You guys out there, if you're in business, you're trying to find out what does a gun salesman do? Why are they the best? What do they do all the time?
Well, I'm going to ask him the question. And you're going to get the opportunity to hear what the best 8th Dan Black Belt salesman. I'm here with my mate Johnny Rocker. Now I... I'm not going to make any bones about it. I'm a fan of Johnny Rocker.
I've known him for a long, long, long time. In my opinion, the two best salesmen that I've ever met in my life are right here in this country. His name is John McGrath, everyone knows who he is, McGrath Real Estate. The second guy, he's not second place, he's equal first place, is this bloke here, Johnny Rocker. We're at Sydney City Toyota, and he's one of the dealer principals here.
So this is his shop, okay? And I think Sydney City Toyota is probably, is it the largest Toyota sales? Yeah, it is the largest.
One of the largest in the country and of course Toyota is one of the best selling cars in Australia. But this guy is the gun salesman. So I, and I actually, you know, I embarrassed him at my master class in Sydney.
I actually called him out. And he is a gun salesman. So mate, what do you do?
Tell me, what do you do? You're flattering me. No, but it's the truth. I believe that. It's not a silver bullet.
It's hard work. There's a process that I've developed called evolution. And evolution is just a, call it a road to the sale. But you can have a road to the sale if you don't follow it and take shortcuts, then you never get to the sale.
are so I say to my guys there are three rules evolution must be followed consistency every single time which is easier said than done do the same thing over and over and over again and then I talk about two pillars two pillars of selling one is to the person that walks in the door the brand new customer that walks in the door but the second pillar is people you've already sold a car to so it's it costs you more money to get a new customer but it cost you less to get your carrot customers into another car so nurture them look look after them, give them all the service they need, call them and tell them they need a new car, and that will lift your sales dramatically. And what does Evolution stand for? But by the way, there's a little book here called The Evolution Book. Who carries this around with them, mate? Every single person in the dealership, even if they don't sell cars, they carry The Evolution Book.
So we induct all of our new recruits. I do it myself, so I'll present for four hours. going through evolution. We role play it, we do it.
We spend four hours in the dealership doing it. I even get my suppliers to go through evolution. So they understand the culture of the business as well.
So outside influences, very important for the business. Can you explain what each letter stands for? Yeah, so let's go through it.
So evolution is basically go from the expectation, what do people expect when they walk in here? And how do we put ourselves in the shoe of the consumer? Nobody wants to walk into a car dealership. They're all threatened by it. They don't feel comfortable.
They think we're sharks. We're not going to look after them, which is a complete bullshit. We're the opposite. Well, we are here anyway. So what we try and do is put ourselves in the customer's shoes.
What are their expectations? What have they been thinking about? Where do they get their money?
Who do they need to talk to before they walk in the door? our perception of them is very different to most dealers so we put ourselves in the customer's shoes then we take them through that's it that's it see that's expectation what is the expectation of the customer and and how do we meet uh that expectation then we just go simply through the book so versatility v v this versatility is we don't grab everybody and say right here's a land cruise i'm going to take you through 16 different steps of the car and i'll show you what i want to show you i'll say what do you like in your current car what don't you like and then I'll tailor make and make it versatile but that presentation is what Mark wants not what I want yeah so that's the versatility. So you don't waste my time?
Exactly, share what you want to see not what I want to share. 100% ever out, that's out. Okay, optimize.
So optimize, make the most of what you have as tools or environments to sell the car. Because let's not cut to the chase, we're here to sell cars. It's not a showroom, it's a...
sales environment. So what we want to do is optimise all the tools we've got. We want to tell our customers we can supply them with finance, insurance, test drive, very important.
You can't just come in and look at the car, you've got to drive it as well. Service, etc. everything what's the full suite exactly learning learning the product so rather than talk about the product we want our customers to experience it so rather than just taking them for a drive around the block i might throw the keys to you and say mate you're a valuable customer you love the car rather than driving around the block take the car for a day drive it in your environment i don't need to be in the car with you if it's the wrong car we'll try something else so that's a learning product from a customer perspective Me as the customer, I learn about it. You as the customer, so I'm not in the car, taking you around the block for a short test drive and then asking you for $80,000.
Yeah, totally. It's all bullshit. I get you 100% because I've done that with you. I've actually taken the car home for a weekend and I've actually experienced it. the car so I'll learn about the car.
Evo, you, what's you? Understanding. So when you come back, my expectation from you as a customer is that you actually understand everything that I've explained to you.
Because in any seminar that you do or anything that we go to, we take about 10% of it and forget the rest. So the understanding is right, what is it that you liked about the car, what is it you didn't like about the car, and if it's a wrong bloody car, you might not tell me. You might just be polite as a customer and say that was terrific, thanks very much, I'll think about it.
What are you thinking about? Yeah and that actually gives you a bit of data too, so you're gathering data here. T? Transaction, so we're not here...
Closed. Closed the sale, they're not here to buy a paper cup. Yeah yeah. People at their time Paul, I said I say to my guys, if people are walking in the door, they've all done all their research, they know about the car, they know about us in most cases, transact, ask for the business.
Yeah, don't be afraid. And that's a hard thing, by the way. It is a hard thing. Asking for the deal.
I'll tell you what makes it easy. Don't take the bloody shortcut. If you do it well, then you should be asking for the business, because you deserve it.
Especially if you've done the six steps you've just done. Exactly. What is evolution?
What's I stand for? Okay, initiate. So initiate is the paperwork.
A lot of people get it. go through paperwork they'll sign a bunch of documents they'll be given a bunch of numbers don't understand it so we do is we go through a step by step and then we also give them a list of what they need to bring in before I pick up the car right so initiate is basically the paperwork and the understanding of that is that confuses people it's scary but if you look at our contracts five pages and that's scary nobody reads it yeah we actually take the customer through and then what happens we get less fall over so customers will get buys remorse or they're confused they'll go home in the heat of the battle they'll go home and think she just bought a car i don't think i wanted to buy a car or we don't understand what we've done yeah yeah so we make sure before they walk out of here they've got a checklist of what they need to bring when they pick up the car and what they've actually gone through O is? Ownership.
Ownership. So we talk about what's going to happen the day they come and pick up the car. We talk about what they need to bring in, spare keys, log books, rego papers. We set up a time that's easy for them so they can't come. us pick up the car, we'll take it to them.
And N, the last letter. Nurture, the most important part. So you've done all the work, you've delivered the car, then you forget them for five years.
Then they wonder, why didn't you come back to me and buy another car? car yeah you've spent copious times looking after them we nurture them through the relationship so for the next three years we'll call you we'll invite you to functions we'll make sure you service on time you've got any questions we'll do a second delivery so on delivery day we take people through the car and they go yeah yeah terrific i'm really nervous i'm really excited thanks for the information see you later we then say okay let's book a second appointment you're going to get 90 of what i just told you on this car you're going to forget and how important is it Once you've sold the car, how important is it for you to just keep repeating the 10 steps in your evolution? I mean, you're saying do it every time the same time, every time.
So we train on this weekly. Right. Every week we'll look at evolution and say, we're shit at L. I wasn't happy with L this week and I wasn't happy with N.
So this week we're going to train on L. And every Wednesday night we'll have a pizza night. And we train L. We role play. We get customer feedback.
We read customer feedback. Do you video people doing it? Sometimes we do. Exactly.
That's great. I love that role playing video. I remember I interviewed a guy called Matt Lancashire and he is the number one real estate agent for Ray White in Queensland.
And Matt told me exactly that they actually role play getting a vendor to sign up with them, not the buyer, but the vendor because you know, you need stock. And they actually role play their staff once a week. And how you go about calling someone to sign them up as a vendor.
So you got stock so you can sell to a buyer. That role playing is really important. And everyone sits back. and critically looks at each other's role play.
And look, you get nervous doing it, and sales people do, but we have a lot of fun with it as well. We have a little laugh. Totally. You can take a mickey out of a sales person and say, mate, that was shit, let's do it again.
100%. And you can have a pizza and a beer or whatever and have a laugh. But the key is, I say to my guys, the reason we train is I don't want you to train on my customer. I want you to train here to prevent that from happening.
You guys have just heard it. That's gold. Now I'm going to go and see my new car. Come along and have a look.
Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Mike. Thank you.
Okay, this is my new car. I know what colour it is but I haven't seen it yet. What am I getting here, Johnny? This is a Rugged X. Hilux Rugged X. Again, top of the range when it comes to Hilux products. You've been driving the City Slicker version.
Yeah, yeah. This is the City Slicker combined with the Countryman as well. Okay.
So you'll notice there's a little bit of a peak there on the left. Yeah, I can see that. That's your snorkel. Yeah.
This is your drive-through water. Right. So let's have a look.
Well, how do we do this? We'll do it together. Wow, that's cool.
The Hilux, which I bought my first Hilux about 40 years ago. I've still got it, it's got 395,000 kilometres on it or something like that. It was a lot different to this car.
But by the way, it still starts first time every time and we still have it on the farm and I still drive it around. But this one's a luxury. Inside these cars are as luxurious as any other car on the street.
Righto mate, see you John. Thanks mate. See you Jake.
Well I've had Hiluxes for a long, long time. My Hilux up at my farm is 40 years old. I've still got that one up there.
The blue Hilux, Johnny from Sydney, Sydney Toyota has taken it back and he's put me in one of these ones, a black one. And this is the new Rugged X. It's a pretty cool car. Pretty much the same on the inside. But it's probably better designed to be driving around my farm so it's got a snorkel and all that sort of stuff.
So we eventually get some rain up there, which I'm hoping for. This will be a much better car. to be driving.
It's my favourite colour, black.