We are delighted to have Joe St John, Chief Customer Officer from AutoFi, with us for the next two episodes.
His background is automotive, his parents worked in dealerships, and he has been a salesman, manager and trainer in the trade for a number of years.
Joe was our favourite speaker from this year’s NADA conference in New Orleans. He is so passionate about the customer experience and how we transition from their digital research to the buying process on site. As he says time kills deals, so let’s focus on making it as smooth and efficient as possible.
Here are the highlights:
{02:25} Joe’s background
{06:55} Time Kills Deals
{10:25} Fastest growing tech company since 2010
{13:05} The we purchase has changed
{15:00} Customer digital research
{17:14} Start process in the dealership where the customer is
{19.50} Too much time taken to stack the deal lets the customer shop elsewhere
{25:07} Disconnect between digital research and selling in the showroom
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. Today I'm going to bring you probably one of my favorite speakers at the National Automotive Dealers Association Conference. Now I've first seen this man, it must have been San Francisco many years ago.
A good friend and a fan of the podcast, Mr. Brian Milstead, said, you've got to come and see Joe. Joe was in one of these breakout sessions. I walked up and he was talking about Jack Daniels was a mystery shop customer that he used. There was another guy called Jimmy Jameson or whatever. Then he proceeded to skull a whole pint of water or it was a bottle of water and throw it over and I went, wow, this is not what you normally see. The energy, he had the crowd going and I've been trying to get Joe on this podcast for a long time. So it's my pleasure today's probably one of my favorite speakers at the conference.
Joe St. John, welcome to the podcast. How you say? First off, Simon, thank you for those kind words. You go to so many sessions, you hear so many speakers, and to hear your praise means a ton to me. You know so much about this industry on really a global level and you're really deeply in the belly of the beast and for you to go to the things to get value from what I'm saying, I find like unbelievably inspiring and helpful. I will, I will comment. I chugged that water because I completely lost my voice because I don't like 10 sessions and I was like, oh, okay, hang on. And then I chugged the water through and then I was like, I'm back.
I can talk now. And the cheer you got was it? Did I get right? San Francisco, was it? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. People started chanting like, chug, chug. I was like, all right, I'm doing this. Let's go. It was really fun for me. So, Joe, for the people on this side of the pond who might not know you, can you give us a quick rundown of your background? How did you get started the motor train? Yeah, I am. So I'm the chief customer officer at the company called Auto-Fi. We really are. I should have mentioned that as part of the introduction. So we, we really automate a lot of the processing and the dealership to really speed up the time to transaction.
And we really work to unite the online experience with the inshow room experience. I thought I would auto-Fi in a very circuit, like, like path, right? I started selling cars in 1998. I was a automotive retail sales person. I was a finance manager, finance director, sales manager, general sales manager and general manager. So I ran a couple of Toyota stores. And my background is primarily retail. So I didn't always look like a washed up extra from Sons of Anarchy. I used to wear a suit and tie. I worked at a dealership. My hair was parted and combed. And I look at the world, I think through the eyes of someone that's trying to build a financial statement and a dealership to maximize my net to sales and to dry volume to a level where I'm hitting all the little levers that are important to running a dealership.
And so when I think about things in this business, I'm always thinking about it through the lens. I still feel like I should be sitting on a desk somewhere working cardials in the middle of stuff. And so I got out of the retail business. Can I get backwards though, Chuck? Am I right? I'm thinking it's even before that. Wasn't your mother a car sales person? Why are you growing? My mom was the first female service advisor for Chevy in the country in the 1980s. She's full of what we like called piss and vinegar. Like she's a tough lady. She's unbelievable. She like, she gave me like weird advice growing up because she was a car person, right?
My dad who was my stepdad that I call my dad, he was an F and I manager at the dealership. So you've all kind of seen that. Yeah. They're still married to this day. In fact, for their like, I think it was 30th and 35th. One of the big wedding universities, my mom tracked down a front license plate from the dealership they worked at. And it's hanging above like the door to their house. So I come from a long line of car people. And so yeah, it was never what I thought it was going to do. I went to school for basically computers and accounting. I won a national scholarship. I got a master's in accounting, which obviously I've used none of.
And I graduated from graduate school, went back to the car business because I was making more money selling cars part time than I would have being a full time accountant. And I then started kind of moving to the ranks in the retail business. I got out of the retail business with a shared friend of Brian Milstead Norris. I don't know if you've ever met Eric Frenchie Malone, but Eric is a mentor of mine. And he got me into the F and I world where I was actually didn't know that was the background. Eric's the man who flies planes. Yes. Yes. Eric is one of my he's like Brian. And Brian is one of my dearest friends last summer when I was on the road with my children traveling the country visiting dealers.
We literally went to like, you know, Delafiled, Wisconsin and had a fish fry with Brian and Jackie. And so yeah, so Frenchie got me as a trainer. So I trained salespeople sales managers and F and I managers with like first dealer resources and IAS with Eric Malone and I like I clean shave and parted hair suit and tie let's go. And that's why I know Brian Brian actually I have a picture of Brian training at my dealership when I was a sales manager. And so that's how and then I got connected with AutoFi through that and they recruited me at the very early stages to kind of be their auto industry expert and help understand how to align what we were doing from a tech perspective with an industry with a lot of deep knowledge because I've just basically lived in it my whole life.
Yeah. Okay. So this really separates the real motor traders from me. Do you remember the first car you sold? Yes. I hate to admit this. It was a Toyota Echo. I don't know if you have those in the UK. I know what it is in Australia. We have the Echo. We call it a Yaris over here. Yeah. It's so tiny. I when I sort of sell cars, the right we did this like ride and drive with Twitter because the Echo was new. So it was the only thing I knew about like as a car. So I was out there. Everybody that came in, I was showing a mecco. So like I literally was the most excited Echo salesperson in America.
They called me my first like two or three months Echo Joe because I was just selling echoes to anybody that would listen because I was excited about them because I've gone to the like Toyota training and it became like, oh, you guys are looking for an Avalon. Have you seen the Echo? This is like the cool literally. Yeah, it was not good. It was not good. Yeah, fair enough. So listen, this is a shameless plug for our first 90 day sales training program. Okay, we often say that the things people learn in the industry in the first three months, good and bad, lasting with the rest of their life. Okay. And I know I'm still doing things now that Tony Island taught me all those years ago when I started.
Is there anything today, Joe, that you learn in your first three months that you think says relevant for maybe someone who's just tuned in this podcast for the first time and starting the motor trade today as it was when you started. Yeah, I, the amount of lessons I learned selling cars, especially in those first 90 days are still informed the way that I operate in the world. I think that there are things that you learn selling in the motor trade that you can't learn anywhere else. And I think that it is a microcosm of really one of the last bastions of like real belly to belly sales and negotiation and all of those things. I would say the one that I still quote was one of the first things a sales manager yelled at me as I was like working a deal and I that was just fumbling around and I didn't have everything together.
And it's like, hurry up, son. Time kills deals. And that phrase is one that I still use today. And what we're doing in auto-fi and what I'm doing with an ADA dealer academy in all of those areas. I think that that fundamental truth and it's something that everybody says, right? Time kills deals like hurry up. Time kills deals. Yeah. That to me is a problem that still exists in our business that existed in 1998 when I was selling cars. The best sales people I see in the market are and I'm out there a lot are people that recognize that the more waiting a customer does, the more it decreases the probability that they close that customer and they buy a car and and the amount of gross that they keep.
And so everything that I feel like I'm oriented to now is how do we take out the dead steps in that process and really focus on driving efficiencies to empower salespeople to be their best, right? Like for me, I'm on a very personal mission. I want, I spend so much time with auto salespeople. They're just the best. Like I love them. Like the car business is the island of misfit toys. It's like, and people find their ways to this, they're very circuitous routes, right? And like they get here and it's an opportunity to like transform their lives. Like they can make an income that they couldn't have, like they can do all of these things.
And I think that what we as an industry owe them is information training, resources, technology that empowers them to do the best job possible to make the most, to find the most success that they can find in this industry. And it's why I'm out there at this stage at NADH. It's why I'm a guest instructor at NADH dealer academy, because I believe that's our side of the street. That's what we bring to them as new people in this business. People don't know auto fight. And Joe, I'm going to ask you to quickly run down what it is and how you guys help dealers there. But it's speeding up the process. It's stopping the back and forth and all that.
And I want to get into that, because there'll be a lot of people on this side of the pond. Or when you keep on saying, what if I won't know who they are and what they are there. Okay. If I can go back in time first, okay, some of the things that stuck out with me over the years is how the industry is changing. And some of the businesses that have really, really grown, some of the fastest growing companies there. And you mentioned, again, it might be San Francisco those years ago about the companies that have grown the fastest there. Do you remember the companies, the fastest growing companies over the last 10 years, 20 years.
So Simon, actually, I teach at NADH dealer academy. And this is the first quiz I give students. So if you're about to go to NADH dealer academy, you're going to get bonus points for knowing this. And I basically ask them, if you had a time machine and you could go back to 2010, and you had $1,000 and you could choose any of really the big five tech companies that have been the stories in America, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Netflix, who would you bet your $1,000 on? And I get a pretty distributed group guess. Most people lean towards Amazon. And I think I would numb up. Yeah, it's like, we're car people, we're stuck in a dealership all day.
We have plenty of money in my front porch looks like Christmas, right? Yeah. And so a lot of people pick Amazon and Amazon would be a really great one, right? The winner is actually Netflix at about a 69 X increase in that 1000. So you're $1,000 worth $69,000 now. The window, I have to invest it back in what year? Sorry. 2010. 2010. It's a trick question because I asked everybody, would you have bet that this stock outperformed all of them? And it's Domino's pizza. Domino's pizza would be an 83 X return on your $1,000 in 2010. Meaning if you put a thousand and Domino's in 2000, it's $83,000 today. And it'll ask everyone in the room, who here would like your dealership to be worth 83 X what it's worth right now?
And everybody raises their hands. And what I like to say, and I think I've heard you say this, is Domino's one of the fastest growing tech companies in America, right? Like, and they're still selling pizza that tastes the same that it tasted in 2010. There's not the best right? But it's pizza. And if you think about it, what Domino's introduced in 2010 was a thing that everybody calls pizza tracker. It was the ability to order a pizza, see when it's being made, see when it's being delivered, you've got like military grade satellite tracking technology, watching it come to your house. And it transformed the buying experience of a pizza. And the reason I love Domino's as an analogy is they're 93 franchise owned and 90% of the franchisees either started making pizzas or delivering pizzas.
What business does that sound like Simon? Art isn't it? Yeah. And so for me, I think that, well, why is it though? Okay, so it's kind of, we want to know where the guy is. Is it do we as humans need to know that? Why do you think that's grown so quickly? I think that it's because the way that you buy everything today is batshit crazy Simon. Like let's be clear. The way that you buy everything that you purchase today is so wildly different than it was in 2010. Right. Like think about you, like people don't go to the gym anymore. They race a bicycle in their bedroom. Yeah, it's people they've never met. Well, some crazy woman in spandex screams out into this soothing sounds of 90 sip pop.
You don't go to the grocery store. I was in a Walmart either. I have six kids under 10. I make good decisions. So I got a Walmart because that's what we could afford to buy to feed my giant family. And I feel like I was the only normal human in their shopping. Everyone else had like robot carts with sacks with numbers on them in a screen and they're buying groceries that are getting delivered to customers houses. You hit a button and deodorant shows up at your house. It used to be a couple of days. It could be today. Like that's how quickly the world changes. And so I think that we want to know and we want like, um, I love there's an influencer named Gary V.
Here's a link I saw one time a LinkedIn about the fact that blockbuster could have bought Netflix. Yes. And it was like a small, it was like $26 million. Don't quote me. That could be wrong. But it was like a little bitty-bitty deal. I think right about said and Netflix, so not even on our radar at the moment. Yes. Yeah. And they had their analysts get together and do a study of blockbuster. And what they did was they convinced themselves. This is what the city actually says if you read it, it's crazy. They're like customers love coming to a blockbuster. They love like holding the DVD cases and looking at the back of it. And they love, you know, like, like buying popcorn at the checkout, maybe running into a neighbor.
And Gary V said in the video that I thought was hilarious is that's not the experience I love. I love like laying in bed in my underwear and hitting a button. Like that's a great experience. And I think all of that combined is influencing the way that consumers interact with a dealership. And you see it in real time. If you're, you know, looking at the data, 92% of customers are starting that car buying journey online. You're spending on average, north of 14 hours staring at a screen doing research before they come into a dealership. Yet when they come into the dealership, they're running into a sales person. Well, you run a training company. How much are most dealers investing in preparing that salesperson to connect with that customer who's done 14 hours with the research before they show up to the dealership?
It's typically nothing. Right. And so I think that we have this disconnect. And I, Simon, I sold cars in the late 90s, early 2000s. And I can remember a day where I would go to the desk and be like, I've got a customer, let's work a deal. And my man's been like, what do you got? And I'm like, okay, I got a warning that they've been on the internet and everybody go, no, an internet customer. Like make this big deal about it. That's now all of our customers. Yes. But think what's missing in our industry is we have this bifurcation of digital and selling cars. Like it's literally digital marketing, digital retail, digital digital digital digital.
And then we do all these things to basically generate clicks and get customer information so that we can call and harass them. And then when they show up, we start them back and step one as if they've done no work before they got there. And I think that part of the reason that it's a three hour is because we're still holding on to this gospel of a road to the sale that doesn't actually align with the behavior of the customer. It aligns with an outdated model that was basically developed in the early 20th century. And so I think that there is still a lot of value in some of those steps, like driving the car, right?
Like there was a lot of values and the steps. But we basically tell the customer go do everything you can do before you get here. And then when you get here, don't worry, we're not going to use any of that. No, but how have we all done that on the government department? You go through the problem. Okay, I'm trying to get a visa or something I need a passport. Yeah, you need to speak to this department. And then you have to start again. Customers are done. The last figure over this side of the pond is 19 hours and 46 minutes. So 42, 19 hours and 42 minutes of research before they've walked in phone in or email the dealership.
They know more about the car than what we do. I don't I'm not saying that's right. That's just a fact. So why don't we then start from scratch? Okay, well, we got here anyway. So let's let's get a car trucker and SUV for a new car. You're looking for a used car. Exactly. Let's start with where you are up to, Mr. Customer. Okay. So is how far have you got along on the configurator? And that brings me on to this back and forth, back and forth, and Joe, I remember don't tell a customer what they want to we get what we want. You never do that. You laugh in there because you're told the same thing, right?
Like in which crazy is salespeople today, if they start selling cars at a dealership in America, at least they're probably told the same thing. Like that's what's wild to me is that like we still behave as if we're holding all the cards and the customer doesn't have any. And really the customer has all the cards now because they've got access to all the information they used to not have access to, right? And so we like customers are so empowered today that we act as if we behave in ways that like still assume a level of empowerment on our side and a level of low level empowerment on their side. And that dynamic is shifted. And I think it's causing a lot of that friction that's happening when you watch Simon, if you're ever to dealership, it's just spending time.
And I don't know if it's the same in Australia and the UK, but if you're in the US, customer gets back from the test drive, they sit down on the showroom and you just watch their body language change like this, right? Like you watch this wall go up. And what's wild to me is, I'll have to do this question. I don't know if in the UK, but in the US, well, I'll ask you if it's in the UK and the UK, do cardials happen like one at a time every hour on the hour on our schedule? Or does it come in waves? Yeah, we prefer to have a little ticket machine at the front. So how would you take it, wait on until we can serve you?
No, it doesn't happen that way. Everyone comes in when you order hot food on a Saturday morning. Everyone comes in. It's all flames. So in the US, what you end up with is, I got, I'm a sales manager. I got three customers in front of me or three salespeople in front of me. First one is always complicated. It's like a, you know, a low credit score with some down payment. I got to figure out what kind of card to show them because I've got to get my structure right to get it approved. The next one in line, I'm switching to a lease payment because we're on way too much car. The third one in line is the salesperson that just got back from the test drive set their customer on the showroom and is waiting in line.
And when I asked dealers at NADA, how long does it typically take to get that person a payment? I wrote 15, 30 minutes. Okay, let's take 15 minutes. What happens to that customer? When's their buying temperature the highest? Second, they get back from a test drive. And we set them there for 15 minutes and let it crash. But Simon, if you sit anywhere, doesn't matter where, for 15 minutes, not knowing what's going on. What does it make you want to do? Listen, they're on this going to over in this part of the world, they're going to car well. Okay, they're going to we buy car. They're going to let's go and have a look at my car and see if I'm getting the best price on it.
Let's go. And that's where you lose in the deal. They're shopping. They're literally shopping your competition and they're buying motivations with and then we're going to present them the numbers and try and close that word. Psychologically pre programming them to think about other things and want to leave before we ask them to buy from us. And to me, it just seems silly. Like it seems like we have these processes that we hold as kind of gospel that actually lead to bad outcomes. And we're so attached to them that we almost can't see past them. But why is it? Is it because we don't trust our salespeople to give the numbers? Is it because we don't give the salespeople a tool to give the numbers?
Is it because that's how we've always done it? And the way I, the reason why I said this, you might have seen the movie, Growing Up with Adam Sandler. I don't know if it's one or two, but he gives some advice to his 16 year old son, which is horrendous if you think about it. He says, Dad, there's this girl I like. What do I do? He said, all right, here's the advice. No one, get a laugh. Okay, Dad, I think I can do that. Then what? Then say, you got to go out with me tonight, right now. He says, why tonight? Because you're ugly. And you don't want her time to decide you're ugly.
Okay, horrible advice. Okay. But again, that's what happens to car deals with. When we come back from a demonstration drive, the emotions are the highest, the customers laughing at the joke metaphorically. Okay, I'm not saying our cars are ugly at all. I'm not saying the deals ugly, but let's put the deal in front of them. Otherwise, they're cooling down, cooling down. Why is this happening? I think that's the real question. And I think it's not one thing. It's like an intersection of multiple things. I think what you said, it's the way we've always done it. It's also how really successful dealerships have built themselves, right? So we're attached to it because it got us to where we are, right?
There are dealers that are 100 millionaires that have jumbo jets that they fly around the country on, and they started selling cars 50 years ago. And they saw the path to make that successful 50 years ago. And now because that playbook has led to such viable outcomes for them, they're not willing to go adjust the playbook and adapt. It's the blockbuster mentality. Now, I would say the other side of that is, yeah, we don't trust salespeople because we spend no time training them, right? You get hired as a salesperson and you're basically thrown to the wolves. And you got to follow some guy around that doesn't want you following him around, who's sending you to go get burritos for lunch or to go pull the car up that he's going to show the customer.
And you're not actually learning the skill set or the artistry of being really great at selling. And so I think that like, so we don't trust them. So they were like, well, we can't let them do anything. Well, why don't you trust them? Well, because they're not trained. Okay, well, you're the manager. Isn't your job to train them? Yeah, well, I don't have time to do that because I'm working all the car deals. Okay, well, like, it's this kind of cycle. And I think it's all predicated on a baseline understanding that is, you know, connected to what has been really great outcomes for people, right? And so I think that, I think that's a lot.
And it's a lot because it's scary, right? Like changing the way that you work a cardio. If I've worked a cardio the same way for the last 10 years, and I went from basically working at, you know, a Starbucks to selling cars to being a finance manager to be in a sales manager. And I'm making great income. And this is the path that got me to hear. It's hard for me to go, okay, I'm going to set that aside and think about how to do this better, or I'm going to follow somebody's advice. Like, it's very hard to overcome that mental block. Yeah, yeah, it's, I'm trying to remember now, people do so much more research online, both sides of the pond.
So, surely the amount of time a customer's in the dealership would reduce, right? And can you share is that actually happen with the stats that you have? I think it's actually worse. According to the 2018 Cox automotive study, right, basically, 187 minutes is the average amount of time transacting at an automobile purchase at a dealership of the US, right? And what's wild to me, is I think the promise of digital retail, like the online payment calculator submit, the letters, all that magic, the magic button on the website, I'll put the magic button on my website, customers click it, and then I don't think it's possible. Yeah, the promise was by doing that, we could speed up the process because the customer could do more of it at home than show up and we would pick up where they left off and the cardials would complete faster and it would be better for the customer.
Well, 187 minutes to 2018, according to an ADA survey, 91% of dealers are doing some form of like digital retail on their website. They're empowering customers to do more up front. So when they come into the dealership, they can save time and that 187 minutes in the most recent study from Cox, now that 91% are doing it, we've shaved 15 minutes off. It's 172 minutes now. So I think we can all go home. It's been fixed. It's called the problem. And so I think like for me, the problem is the disconnect between digital and selling cars with the showroom or digital. And I think that we have this bias in our business. At least I did.
If you were a technology rep Simon, when I was a sales manager and you came in to talk to me about something related to digital, I'd be like, oh, hang on, I need to use you with Hans. He's our internet manager. Hans takes care of everything digital. I'm in charge of selling cars here. And so we almost have this like disconnect between those two systems where we don't think of what we're doing digitally as a part of the way that we sell cars. And I think it's because we go from this online experience to basically a sheet of paper and a Sharpie is how I'm taught to work a cardio in the US. And so say that the disconnect is basically further entrenched by the fragmentation of the tech stack that's out there that can support a unified vision for a customer.
Yeah. Yeah. And you brought about everything else we buy. Just give me the information. Going into buying McDonald's now. Okay, I want to go and put all the thing in myself, because I know I'm going to get the right food. Yes. And then we're still not trusting sales people to give us some time to say. I see it out in the wild. I've got dealers that have nothing but Gen Z sales people. And on average, they're doing 20 units a month and they're running their dealership a lot like you would run a dealership in the UK. And they're or in Australia or other places, they're focused very highly on expense control. They're focused on high velocity of efficiency in those salespeople.
So getting them towards that 20, 25 cars a month. And it's all trickling down towards a net profitability that is materially different than what's the acceptable kind of baseline in the retail business in America. 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 symco training dot co dot 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.
