by Simon Bowkett
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
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7/14/2020
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June 11, 2026
<p>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.</p> <p><strong>What's covered:</strong></p> <p>• Why will cannot be bred and how to spot it fast in a candidate or a first conversation <br /> • The physical and social signals that tell you someone is genuinely people-orientated <br /> • What a healthy business feels like when you walk it and what a broken one reveals <br /> • Why having a hierarchy is not the same as behaving hierarchically <br /> • How corporate pride became the motivator that drove Eden's recovery from a bruising 2023 <br /> • Why the best leaders ask their teams questions instead of performing certainty <br /> • The specific advice Graeme would give to anyone taking their first management role <br /> • Why IMI accreditation is starting to move the needle in front-line recruitment decisions</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>About Symco Training:</strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">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.</span></p> <p><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;">To find out more visit: <a title="www.symcotraining.co.uk" href= "https://www.symcotraining.co.uk" target="_blank" rel= "noopener">www.symcotraining.co.uk</a></span></p>
June 4, 2026
<p>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.</p> <p><strong>What's covered:</strong></p> <p>• Why UK BEV mandates are creating a different competitive landscape to the rest of Europe, and what that means for dealer margins <br /> • The specific reasons Eden backed MG and Leap Motor, and what made those two decisions straightforward when others were not <br /> • How Eden's early Vauxhall joint venture worked, including the golden share, the accounting rules and the buyout strategy <br /> • The workwear question: what Eden's exec committee decided after consulting front-of-house colleagues, and why it still divides opinion <br /> • Why Graeme talks to every waiting customer before his morning management meeting, and what he heard this week <br /> • The deliberate decision not to grow Eden beyond a certain size, even when the funding and the franchise opportunities were both available <br /> • What keeps a 40-year industry veteran fully engaged: the honest version, not the polished one</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>About Symco Training:</strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">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.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style= "color: black; font-size: 12pt;">To find out more visit: <a title= "www.symcotraining.co.uk" href="https://www.symcotraining.co.uk" target="_blank" rel= "noopener">www.symcotraining.co.uk</a></span></span></p>
May 28, 2026
<p class="MsoPlainText">Graeme Potts has run motor retail at every level worth running. He joined Sir Peter Vardy in 1983 when Reg Vardy was three dealerships, and was still there when it had grown to 85 and was turning over 900 million pounds. He then led the RAC turnaround with 10,000 people and a 765 million pound price tag, ran 1.6 billion of turnover at Inchcape, and then walked away from all of it to start Eden Automotive with five dealerships in 2008. In this episode, he talks through what he learned at each stage and what still holds true in 2026.</p> <p class="MsoPlainText"><strong>What's covered:</strong></p> <p class="MsoPlainText">• Why knowing your numbers separates good operators from great ones, and what that looks like at the sales consultant level <br /> • What Sir Peter Vardy built at Reg Vardy and the attitude that drove the growth <br /> • Why there is always business to be done, regardless of weather, economics or what is on television <br /> • How Eden bans the phrases time-wasters and tyre-kickers, and why that matters <br /> • The infrastructure shock of leaving a PLC and building a dealership group from scratch <br /> • Whether standalone dealerships can realistically stack up in 2026 <br /> • Why culture is the hardest thing to change in any acquisition, and the most important <br /> • What changes in how people respond when you become the owner rather than the executive</p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>About Symco Training:</strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">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.</span></p> <p class="MsoPlainText">Graeme Potts is CEO of Eden Automotive Investments, a group he co-founded after senior roles at Reg Vardy, the RAC and Inchcape. He has spent more than four decades in motor retail, across every scale from a three-site family business to a multinational PLC. His perspective covers both the corporate and the independent sides of the trade, and he has the track record to back it.</p> <p class="MsoPlainText">If you are a dealer principal, general manager or anyone building or running a dealership group, this one is worth blocking out proper time for.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style= "color: black; font-size: 12pt;">To find out more visit: <a title= "www.symcotraining.co.uk" href="https://www.symcotraining.co.uk" target="_blank" rel= "noopener">www.symcotraining.co.uk</a></span></p>
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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
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