After the briefest of all breaks after settling the sale of the pub, I found myself in the used car department at Whitehorse Motors in Nunawading.

Once was a client but now, an employee selling a car brand I had come to admire and actually like. 

There’s nothing like selling a product that you truly believe in.

It was a Saturday morning, and I was settling in, setting up my desk, collecting pens, pencils, staplers and sales agreements order pads and all the shit needed to sign up a customer, when I was handed a beautifully produced roster.

Was it a roster of days off or the hours we were to work at the yard?

No.

It was the roster of who went up the street at 10AM and collect (and paid for) the party pies each Saturday for the sales teams morning coffee break.

Last on, first on the list, I later found out from the used car manager Dick Sampson. Dick was a very funny guy. He came to Australia from Dutch Indonesia after the “troubles” when the Dutch left the region. He spoke with a strong Dutch accent, but I believe he never lived in Holland. 

I can stand corrected if that’s not so.

Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/

The decade began with the introduction of the iconic Mini and ended with the arrival of home-grown muscle cars – the Holden Monaro, the Falcon GT and the Valiant Charger.

In between, came the beginning of the end of our preference for European vehicles with the arrival of the Japanese.

The major styling feature introduced during the sixties was the ‘Coke bottle effect’, in which the boot and rear door panels were swept upwards over the wheel arch creating a profile which resembled that of a Coca Cola bottle. 

The first Australian car to incorporate the Coke bottle ‘hump’ was the XR Falcon in September 1966. 

The styling of the car was inspired by the Mustang, copying both the coke bottle style line and the long bonnet and deep, stumpy boot.

Whereas the fifties were dominated by British made 4-cylinder cars, the sixties saw Holden, Ford and Chrysler erode the supremacy of the imported 4-cylinder car and establish the locally built 6-cylinder models as the Australian motorists’ premier vehicle of choice. 

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The kids were growing up.

The work was relentless and hard. Anyone that dreams of owning a little country pub should have a month running one on their own. Then decide.

The hours just kill you.

So, we decided that one day when we got an offer on the hotel that maybe we should accept it and one day we did.

We moved back to Melbourne.

Plan (A) was to go overseas, do a bit of a tour of Europe or maybe a cruise on a ship and then I’d come back and look for a business opportunity or a good job.

We rented a Villa Unit in Nunawading and booked the kids into the local state school while we decided what we were going to do with the rest of our lives.

One morning, I said to my wife Marian,

“I think I'll go up to the Volvo dealerships and get the car serviced. I'll see you in a few hours”

“yeah OK” she said “see you later”

White Horse Motors were just around the corner from our flat, and if it was a long service I could walk home from there quite easily.

Then after booking it in with the service people, Noel Cheney sees me and sits me down makes me a cup of coffee.

I was going to be a few hours at the car yard and so we just filled in the time chit chatting about the pub and funny things that happened there.

A phone call comes through, and Noel gets tied up.

“I'm sorry Gordon, I’ll have to catch you later” and off he wandered.

One of the other salesman Dick Samson was there selling used cars and he came over and he was talking away about this and that and the other.

A new car salesman called Ron Kantor, a lovely guy, came over and spoke to me for a while and he sort of got tied up too.

I was being handed from one salesperson to the next and it was just like the old days. 

Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/

Something we could take away on a couple of weeks break. 

To South Australia or up to NSW. 

Anywhere, just to get away for a break.

And I remembered whilst I was working for Bill Patterson Motors that we owned a company called Grand Prix Motors – BMW.

I loved the look of the little BMW's that they drove as demos.

So, I thought, I’ll get on the phone, ring them up, and find out how much the sexy little BMW 2002 coupes were.

The call was answered and went a bit like this:

“Hi Mr McLeish, where are you calling from?”

“Ah, I'm calling from a place called Drysdale” I said 

“a little hotel just out of Geelong on the Bellarine Peninsular”

“Oh I see, look, how often do you get up to Melbourne?”

I’m the publican here and it’s just a small family business, so I don't get away that often”

“I was wondering if someone could bring one down to me and discuss it, I am a genuine buyer”

“That’s fine, but we wouldn't travel that far” was the reply.

I thought, what a pack of lazy ******* you are,

So after I hung up I thought, well OK, let's see if there's a BMW dealer in Geelong.

Yeah there was.

Same answer,

“how often do you get into Geelong from Drysdale? once a week?

“yeah, well, let us know before you come in and I'll make sure I've got a demo here for you to have a drive in”

“You couldn't bring one out to the pub, could you?”

No, I'm pretty well tide up most days, and there’s only a couple of staff here”

“You know, it would be just a lot easier if you could make it into the dealership”

“OK thanks”

So that was my stint at buying a BMW.

Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/

Originally, I thought it was.

 No weekend work.

 About the same sort of pay they said, and more freedom, how wrong it was.

 When I worked in an office, I was an accounting type person. I hated it.

 When I went to Bill Patterson Motors, I became this raging sales type person.

 At AGC they wanted you to do sales and accounting type duties, so they gave you the title DSM (District sales manager) but most of your day was spent doing numbers.

 Financial figures.

 Percentages.

 And like some religious order, you had to read a book called the SPI which is about the size of a telephone book.

 The SPI (the specific practises and instructions) was the company bible and they tested you on it regularly. 

 The branch accountant would say “have you done your SPI training?”

 Do you want to talk about it.

 Then they would send you endless amounts of meaningless internal memos.

 They would arrive via the company’s own “branch courier service”.

 Memos came in three parts, and you had to answer them ASAP and of course keep a copy and file in special folders.

 Carbonised paper. Reams of it. Relentlessly arriving day after day.

Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/

Well, for all new cars that is.

We had Lombard and others we could use if GMAC if a deal was a so-so type of deal.

As well as Lombard there was IAC, AGC, Custom Credit and Avco if you were desperate.

With GMAC if we got a contract approved and settled, we received an extra $5 Commission.

And believe me, that was handy.

I was on about $50 per week.

Commissions were structured for volume selling. 

Not like today.

Where "order takers" think he or she’s a GUN when they hit 10 sales.

The average used hack was selling 25 or even 30 if they were any good.

My pay scheme was 

$10 first five sales 

$15 the next 

$20 thereafter

But it was not retrospective.

Plus, in used cars they had a great system of paying bonuses 

$5 or $10 for selling old stock if it was 30 days 60 days and 90 days old.

So, if you sold 15 cars a week you got around $250 to $300.

Plus, if half of them were finance or old stock, you could add another $80 or so.

$250.00 per month retainer, a company car, petrol and around $300.00 per month in commissions, you could earn about $500.00 per month. 

For a 19-year-old that was quite good money.

Just married too. And desperate to save for the deposit on our first home.

It was really good money. But you had to put in the hard graft. 

GMAC were hard buyers of used cars. They only wanted the cream of the deals, the ones with minimum risk.

I think Pattos probably were on some form of recourse agreement.

To buy back any bad payers whose cars were repo’d.

So, we had to have a second-string finance source.

Ours was LOMBARD down near the railway station in Ringwood.

They were so good to deal with.

But back then, all finance deals were handled by the selling salesman.

All those credit apps, the little rate chart book you used to calculate the payments.

Then sit on the phone for hours ringing through the deals. It was just too time consuming for most guys. 

And you guessed it, lots of potential for mistakes.

Remember what I said earlier, most used car salesman had trouble just writing up the new car sales agreement and getting the numbers to balance was a miracle.

But I didn't mind doing finance deals as there was extra comms if they were through GMAC.

The other old stagers hated it and would flick pass finance stuff to me.

“hey Young Gordon! These are finance heads. Do you want to speak to them. Probably rotten eggs by the look of them”

Bring it on! Money, money, money!

Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/

 One involves a great character from Ringwood called AUB M.

 One involves Poopy K.

 The third involves an incident when I was working in the used car department 

 I was walking around the showroom one day. I'd come over from the used car department to the new car showroom and Patto was coming down the stairs from the mezzanine floor.

 He saw me, and then he saw there was someone on the showroom floor climbing in and out one of the imported Chevrolets.

 He obviously thought that the person was a little bit bedraggled, untidy and a bit grubby and shouldn't be climbing in and out of a Chevrolet with nice white leather trim.

 So, he put his hand up and beckoned me over and said 

 “Gordon just a minute, what are you doing down here from used cars?”

 So, I explained “I'm just getting a receipt for a car I’ve just sold etc”

 “OK whatever”,

 he said 

 “well see that guy over there, can you get him out the showroom” 

 “I don’t want him climbing in and out those cars” 

 “Yeah, sure Mr Patterson, I'll go over and have a chat with him” 

 “Well yeah! that's what I want you to do. But not a chat, get him out of the showroom”

Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/

So, as promised, I’ll attempt to entertain you with:

The Road to A Sale - Expanded

 But before I do, 

I’d like to talk about two of the three best trainers I’ve ever seen.

From America as lots of trainers were. But these were special

Ernie Tex Pritchard.

“Jackie B Cooper”.

The third being Clint McGee but I never got to meet him in person as I did the other two.

They really could sell “the message”. All in your face, and full of energy and enthusiasm.

Ernie Tex Pritchard was quite a different person to the other two.

Quieter spoken. Long Texas drawl. 

With those long pauses, soft spoken and then, a high pitch when he wanted your attention. 

He was a proud Texan and was bejewelled with a huge, expensive, solid gold Rolex watch and a ring on his finger that was so huge.

You see sports people in the states showing them off when they win a super bowl. 

Or Navy Seals when they graduate.

His was gold and had a humongous diamond set in it.

“to show I’m from Texas, the lone star state’

It was very brash and over the top. 

Just ostentatious. 

Funny how we aussies aren’t that impressed, with all that shit.......

Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/

One of those “new” sales techniques and processes was called 

The Road to a Sale.

This was also referred to in the USA as the playbook. 

They would say “we should consider ourselves a Team and we need a playbook to go by.

It consists of a series of steps you needed to take to end up with a sale. 

In my next episode, I’ll do a separate Podcast to cover them in more depth and detail but here is a broad brush stroke of the steps.

Step 1

Meet and Greet

Step 2

Fact Finding

Step 3

Select a Vehicle

Step 4

Presentation and Demo

Step 5

Trial Close

Step 6

Trade in Evaluation and Trade in Walk Around.

Step 7

The Write Up

Step 8

Negotiate and Close

Step 9

Proper Double Close

Step 10

Delivery

Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/

Running errands, finding missing keys, doing yard changes, making cups of tea for customers, and getting lunches for everyone. 

All unofficial, but at the end of the day, it was a good grounding and helped me understand the psyche of a sales team.

Then I was sent off to the factory for a sales training course. 

As I left one of the salesmen shook my hand and said, 

“good luck Gordon, I hope you survive the lobotomy”. 

What was he saying?

Then, around two thirty that afternoon, it dawned on me. 

The training course was run by a couple of older guys who had a completely new and fresh idea on the sales process.

I found it was radically different to how the “old stagers” back at work sold cars.

It was called, The SALESPOWER System!

Run by Bob Lewis and Graham Hornsby and was a week-long affair.

By the mid 60‘s, Dealerships were becoming more and more aware of the other minor brands eating away at their sales numbers and had concluded that they needed a better trained sales force. 

Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/

I was asked to report to the board room the one day and fearing the worst, I tidied up my desk and slowly walked across the mezzanine walkway and knocked on the door. 

To my surprise I hadn’t made mistakes with the ledgers and journals. I was being offered a sales cadet’s job and a company car to use when seeing customers at night.

"a car salesman! 

a car salesman!" 

I remember mum shrieking when I told her about my new position that evening, 

"a car salesman! 

Oh my God why? 

What happened?" 

I wondered if my dear old mum would have been as animated if I had said “a bank robber” or a “professional hit man” or even a Collingwood supporter. 

But “my God! a car salesman!......

That was worse, much worse. 

I remember years later when in conversation with my youngest brother Alistair, my mum came across the room, interjected, and said, "don't you mind a word he's saying Alistair, remember he's a car salesman, he'll tell you anything" 

Thanks mum! 

Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/

OK! 

Sure! it did leak some oil. 

IN FACT IT LEAKED PINTS OF OIL!

He moaned all the time that it didn’t quite fit “the look” of the Rover-Isuzu Dealership’s image. 

He also added that it was “embarrassing to have such an old car wreck laying around abandoned wherever you find a hole Gordon”. 

I was soon assigned a spot up the road and out of sight. 

It was at the local pub’s car park. 

I reckon if you went there today, you would still see the patches of oil left by the mighty Morris. 

One day a salesman asked me if I wanted to get out of "that old shit heap of a Morris Minor” and drive a proper car. 

It appeared that he had pulled off the deal of the century on the sale of a new Isuzu and had taken in a great car as a trade in.

He slapped me on the back and whispered in my ear 

“Hey Gordon! I’ve just traded in a car and it just has your name written all over it mate” 

Then, oh dear, he did what I eventually found myself doing over, and over again in my future career in sales. 

He puppy dog closed me. “Take it home over the weekend and see if you like it, no pressure”

Monday morning. He walked up to me with a questioning look on his face.

I heard myself saying out loud. SOLD!

Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/

A career never intended, never planned. 

My mother Rebecca McGartland Murphy McLeish wanted her favourite son to be an accountant just like her. She was a wizard with numbers, as are a lot of my family.

My mum could do numbers in her head faster than a speeding bullet and, was super accurate as well.

​But me? I'm hopeless!

The Marist Brothers at Chanel College tried their hardest, but failed miserably in my case. 

I’ve always struggled with numbers. 

But in the end, and to keep my mum happy, I took to that "bean counters" path and got a very, very, very boring office job.

My path was kind of pre-ordained by mum. 

Then mum read the position vacant section of The Sydney Morning Herald.

"Trainee Accountant Wanted. On site training for the right candidate. 

Contact Tom Matthews, of Tom Matthews Motors, Condamine Street, Balgowlah for more details"

Mum handed me the paper with a huge smile and a reassuring nod of her head.

With that, my rewarding and enjoyable journey in the automotive industry began. 

Trainee Accountant - Tom Matthews Motors......

Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/