Selling In The Motor Trade

Simon Bowkett

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Simon Bowkett, from Symco Training, shares tips and ideas on selling in the motor trade from a sales and aftersales perspective, as well as interviews with industry leaders sharing some of their best practices. To find out more visit www.symcotraining.co.uk

3d ago

Dial Your Own Dealership. You Won't Like What Happens

If a customer walked onto your forecourt, got ignored for three minutes, then was told to hang on while nobody came back, heads would roll. You'd call it a process failure and fix it that day. So why is exactly that happening on your phone every single day? Roughly one in three callers never gets through to someone who can help. They're not cold leads. They want to buy or book. And when they can't reach you, they don't wait around. They phone the independent down the road who picks up. Phone leads convert at nearly double the rate of internet leads, yet they're the ones we let slip through. This episode lays out where the calls fail, why voicemail is a dead end, and five fixes you can check today. What's covered: • The one in three callers you never knew you were losing • Why phone leads convert at nearly double internet leads and still get neglected • Hold times, voicemail and the exact points where calls fall over • The Monday morning crunch that makes the service desk the biggest offender • How missed calls are quietly costing you service loyalty and repeat sales • What happens to your net promoter score when a customer has to explain themselves three times • Five fixes, including the one most owners never do: dial your own dealership Host Simon Bowkett, or Skippy to regular listeners, runs sales training company Symco Training and spends his days inside real dealerships. This one is data led and personal. It started when he couldn't get hold of a newly acquired group on the phone, and a business partner asked him why it's so hard to spend money with dealers. Before you spend another penny on marketing, listen to this and go dial your own dealership. You might not like what you hear. 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
Jul 16

I Sold Four Cars to Motorway and We Buy Any Car. Here Is What Dealers Need to Know

Here is the trade-off nobody on the sales floor wants to admit. Every time your salesperson says just sell it to We Buy Any Car to kill a part-exchange objection, they are handing your best stock to someone else. Quick for them. Expensive for you. Simon sold four of his own cars through Motorway, Carwow and We Buy Any Car to see the process from the customer's side, and it was worse than he expected. Late outsourced drivers. An app arguing about a tyre inflation kit on run-flat tyres. A finance settlement that nearly left a black mark over £60. But the sharp end is this. Your used car department is your profit centre, and you are letting it starve to make one objection go away. This episode is about taking that stock back. What's covered: • The easy objection-buster that quietly drains your used car stock • What really happens at a We Buy Any Car drop-in centre • Why Motorway and Carwow quote almost identical prices to the pound • The outsourced drivers and app mistakes that put deals at risk • Why finance settlements through these services are not as seamless as they look • The window of opportunity close that keeps the trade-in with you • The one to ten condition question that stops distance sales going wrong • Why used car managers should worry more about their own salespeople mis-describing cars than customers If you run a forecourt and you want to stop feeding your rivals, listen to this before your next sales meeting. 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
Jul 9

Why Are Your VHC's Not Converting?

Here is the uncomfortable bit. Your VHC videos probably aren't broken. Your technicians' script is. In this episode, Simon Bowkett, Skippy to most of the trade, explains why so many vehicle health check videos get filmed, sent, and then convert nothing. The camera was meant to fix a strange problem in the motor trade, the expert who inspects the car never actually speaks to the customer. But most technicians narrate like mechanics reading a chart. Amber, red, green, borderline, two millimetres. The customer hears noise, not risk. Skippy breaks down the SWOP process Symco teaches, shows how to make a worn tyre feel like a real decision rather than a line on a checklist, and hands you six steps to put back into the business for immediate results. What's covered: • The real reason VHC videos get watched but don't sell the work • Why 'amber, red, green' narration quietly kills conversion • The SWOP process: see it, why it happened, the outcome, the proposal • The doctor and receptionist problem, and why the expert must speak to the customer • How to explain a two millimetre tyre so the customer feels the risk • How the right video hands the service advisor an easier, more credible call • Six steps to lift VHC conversion, ready to use straight away If your health check videos are getting filmed but not converting, take the six steps in this episode and put them in this week. 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
Jul 2

Are You Losing Money on Every Part Exchange?

Most used car managers still price off the auction book. Cazana wants to flip that on its head. In this panel episode, Simon Bowkett sits down with Ian, Mark and Darren from Cazana, the retail valuations platform built on more data than anyone else in the UK, with around 900,000 unique cars tracked every day. The conversation stays practical and commercial throughout: how to value a car retail-down rather than trade-up, why days to sell matters more than gut feel, and why the used EV market has turned hot again. If you buy used cars, run a sales desk or want tighter stock turn, this one is built for your job. What's covered: • Why valuing a car retail-down beats pricing up from the auction book • How days to sell data sharpens what you pay and what you advertise for • Why the used EV market has turned hot again, with dealers struggling to get stock • What battery health really does to used EV values, and why it is less of a worry than people think • How provenance, MOT history and local stock affect a car's price • Why estates, saloons and small petrol hatchbacks are selling quickly right now • The pricing strategy that avoids a race to the bottom • What the Cazana 500 offer gives independent dealers Cazana is a used vehicle data and retail valuations platform, originally built in 2012 by Tom Wood, purchased in 2023 by Percayso and relaunched after the Cazoo collapse. Ian leads the business, while Mark and Derren bring years at Experian Automotive and Cap HPI to the table. Eight of the top ten insurers and the Financial Ombudsman already use their valuations, which tells you something about the quality of the data. If you are a dealer principal, used car manager or buyer trying to buy better and turn stock faster, this is worth your time. 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
Jun 25

Why Trust Is Measurable in the Blood and What That Means for Your Dealership

Here is something most sales managers know but cannot prove: the mood on the floor matters more than the morning meeting. Dr. Tharaka is back to put the science behind it. Emotions are contagious. Your team members are copying each other's states right now, not by choice, but because that is how human brains are wired. There is a measurable return on your team's emotional climate. There is also a measurable return on trust, down to the hormone level in the blood. And there are practical tools you can put in place on Monday morning that shift both. This episode covers the mechanisms, the techniques and the brain science in plain language for people in the motor trade. What's covered: • Why emotional states transfer between team members and why that is not a soft concept but a performance variable with a commercial return • The bandwagon bias and why customers and staff alike default to following the crowd, even when it is the wrong crowd • Why short-term memory evaporates and a practical visual technique for making customer names, partners and even dogs stick • Why the brain is 60,000 times faster with images than text and how that should change how you show up with a customer • Time punctuation: how to use the calendar to unstick a team that has run out of momentum, and the dealership example that ran used car targets to the 15th • Crisis, Crash and Comeback: the three-phase model that explains the bickering, entitlement and initiative loss that followed lockdown • Oxytocin, trust and why there is a direct financial return on building genuine rapport, backed by experimental transaction data • The what went well huddle: zero cost, measurable impact, simple enough to start this week Dr. Tharaka is a neuroscientist, performance psychologist and TEDx speaker who appeared on Channel 4. He advises leaders on the psychological levers behind team performance, motivation and trust. He is not a motivational speaker. He is someone who can tell you what is happening in your team's brains and what you can do about it. If you want the science behind why your best teams behave the way they do, and the tools to build more of them, this is the episode. 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
Jun 18

Dr. Tharaka on Mindset, Expectation and Why Sales Performance Starts Between the Ears

What happens between the ears drives what happens on the forecourt. That is not motivational filler. That is the core argument from Dr. Tharaka, a consultant psychiatrist and TEDx speaker who has spent 15 years studying how the mind affects performance, and now brings that science into the working world. In this episode, he and Simon Bowkett dig into the real psychology of why salespeople go from the Midas touch one week to the SADIMS the next, what manager expectations actually do to the people they lead, and why visualisation is not hocus pocus. If you have ever watched a salesperson fall apart after one bad deal, or wondered why your team's belief level is so hard to shift, this episode gives you something practical to work with. What's covered: • Why winning needs redefining beyond cars sold and commission earned, and what the 11 growth areas have to do with sales performance • The Mind-Action-Profit framework: why getting the mind right comes before the action, and the action before the profit • How to help a salesperson climb out of the SADIMS when deals keep collapsing around them • Why self-compassion is a performance tool: the science behind talking to yourself like a friend rather than an enemy • The Pygmalion effect: how a manager's high expectations directly and measurably improve team performance • The Golem effect: what consistently low expectations do to the people you lead, and why it matters on a sales floor • The neuroscience of visualisation and why athletes, actors and top performers all use it for the same reason • The 'what went well' huddle: a simple team meeting tool to retrain the brain to hunt for good data instead of problems Dr. Tharaka is a consultant psychiatrist, TEDx speaker and high-performance coach who spent 15 years in clinical medicine before bringing the science of the mind into business and leadership. He has appeared on Channel 4 and works with senior leadership teams across multiple industries. His central argument is that when you manage the mind, you manage the bottom line. If you manage people in the trade and want to understand what is actually driving performance on your floor, this episode is worth your time. 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
Jun 11

The General Manager Who Could Not Find His Own Parts Department

Here is a question worth sitting with. When you walk into your own business, does everyone know who you are? Graeme from Eden Motor Group once acquired a large Ford dealership and asked the general manager to take him on a tour. The GM opened a broom cupboard looking for the stairs to his own parts department. He had never been down there. When Graeme finally got into the parts office, the young woman behind the desk asked which one of you is the new guy. She had never spoken to the GM in her life. That is not an operations problem. That is a culture problem. And Graeme has spent a career learning to spot exactly that kind of failure within minutes of walking through a door. What's covered: • Why will cannot be bred and how to spot it fast in a candidate or a first conversation • The physical and social signals that tell you someone is genuinely people-orientated • What a healthy business feels like when you walk it and what a broken one reveals • Why having a hierarchy is not the same as behaving hierarchically • How corporate pride became the motivator that drove Eden's recovery from a bruising 2023 • Why the best leaders ask their teams questions instead of performing certainty • The specific advice Graeme would give to anyone taking their first management role • Why IMI accreditation is starting to move the needle in front-line recruitment decisions Graeme is the principal and sole shareholder of Eden Motor Group in the North East of England, a franchise business spanning volume and premium brands. He chairs the IMI and spent years on the board of Ben, the automotive industry charity. Before crossing into the motor trade, he built his thinking about people at Marks and Spencer, and you can hear it in every answer he gives. If you run a dealership, lead a team, or are about to take your first management role, Graeme's thinking on will over skill, recovery culture, and what great leadership actually looks like is worth the full hour. 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
Jun 4

96 Chinese Car Brands Coming. Eden's CEO on How to Decide Which Ones Are Worth Your Time

The UK has made itself the most attractive market in Europe for Chinese car manufacturers, and most dealers have not fully thought through what that means yet. Graeme, CEO of Eden Motor Group, has. He has been in the trade for over 40 years and built a multi-franchise group across Vauxhall, MG, Leap Motor, Mazda, Hyundai and Peugeot. He is direct about the dynamic: aggressive BEV targets and a relatively open import policy are pulling manufacturers toward the UK in a way that France and Germany, with their fiscal management and tariffs, simply are not seeing. That matters for anyone trying to decide which Chinese brands to take on, which to leave alone, and whether the ones arriving now will still be here in five years. This episode is worth your time before you make that call. What's covered: • Why UK BEV mandates are creating a different competitive landscape to the rest of Europe, and what that means for dealer margins • The specific reasons Eden backed MG and Leap Motor, and what made those two decisions straightforward when others were not • How Eden's early Vauxhall joint venture worked, including the golden share, the accounting rules and the buyout strategy • The workwear question: what Eden's exec committee decided after consulting front-of-house colleagues, and why it still divides opinion • Why Graeme talks to every waiting customer before his morning management meeting, and what he heard this week • The deliberate decision not to grow Eden beyond a certain size, even when the funding and the franchise opportunities were both available • What keeps a 40-year industry veteran fully engaged: the honest version, not the polished one Graeme is CEO of Eden Motor Group, a UK franchise group representing Vauxhall, MG, Leap Motor, Mazda, Hyundai and Peugeot. He built the business from a single Vauxhall joint venture, chose quality over scale at every growth stage, and now advises the IMI, a French motor retail business and an American investment bank alongside his full-time CEO role. He has been doing this for over 40 years and still walks the service reception floor before his meetings start. If you are a dealer principal or franchise director trying to make sense of the Chinese brand wave before it makes the decisions for you, this is the episode to start with. 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

Simon Bowkett, from Symco Training, shares tips and ideas on selling in the motor trade from a sales and aftersales perspective, as well as interviews with industry leaders sharing some of their best practices. To find out more visit www.symcotraining.co.uk

Creator

Simon Bowkett
Years Active

2020 - 2026
Episodes

286
Rating

Explicit
Copyright

© (c) 2021-2026 Symco Training Ltd.
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