In this week’s episode I am chatting again with Elise Kephart (if you’ve not listened to episodes 1&2 then please check them out!)
We discuss how Elise got started, how becoming a mum changed her outlook, and how the concept of TEAM is so important in this business.
Here are the highlights:
(01:43) Ok,now I’m going to be a mum!
(04:32) Its not a cake-walk
(07:08) A real eye-opener
(10:01) That team mentality
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 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 inspiring 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. Now, some of you probably already know me as Skippy. I will start by saying thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Listen, this always interests me. How does someone like us get into running out sales training company? I love speaking to David Martin's of the world and great, great speakers. I've had the privilege of interviewing. Why is it? You go from selling cars, making good, good money. You must have been making great money where you are. What was your motivation to get into the training world? The biggest motivation I would say is probably my transition. I'm becoming a mom. I look at it now, especially through the last few changes. It's usually very difficult and I'm a mom of two now. It's very difficult in just in general, car business or not, but especially in the car business retail. It's inner competition me, but you want to be at the store all day every day. You're at the store and I'm just going to sundown all day every day, except for every other Sunday or Sundays if the store is closed. I'm becoming a mom and also at the same time, I found out I was pregnant with my now six year old, my youngest daughter a week after I basically started on my own. It was like, oh, you start your own company and now you're going to be a mom. Oh, wow. You do everything at once. Wow. I'm very thankful. Part of it was, I mean, that was a large part of it was doing something that I knew was like, okay, this is kind of like a big deal, right? And if you, I remember the mindset for me to being like, all right, well, what if it doesn't work out? What if it gets really hard? What if, oh, gosh, Golly, what if in the year 2021 there's an inventory shortage? Like, what if it's like, right. And me having and saying, what's going to be your plan be at least if like you just got, you just got to like you have to shut down. What are you, what are you going to do? And it had to be this mindset of like, no, there's no option B. Like there, there's no option B and so I made that decision and then like, bam, I got hit like a week later with, oh, I'm pregnant with my second daughter. So, but the biggest motivation. That was a large part of it was I wanted a big, big believer of freedom and as a mom or as a parent, you know, I have really over the, especially over the last few years looked at my kids are only kids once, you know, like, and beyond, I think this is like beyond anything, like any, any like, high that, that I, that we can get from like closing a deal or selling or being in front of a hundred dealers and making a live phone call and all those, all those things like, I guess I look at it like for my girl, for my daughters, like they just they're on their mom and they're one day going to be going to be like grownups, right? And it's, it's other big competitive moms, like part of me where I just want to make that, you know, these years like the best for them. Yeah, especially. It goes, I've got a 19 year old now and he's just got off to do his commercial pilot's license for 12 months in a different country. And it's, it's like going off to university. He's 19, but he's still my baby, right? Yeah. It's great. That's what we do it for. We do it for our kids, don't we? Yeah. It's, I mean, it's that and I, I just remember, I mean, because I, when I left retail, I didn't, I didn't start on my own right away. You know, I worked for a automotive phone training company. Okay. And for a year, a year before I branch out on my own and, and the reasoning for that is all the safe reasons, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's going to be like it, it's, it's, it's a safe way to go. But I think it's a, that's why anybody, I respect so greatly, like studying entrepreneurs and business owners. And I feel like there's this thing like if you know, you know, right? Where it's not always a cakewalk. Right. Like good thing for the car. I think transitioning from the car business, the, the car business in general is not a cake walking. You got, you learn, you get the skin real quick. So that's true. That sort of like builds you up into it. I don't make you though. We get all the time, our trainers and I had it last week. Someone said, I love your job. How nice is that? You swung into the dealership at nine, you swung out at five thirty. Okay. You don't have a monthly target to worry about. What a great job. Not realizing. I'm then trying to catch a plane then to go to somewhere else, get to a hotel at eleven thirty at night. Yeah. I suppose the grass is always greener. Now don't take the wrong way. I love what I do. Yeah. I'll change it for the world. But it's not a cakewalk. It's a, you've got to love this job to want to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's the typical, tell me about your company then and what's a typical work and week work look like for you. Are you on the road all the time as well? Do you do lots of stuff remotely? Are you digital training then? Oh, yeah. So I do about fifty fifty. So I have my daughters every other week. And so when I don't have them, I've been, I've been, I, that's when I do my, my travels. So more recently I came back from Texas. I have a dealer group in California and Washington or Seattle that I've been going to, that I've been doing onsite with consistently. So the weeks that I have that I am not traveling or have my girls, I do what's called aftercare, which are Zoom sessions, really diving into leads as well as with some dealers. I've been sort of tapping into figuring out if, if a menu item or something that I could offer would be to my own remote BDC team. So I guess the sense of like, and train your people to do it. But if it's, if the struggle bus is there and it's not improving, then let me just do it for you. Right. But I wouldn't be able to do that solo handed, but so much of my system now is well, so so hugely scalable, even, even very much automated depending on the CRM. So really this skill set like becomes on people under, like knowing how to close on the phone, close an appointment on the phone. Because a lot of my system now is like automated to get you that phone call, right? To, to bring a text to a, to a live phone call or to bring an email to getting their phone number and texting. Like, so it still takes the labor, I guess, or the skill set of somebody taking a phone call not botching it, right? But so I've been doing that as well. Like, but selfishly, whether I'm training on it and, and we're doing a Zoom session or an aftercare session. And I'm playing this role of Elise Timberlake, right? We're, we're making the call still like every day. It's selfishly like it keeps me, gives me understanding what's going on. It keeps me, like for, for a real internet sales rep or VDC rep, especially for the store that where I've, where I've worked their leads, like consistently for three, three, four weeks, right? That's a role I open her on like what, what is out there and really happening, especially in this time that we're out right now, we're like inventory's coming back. Yeah. I mean, I was just at a store and like, I mean, it wasn't like 2019 again, but it kind of was like it was the first time where I was like, Oh, this, there's like the days of my go-trib shortage that like two cars on the lot, like, yeah. Well, I just think so many salespeople have been used to this low hanging fruit because let's be honest, you didn't have to be a great salesperson. I've lost two years. I mean, the whole sales process was, do you want to, if not, I've got three other people on it. Right. And people could get away with that. And with the alpha dominant like industry that can, that, that was like such a, I mean, I would see it in groups all the time. Just very cocky, right? Yeah. So call us off closers and it's like, bro, you ain't got to do anything like right now. You're just, that's not closing. That's just like, do you want it or not? But actually, right. Transact, very transactional. So easy when we haven't got semiconductors and wiring looms, but you know what, that taps getting turned off. And I do believe these manufacturers will do what they've always done. They'll start over spline. They'll start jamming it into us. We're going to get, we're already seeing people now and more. Come on, what's your best price? Okay. All the stuff that was back 2019, it's happening now. And what's your advice to the dealer who's got a wholesale team who is this too harsh to say, forgot how to sell or actually, at least never knew how to sell. What if someone started in 1920, they never learned how to sell. What's your advice to the dealer? It's got a whole team of those guys. I very much so looked at a dealership. If you look at your dealership like you are a professional sports team, right? If you're a professional sports team, then, you know, and you want to get your championship ring, like there's so many components of what it's going to take to get there. But a large part of it is internally, I feel like fixing whatever necessary communication or for everybody to be on that same, like it's almost like a team high as I call it, where like you realize everybody is on the same page, right? There's no Tony Hawks is I call it on it, where people trying to like just look out for themselves or skate for a half deal, right? You work out those cultural problems, I guess, and have a have your team that wants to win, right? Together. And once you have your people down, right? Once you have your people down, then it's the process. It's the pro it's showing up to the practices, right? It's doing every all the work that it takes to get you to that championship ring. And so and so much of that is think through the last few years, maybe some people said, we don't need training because we got it, right? Now it's going to come down to skillset, right? And skillset doesn't doesn't skillset isn't something that I've always that I've looked at that just happens like, all right, I take a course on it and you were like a it's it's it's constant. It's why I'm still like working leads every single day as a least timber lake because and even when I listen to calls like from three years ago, four years, the five years, it makes me realize that it's because I take calls every single day. That helps me stay that helps me get better, right? It helps me get it down to where I can, you know, I always want to be doing those blind calls because that just proves that it's a shop. Yeah, that you're, you know, if they're going to give you, I think the quote is if they give you five hours to chop a tree, sharpen your blade for four or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I need to say that all details of this episode and other episodes on the selling in the motor trade can be found on our website symco training.co.uk. Go there to get a copy of our book, Words That Sell Cars. Go there to sign up to a free trial of our sales fitness online sales training program. Easiest way to get hold of me is Simon Bowkett through LinkedIn. Thank you.
