Selling In The Motor Trade Know Your Business, Know Your Numbers with John O’Hanlon
We welcome John O’Hanlon from Waylands to the podcast this week. John started his career as a chartered accountant with Grant Thornton, specialising in consultancy in the motor trade. He then set up Ridgeway Garages with David Newman, and built it to a 30 dealer group which was subsequently sold to Marshalls.
John believes that great dealerships and groups all have a culture that cares, with their staff taking pride in the business and having a ‘can do’ attitude. He also emphasises that its important to be visible, showing your team that you care about the little things, which then becomes part of the ethos.
If your dream is to own your own dealership, we delve into how achievable this is in the current market.
This is the first instalment of a two part interview that is full of insightful tips and strategies.
Here are the highlights:
{04:42} Recovering accountant
{11:10} Know your numbers
{13:43} You control what happens in your world
{20:50} Be visible
{26:00} Peach
{30:30} Owning Your Dealership
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.
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