The motor trade is ever changing, like most markets. Simon started selling cars when he was 17, he’s now 49 and obviously the way he sell cars and trains people to sell has evolved in that time
For your sales meeting this week, we examine some the practices that haven’t actually changed since the Romans. Or have they! The danger is, if we don’t continually strive for improvement and development across the board, we stand still or get left behind.
Again, this motivational tale may not be entirely true but ask yourself and your team. How many processes, habits, and paper trails to name but a few, do we completed every day the same way, just because it’s always been done that way?
Here are the highlights:
{02.50} Imperial Roman War Chariot
{03:23} Space Shuttle
{04:22} We’ve always done it that way
{05:05} Customers know more about the vehicle than we do
{05:30} Sky Cycling Race Team
About Symco Training:
Symco Training was founded in 2000 by Simon Bowkett and it was his belief that the business had to offer its clients something different. That difference was clear to Simon from his days in the dealership when he experienced many sales trainers who had all the answers, but were unable, unwilling or both to actually show the delegate how they could be implemented. It remains the ethos of the business today. You see, Symco only employ trainers that are committed to delivering not only in spiring and insightful training, but are equally as happy to demonstrate these skills and techniques with real customers in your own showroom. We believe in order for sales training to be effective and in Simon’s words ‘real world’, it needs to be tried and tested in the only place it matters the showroom floor. There is no room for theory when your goals are for your team to sell more cars, hours or parts and retain more profit. In dealerships around the world the focus applied by many of the sales executives is to try and sell a deal. Symco specialise in getting your teams to focus on selling themselves, the product and then supporting this with the deal.
To find out more visit www.symcotraining.co.uk
Welcome to the Selling and the Motor Trade Podcast, an association with Symco Training. This is the weekly podcast where we share best practice tips and ideas on how to sell more cards, improve your service department and generally put more profit into your dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Bowkett. As some of you probably already know me as skipping, I will start with saying thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Hi, welcome to another episode of Selling and the Motor Trade. A lot of you people have been saying, give us those little stories there for our sales meetings. We love the idea of using these stories in the sales meetings, so here's another one. The US standard railway gauge is four foot, eight and a half inches wide. That's quite a strange number, isn't it? Four foot, eight and a half inches wide. Why did they use that gauge? That's really simple. That's the way they were built in England. The English expats, they come over and they actually built the US railways. Why did the English build them like that? That's because the railway lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railway trends. That's the gauge that they used. All right, then. Why did they use that gauge? Because the people who built the trends used the same jigs and the tools that were used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. I know what you're thinking. Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, you see, if you tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break because they were going through the long roads, long distance around England. The wheels had to go into the wheel ruts. You have a different spacing. They'd go in and out of the wheel ruts and they'd break up all the time. Okay, so how did the rotted roads get there? So people have built those old rotted roads with imperial Romans. And they're the first long distance roads throughout Europe and of course, England. And they've built it for their legions. And those roads have been used ever since. Now, the rots and the roads. See, they come from the Roman war chariots and they formed the initial ruts. And everyone else had to match for fear destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for the imperial Roman, they were all alike in that manner of wheel spacing. So the United States railway gauge of four foot, eight and a half inches is derived from the original specification for an imperial Romans war chariot. And they say bureaucrats live on forever. So next time you handed a spec and you told, we've always done it that way before. Okay. And you think what horses asked of an idea come up with that? Yeah, probably right. Because imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Now, here's the twist to the story. You see, when you see the space shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there's two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tanks. They're the solid rocket boosters or SRBs. And the solid rocket boosters are made in a factory in Utah. And the engineers who designed them would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, a bit more solid rocket fuel in there. Okay. But they had to get them to the launch site by train. And you see the train had to go through a tunnel in the mountains. And SRBs had to fit right through the tunnel. And the tunnel is just slightly wider than the railway tracks. And the railway tracks, as you know, is about as wide as two horses arses. So the space shuttle designed for the future, arguably one of the most advanced transportation systems ever developed, maybe limited by 2000 years ago, the width of two horses arses and someone else thinking, we've always done it that way. So again, guys, one of these stories, go and fact check it. There's some truth in it. There's some bollocks. Okay. I'll let you go and decide there's so much on the internet about all know, but the cage is slightly different here and slightly different there. I don't know, but never let the truth get in the way of a good story. And I want you to think, if you're sitting there thinking, we've always done it that way, we've always done it that way. And you know what? I started selling cars when I was 17 years old. I'm 49 now. The internet was an around. Okay. The way that we used to ask people early on what do you want for their car? I would always do that right at the beginning. Now I'd never do it because of the internet. There's so many change. Don't people know more about the car than what we do? Because they've done 90,000, 42 minutes of research before they walk in, phone in or email you. In fact, video, don't sit down and think we've always done that way. Keep an open mind. Look for the better mouse trap every single time. And look for those continual improvements all the time. It's marginal gains. Now here's the story I do love. It's about the sky push by racing team. Okay. They talked about how to improve things. Look for marginal gains. Make everything slightly better if you get a little bit of a percent increase here, a little bit there, a little bit there. That overall turns into a huge performance increase. Don't sit down and think we've always done it that way. Hey, guys, all these stories, I'm getting bombarded with people saying what about this story? What about that story there? I'll get to you. I've had a lot of fun looking at these stories. Okay. And that one in particular, go and Google it. I'm going to say it's kind of partially truth. Okay. There's been a truth in that and a bit of maybe not so true. I always wonder how do these people know this going all the way back to the Romans, the wits and all that sort of stuff. But hey, listen, as I say, never let the truth get in the way of good story. Remember, don't just say we've always done it that way. Anyway, another quick one for you this time and 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 link to him. Thank you. Bye.
