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EP 6: Stavros Paraskevaides: The challenges of steering BMW and Rolls-Royce in Saudi Arabia
43 Plays18 days ago
This week on The Auto Ethnographer podcast, host John Stech speaks with Stavros Paraskevaides, located near Athens, Greece. Stavros recounts the challenging eight years he spent in the Middle East and how he managed a wide array of cultures within a distributor operation. He now puts those learnings to use for clients at SP4A Advisory, a consultancy he founded in 2021.
Stavros led BMW and Rolls-Royce at the brands’ largest distributor in Saudi Arabia, a large company with multiple locations and over 1,500 employees. These employees stemmed from the Middle East, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, bringing with them many traditions, work ethics, and cultural differences.
He also worked for another distributor in Qatar, responsible for the Hyundai, Genesis, and Chevrolet brands. Here, the challenges were similar.
Prior to his Middle East journey, Stavros worked for Mercedes-Benz in several countries including his native Greece where he rose to Managing Director of the brand. He also led Sales Operations for the brand in the United States where he found Mercedes-Benz USA to be a vastly different scale than what had known in Greece. He speaks about his experiences during his first overseas working experience during the podcast.
His career originally started with Toyota Motor Company in Greece before making the move to Mercedes-Benz.
SP4A Advisory: https://www.sp4advisory.com/
MotorWerks Garage: http://www.MotorWerks.gr
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
As an executive, you need to negotiate with a manufacturer and try and convince them that I understand your way, but this is not the best way of doing things here.
Introduction to Auto Ethnographer Podcast
00:00:11
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Auto Ethnographer. I'm John Steck, your host on this journey. We travel the globe to bring you stories about culture and the global automotive industry. Fasten your seatbelt and let's get started.
Guest Introduction: Stavros Paroskovaides
00:00:25
Speaker
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Auto Ethnographer. We have a great guest here lined up today, Stavros Paroskovaides. He's visiting us from Greece, where his native Greece.
00:00:40
Speaker
We're gonna talk little about a couple of brands that are in his career history and some of the locations that he has working in the auto industry over the past several decades.
00:00:51
Speaker
So he started in Toyota in his native Greece. He then moved over to Mercedes-Benz, first Greece, and then ultimately for about a five-year stint in the United States.
00:01:03
Speaker
After that, he returned to Greece ah again with Mercedes-Benz, both in Greece as well as Serbia Montenegro. During the Daimler Chrysler years, he did a very small stint with the Chrysler Jeep and Dodge brands under Daimler Chrysler.
00:01:18
Speaker
And then had something very different. He spent about eight years in the Middle East, first in Saudi Arabia, and then ultimately in Qatar. Very different experience, first working on the BMW and Rolls-Royce brands, and then ultimately in Qatar working with Chevrolet, Hyundai, and Genesis.
Career Journey Across Continents
00:01:38
Speaker
He's since gone on to found his own consulting company, SP4A, and started a premium and classic vehicle repair workshop, Motorworks, in Greece, which is something we'd also like to hear a little bit about during our conversation.
00:01:53
Speaker
Stavros, welcome to the Autoethnographer. It's great to have you. Well, it's great to see you again. mean, we have a ah history that goes back, I guess, 20 and a half decades now.
00:02:06
Speaker
So we are both getting a bit... grayer, I should say, whiter. We crossed paths at Mercedes-Benz in the US, which, as I mentioned, you spent about five years there at Mercedes-Benz USA.
00:02:22
Speaker
And um you had been working with the brand in Greece, primarily focused on more commercial-oriented vehicles, commercial vans.
00:02:33
Speaker
So when you made this jump across the ocean, um Must have been a big shock for you because I think you spent most of your, or all of your career in Greece prior to that.
Adapting to Cultural Business Environments
00:02:44
Speaker
Yes. I mean, I remember walking in the office on on day one and thinking I'm used to dealing with 15 dealers and now I need to deal with 320. And, uh,
00:03:01
Speaker
and In my office, I mean surrounding my office, can see 20 to 30 individuals a day and here on the first floor we have about 400. So I think immediately the numbers just fell onto my head and I realized that the scale of the challenge is going to be completely a different level.
00:03:29
Speaker
What was for me very, I would say relieving was the fact that I was confident that I knew how Mercedes-Benz works and I knew the car business. so I was willing to learn and adapt to a new market and that kind of, let's say, reduced to a degree my stress.
00:03:57
Speaker
Because obviously coming from a market of a few thousand units to a market of a couple of hundred thousand units at the time was quite daunting.
00:04:09
Speaker
It's a huge change, certainly in terms of the the scope and the scale, um the the number of dealers and and just the size of the United States, right? it's It's an entire continent which behaves almost like individual countries because the regions are are very different just from the customer tastes.
00:04:27
Speaker
When you're willing to learn and when you're willing to try and understand the idiosyncrasies of each individual market, irrespective of the size, you're going to be able to to adapt. If you're looking for solutions, you're going to find a way to provide those, hopefully.
00:04:48
Speaker
So yes, Mercedes-Benz USA was a huge, I would say, university for me because it just ah taught me how to work for the first time with I would say the to a degree the Anglo-Saxon business culture.
00:05:12
Speaker
I was more used to the ah German business culture and before that to the Japanese business culture.
Challenges and Flexibility in the Middle East
00:05:18
Speaker
And as the years went on and the time went on, i was just constantly a e thing enhancing my knowledge and experiences and and evolving
00:05:34
Speaker
into a better professional. What did you think was the biggest change? right Like you said, it's an Anglo-Saxon business environment. and You know, Anglo-Saxon, whether it's the Americans or the British, tend to be more low-context cultures. So you say what you think, right? There's no double meanings.
00:05:55
Speaker
It's just, it is what it is. And I think Greece is a little bit more of a high-context culture, and and the Japanese even much more so. but What was the biggest challenge for you?
00:06:06
Speaker
There's positive in everything. I mean, you just need to look for it. And and and that's my... That's my stance. Working with the Germans for for a many years, I have learned that you need to be precise.
00:06:23
Speaker
You sometimes need to be absolute. you You need to be a proper technocrat. And I have nothing against that because I'm an engineer by training. So I i kind of enjoy that to a degree.
00:06:39
Speaker
The difference I think in the, let's say North American or US or Anglo-Saxon approach is that I think people are much more focused on the outcome.
00:06:51
Speaker
And sometimes in German mentality, we we're more focused on the process to get to the outcome. And is that good? is that Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not.
00:07:06
Speaker
Sometimes when there is an urgency, the German approach can be time consuming and seeking the perfect solution
00:07:21
Speaker
can allow the situation to potentially go out of control and the outcome to to to be negative. I think the Anglo-Saxon model is a lot more focused on the result and then trying to find a way to get to that.
00:07:39
Speaker
So it's more flexible in that sense. And obviously when you're an executive in an organization that is highly structured, it's a little bit less stressful. ah So I wouldn't say there is a...
00:07:55
Speaker
Is one better than the other? Depends on the situation. Certain situations, one approach is better. In another situation, the other approach can be more fruitful.
00:08:12
Speaker
Now, I came from a culture that obviously Greece borders between Europe and the Middle East. ah The more east you go the more huggling takes place about everything.
00:08:29
Speaker
Emotions, and negotiations, ah these things are integrated into the into the culture, whether it's family or business. if It doesn't make ah too much difference.
00:08:42
Speaker
so the further west, let's say, you move, you need to adapt ah your approach. Now, the fact that i have been educated in in the British educational system probably helped me ah quite a bit in being able to to shift when necessary from one to the other.
Managing Diverse Teams in Saudi Arabia
00:09:06
Speaker
So I think Due to my culture, I have ah in my DNA an embedded element of flexibility, I should say, or I should say openness into seeking solutions into different ah situations rather than just always following strict operating procedures.
00:09:35
Speaker
Certainly makes a lot of sense. and but Was there one of the two cultures, the German or the the American one, that you felt that you adjusted to easier, that that you felt more comfortable slipping into? You you mentioned ah education through the British schools.
00:09:54
Speaker
I think adapting to the U.S. market for me was, I would say, easier than adapting to the Middle Eastern market.
00:10:06
Speaker
Because the... Yes, the language between the colleagues in Germany and the colleagues in the U.S. might have not been identical, but it was easier to bridge and find the common ground. Now, when you're talking about the Middle East, ah things are different. And there I was representing again German brands in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula. so we're talking...
00:10:34
Speaker
I would say 180 degrees ah completely polarized as ah situation in terms of communication and negotiation because I think it's it's it's not... the
00:10:52
Speaker
It's not by chance that if we look at the expats in the Middle East, I would say that the representation from Germans is much lower than other than other nationalities. And that is because I believe
00:11:11
Speaker
people that have grown up in a very structured environment with ah well have learned to follow rules and processes, ah find it sometimes quite difficult to adapt into an environment that's so literally sometimes you constantly need to improvise every every hour to to survive in certain cases.
00:11:38
Speaker
So adapting to the U.S. culture was a lot easier for me than it was to the Middle Eastern one. Moving on, I guess, to to the Middle East culture a little bit more, um you were running actually the brands, BMW and Rolls-Royce in Saudi Arabia.
00:11:58
Speaker
did Did you have multiple locations? You were um one location? So i joined I joined one of the largest automotive groups as the managing director for BMW and Rolls-Royce initially.
00:12:10
Speaker
And later on, I became the senior VP of the group. And I also had under my belt Jaguar Land Rover
Logistical and Workforce Challenges in the Middle East
00:12:22
Speaker
and Lincoln.
00:12:23
Speaker
And we had more than 20 locations and one and a half thousand employees. So it was a completely different experience because the only commonality, I would say, you have with ah the western part of the world when it comes to operations or the business is probably the facilities which
00:12:57
Speaker
are somewhat similar due to the CIE specs or constraints or whatever you want to call them.
00:13:07
Speaker
From that onwards, almost nothing is the same. From the legal environment that you operate in the multicultural employee environment that you you need to deal with,
00:13:23
Speaker
to the families that are sometimes ah managing the business in in different ways and you have rotating boards and chairman in some company.
00:13:37
Speaker
So the environment is completely different from anything that anyone is used to, let's say in Europe or North America at least.
00:13:48
Speaker
So within within that organization then, as I understand in in Saudi Arabia, my my parents had spent time living there back in the early nineteen ninety s So my my understanding is that depending on the job, you you really have different nationalities doing particular jobs, right? So I think it's unlikely that you have Saudis actually working in the in the workshop, um I'm guessing.
00:14:14
Speaker
is Is that a correct assumption or i am I incorrect? Traditionally in the Middle East, the locals would not be involved in a in a business like... ah cars or automotives.
00:14:30
Speaker
And the fact is that there there are many factors from social factors, educational factors, so on and so forth. And these countries, and Saudi, I will talk about sides a little bit different, but we were talking for the rest of the countries, whether they should unite Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, or Qatar.
00:14:54
Speaker
We're talking about countries extremely wealthy in fossil fuels and obviously ah countries that have low population, native population.
00:15:08
Speaker
So obviously the fact that that the country is very wealthy, yeah in many ways it's reflected that the wealth is distributed also to a degree to its residents or to the native residents.
00:15:23
Speaker
And therefore these people ah are quite well off. ah And due to the fact that they do travel overseas and they have different experiences, they expect high quality of services and options.
00:15:41
Speaker
And what's the easiest way? you have money, you just buy it. You buy the expertise, you bring people over, you have them do that for you. And you offer them a tax-free environment most of the time.
00:15:54
Speaker
And the therefore, um you can attract, the let's say, for the higher paying jobs, executives potentially from the region or from Europe or the rest of the world.
00:16:10
Speaker
And for the technical side, jobs or labor-intensive jobs, then you can go to subcontinental Asia or Southeast Asia and and and get manpower that is to a degree skilled and it has a lot lower cost.
00:16:35
Speaker
So this is the this is the environment. Now, if you go to Saudi arab Arabia, it's quite different because in Saudi Arabia, the local population is actually large.
00:16:48
Speaker
And there you have ah big country, very wealthy country, but the level of skills is is still low and especially technical skills.
00:17:02
Speaker
Because when you go to banks, obviously you'll find local people working in banks, working for the government and in the public sector overwhelmingly will be will be local.
00:17:13
Speaker
But when it comes to technical professions which are harder, and let's say the the working conditions are more challenging, people don't really are not really attracted to those. I mean, we are starting to face a problem in the Western world too nowadays, that people want to avoid the technical and jobs that are heavy on the body, let's
Aligning Team Goals with Company Success
00:17:37
Speaker
say.
00:17:37
Speaker
so ah That means that you you're you will have in your management team ah potentially locals, but as you go further down the the ranks and the pay grade, let's say, then you will not find any locals because they're simply not interested, either not interested in the jobs or those ah skills are not available.
00:18:07
Speaker
And that that makes it extremely challenging as the language, quote unquote, that you you talk to these people and you try to ah manage them and motivate them is not one, but it's multiple and you need to adapt, you need to constantly adapt and you need to constantly translate a the language so you can effectively communicate.
00:18:35
Speaker
Clearly not only language, right? Because different, regardless of the specific words, there are different understandings and different work styles um for for different you know cultures.
00:18:49
Speaker
So if you have three different cultures in sales and workshop and functions, maybe the parts of your house, um maybe the parts your house it's it's got to be very difficult to to get everybody moving in the same direction.
00:19:04
Speaker
I can only imagine. How did you navigate that? Fundamentally, I always say, you know, respect the individual. So you you need... My philosophy is that we are all expats.
00:19:19
Speaker
We go into a foreign country for a common purpose, and that is to be financially... at a better position so we can support our families, educate our children.
00:19:32
Speaker
So I e always try to remember that all these people were in this country for the same fundamental purpose. So that means that we all have a common goal.
00:19:45
Speaker
Maybe it's not a business goal, but we all have a common goal. So this means that we have a base from which we can start discussing and understanding each other. then
00:19:58
Speaker
We talk about the business and we say, okay, guys, we came here to work. We have nothing because we have also, there's a lot of issues that have to do with ah hostility, you know, ah different ethnic ah groups or ethnic castes that ah and need to be sitting around the same table. And you, you can tell that that's embedded in their DNA and oh they they're looking at each other with suspicion or they don't want to deal with people or they will come and tell you, boss, I don't want to talk with these guys because these guys, my grandfather, you know, whatever.
00:20:28
Speaker
So you need to make clear to everybody that we are here for a common purpose. We are oh good human beings and we just have to find the best way we can to work together and bring a result. And if the company prospers, we are all going to ah take a a bit of that.
00:20:53
Speaker
And it it sounds a lot easier than it actually is. ah because there is in the Middle East there is a constant...
Expat Limitations in the Middle East
00:21:04
Speaker
um its the The political situation is constantly in flux.
00:21:10
Speaker
And there is a lot of um animosity sometimes between countries in the region or due to religious reasons.
00:21:23
Speaker
And many times the government takes decisions. And for example, let's say there was a period that the um when I was in Qatar that there was poor diplomatic relations with the with Egypt.
00:21:38
Speaker
Now, Egyptian workforce is very prominent in in Qatar. And suddenly the government said, you know what, no more visas. And who whatever visa expires, you know, you need to go home.
00:21:50
Speaker
Suddenly, you know, you're faced with a problem because either you have people that you have recruited and you're expecting them to come on board and they can't join you. And you have people that are serving you and suddenly they're disappearing.
00:22:02
Speaker
So you have this type of challenges that you don't have in other parts of the world. And on top of those, you have, I mean, COVID was a horrible situation oh that,
00:22:18
Speaker
Sometimes we couldn't even send the bodies of of of people that but passed away due to the virus because of political reasons. and We couldn't send them back to their families. So when operating in this environment, multi-ethnic, and I would say also and and and multi-religious, it's it brings complications that are not relevant to the job itself.
00:22:47
Speaker
But they affect so deeply the social ah environment around it that the it becomes part of the business problem.
00:22:59
Speaker
And you need to solve it as an executive. That's a huge challenge. You mentioned visas, right? Usually visas can be one year, two year, three year. So i can I assume that you had a lot of turnover at at these different organizations so that you know you you had people coming in and leaving again within one or two or three years?
00:23:20
Speaker
you know In Mercedes-Benz in the United States, you tend to have long-term employees at the dealers, right? People are there for 10, 20, 30 years or more. in in in Saudi Arabia or Qatar or these countries in the Gulf, you have families that have literally lived there for decades.
00:23:38
Speaker
But they're always on visa. they' are never They can never take a permanent residency.
Empathy in Leadership in Complex Cultures
00:23:43
Speaker
So that's one of the other challenges that these people know that they have a termination date. So when my even if I retire at that company, it means that I need to go back after 30 years to my country where I'm a foreigner again.
00:23:59
Speaker
That's another burden that you see in your employees too. Many times you see that. so I remember I had a gentleman from Pakistan. He was working for us for 35 years. and And he kept asking me to extend his contract.
00:24:13
Speaker
And I said, look, the company policy is that, you know, we cannot extend any more your contract. We have already extended five years. And he came one day crying into my office. He was already 65. And he came crying into my office. And he he said, Mr. Stavros, he said, I have to go back.
00:24:32
Speaker
I don't know anybody back home after 35 years. What am I going to do? My kids are here. They are also working sponsored by some other business. and And, you know, yes, I will have money and a house, but what am I going to do with that?
00:24:48
Speaker
And so all these things are, you know, all the situations, you need to deal with them because you need to have your staff working motivated and you need to have your staff ah
00:25:06
Speaker
feeling secure in order to deliver the results. So it is very, very, very challenging
00:25:19
Speaker
or with the issues, for example, ah you know, Palestine is in in conversation, obviously, ah for a long time now and has been and unfortunately it will be, I guess.
00:25:32
Speaker
We had people that were Palestinians
00:25:40
Speaker
from Palestinian parents born in Saudi Saudi Arabia will not grant citizenship to these people so they actually are trapped and employed in that country and they cannot do go anywhere.
00:25:56
Speaker
because they don't have a passport. So they have a document. They can literally live and die there, but they cannot go anywhere else. Wow, what an interesting and complicated situation.
00:26:11
Speaker
And and these these are the people you work with. And you need to have empathy. You need to understand their situation. And you need to see how you can integrate them into into the business And at the same, I mean, from my end, I always felt a a responsibility, ah social responsibility against the any any person and any employee to try and and make their life better as much as possible. but
00:26:43
Speaker
So the complexities ah there are are huge. And you you end up spending most of your time doing quote unquote HR management ah because you you need to ensure that the organization staffed properly.
Luxury Brand Expectations vs. Workforce Skills
00:27:05
Speaker
People are focused on what they are supposed to be doing because obviously the manufacturer, whether it's it's in the US or China or Japan or France, they they want results and they don't care about ah the specifics of of of your problems.
00:27:23
Speaker
In any case, in most countries, these are ah general distributors and the purpose that the OEMs place general distributors is that they are either not allowed due to local legislation or they don't want to get into that situation. So they will quote unquote outsource the distribution of vehicles and solve their problem. So it's your problem.
00:27:45
Speaker
certainly ah a challenging environment on how to align strategically and and motivate such a diverse employment base.
00:27:58
Speaker
let's Let's flip the script over to the other side. What about the customer? is Is that a more homogeneous customer? So if we're talking, for example, BMW in Saudi Arabia,
00:28:09
Speaker
or I'm not going to talk about Rolls-Royce because that's such a special small category, but what what kind of customer came in for BMW? Was it the more, let's say, monolithic customer? Were they primarily the Saudis or did you have also lots of other nationalities coming in as as a BMW customer?
00:28:29
Speaker
I guess Saudis is very specific. saudii ah and Saudi, in Saudi Arabia, about 95% of the wealth of the country is allocated to approximately 2% of the population.
00:28:43
Speaker
So this means that vast the ah the vast majority of the population lives with less than, family lives with less than $2,000 a month. So obviously that's not a BMW customer.
00:28:58
Speaker
That's why I had the impression before going there and working myself that, you know, it must be a very lucrative ah premium and and luxury segment. But the fact is that, that let's say, premium European, Asian, American premium segment is probably 10% of the total market.
00:29:18
Speaker
And then you have all these players who are trying to to take a chunk of that. So the volumes are not high. I mean, if we look at Saudi Arabia surpassed 1 million, ah registrations last year, which was ah obviously ah top 20 market.
00:29:34
Speaker
But ah the premium segment is is quite small. Now, the also the contrary to, let's say, the yeah UAE or Dubai, ah the number of Western expats that have high incomes is less than 2%.
Training for High-End Customer Service
00:29:57
Speaker
in Dubai that's much much higher so although the population is lower you have a lot of expats that also due to the lifestyle they they will buy premium vehicles in Saudi you're provided with a company car the lifestyle is very conservative so you don't even have to spend where to spend your money okay apart from a mall or shopping or so expats don't very, very few buy premium cars.
00:30:31
Speaker
Then, therefore, I would say that 95 to of your clientele is local. And more than half of them are employees of the public sector.
00:30:45
Speaker
The rest are business owners, professionals, so on and so forth. And Obviously, these are very affluent people in the local communities and they're also very demanding because they travel, they own properties in France, in Switzerland, in Germany, in Italy, in the US.
00:31:14
Speaker
They are clients of these premium brands in Beverly Hills, in London, in Zurich or wherever. And their expectations, they fly Emirates or Saudi business class, which is a top experience.
00:31:33
Speaker
And when they buy a similar branded vehicle in Saudi Arabia, they come and they expect that they are going to receive the same type of service.
00:31:43
Speaker
And that's where the challenge really peaks as the human resources you have at hand,
00:31:56
Speaker
whether it's due to academical knowledge, whether it's due to business experience or even exposure they've had to such an environment is not there.
00:32:10
Speaker
So just to give you an example, you know we when we launched the 7 Series, the previous generation 7 Series. So we went to Munich and and there was a big program by BMW to train ah the after sales staff on the, what they call the GKM. So it's, let's say the S-Class segment, 7 Series segment, how well you should treat these clients.
00:32:39
Speaker
Now, to us in Saudi Arabia, since Saudi Arabia is the largest company general distributor with the highest market share in terms of of ah of seven series. We had 40% share of our sales was seven series and was ranking fifth in the world in seven series sales, although the market is is small.
00:33:00
Speaker
ah We were accustomed to a degree, but the the challenge is that ah you have service advisors who are getting a salary $1,000. come from they come from Subcontinental Asia or they come from the Middle East.
00:33:20
Speaker
ah They have been in the past technicians or they come from very very humble belongings and their income doesn't even allow them to enter enter let alone fly a business class to enter a four-star hotel and see how these customers are treated.
00:33:34
Speaker
So we are asking these people and we're saying, you know you need to treat these people with the utmost ah you know sensitivity and and these people don't understand the language you're talking about.
Enhancing Customer Interaction Quality
00:33:50
Speaker
So one of the things I used to do actually is I used to ask my service managers once a year at least to take out the service advisors to ah to a high-end hotel and just spend half a day there, buy them lunch, um and explain to them or give them some feel of the experience that this client is expecting from us.
00:34:19
Speaker
ah So these this is... an approach I was taking. Did it work? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
00:34:32
Speaker
But this is the thing, you have to try and and and and bring that relevance
00:34:40
Speaker
of the experience ah which inherently that just doesn't exist. you you need You need to force that somehow. How can you expect them to know what they don't know? right if If you've never seen the inside of a five-star, six-star hotel, how do you expect them to be able to handle customers in a five or six star way.
00:35:05
Speaker
they They simply have no exposure to that. I think that's brilliant to take people to a high-end hotel for for lunch to to witness this. um Obviously, i would I would imagine you have to explain almost step by step, you know, why why is the waiter doing this at this time, right? Things like this, just to add the context onto to it. but and Very brilliant. We spent two years to two and a half years educating over 300 people. i would say over 700 people. And these were the customer contact people. in we We tried from start. We create a custom platform.
00:35:42
Speaker
a custom training program. And we start with the complete fundamentals of of how do I talk to client?
00:35:53
Speaker
Why is a client important for me? I remember I new. I walked into the BMW showroom. I mean, I had been announced. People had not seen my face. So I said to one of my managers, I said, you know, I want you to drive me.
00:36:08
Speaker
to one of our dealerships and just let me walk in as a client. And so I walk in as a client. it's I remember it's ah Thursday evening, which is like a Friday evening in the in the Western world.
00:36:24
Speaker
And it was also Ramadan time, which was, it's always pretty busy. And I walk in and I see a kind of a chaos in the showroom.
00:36:35
Speaker
So there is several salespeople. I guess they're salespeople, by the way, they were and communicating because I couldn't tell from the dress code.
Managing Non-Compliant Staff
00:36:47
Speaker
And they're walking around and talking to people. There's guys ah serving customers with coffee and tea. And...
00:36:59
Speaker
Then I said, okay, let's see if someone's going to pay any attention to me. So I started working around the cars and I remember that I was clocking this. And for 12 minutes, absolutely nobody turned around to talk to me or look at me or come towards me.
00:37:15
Speaker
Although there were people on their phones or, you know, just hanging around. So the when we went back to the office on Sunday,
00:37:27
Speaker
I said to, I called the regional sales manager and I said, you know, this is under your region. He said to me, yes, sir. I said, okay, I want to see you. And I said, I want you to organize.
00:37:38
Speaker
You're coming to the office because I want to talk to you and you're going to organize today a meeting at the afternoon shift with all the sales team. So the guy came to me and he said to me, yeah, you know,
00:37:52
Speaker
these people are very experienced and, you know, I cannot tell them what to wear and what not to wear. And, you know, they're booking a lot of cars and I said, okay, I said, that's one side of it. But the other side of it is that, you know, people expect to see how the brand should be represented when they come in and they don't see that they see a buzzer.
00:38:11
Speaker
And we, uh, I got the guys to, to come and, uh, uh, talk to them and, I explained to them, I said, guys, you're lucky you work for a great local company and ah and a great brand. And a lot of salespeople are envious because they work for lesser brands to a degree.
00:38:38
Speaker
And the expectation from you is that you behave in accordance with the brand philosophy. And so I told them that, you know, that I want you to take care of the client. I want you to be dressed properly. I want you to do the the fundamentals.
00:38:55
Speaker
And when we finish the conversation, top selling guy comes to me and says, boss, can I talk to you? I said, yeah, sure. Of course you can. He said, my name is so on, so on, so on.
00:39:06
Speaker
He says, a you don't like me, boss. I said, how can I not? like I don't even know you. I just met you. He said, yeah, but he said, what you explained the way you described that you want us to work, I don't work like that.
00:39:23
Speaker
I don't want to work like that.
00:39:26
Speaker
I said, look, let me explain to you something. I said, I will be monitoring your CSI scores or whatever measures your quality, the quality aspects of your work.
00:39:41
Speaker
I said, if the client, you're going to apply for sure the dress code and some other stuff. if the clients are happy and the outcome for the company is positive and the brand, I said, you're welcome to continue what you're doing. But if you're not, you either have to adopt and I will train you to do that or then we have to discuss again and see what's going on.
00:40:07
Speaker
Now, it's very interesting, the history with this guy because he was actually our top selling ah guy, but he...
00:40:18
Speaker
did not want to follow any rules. And he was giving the bad example also to the to the newer generation that we were bringing in. And eventually, ah the sales manager is asking him to follow the sales funnel management process.
00:40:37
Speaker
He's not only ignoring, but he's arguing with him inside the showroom and he's telling the other salespeople these are, these all rubbish and you know it's not that it doesn't bring any sales.
00:40:50
Speaker
And the sales manager comes to me and says, you know what, I've had it with him and that's it. So I said, okay, let me invite him to the office. And the guy comes over and I said to him, look, I said, you don't want to like i like yourself and that's that's a problem.
00:41:06
Speaker
He said to me, boss, that's the way I work and that's the way i am going to continue working. So I remember I got off my chair. I gave him my hand and said, thank you for your service, but I think we'll have to part ways.
00:41:21
Speaker
And the guy was shocked for a while. And ah then he went to HR and HR told him, well, if Mr. Stavros told you, you know, you have to go, you have to go.
00:41:33
Speaker
that's That's the way it is. What was the moral of the story? The moral of the story was that from the day that this guy left,
00:41:42
Speaker
we started seeing an improvement in behavior of the rest of the sales team.
Instilling Brand Standards in Sales Teams
00:41:48
Speaker
Did we lose sales due to him? Yes, we did. we We lost some sales because there were people that were for many years loyal to himself.
00:41:57
Speaker
But at the end of the day, I had to find a way somehow to manage the team. And due to the fact that all the cultures in in that sales team were of similar background, in the end,
00:42:20
Speaker
I will use the term loosely. Disciplining was the only way to to to give them a direction to, to show them by example, that you know what we will debate, we will train you, we will do whatever we want to do. it And there was another guy at JLR. I remember I walked into the showroom and he did not get up from his desk to, to welcome me.
00:42:48
Speaker
And I woke up to him and and I said, i think his name was Abdulaziz. I said, Abdulaziz, I said,
00:42:56
Speaker
Shouldn't you come and welcome me? You know mean? And he said to me, you're coming to my house. Why should i get up and welcome So that was the day i said, you know, we need to do a custom training program and we need to train these people. And we saw a huge improvement, but it was ah a very lengthy process that took us about two two and a half years.
00:43:22
Speaker
But again, it's understanding I was trying to bridge the customer expectations with the reality I had on the sales floor. The brands are are often obviously defined in their home country, right? so they there are certain assumptions that go into what is that brand and and how should you behave in the showroom or in the workshop ah according to that brand.
00:43:49
Speaker
Right. and And then taking that assumption and trying to overlay that um onto you know employees from ah you know a patchwork of of different cultures is such a challenge. If if they don't understand that the German-ness, for example, of of BMW and the process orientation that that the Germans have you know during the sales process and
Balancing Manufacturer and Market Expectations
00:44:14
Speaker
tracking. And and you mentioned the sales funnel.
00:44:17
Speaker
That that's requires a lot of KPIs and tracking. That's not necessarily something that some of these ah cultures are are you know familiar or comfortable with. The other challenge is that obviously you you need to negotiate, let's say, internally in the organization ah and and find a way to get consensus together.
00:44:41
Speaker
because at the end of the day, you need people behind you to to move forward. Then on the other side, you have the manufacturer who, like you said, you know has his own set and sometimes inflexible ways of doing things. And and then you have ah people pushing you because they want to do a design or an individual program ah where people say, oh, you know, you need to be in Germany. You know, people will wait 90 days for a car.
00:45:08
Speaker
Well, in Saudi Arabia, people won't wait for two hours for a car. You know, they they want to pick it up and drive like they want to do in the U.S. I remember conversations at MBUSA with a our then VP, a dear friend today, who was constantly chasing the field managers and trying to get the dealers to ah to to place ah orders and wanted to see pipelines so we can manage the inventory better.
00:45:35
Speaker
And field managers were saying, it just doesn't work like this in the States. It was the same in in Saudi. I remember conversations with Rolls-Royce. We were the number two dealer in the world. And So Rolls-Royce was saying, you know, you need to build the cars, you know, to customer order.
00:45:54
Speaker
Well, customer order for Rolls-Royce might be six to two months to 12 months, depending to build a car, build your own. And customers don't want that in Saudi.
00:46:07
Speaker
So I remember that maybe we will we would build to order maybe six or seven cars a year. So, and the manufacturer could not understand that they were saying, yeah, but you know, these are people that, yeah, maybe somewhere else, not here.
00:46:26
Speaker
So as an executive, you need to negotiate with the manufacturer and try and convince them that I understand your way, but this is not the best way of doing things here.
00:46:39
Speaker
And then you're trying to convince or bring up the local staff and trying to convince them that, you know, we need to to do what we need to do. And then you have the client, obviously, who one day wants to be served the way like he is in, because that's the other thing, he's in Zurich, where if he books an appointment for an oil change, it might be three weeks, but he will respect that. And then if he calls in Saudi and you tell him it's three weeks for and an appointment, he will just start, you know, ah shouting at you because he thinks you're not um respecting his time.
00:47:18
Speaker
So it's it's it's the The environment is ah it's ah it's it's ah super challenging and it takes a big stomach.
00:47:30
Speaker
It takes adaptability and you need to be determined to succeed. Otherwise, and that's why a lot of the expats don't last long in in the Middle East because the challenges are multiple, especially in South Africa.
00:47:48
Speaker
You lasted for eight years in the Middle
Consulting Career and Practical Experience
00:47:50
Speaker
East. And of course, now you you started your own consulting company, also an automotive, of of course.
00:47:59
Speaker
how do you like How would you categorize or how would you, you know, prioritize some of the learnings you had you know with with your different international experiences? and And are you still using these on a daily basis as you work on your current consulting projects?
00:48:15
Speaker
but Or are you localized more working on projects in Greece? I have worked in projects in the US, in the Middle East, in China, and in and in Europe and in Greece.
00:48:29
Speaker
ah In Greece, to be honest, i I take some projects on to to stay in touch with the local market and obviously I have a lot of contacts from the past.
00:48:43
Speaker
What is in interesting in Greece right now is that the after the before the crisis, before the Greek crisis, I would say most manufacturers had established national sales companies in Greece.
00:48:56
Speaker
After the crisis and with what's happening today with the necessity for huge investments in electrification and all the other, whether it's autonomous driving or or whatever the technology brings, all the manufacturers are looking to pull out and reduce their costs and pass on distribution to local dealer groups. So ah what we see locally is we see a ah realignment, I would say, of distribution groups.
00:49:26
Speaker
and consolidation. And I'm working on some of those strategic projects, other with multinational, usually companies or some some local ones. Then I work quite a bit with the Middle East.
00:49:40
Speaker
I am quite familiar with that market, I understand it. I built a certain reputation while I was there, so people do reach out to me to help them in in different projects.
00:49:53
Speaker
I don't take on many clients and I will explain why I do that. You know, you know I had a allergy to consultants.
00:50:07
Speaker
This is the funny thing now. And there is one being that what I had experienced is that
Value of International Experience
00:50:16
Speaker
my bosses or the boards or would decide to bring a a consulting company to help us with the project.
00:50:24
Speaker
So many times and many of these big companies would bring a seasoned executive who was working as their head of desk or whatever.
00:50:39
Speaker
ah We would do a meeting for a couple of hours. Then this person would walk away and then suddenly an army of young consultants and completely inexperienced would come in and they would start analyzing the business. Then they would come and present us something that they had gone back to their libraries, seen similar projects.
00:51:03
Speaker
And from that, they would come up with a proposal, which many times, unfortunately, was unrealistic or, you know, I would say partly partly acceptable.
00:51:17
Speaker
And so I, guilty, I used to grill them quite a bit and sometimes enjoyed it. And ah I was always saying, you know, how can this, you know, i'm doing this business for 30 years and then you get 30-year-old, you know, who has been doing consulting for two years and came out of the university, you know, now telling me what I should do to sell used cars in regional towns in Saudi Arabia.
00:51:51
Speaker
And the guy comes from Germany. So I said, okay, when I'm, if I'm going to do consulting, first of all, i e have been an executive for almost four decades.
00:52:04
Speaker
I have experienced the business. I have, you Deep knowledge. Of course, I don't know everything. Nobody knows everything. I learn every day.
00:52:16
Speaker
But now I can actually contribute because I have seen so many ah different ah situations in so many different locations that I can potentially relate to the problem of my client and not offer him a solution.
00:52:38
Speaker
Part of the agreement is that once that I do the proposal or the restructuring proposal, let's say, for example, or I will be part of the solution. i don't I don't want to walk away. I want to sit with their teams and actually teach them, transfer the knowledge so when I've left, they have actually learned something.
00:53:02
Speaker
I don't just pass on a presentation and walk away. Stavros, thank you very much for joining us today. It was really an interesting conversation talking about your experience with Mercedes-Benz in Greece and in the US and then your subsequent experiences with other brands, BMW, Rolls-Royce in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Conclusion and Encouragement
00:53:22
Speaker
Thank you very much for sharing that with us and and also with about how you've moved on to utilize and leverage a lot of the experience that experience in your consulting company.
00:53:34
Speaker
So thank you very much for ah joining us and sharing that with us. The pleasure was all mine. If I have a final word, I would say that any executive that gets the opportunity to go overseas, I think they should take that.
00:53:52
Speaker
And
00:53:55
Speaker
it it will make you not only a better professional, but also a better person as long as you have a learning mentality.
00:54:09
Speaker
Those are extremely wise words. I could not agree with you more. And I think all of the listeners will take those to heart as well. So with that, I'd like to say thank you all the listeners for joining us on this week's episode at the Auto Ethnographer.
00:54:26
Speaker
We look forward to seeing you again next week. Keep on driving. Thank you for joining us on today's journey. Please remember to like and subscribe to the Auto Ethnographer and leave us a rating or comment. For more information, visit our website at auto-ethnographer.com.
00:54:43
Speaker
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