David Lowe: 0:00

Welcome to Prepare to Win. Today's episode is about craft and art. You know, living is craft and art, and so is selling, and today we're gonna help you understand the difference and how to use them to maximize your life and your results at work. Stay tuned.

Grace Lupoi: 0:28

Hi, I'm Lupoi and and I'm with David Lowe, the Automotive Sales Coach, and, like he said, today we're talking about craft and art, and it's something that we've talked about a lot and you've trained me on a lot. Right, we need both. We need craft and we need art, right? So let's talk about what is craft and what's art.

David Lowe: 0:43

Okay. So like good to be with everybody. Right, it's craft. Develop your craft. You hear a lot. Develop the wherewithal, the know-how right. And Truett Cathy said you need three things to succeed Desire and drive. Develop the know-how right and the and take the actions right. Developing that wherewithal, or the know-how, is developing your craft.

David Lowe: 1:06

So if we would say what is the craft, we would say the craft is what to do, why to do it and how to do it. Right or well, does that make sense? So if I was going to be a plumber, I would go learn my craft. What do I do, why do I do it that way and how do I do it right? If I was going to be an electrician, it would be that right. So it's basically the mechanical of the job, right, it's the mechanical of the job what to do, why to do and how to do it. Now I will say I say it's mechanical because it's the craft. Now, in it is the motivation, the why, right. So I think that a lot of people I'm this way I want to know why I'm doing what I'm doing. So somebody's gonna teach me something. Why are you saying this? So we see a lot of sales trainers out there. They're always like do this and memorize this and put it on your heart and everything. They're not really concerned with you changing inside. They're, after memorization, right.

David Lowe: 2:12

So when we say develop your craft, we're really talking about a transformation where we understand what we're doing, we understand why we're doing it and we understand how to do it right. And, of course, developing your craft means turning this knowledge into skill and, of course, to succeed, we have to turn skill into action. It's knowledge. Well, stephen Covey taught this. He did a great job. He didn't make it up, he just did a great job, teaching us what has always existed, that it's really attitude knowledge plus skills plus actions that change your results. If you want to change your results, improve your attitude. You want to improve your results, improve your knowledge. You want to improve results, improve your skill. If you want to improve your results, improve your actions Best, yet, do them all. Training is a life, okay.

David Lowe: 3:09

So we're talking about the craft kind of the mechanical what you do and why you do it and how you do it and, of course, practicing it till you can do it right. And so this goes through several stages, especially if we're learning something new. You've experienced this right, and so we talk about the fact. When you're learning something new, you start at stage one, and our goal at Automotive Sales Co should prepare to win is to take you to stage four. You start here, and what we want is transformation. Listen, there's four real levels of transformation. There's four real levels of skill building right, and that's how you turn craft into art. So let's walk through those. You've been through them.

Grace Lupoi: 3:56

Yeah, so this first step right, this first stage is I'm unconsciously incompetent.

David Lowe: 4:00

I don't know what you don't know. I don't know what I don't know.

Grace Lupoi: 4:02

I'm ignorant, right, and that's okay, we all are on some level. That's how we are. Then, once I don't know what I don't know, I gain some knowledge. Now I realize I'm consciously incompetent. I know what I don't know.

David Lowe: 4:15

Okay, so you come to training class and we just break this down. You're saying that I come here for training. I've never sold cars before. I don't know what, I don't know, I can only guess. And then I come to class and somebody starts teaching me this is what you do and why we do it and how we do it. I know. Now I know I can't do this. I'm consciously incompetent, true? So I moved from unconscious incompetence to now I know. Okay, that's what you do. I know I can't do it, right, all right, so that's stage two.

Grace Lupoi: 4:48

That's stage two. Okay, got it. Now, once I've come to this class and I realize there's a whole lot of things and skillsets that I don't have yet now I have to practice and I make that into a skill. So if I think about it, I become consciously competent. Right, I practice. I know what I should say. If I think about it, if I look at a real-play checklist or I look at my notes, I can think and say here's what I do next.

David Lowe: 5:09

You know what we have. So many people like that. Right, they'll get into our stuff. They'll work hard on it, almost memorize it. You know, this is supposed to be a compliment, but I don't take it as much. They really know your training and that's great if it means they developed it into a personal art form, right. Too many times it means they can say those things exactly the way you say them. That's not our goal, right. That might be the goal of other trainers, but we want to be up here. Right, our goal is this that you move from unconscious incompetence. Now you know. Now you know you don't know. So you begin to practice, you keep practicing until you can do it. Unfortunately, you have to really think about it as you do it. Right, it's not really part of you yet, right, and so you're really kind of parroting what you've learned. That's right. There's power in it, but not ultimate power. Memorization has power, but not ultimate power.

Grace Lupoi: 6:10

That's right.

David Lowe: 6:11

Where do you get the ultimate power?

Grace Lupoi: 6:12

Becoming unconsciously competent, yeah, right, so I practice so much. I'm at stage three, I'm consciously competent If I think about it, I know it, I'm a parrot, I can memorize it. And our goal is to get them to stage four, right, which I don't have to think about it, and I know it because it's become part of me. And that's where I think we lose so many people sometimes is because they get comfortable in the stage three and don't even realize there's a whole another stage, right, right. We're not trying to get people to go from stage one to stage three. I want them to just say, hey, I have no idea what I don't know, and then eventually they can say, hey, I don't have to even think about it because it's me. And that's that transformation that we're after, not that memorization.

David Lowe: 6:50

Yeah. So we always thought transformation, not memorization. Right Now I can memorize my way to transformation. That's right. As long as I don't stop. It's cool and it's okay to use the word tracks we provide to develop that presentation to be able to handle those objections.

David Lowe: 7:12

The dealership playbook is full of this is going to happen. Here's how you do it. It's full of here's what you do every day. Let's teach you the craft. Here's what to do and why to do it and how to do it. It's full of our certification videos. Come on, practice it till you can do it. It's full of that. And we don't want anybody to stop there. That's right.

David Lowe: 7:31

Becoming a master sales professional means that you become level four unconsciously competent. That's right. You don't have to think. I better use empathy, see, when somebody has an objection, your natural go to is what I think Malcolm Gleve was. So it takes 10,000 hours of something to become an expert, right? Thank God it won't take you that long to become an expert here.

David Lowe: 8:01

I do believe the more time we spend, the better we get right, as long as we're practicing the right things. So we don't have to unlearn. Practice the right things. And then we always say practice for perfection and play with passion. In other words, once the game starts, do your very best and don't worry if you form the ball, pick it back up and run right. That's going to happen during the game. And in practice, why not keep doing it until you know you can't get it wrong? Because during the game, when the pressure's on, you're going to do it wrong, and that's okay. We're not after perfection. Doing things better, more consistently, will create the results that we want. That makes us excellent. But so we're talking about mastery.

David Lowe: 8:40

You know, I go through this with playing a new song on my bass. I go through it all the time. So he says let's play the song. I don't know that song. So I listen to the song and I don't know how to play that Right. So I move from stage one. I don't know this, so I didn't know. I didn't know it. Somebody brought it up. Now I don't know. I listen to the song, I don't know that I don't know that.

David Lowe: 9:00

And then, of course, I learned the song. You know what is the intro, what is the verse and chorus, and how does it go and what are the notes and how do I play it. And so now I practice it over and over, keep practicing it till I can play it. As I'm practicing it, guess what I'm doing, thinking about it, right, I'm thinking about the chord changes or the runs, or wait a minute, is the course comes next, or is it the solo? Right, I'm thinking about it. And then, once I play it often enough, as soon as the band starts playing, I don't start, I don't think about it anymore, I just play. Right, the song carries you. And the song carries you because I am now unconsciously competent.

David Lowe: 9:41

And so the funny thing is, I can, I was unconsciously competent playing a lot of songs. How come I can't just play this song right away? See, we're always learning and as a sales professional, you're probably really good at some things and you're always learning. So this process of learning the new song, if you will, is a lifelong journey, right? And so what do we mean by art and personal art? Right, I think we mean style, oh, absolutely, presence, the ability to not think about what you're saying, but the focus on connecting your customer to it.

David Lowe: 10:24

Isn't that, true, that's right, and so we're playing on stage. It's not focusing on the notes you're going to play, but connecting the audience to your music. Right, that's what it is, that's the art form. That's what you're thinking about, and not thinking about your thing about the audience. You're not thinking about what you're playing Right.

David Lowe: 10:40

I know what I practice, that that's going to come automatic. What I want to do is connect my buyer to it. So we say we want people to be better than us. That's my sincere goal. Don't say I want to. It's why this training is not named Dave Low training. Right, we've named it automotive sales coach. We talk about prepare to win, because excellence is available to everyone and what we're trying to do is develop our own replacements. We don't want to be looked up to. We want to be a mentor that says we have spent a lot of time taking what the best of the best do, mapping it out, putting it in a simple pathway like a Google map, so that everybody has access to what the best of the best do. Right, that's what the playbook is. That's what our train is. Now we're hoping that you want to be your best and to do that, you have to what Practice? And the more you practice, the more you go.

David Lowe: 11:41

I'm gonna say it like this, because we're all on a team, we're all saying the same things, but we're all saying it in our own words. It sounds terrible to try to use somebody else's words. Right, absolutely, it doesn't sound real, doesn't sound sense. By the way. How many of you like that, right? So you know, there's trainers from a certain age, from a particular part of the country that don't necessarily speak or talk like you.

David Lowe: 12:08

Memorize this. I'm sorry I'm out Now. What I can do is use that successful pathway to memorize what you do so I can practice it over and over until I can say it in my own words. In other words, I know this so well. I'm not talking from memory, I'm talking from understanding, and that's why it becomes. You know, when you go through our playbooks, if you everybody says this, one of my favorite compliments is wow, this is just so natural. It makes so much common sense, right, and it does. It's a natural process of buying and selling. All we're trying to do is help you communicate, connect and lead your buyer well. Buyers fear making a bad decision. They just do. And the better you are and the better you can communicate right. Being a better communicator isn't just craft, it's art, that's right.

Grace Lupoi: 13:05

You're so confident in what you do and who you are that you can look people in the eye and connect with them Right, and this goes right back to talking about craft and art, whether it's in my professional life or my personal life, right, we train and we say that selling A is not just in your professional life, it's selling is getting someone else to see your point of view, and that is something that's so great to me and we train on is the fact that selling is I get to capitalize on my individuality. I'm different from you, right, and you are different from Lexi, and we're all different, and so we get to capitalize on that. And to do that, I have to go from stage three to stage four where I can say you know, I understand this, I put my own spin on it, I make it my own, and I can do that. And now that I'm transformed, I can see. Also here's how all these principles align with different areas in my life.

David Lowe: 13:57

It just rolls over, doesn't it?

Grace Lupoi: 13:58

It rolls over, and I can think man, you know what? Here's how empathy in this situation works. I can look at it with a totally different situation, with the same lens, because I don't know it by memorizing it. I know it because it's become part of me.

David Lowe: 14:11

It's changed you, transformation has changed, and if you're thinking changes, that's last in change. If you memorize it, it may not last and it certainly won't connect as many people, but last in change is thinking changed. It becomes yours now, the confidence that grows with last in change and thinking change is so contagious and not just contagious to others but contagious to other parts of your life, as you said, and you become more mindful. So I'm assuming that everybody who's joining us wants to be better today than yesterday. I mean, why would you get on?

David Lowe: 14:52

a podcast like this and I'm assuming, probably like me. Every day I'm in pursuit of my best self and every day I say or think or do something I wish I hadn't. I know I could have done better, I just know it. Now I'm not gonna beat myself up over it, but I do have to be mindful that I'm not being my best self and that encourages me to what Do a little better. That's why we were the better today than yesterday. Braceless if you don't have one, send Grace a note and she'll send you. That's why we were the bracelet. It's just a reminder, dave. You're not perfect man. You're gonna make mistakes.

David Lowe: 15:33

The key is what do you do when you make a mistake? Are you learning from it? Are you mindful of it? And so, just kind of wrapping this up our craft, the what, why and how we do it, the art, personalizing it, making it right. It just happens. This is the area of excellence, for everything you know. I think that football players practice plays over and over and in the huddle. If I'm a wide receiver, when the quarterback calls a play, I don't go. So what route do I run during that? And right, they call the play and I've run it so many times that I just run it. I know instinctively where to go. Instinct is created, yes, by experience, but more by preparation.

Grace Lupoi: 16:25

Repetition.

David Lowe: 16:26

Repetition. And so how do you catch a 90-mile-an-hour fastball thrown in the dirt? If you're a catcher, how do you hit a 90-mile-an-hour fastball right? It's preparation right. And so we know that turning craft in the art separates the good from the great, the great from the excellent right, and that's what we're after.

David Lowe: 16:48

So, no matter where you are in life or selling whatever, I think can't you benefit from being mindful of these? I know Vince Lombardi used these. He said man, you want a winning team. It's simple Make sure they know what to do, why to do it and how to do it Craft, make sure they can do it Craft, make sure they do it on the field right, action, right, and so, and the better they do it. You can see players. They all have access to the same blocking and tackling and you see some of them turn it into an art form. They get more sacks, they have more yards, they score more touchdowns. And so, in life, what the score, more touchdowns look like. It looks like better relationships In selling. It looks like selling more cars, right, having excited, loyal, lifetime customers, creating happier customers that return. It looks like, of course, being rewarded for both by making more money.

David Lowe: 17:42

So there's a lot at stake, of us being mindful and making the decision to turn whatever we do our craft into art. Right, that's right. Whatever you do, do it with your whole heart and your whole mind. Right, that's what we say excellence is. Today, we talked about excellence in a form of craft versus art. Talked about moving from what we don't know to being unconsciously competent, being prepared that our actions and our reactions become instinctive. That's really the art form. We trust there's been a benefit to you. We hope that you join us again for our next episode. We've got some great stuff coming down. In fact, I'm not even gonna get into it. I just joined us. We've got some great stuff. It's gonna be a benefit in your life and we sure appreciate it. We know time is valuable and you spending time with us means a lot, doesn't?

Grace Lupoi: 18:28

it Grace, it does, it does.

David Lowe: 18:30

Tell them how to like us and to follow us.

Grace Lupoi: 18:32

Yes, like us. Follow us. Comment below. Subscribe as well. Send us a note of anything that we can continue to help you guys improve on.

David Lowe: 18:40

We sure love you to share us too. Absolutely. I think a simple share of our link on Facebook could be a benefit to a lot of people. Thank you for doing that. Thanks in advance for doing that. So have an awesome week. Good selling and listen. Good living.