to play at your morning sales meeting, to help get your team motivated for the day.
We look at a story about the US Navy, which has been denied, and also claimed that it wasn’t the US Navy but the British Navy. However, although its probably not true, the morals and principals behind the story make it worth telling.
No matter how long you’ve been selling, we can all fall into the trap of jumping to conclusions about our customers or situations.
Here are the highlights:
{01:13} Qualifying
{01:33} 1995 – Newfoundland
{02.10} USS Lincoln
{03.12} Don’t go into sales mode
{03.32} It happened to me
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 cards, 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 with saying thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Hi and welcome to another episode of Selling and the Motor Trade. Listen, we talked about Henry Ford a while back and I've got lots of people saying, oh, I love that story. Colin, thank you very much. He called me and told me the true behind it and where to go. It's just a great story about how the V8 engine was not so much born but how it was developed and how Henry Ford said, if you think you can, you can. If you think you can't, you can't. And Colin actually said, it's great to play in sales meetings. Give us some more stuff like that. So I've got one for you today that you, again, you might want to play in your sales meetings. It's all about qualifying the situation. It's all about making sure that we as salespeople don't prejudge the situation. We qualify the situation before we go into sales mode or we don't just jump to conclusions. As the story starts, starts off in 1995, October 1995, off the coast of Newfoundland as a radio conversation between the Americans and the Canadians. It starts off with the Americans. Please divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision. Come back and say, recommend you change your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision. Come back to Americans. Now this is the captain of the USS Navy ship. I say again, divert your course. Canadians said, no, I say again, divert your course. The Americans respond by saying, this is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln. It's the second largest ship in the United States Atlantic fleet. We're accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous other support vessels. I demand that you change your course 15 degrees. That's one five degrees north or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship. Canadians, this is a lighthouse. You're cool. Guys, I love that little story. I wish I could tell you it's true, but you know what? Google very quickly tells us that it's all made up. It's all bogus. The Americans are definitely come back and say, no, we never did that. There's examples where it's the British did the same thing and it was the Irish in the lighthouse. You know what? Sometimes you just can't let the truth get in the way of a good story. But you know what? What I take from that is we need to qualify the situation properly. Don't go into sales mode before you've asked all the questions to find out what the situation is. Think about objection handling. Too often we don't prescribe. Well, sorry, we do. We've prescribed the treatment before we diagnose the illness. Here's the story I want to tell you that is true because it happened to me. I was in a Toyota dealership in Townsville, North Queensland. And I know some people from my car, and Toyota might still be listening to this. Okay. I know that Julian, who I work there, and Julian now runs a massive dealership in the dog coach, I believe. I know that you and your team listen to this all the time. But there was a Toyota 4Runner that was just launched. I was this young salesperson, green, wet behind the ears. And I've just been sent on a course about this Toyota 4Runner. And I was all excited about this thing. Okay. You know what these manufacturer courses like? They put the chip into you. I mean, this thing had, I don't know, three and a half tonne towing capacity. It had the four-wheel drive with the hubs, where you had to lock them in manual before. But this had the first automatic locking hubs. The inside of the car was so comfortable, but it still had a chassis underneath from the high luck. So it got the towing capacity, but it was still more like a car inside. I think from memory, it had coil springs, not leaf springs. I mean, this was real cutting edge. Now, some of your young people, I'm an old git now, but it was cutting edge. As Guy come in and wanted to ask all about it, I told you, yes, come with me. I had him eating out of the palm of my hands. He was nodding his head the whole time, showing the automatic locking hubs, showing him how the towing capacity, the coil springs, how comfortable it's going to be inside. I tell you what, for half now in my life, I had him eating out of the palm of my hands. I knew this was a done deal. And then I said, so tell me, what do you drive at the moment? To which point he said, well, it's a company car that's going back. They're just buying me a new one of these. I just want to see what they're buying me. And of course, my heart sunk. Because you know what? I didn't qualify the situation before I went into sales mode. Guys, I wish I could tell you that conversation between the Americans and the Canadians was true. Hey, listen, maybe it is true. There's lots of different websites there that talk about, maybe it did happen and that was trying to be covered up. I don't really believe that one, but it's a good story that you might want to remember the next time you go into sales mode, without qualifying the situation first. Sure, one this time. I'll see you next time. 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 link to him. Thank you.
