I break down the most-quoted sales scenes from The Wolf of Wall Street and Boiler Room to Jerry Maguire, Joy and Rocky.
“Sell me this pen”
“ABC: Always Be Closing”
“Show me the money”
I’m separating cinematic hype from practices that actually build long-term repeat and referral business in the motor trade.
In this solo episode, I unpack the ethics line (influence vs. manipulation), why short-term “smash and grab” tactics burn your brand in a Google-reviews world, and the fundamental skills that win.
We’ll use the films to illustrate what to copy (process, numbers, resilience) and what to leave on the cutting-room floor.
Featuring takeaways from Wall Street, Glengarry Glen Ross, Used Cars, The Pursuit of Happiness, Jerry Maguire, Joy and the true story behind Rocky.
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
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. Hi, welcome to another episode of Selling and the Motor Trade. And this time we're going to go into Hollywood. That's right, we're going to talk about selling in the movies. And we're going to be talking about some of the great movies out there that depict selling, maybe the good, the bad and the ugly in selling.
And I have to start off with the Wolf of Wall Street. You know what? So many times I get people come on training courses that go, ah, the Wolf of Wall Street. What a great movie. Sell me this pen. Sell me this pen. So let's have a look at this. The Wolf of Wall Street, by the way, it is a great movie. Okay. And if you haven't seen any of these movies by only, go and have a look at them, take them for what they are, entertainment value. And also, you've got to bear in mind how much of these stories been embellished in, for Hollywood. Hollywood has an ability to do that. Of course, we know that.
Now, of course, Wolf of Wall Street is based on Jordan Buffett. It's based on a real story. And I'm sure there's lots of dramatization there. But this is the man who starts off to be a broker and Wall Street. He gets fired very quickly. He goes to a little boiler room type of a brokerage company, whether they're selling penny stocks. He sells these penny stocks very well. He has a whole team of people around there looking at what he does. And how do you do that? That's brilliant. Can you teach me? And when he starts off there, by the way, there's a great scene there. He's talking to the customer. He takes control of a coal.
These tone is very good. People are listening to him what he does there. But then, of course, the movie goes off into a completely different direction. And instead, Jordan Buffett still teaches sales training today. Sell me this pen. And I'm sure there's lots of good ideas there. However, we've got to bear in mind, Jordan was doing this in the early 80s. Now, in the 80s, if you really upset someone, it's very hard for them to tell anyone else or that many other people there. But now we have Google. Google reviews, trust pilot. You upset one person now. How quickly can they tell everyone else? Also, he was doing it in the American market. Hello, my American listeners.
But in the American market, there's what? 250, 300 million people. If you upset one person, it's not the end of the world. But actually, you might be listening to this and you're based in Bolton. You've just got the people in your community. In fact, some of your places might be even smaller. You upset that one person with Google reviews, they can tell lots of different people. And I always say that anyone could sell one car. We don't want to do that. We want to sell people their second, their third, their fourth, their family and friends cars. And you know what? It's only great service, not ripping people off that's going to do this. Of course, Jordan, he went to jail of what he did.
What he was doing, he was selling junk stocks and penny stocks. And in the movie he talks about, these stocks, okay, he was paying his salespeople 50% commission. So think that's true. If grandma had, and by the way, I say grandma, because that's who is ripping off the grandparents. Because they're the people had the big pension pots that could invest this money. But get grandma's $200,000 of their life savings. Their salespeople who paid $100,000 on the investment, okay? How much would that stock have to go up before grandma granddad made any money back, okay? But of course, he didn't have to worry about that because his team will on to the next people, the next people, the next people.
I listened to a guy talk about sales training many years ago, and it reminds me so much of the Wolf of Wall Street and the movie. He said, you know what? Making money as a broker in the stock market is so easy. All you do is you buy a list of rich people, which is pretty easy to buy. This is back before GDPR and stuff like that. And what he'd do is he'd send out a letter to these people. Now, I don't know if he actually did this or not, but he told me how it worked. He'd send out a letter to a whole lot of rich people, okay? He'd get, I don't know, 100,000 to start with.
50,000, he'd say, right, the Tesla stock is going to go up tomorrow. The other 50,000 would say the Tesla stock is going to go down tomorrow. Or it might be this week or this month, whatever it was, okay? He'd come in, find out what the Tesla stock had done, and tear up half the list. And then you'd get 25 and 25 and turn around and say, right, shell stock is going to go up this tomorrow, this week, this month, okay? The other half, he'd send a letter saying the shell stock is going to go down tomorrow, this week, or this month. He'd find out what's done, it tear up half of his list. Then of course, next time he'd say, Amazon stock is going to go up this month.
Amazon stock is going to go down this month. He'd find out what's happened, and of course, he'd tear up the list, okay? Are the ones that didn't work out for him. Of course, he's got a situation where he's narrowed it down to 500 people, where every prediction he's made over the last six months or six weeks or six or 10, whatever it is, every prediction was right than he put his phone call in, clever, but actually it's scamming people, isn't it? Because did he actually have the knowledge as to why they went up or why they went down? But no, they actually had these people, and that reminded me of the Wolf of Wall Street.
Now, they didn't actually do that in the Wolf of Wall Street, and I don't know if that actually happened or not. I'm sure it could have there, but it's unethical. Guys, if you want a good move to learn about how to sell, I would take hard work. You see Jordan Belford, right, begin that movie. He did talk about hard work before he went off into parties and drinking and money laundering and hiding things and prostitution and all that sort of stuff there. By the way, he went to jail because it was illegal what he was doing there. I want you to remember, anyone can sell one car. We don't want to do that. We want to sell people their second, the third, the fourth car, okay?
And it's actually great service that's going to do that. We don't want a one-hit wonder there, and that's what the Wolf of Wall Street was. Now, did that work in the 80s? Sure, it did. But actually, he talks about the quick rise in his company, but actually, how quickly did it fall apart as well? You want to be there for the long term. Now, again, I'm not going to knock Jordan Belford if somebody's techniques and all that. I'm sure they're great. Does he still do this? Is it still ethical? Some of the stuff he teaches? Don't know. I mean, a conference where I've actually seen Jordan Belford actually recommending a company which was a bit dubious.
I know he's still using scarcity and urgency. He's selling high price sales training events. There was a how to invest in the foreign exchange market for 1997, okay? I know that he has plants in the audience. He says, I can't believe I'm going to do this. It's the first 50 people first come first served and he has actors there. I can say stuff like that. Is that ethical? Now, don't get me wrong. I believe him. I train as a company, influence. I believe our job is to influence people, but not to manipulate. I mean, every time you go through a McDonald's drive-through, you wind your window down. You ask for a Big Mac meal. They say, certainly, do you want to go?
Large. Now, I would argue that's influencing people. Our job is to influence, but not manipulation. Don't cross the line into, well, at McDonald's. If someone says, no, I don't want to go large. They don't say, well, why didn't go large? Looks like you normally go large. Of course, you'll want to go large. It's a better deal. They don't cross the line into manipulation, okay? They just influence. And that is our job to influence our customers there. Hey, we talk about that when our sales training. If you offer a deal to someone, okay? And the last word you say, so what do you think? The last word you left in the customer's head is think. Our customers might say, well, I think I need to think about it.
And I think we've influenced the customer the wrong way. So we will be talking about, hey, did you want to do that over the 36 months or is it more comfortable for you over the 48? That is influence. But I don't think we're going to cross the line into manipulation, okay? But again, great movie. Go and have a look at it. Okay. Go and have a look at all these movies. But be careful. The mode industry is not like that now. And by the way, I don't think the people have made great money in the motor trade in the 80s was like that either. If that bad reputation we have is sometimes because of these sales movies.
Okay. But that's the wolf or Wall Street for you. Sell me this pen. Okay. Oh, by the way, there's I wish he had a done this. Okay. The sell me this pen at the end of the movie. That's a great example where people go into it's a pen and it's got a clip on it has got this and they talk about feature dumping. I wish he went into qualifying. Why do the people need a pen? Ask questions about what they're going to do with the pen. Oh, they need to sign this contract. What's that contract worth? So there's some great ideas there, which I just don't think they expanded enough on. Now, of course, it's because it's Hollywood.
Okay. Having Margot Robbie naked in the movie is probably going to sell a lot more Hollywood tickets than explaining how to sell the pen in the correct way. So listen, I get that. Okay. Great movie. But be careful with it. The rise in the fall of Jordan on that one. Next one, I'm showing my age now. This was in 2000. It's a movie called Boy Luck Room. Now, Boy the Room, it's kind of similar to the wolf or Wall Street. And I wonder if it's written a little bit about him. So you've got an actor there. I believe the actor is Giovanni. His name's called Seth. Okay. He's a colleague's dropout. If all our fails, try sales is what people sometimes say.
So he's going to go and try and sell the stuff. Boy the Room, it's this call center where again, they're selling penny stocks. Okay. These junk stocks call them what you want to get people that are selling their stocks like Jordan Belford, which aren't the best. But again, it's a high pressure toxic sales environment where they say things like there's no such thing as a no-sailed call. I kind of get where they come with this one. Okay. So the customers says, no, I don't want to buy anything. They go straight into looking for referrals on every call. I get the point on that one. Okay. Don't give up. So again, with all these movies, there's some good little ideas in there.
But again, there's an ethical vacuum created. Clothes are all cost mindset. And I'd love to know how much repeat business they've had. Okay. Once they burn everyone and also in that environment, how long could you sell in that environment? Yourself. I don't think it's sustainable. Okay. It needs to be a sustainable sort of approach. And the motor trade, people make great money in the motor trade. They stay in one place forever. And they have that repeat referral business, people coming back again and again and again. Okay. So listen, by the way, great movie. Go and have a look at it. Okay. Oh, and by the way, in the movie, they talk about what are the movies I liked as a kid?
And that was Wall Street. Greed is good. Greed is going to save not only tell door paper, but greed is going to save this other unfunction company, the United States of America. You know, the speech for the people that listen to it. Gordon Gekko is this trader. And they have this, oh, I can't even remember the name of the character there. But this guy who works hard. Okay. He wants to get into Gordon Gekko. Okay. And he wants to be his broker. And he goes to him with all of these stocks. Now, what I love about this movie, it starts off with the character, the hero in this movie, Charlie Sheen plays it. I can't remember his name.
And again, people screaming at their radios now saying, no, it is. Okay. But this guy has persistence. He's a stockbroker. And this is a stockbroker, which is not a boiler room type stockbroker. This is a stockbroker in a prestigious Wall Street brokerage that does things the right way. But what this movie does is it talked about persistence. He contacts Gordon Gekko. Okay. So many different times. Okay. He contacts him in lots of different ways, just trying to get a meeting with him. Okay. One of these colleagues laughs at him and car sounds people. You just start this industry. You will get your colleagues laughing and going, look at the see it now videos he's doing.
Look at the prospecting cause he's speaking the service department. Look at what he's doing there. But that hard work will pay off. His colleague is having to go at him about his persistence trying to get into this Gordon Gekko character. He finally gets there. And there's a scene of a movie I love. He said, there should be a picture of this guy under persistence in the dictionary because he just never give up. And I just love that. And that's why I stole from that movie. Never give up. Never give up. Never give up. Stay in touch with people till they buy or die. Now, I don't actually want them to die. Okay. And that's a bit of exaggeration there.
Okay. But buy or die. But then once he finally gets there, when he can smell the chance to work with this Gordon Gekko, he goes through all of these different stocks and he's analyzed and what he's going to do. And this guy kind of beat a little sim, he said, well, that's dog shit. That's dog shit. Why you give me? That's a dog with fleas. That's a dog with different fleas. Give me something I don't know. I've got analysts everywhere that told me everything you're talking about. Okay. And the guy decides to go and give him some inside information from a company's father works with. He knows he's breaking law. He shouldn't do it. But it's the ethics we're pushed when he actually seen the opportunity to get something there.
Guys, do me a favor. I don't believe we need to tell lies to some customer car. Okay. And you might say, well, a little white lies sometimes here or there works in a what every now and then that little white lie turns into a whopper. Okay. And I don't think you need to because I promise you, I don't think customers are stupid. Okay. I think customers can smell a lie. Think about yourself. Have you ever been into a electrical retailer? Have you ever spoke to a state agent trying to list your house? And they turn and say, oh, I've got someone looking for this house. The other day, I know exactly what it is. You go and list your house with that person.
And suddenly this person never turns up. Okay. You have a gut for your look at the time it was a lie. When customers catch you on that small lie, what do they think about every single thing else you do? It's all a lie there. Okay. But what I got from that movie, the Wolf of Wall Street, it's persistence. Persistence right at the beginning of it. Okay. Great movie as an old one. Now you're going to have to go and find some of these. Okay. And now I want to go all the way back to, and by the way, Gavin Hyde, thank you for this one. It's your fault that I'm talking about this because you talked about this on Friday.
Gengari Glen Ross, 1992. And in it, always be closing. Now, I've got to tell you, Gavin Hyde was talking about in the correct way. He was saying, this is not how we want to operate our business anymore. That's the terrible things we used to do back in the 80s and the 90s. Okay. It's early in that. And that's the phrase if you're always, oh, sorry, if you've ever heard ABC, always be closing. It comes from this movie. Let me give you the background of this movie. Okay. This movie is Alec Baldwin, is the sales trainer who turns up the sales guru, kind of like us guys, hopefully not. But these people are selling real estate and they're selling blocks of land.
I believe it might be investment properties or something like that. And this guy turns up and he says, I'm going to have a sales meeting. Now, this is not the beer and pizza sales meeting that we're talking about. This is a sales meeting where you guys all crap, this manager going to motivate them or this consultant. I'm not going to say consultant. This consultant says, right, this is very simple. We've got something like seven sales people here. This is what we're going to do. The first two of you get to keep your job. The other five are gone. Okay. I think there's a consultation provider of number three. It's a set of state knives, but you can take it on your way out there.
Okay. Because this business, we're employing closes now. People know how to close there. Okay. And if you don't get that, you're not going to keep your job there. And then of course, it goes into a cautionary tale about toxic sales management and unethical techniques. Okay. Always be closing. That's Alec Baldwin's monologue. Always be closing. Always be closing. They talk about the leads. Okay. Give me some leads. These are old leads. They're really old leads. They say, you don't get the good leads because you're crap. Only the closes get the good leads there. You don't deserve to have the good leads there. Okay. One of the guys, one of the older guys there who is one of the central characters in the movie, he goes to get himself a cup of coffee.
He phones his wife, who I believe is quite ill in a serious way. He says, no, I won't come home tonight. He makes himself a coffee. And the guy says, coffee's for closes. And listen, that movie there, okay, is really for the managers. Okay. Don't be the Glenn Clary, Glenn Ross, top end managers. Because what it goes down to is unethical sales. I mean, people break in to the office to steal the good leads. Okay. It's a smash and grab selling a process. You know what? If you look at some of these things, you might think, well, hold on, our manufacturer forces that. We got to get this target by this quarter. Otherwise, they're going to come and beat us with a stick.
If I don't get to this, my commission structure, I've got to get there. Don't think short term temporarily, because actually, you might get a short term increase, but it's a long term stuff. That's what we want in the motor trade. And by the way, this is not just the motor trade. It's everything. Okay. What about this one? Use cars. I'm going back to 1980 with Kurt Russell. Now, this is slapstick comedy. This is the guy tries to attract people to his lot. Okay. On the other side of the road, by getting a $100 note, tying it to a fishing rod, he throws it across the road. Okay. A customer sees $100. They try and pick it up and he winds it across the road into his dealership.
And hey, let me say this, Caddy. So it's definitely tongue in cheek. It's just more of a comedy this movie there. Okay. Maybe not that funny, but it was a comedy in the early 80s. Might even be 70s this one. Okay. A scene from that movie, though, they get the car in and it's the paint and fabric protection sorry, been fitted the car. Okay. And he says, I don't want the paint protection. Well, sorry, honor. He said, are you bastard? You always do that. I'm pretty sure it's that movie there. Okay. But it's movies like that that give us in the motor trade, that bad name. It's the Arthur daily image in minder who was a used car salesperson.
It's a for the newer, younger audience listeners, Matilda, Matilda, who was that Danny DeVito plays the sleazy car salesperson there. Guys, there's enough stereotypes about the motor trade in and in selling the movies that people buy into. And I could have say, honestly, I believe more customers were ever like us than what a salesperson will. You know, there's an old phrase, buyers are liars. How do you tell when a customer's lying? The ellipse are moving. I would argue that's because we invite the lie and our questions, we ask almost did that. But listen, there's some of the movies. Please go and have a look at all of them. Okay. They're entertainment, bit of fun. Okay.
But what are some of the movies they really recommend on the right way to do things? Well, guys, I'm going to three that I heard you just go and listen to this weekend. If you want to some, I don't know, upbeat, feeling good. Okay. Or if you're new to the industry. First one's the pursuit of happiness. This is Will Smith. It depicts Chris Gardner. Again, another broker. Okay. There's some of these movies about selling stocks and shares, isn't it? So Will Smith or Chris Gardner, okay, it's a real story about the struggling salesperson who just wants to provide for his family. Okay. He tries on the side to buy these medical things. I don't know.
It's a bone density scanner. I think it is. He's struggling to sell these bone density scanners to doctor to doctor in hospitals. His wife leaves him. He's stuck looking after his son. Okay. Because his son is like, hey, any parent, listen to this. You know that our children are so, so important to us there. Okay. And he loses the house. He can't pay the rent. He has to sleep with his son in a subway toilets. There's one scene and move with a rip your heart out where a janitor is trying to get in there. He's in there crying, holding onto his son because he's got nowhere else to go. Okay. There's an overnight shelter he was going to be had to get to the shelter before a certain time.
If not, they couldn't go into the shelter. Okay. And his son had to go in the shelter with the ladies on the side breaking his heart there. Okay. He walks past a guy driving a Ferrari, a Ferrari 308. Actually, it was a Magnum PI Ferrari again showing my age there. He says, man, I only got two questions for you. What do you do for a living and how do you do it? And he said, hey, I'm a stockbroker working here. I actually got my license through blah, blah, that's the seed of, ah, that's what I'm going to do. I'm actually going to go and be a stockbroker. So Chris goes on to study the exams.
Okay. He has to do an internship where hopefully at the end of it, he gets a job as a stockbroker. But what a stole from that movie is two things. In that movie there, he works out. It's selling is a numbers game. He's in competition with the other people who want this prestigious job. Okay. And he notices they're at the water machine talking all the time. He decides not to drink as much coffee there. So he didn't have to go to the toilet. And that way he could dial more. He decided to put something on his phone. So when he hung up, he could dial the next number as quick as he possibly can. Because he worked out on the numbers.
If he could do X number calls an hour X number hours in a week X number weeks in this period there, that's number calls he could get to. From those number calls, he could get the number appointments he could get to. Okay. Again, there's a never give up attitude there. There's a guy he goes and sees on a Sunday and wants to talk about pensions. I think for this guy's company, one of the rich guys that he wants to sell to. The guy takes him to the game. He builds a great relationship with this guy watching a football NFL game. Okay. Chris keeps on talking about let's sell yourself, sell your stuff. And the guy says, hey, Sunday, Chris, we'll talk about through the week.
Chris understands he's right. He just builds relationships. And he speaks to the guy that week and gets the sale there. He's an intelligent guy. He works out a Rubik's Cube within, I don't know, a taxi ride from some man San Francisco to somewhere else there. Okay. Oh, here's something on the side. Will Smith actually learned how to solve the Rubik's Cube himself for that scene in the movie went, wow, I had a Rubik's Cube as a kid. I could never work it out. After that movie, I googled how to solve a Rubik's Cube worked out because there's so much stuff on the internet nowadays that actually working out a Rubik's Cube is just an algorithm.
Okay. I learned the algorithm. I was nowhere near as quick as what Will Smith was, but I could get it down to about four to five minutes. I could work out a Rubik's Cube, not through genius, but process, process, process. You see the Rubik's Cube, I tried to work out without a process. I just couldn't do it. Once someone showed me the process, because I'm not smart enough to work it out and they showed me the algorithm, he has step one, step two, step three. This is how you hold it. Actually, I could get it down to four minutes probably easily. I don't know if I could do that now, but I think if you get back there, fall in the process there.
But also, in there, there's a scene where his son wants to be a basketball player. He wants to play for, I don't know, some basketball team. He's here or there. The son's probably about eight to 10 years old. I think something like that there. He said, I'm going to be a basketball player, dad. That's what I want to be. His dad said, well, probably well. What do you mean? He said, you know what? If genetics got anything to do it, you probably won't, because you'll be my height and you won't have the height for basketball. So you're probably not going to be a basketball player. So let's get used to it. See the kid, heartbroken, picks his ball up, puts in his bag of possessions.
There's only one shopping bag of possessions he's got. He puts it in there, heartbroken. And Chris turns around, looks his son and says, never let anyone tell you, never, including me, tell you you can't do something. If you want something life, you go and get it, period. Listen, I love that movie because I was very fortunate to see the real Chris Gardner at the National Automotive Dealers Association. He talks about the real story. When you go and listen to some of these people's real stories, it's better than the movie sometimes. What he actually went through, what he actually did. And Chris Gardner is that success today. And a great movie. If you want to learn about selling, really good.
Next one, I'm going to go for Jeremy Gwire, Tom Cruise. Okay. You had me at Hello, you know, the punchline at the end of it. Okay, so listen, Tom Cruise is a sports agent. And what flips up all the time is Tom Cruise's mentor. And what I love about this, Tom Cruise's mentor comes on all the time and gives advice and tips all the time. This must be some guy that he worked with years ago. They don't even refer to him in the movie that much. He just comes up with the play in the scenes that has always good advice there. You see, Jeremy Gwire, okay, oh, Jerry, he was taught the right approach early on.
He was taught how to do things. And I take it from that, that the skills that we learn in the motor trade, good and bad, often formed in the first 90 days. Okay, who's teaching our salespeople, our service advisors in the first 90 days? Is it your five car friend? You know, the salesperson that has time. And is he the person you really want to teach a new salesperson? Maybe not. He's five car friends because he's not putting the work load in the effort, the blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So anyway, Jeremy Gwire keeps going back to these scenes there. He talks about, okay, looking after people. There's a scene there. Show me the money.
Show me the money on one of these clients. Just show me the money. Help me to help you. Okay, there's some great lines in that. But the idea is there, look after your customer. Look after your customer. Put yourself in the customer's shoes. You see, the company who's working with was talking about more clients, bigger, bigger, bigger. Don't take it the wrong way. Manage this list of this. Yes, of course, we want growth there. But it's the right sort of growth. Because actually, you get more clients. You have to put clients back in for the process all the time because as many are going to drop off. He talks about looking after people. And when he looks after people, the guy gets this final gig that he's meant to get at the end, he gets a huge contract.
And then other people start coming ahead. Okay, that's Jeremy Gwire. But now, and again, lots of people go and say, Oh, there's another great one for you. I'm going to go down to joy. Joy based on a true story. Anything based on a true story, I kind of gravitate to that more, I suppose. Having said that, that's a load of garbage. I love the Star Wars original trilogy. And as we know, that's of course a true story based on fact. Okay, but anyway, this is joy. It's based on a lady, real lady, Joy man, you know, I think it is. I'm not sure if that's her name. Again, you'll be yelling at the radio at the moment, okay, or podcast or phone, wherever you listen to this saying, that's not her.
This is the lady that really probably emphasized info commercials. Okay, it's the struggling. It's the rag to riches type of approach there. Okay, and Joy, she develops a mop and it's a mop that you don't have to wring out into a bucket and cut hands with glass and stuff like that there. It's self wrings out and she makes this thing. She patents it and she tries to sell it through one of these shopping centers. Again, everyone's telling it, no, no, no. There's a bit on the air where one of these hosts goes into a sales mode trying to sell this mop. And of course, you can see that none of it is selling. Okay, and she's saying, listen, the downside is this person who's presenting it, their action actor, they've never mopped a floor in their life, someone else does it for them.
They don't know what it's like. She's not selling it to the right audience. Okay, let me have a go. And very reluctantly, I don't know who the producer is in this one. It's a famous guy. He's in the hangover, whatever his name is. Okay, he sees this and he takes a punt. He says, okay, let's put the presenter of this on the TV show. So they make her up, she put a dress on and all the makeup and all that. And she says, no, I need to be authentic. I need to be authentic. She puts her own clothes on there. Okay, she talks to the audience with empathy. And if you want to look at the sales process, if you're talking about features, advantages and benefits, the actual first presenter was going through the features of this mop.
No one was interested in it. What actually joy does is, Jennifer Lawrence, she actually goes into, guys, you know, it's like with the glassy, cut the glass out on your hands there, because you put it there. And this is that and this is how I do that. You know, she's done it. She's been there. But more importantly, her audience knows she's been there. Of course, you can see instant sales on the QVC system, where it goes through there. And she ends up being a multimillionaire or probably billionaire or something like that there. What I love about that one there is being a great salesperson. It's putting yourself into the custom shoes and be authentic. Guys, you've got to be authentic.
Good to you. I had a guy on a training course. I won't tell you his name. Won't be fair. But this guy, lovely, lovely guy, is a Italian guy. And he was funny and charming. He was single, but he would say to the whole group how great he was on a Friday night in the bar. And he uses his accent. And he has all the patter. That's all the gift of the gab. I went, maybe it's the gift of the ears. Okay. But anyway, asked the training course. He was, I don't want to say struggling, but he wasn't selling his me cars as he probably should do. And I watched him. This particular dealer group, they have that mezzanine where we do the training.
I could see down into the showroom. I could see him with a customer. And he was going into it. Yes, certainly sir. If you'd like to come this way, so if we could do that, I'd love to proceed. And he's doing exactly what he thought a salesperson in a very high end prestige dealership wanted. I seen him there. I said, boy, come up here. I said, you're really good at the ladies. If you say you are, so I do it right. Skip me. So does that, how you talk to people on Friday night? No. What do you do then? So cheeky, aren't I? So why aren't you cheeky self when you're with a customer? So that's not what I'd expect.
It might surprise you. Be yourself. Be authentic and be yourself because people buy people. And actually, to get people to buy people, people buy authenticity. They really do. So actually, don't put that suit on and pretend to be something you're not. Be yourself. Enjoy. If you want to have a good way of looking at the difference between features and advantages and benefits, the way she presents the product is absolutely brilliant on that one. So listen, go and have a look at joy. Now, one of the last movies I'm going to leave you with on selling is the original Rocky. After the Rocky movies, sorry, Silversto. They start going off a little bit. They really do.
But the original Rocky movie, I love it. And you might say, Hey, Skip, what the hell is that got to do with selling cars? Well, nothing. Don't punch a customer. Don't threaten a punch a customer. Okay. Don't buy the car or something like that. But actually, what I get from that movie is not the movie. It's the real story behind the movie. And if you've been on a sales fitness program, you know, I'll talk about this house. So this alone wrote that movie himself. So that's just alone. Okay. He was Rocky. Okay. Please, I've talked about this on the podcast before, go and find it there. And there's a situation where he was broke. He had to sell his dog to pay for food for his family.
He finally gets this script, which he wrote in something like 72 hours, like a man possessed. He was at the library to stay warm because he was unemployed. He'd done some bit movies where he'd been beat up. Okay. He spoke like because he had one side of his face was down. He doesn't look like a traditional Hollywood actor at all. Okay. He writes this movie because he reads a movie about a real guy, good Rocky in the library. He writes it from start to vision. It's such a short period of time. He sells it to all tries to sell it to lots of movie production companies. And they ends up being a bidding war. Someone likes it, offers him something like 30,000.
He says, yes, brilliant. When you take it, of course you would, I would as well, if he's worried about how to feed his family. And of course, that's the Sloan he took as well. He said, oh, there's one caveat though. I'm Rocky. They said, no, no, no, no. We've got someone else to play it. Someone Ryan, someone's going to play it. Okay. Except no, no, no, you don't understand. I'm Rocky. No, if I'm not Rocky, you don't have it. Someone else gets involved. A bidding war happens. Okay. He gets the situation where he's offered. I've seen the amount of money for the script because it was a great script. Okay. They were going to put lots of money behind it.
Okay. I don't know the numbers. Okay. It's going to go and put it into chat. She'll tell you the exact numbers and all that. But something like 30,000. Okay. He said, yeah, fine. I'll take it. No problem. You can have it. But I'm Rocky. This studio boss in exasperation said, okay, if you want to be Rocky, okay, I'll tell you what we're going to do is we won't pay you that amount. We're going to pay you $30,000. And the budget's only going to be a million dollars. We're not going to get all these big actors in that. Did you want that then? He said, done. But the smart thing he did, it said, oh, and by the way, I want 5% of all the royalties the Rocky ever makes for the rest of my life.
Again, I don't know if they're the exact numbers. And I'll worry how these stories have been embellished. In fact, if you go and Google this, this great YouTube video, we talks about the story himself. Okay. He goes and buys his dog back once he's got the money. That's how much he loves that dog. And by the way, the dog is the same dog that's in the movie. Is it Boston or something like that? Okay. He has to employ his family. Okay. In the movie. So he's got his family and friends in the movie because they couldn't afford for actors. Okay. There's a final scene where they didn't have time to film it. Okay. I love this.
It's the scene where he's sitting on the bed. Speaking of Adrian, just be Adrian, just before the fight. It's the scene where he says, all the one to do is go the distance. I just want to go the distance because no one's ever gone the distance with a polycree. If I could just do that, I'd be happy. Okay. That scene almost encapsulates the whole movie. Okay. And what I love about it, it's actually Sylvester Sloan, own personal fight. That movie's got nothing to do with fighting, of course, as, but it's actually never give up, never give up. And that for me, it's the key to selling, never give up, never give up, never give up.
Guys, that about doesn't. Now, I know you're going to talk about lots of different movies and I, listen, messages. Okay. Please go and subscribe to this podcast and say, what about this movie? What about the movie? I don't know if you've seen it. This is just my ramblings of some of the movies I've seen. Okay. And remember, if you're brand new to the motor trade, there's more than just the Wolf of Wall Street. Okay. There's lots of good inspiration to get out there. Anyway, that about does it for this podcast. And let's talk to you next Thursday. 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 Bowkett, food linked in. Thank you.
