Maybe a controversial one, but we don’t believe that test drives work. Demonstration Drives work – you demonstrate the right feature, to the right customer at the right time.
Think about it, no one enjoys a test. The customer doesn’t want to feel like they are on their driving test.
We discuss how to optimise you demonstration drives, how to make the customer feel comfortable and when to stop talking.
Here are the highlights:
{01:41} Right Feature, Right Customer, Right Time
{02:50} Can you sell a car without it?
{07:04} Who should drive first?
{08:36} Demonstrate features
{09:14} Car, people, car, people
{17:33} Stop talking
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 in 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. Hey, it's time for another episode of Selling in the Motor Trade Podcast. This again is one of those episodes that I really hope you do share with all your sales people. This one is sharing the tips and ideas on how to sell more cards this time. And it might be controversial to start with. Maybe the title, Drag You In. But I don't believe test drives work in the... That's right. I really don't believe test drives work anymore. In fact, I've got to say I don't think test drives ever worked. Now hold on, let me explain before you switch off. I do believe demonstration drives work though. Now of course that's a play on word, but what I believe we need to do is we need to demonstrate the right feature, the right customer at the right time. You see a test drive is when someone's testing the car. Do you want to test the car? Mr or Mrs. Customer. Okay, sure, they might want to test the car. But actually they might want to test it after they've bought it. What we want to do is we want to demonstrate the right feature to the right customer at the right time. You see the purpose of a demonstration drive is to raise the customer's desire in the product or the service. Okay, now of course the product is the car in our world. Okay. And this thing goes out to a few people over the years. But last one is Michael Bryan. Bryan works for the Braille Group and he runs a Nissan dealership in... Oh, Bryan, you're sending me a message. I got that wrong. I believe it's altering them. Okay, it might not be altering them. It might be a stock book. He said, hey Simon, when I was talking about this point on a management training course recently, he said, even the word test. Actually, that won't flag up on people's subconscious mind back when they had tests at school. Did you like tests at school? No, of course not. I don't think anyone really enjoyed tests. We don't want to put that thought back into someone's subconscious mind. Yeah, I think you've got a very, very good point there, Bryan. Okay. But what we want to do is demonstrate the right feature for the right customer at the right time. Can you actually sell a car without a demonstration drive? Keep the bottom of the bottle. We all have. Okay, after COVID, if you didn't, you would have starved. But actually, isn't it so much easier when you do that demonstration drive? Is it so much easier when we raise the customers' desire in the car? Now, again, this is not going to be a full training course on how to do a demonstration drive because we cover that on our standard training. And I know a lot of that clients listen for this as well. You'll know exactly what we're doing. This is where we, the people who might not have us as your training provider or not gone through the sales fitness program or something like that. We haven't got time to do all of that bad. But a few things I want to point out on the demonstration drive. A demonstration drive is where you're demonstrating the right feature, the right customer, the right time. Your test drive might be where you jump to the car. You drive out 100, maybe 200 metres. The customer then drives the car from there. You as a salesperson or your salesperson, so go up to the roundabout, turn left. Go to the traffic lights. Go straight over the traffic lights. In fact, I was taught to go left, left, left, left, left. And we went to the customer to go left, left, left to make the all the turns nice and easy for them. Now, in America, Canada, you're going to be going right, right, right to make right hand turns a lot easier there. Do you feel like a, when you're doing that, do you feel like a driving instructor sometimes? Like they're going through the driving test. In fact, sometimes people say that feels like a driving test. Yeah, what I do though skipping, what I do is I say, it feels like a driving test. Yeah, it does. When I slap the dash go for the emergency break, guys, please don't do that. For two reasons, how comfortable did you feel on the driving test? You know, I put that thought back into their mind. Okay. How many other salespeople use that same silly joke? And what's the average customer think of car salespeople? Guys, the last survey on the trust survey, we're right down there with the politicians and the state agents and telly salespeople and lots of other people down there which we don't want to refresh people that we're just a cheesy sales person. We want to build a truck. And also, what do you think? Do you remember the first time driving a car, feeling a little bit like a driving instructor? Yeah. Okay. Actually, no, let me ask you this way. Do you remember the first time driving a car with, let's say, active lane departure warning system? This is a better way to describe it. So the car's got active lane departure warning system. Now, first time I drove the car for that, I thought the system was a little bit shy. Yeah, you're not in a way. You probably thought it was a bit shy as well. Now, if we thought it was a bit shy, what might your customer think? It's a bit shy. Did you just drive out a little bit or you just get the customer to an un-accompany demonstration drive? How many times have they come back? Now, I'm going back to sort of five, six years ago and say, oh, there's something wrong in that car. The car thing has got flat tie, keeps them pulling to the right or keeps them pulling to the left and you're like, ah, it's got the active lane departure warning system on it. That's all it was doing. Now, if we think it was a bit shy, your customer might think it's a bit shy. So actually, you might want to do a demonstration drive like this. Not one where you come out of your dealership and you go left, left, left, left. Try a demonstration drive where you drive out almost in a straight line from your dealership. Go and find a nice golf course car park midweek because they tend to be vacant. Some sort of beauty spot where you can stop the car and butterfly it. And the way out, I want you as a salesperson to drive the car first, to demonstrate it. Now always say things like, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Customer, I'm going to drive the car out. I just want to show you a few things along the way and then you can take it from there. Is that okay? Or here's a question for you. We've got husband and wife. The car is for the wife. We know that I'm going to drive the car first as a salesperson to demonstrate the car. Peter, I'm going to put beside me the cast of the wife. Are you going to put the wife beside you? Guys, I don't. I put who is for, so if it's for the wife, I put her in the back seats where she can see through to where I'm driving the car. So opposite. In America, Canada, okay, you're going to have her on the right hand side because you're off the left. Plus, people in the proper part of the world. I'm going to be on the right hand side of the car. So I'm going to put the wife behind me on the left hand back seat. Okay. And of course, I'm going to do that until a why. I'm going to say, hey, Miss Ramis is customer. Miss is customer. I'm going to drive the car out. I'll show you a few things along the way and you can take it from there. I'll put the husband right up the front just so when it comes to the hand over point, I've got to have been a wife in the front of the car, like they normally are. And I'm sitting out the back and allowing mental ownership to kick in. That's what I like to do with that way. And again, vice versa. If the car is for the husband, I'm going to put the husband behind me and the wife beside me. Now, of course, this could be husband or wife, business partner, business father, mates and any expert that turned up father and son, father and daughter, wife and wife, husband and husband. Okay. I'm going to put whoever the car is for behind me. So they can see what I'm doing. They can see where I'm adjusting the electronic adjustable steering column. They can see when it's linked up with the memory seats. So with the different keys when you jump in. So it's his car, her car, it automatically adjusts. They can see everything you're doing. Okay. But also in the rear vision mirror, I can actually maintain a little bit more eye contact. In fact, I can probably have a better eye type conversation with the potential owner of the car behind me in the rear vision mirror than I can with the person right beside me. Okay. So on the way out of this demonstration drive, I'm going to talk to you something about the car and something about the people, something about the car and something about the people. Now the modern car, there's almost too much stuff to talk about. So let's just take an active lane departure warning system. Are you doing this for a safety conscious customer? Okay. Not someone that's interested in the economy or reliability or settings of the car. So we might say, hey, Mr. and Mrs. safety conscious customer, this car has actually got the active lane departure warning system on it. Now I know it's active at the moment because there's a picture of a road in front of me and the two white lines are turning green. What that means is this camera, okay, behind the rear vision mirror. It's picked up on these two white lines on this dual carriage lane. Now Mr. and Mrs. safety conscious customer, I'm coming up to a road that's bending to the right. Okay. Now I'm going to take the hands off the steering wheel here for a second. Don't panic. I'm going to cover it. As I take my hands off the steering wheel, knows how the car starts tearing around the road. I'm going to put my hands back on the steering wheel because this system is so good. You've had to build in a warning to put your hands back on the steering wheel every 10 seconds or so. Now this car is not designed to drive the car. It's there to get you out of trouble before you're in trouble. Okay. Because we all know it's like when you get distracted with the kids in the back of the car. You say be quiet when mom and dad's driving the car. You look back and you're half a meter in the other lane. And for the grace of God, no one's there. The beauty of this car, if you do get distracted with the apple car play, the kids in the back of the car, the heated steering wheel settings. Okay. You do get distracted. Tell you what, when this car starts tearing back in the middle of the road, it's going to get your attention right back to where it needs to be. Now I've got to say I didn't like it to start with because I didn't realize Mr. and Mrs. Safety Conscious Customer. I was actually a center line hugger and the system started just keeping, I thought off the side of the road. In fact, it wasn't. It was just put me in the middle of the two lanes. How's doing it like this and demonstrated? Some of my customers, Mr. and Mrs. Safety Conscious Customer, they tell me they're outside line huggers and I think the system is turning them into the oncoming traffic. It's not, it's just put me in the middle of the two lanes. Okay. Now this system's saving so many lives, it's going to be lower on every car sold in the UK next year or in Europe next year. Of course in South Africa, Canada, America, wherever you are, that law might change state by state. Okay. But demonstrate that feature of product. I'm just telling it's got an active lane departure warning system. Now also, some of the things with that one, why did I pick on a road that was bending to the right in the UK, Australia? Yeah, that's right because this system, okay, you're getting it to save you in your customers okay. If it doesn't, it goes off onto the hard shoulder, okay, in America, of course swap it around. All right. Now also, I picked fond of that particular feature because it's a bit shy sometimes. You know and I know there's certain bits of roads that the white lines aren't visible enough and it doesn't work and sometimes it kicks in and kicks out and guys, let me tell you, there's nothing more scary than what's in a customer of front of the car. You've done your traditional test drive. You're sitting in the back and they're trying to see how the active lane departure warning system works, but you know you're on a road where it's not worked for fine. You can see from the back seat that actually between white lines have turned to amber. In fact, there's nothing more scary to be sitting in the back of a car. You get a customer who drives a London all the time and they want to know about the adaptive cruise control. You can see that's not set up properly and they're hurtling towards the back of the truck on a motorway at 85 miles an hour and they're waiting for the system slowing down and it's nothing if they haven't. They look properly. Did you demonstrate that right feature to the right customer right time? That's what we call a demonstration drive. By the way, how long should a demonstration drive be? This is kind of why I'm liking a straight out and straight back demonstration. That way you can lengthen and shorten the demonstration based on your customs. Let's be honest, real-world now. You drive out a customer that says, this is perfect. This is exactly what I've been looking for. I can. GTS, it's got the, it's all the green credentials I wanted. It's got all the trim that I really liked and the GTS doesn't look sensational. This is exactly the car I've been looking for. I'm going to be high time on the backs of the dealership. Sometimes though, you might say, hey, you've driven the car far enough. No, I haven't. That's your cue to take them for a longer demonstration drive. But here's something I heard from automotive management use car conference. How long was average new car in demonstration drive? Guys, it was 11 minutes. How long was average used car demonstration drive? That was seven and a half minutes. Actually, the weird thing, I think that's the wrong way around. I might buy a new product without demonstrating or testing it to start with. The used one, I probably want to test that more. Compare that to how long does it take for someone to choose a pair of glasses at spec savings? Do you know how to choose a pair of glasses at spec savings? On average, it was 48 minutes. I said, think that through. A pair of glasses, what are they? Are they 200, 300 euros, something like that? Compare that to the 50, 60, $70,000 car that customers buying. And then someone takes 48 minutes to choose a pair of glasses. And we're asking to make that decision on that car in seven and a half minutes. By the way, that's on average. Some of them were a lot shorter than that. So that's where I urge you. And listen, I start off talking about the words here. Let's not do a test drive, but let's do a demonstration drive. Now, let's demonstrate the right feature to the right customer at the right time. Okay? And listen, when you're driving out car people, car people, it's the conversation. You might then talk about, hey, Mr. and Mr. Safety Conscious Customer, you're here on a Wednesday, but you're on a day off or holidays at the moment. Day off, half your luck. What are you doing for a living? Are you going to have them in the week? Oh, you're a school teacher. Ah, big kids, little kids. Now, of course, you may have had that. Oh, should have had some of that qualifying information before this stage. But you know, in the real world, maybe you haven't to maybe continue to talk about how you know they're a school teacher and what's the school either, what subjects do they teach, then something else about the car. And guys, think about all the things that we can demonstrate in the modern car. For matrix head lighting, your adaptive cruise control, the electronic power steering, which is speeds sensitive. So it's nice and light when you come into a tight parking situation. There's a speed increases on this true or character way. It actually stiffens up for such a small car. It feels a little bit more stable at motorway speeds. So on that long journey to Edinburgh, you're going to feel a little bit more comfortable and relaxed because you're not having to fight the car all the way up to Edinburgh as you would in another smaller car. There's just almost too much stuff to talk about on the car on the way out. So car people, car people, car people. Let's stop the car and then butterfly it. Do the rest of your presentation. Try and get all your selling out of the way before they start driving the car. And when they start the drive in the car, what you want to do is just be quiet. When they're driving the car, there's magic and wrapping the metal around people. There's absolute magic. This is where their desire really gets raised. And what I want to do then is when they're driving the car, hey Mr. and Mr. Safety, come just customer, I'm just going to be a bit quiet. I let the car sell itself. Feel free to ask any questions. So we want to do that. Get all the selling out of the way. Don't be sitting there, harping on when the customers driving their car. In fact, I'll tell you what I'm going to do is I want to talk more about when we stop the car at this place, how you present the car. And let's talk about some of the trial, close questions that we do on the way back. So anyway, this one was more about the words there. Okay. Don't test drive the car. They don't work anymore. Now, by the way, I'm fighting against the industry now. Your OEM, your manufacturer, your dealer principles, your group calls them test drives, test drives. If you look at any of your diary systems out there, deal with contact advantage, inquiry max, they also test drives, test drives, test drives. Okay. Yes, I know it's a plain words. Of course test drives work, but make sure we remind ourselves people, if you're a sales person, listen this, a test drive is not just sitting there. I'll let my customer test the car. Let's demonstrate the right feature, the right customer at the right time. Oh, by the way, I forgot this one. Here's one of the reasons why I started doing this. It happened for me in the, I think it was wonderful. Listen, don't quote me on this, but I'm going back right to the start of Simcoe back in 2000. And a sales person was very upset with the customer who gave them a bad customer satisfaction index score. You know, like the net promoter scores that you're given in your, your manufacturer gives you or whatever it's called in your brand Toyota CCS. Okay. And it was upset because the customer said on the survey, it's an email comes from where you're off to the test drive as part of the sales process. And the customer said, no, and this guy, Mikey's name was said, I did, actually, we went for a test drive. I mean, she's mad. We went for a test drive. Now, of course, there were other parts of this survey. The customer wasn't entirely happy with. But I thought, listen, hold on. Listen, she's telling you that she's not done it. Okay. I know you call on the customer live, but listen, let's look at these other things. It got really heated. I said, Alison, I'm going to find the customer. Okay. I want to know firsthand what's actually happened to you. So phone the customer and it's talked about, ah, the test drive. And she said, Oh, yeah, when I bought the car, we took it for a drive then. So when I picked the car up, Mike never gave me a chance to test it before I bought it. I thought, Oh, let's just think that through. When does the average customer think they bought a car compared to a salesperson? If you speak to me and any salesperson about when did you sell the car? Isn't always when we get the order for we get the deposit. We get the agreement. Isn't that when you get the buzz? What's she doing? You ask any customer, when did you buy the car? Did actually say it's when they signed the paperwork? No, it's when they pay the remaining the balance, sign the finance and documents or most of the time it's when they pick the car up. Okay. In fact, um, again, years ago, I bought a car from Bristol, one of their clients and it was from a wife. And this was an RX 400. We bought the car. It was through a client. We paid the money. But I just couldn't get there for a while to pick the car up. And when I say, well, it must have been two weeks, three weeks, some of that because we spend a lot of time traveling with work and it was just hard work to get there. I remember, and always saying, when are we going to buy my car? When are we going to buy my car? And I can remember this conversation. So well, and you bought it. We just got to pick it up. And of course she's thinking like a customer. When did you buy the car is when she picked the car up. So again, this word test drive and demonstration. I actually listen, I would love to one of our clients. If you're one of ours now, let's bar the word test drive and the school on demonstration drives. You're going to be fighting against your manufacturer and everyone else there. But it's the philosophies more important. Let's demonstrate the right feature, the right customer at the right time. Because they still work. I think they'll always work because bums and seats sell cars. Anyway, guys, that about doing for now. I'll tell you what we're going to do next time. Let's talk about some of the key things you can do on that demonstration drive. And in fact, we might talk about some of the trial for those questions and mental ownership questions we can ask right at the end of it without representing one of our training courses. Anyway, I hope this is that some good ideas for you. I hope you can share this with all your sounds people. I know lots of you guys do. And listen, what you do is if I keep subscribing to this, it really does help to get more and more people to this out as many people we can in the motor trade. Really appreciate it. I'll see you next time. That just leaves me to say that all details of this episode and other episodes on the selling in the motor trade can be found on our website simcotraining.co.uk. Go there to get a copy of our book, Words That Sell Cars. Go there to sign up to a free trial of our sales fitness online sales training program. Easiest way to get hold of me is Simon Bowkett, food linked in. Thank you.
