Building confidence: careers and car buying
London, 19th June, London: Episode 15 of the new Auto Trader podcast Women in the driving seat, hosted by Editorial Director, award-winning motoring journalist Erin Baker is released today. The series aims to rip up the rule book on the female-empowerment narrative by sharing personal as well as professional experiences, examining the space where both collide, and the challenges, fears and successes happen.
This episode explores how women feel about test drives (as long as possible please), what good looks like for gender balance at every level of the business and the joy of marketing!
All episodes in the series feature a Podcast Pit Stop – a quick fire round covering the professional and personal including; Lark or owl? Circuit or circuits? Phone by the bed or phone downstairs?
Join Erin as she puts two automotive leaders in the driving seat.
Podcast preview
Julia:
“People from other franchise groups think we get preferential treatment, but we have to set the standard.”
“I think we’ve come a long way on the relationship [between Ford and TrustFord] …more like parent and child…in many ways I’ve seen the dynamic change over the years…we’re all trying to do the same thing at the end of the day”
“Are we there yet with female representation? No, but some areas are better than others…we’ve got 80 female sales executives now across 30 sites and we’re starting to see women being pulled through to more senior roles.”
“I know uniform doesn’t sound like a big thing but it is, it’s just such an equaliser. It wasn’t easy but it’s so important as a trigger when you’re coming into the dealership.”
“Every week we celebrate colleagues who are achieving and I’m always excited to see female colleagues names in that”
“We had to take a brave pill to call ourselves Trust Ford in this industry…in the early days was it thrown back at us? Yes. Now? No.”
“We had to be very conscious were talking to a predominantly white male audience who were feeling slightly intimidated – what’s happening, where am I in the middle of this? We had to take everybody on that journey.”
“Men and women want a lot of time spent explaining the technology before you take it away. Women were really clear – they wanted 24- or 48-hour test drives, unaccompanied. Majority of men said an hour is fine. I was expecting a lot of women to say they prefer a test drive with a woman, but majority came through agnostic.”
“A lot of the time where I’ve been pushing, asking what does this look like for a female consumer, I’m getting a lot of feedback from men saying well that works for me too.”
“When I was approached about coming in to automotive, I pushed back…thankfully I was persuaded to have a more open lens.”
“I look around this industry and see amazing women in amazing roles who have carved successful careers…and I just want more women to have that opportunity”
Catherine:
“There’s no number that you’re ever solving for, you’re solving for have I got a group of people round this table that bring diverse experiences, backgrounds, perspectives that can really make sure that when we’re having conversations as a leadership team that we are really representing everyone that we serve in a business.”
“The right balance for any organisation for any period of time will change…I am not sure you ever get there, you keep striving to have the best people.”
“We deliberately design that leadership team to be a big team – 21 people… we think we make better decisions because we have lots of people in the room”
“If you’re a consumer, our job is to close this huge information gap between the experts selling the car and a consumer who does this job once every 3-5 years…it’s our job in the middle of that to provide them with the info and tools they need to make a decision for them.”
“It’s such an emotive category for people, we love our cars.”
“We can imply from your behaviour what you’re most likely to want to see next… there’s lots of debate about AI, in a closed environment like Autotrader we can help people to find the things they need quicker and easier.”
“There’s a huge amount wrapped up in that car buying journey.”
“A career in tech can mean many different things to many different people…hugely varied, exciting and creative.”
Auto Trader’s podcast Women in the driving seat releases new episodes every Thursday.
Notes to editors
ABOUT ERIN BAKER
Erin Baker is an award-winning motoring journalist and Editorial Director of Auto Trader. She writes a monthly driving column for Vogue, is a World Car of the Year judge, consults for Goodwood and hosts She's Electric, a national roadshow bringing women and electric cars together. Erin is passionate about narrowing the gender gap, both in the automotive industry itself and between car brands and female consumers, through more targeted language, marketing and experiences. She is a single mother of two boys.
ABOUT CATHERINE FAIERS
Catherine is COO of Auto Trader and a member of the plc Board, Non Executive Director at Allegro, Mentor and early stage Investor. She’s been at Auto Trader for 7 years and before that, worked in senior roles at consumer technology businesses delivering strategy, transformations and change. Her career has been an adventure, taking her in all sorts of different directions, rather than a ladder or career path. She’s a 44-year-old mum and step mum living in East London, juggling family, work and travel with the occasional football match squeezed in.
ABOUT JULIA GREENHOUGH
Julia has been Marketing Director at TrustFord, the largest Ford Dealer Group in the UK, for 11 years. She is also Executive Sponsor for TrustFord’s Women’s Network Group. Previously she worked for high street brands including Argos, BHS and Virgin. Married with a grown-up son, an even more grown up step-daughter, 3 small step grand kids and a dog called Ralph; Julia chooses to relax by singing in a 6-piece folk band.
ABOUT AUTO TRADER
Auto Trader Group plc is the UK’s largest automotive platform. It listed on the London Stock Exchange in March 2015 and is a member of the FTSE 100 Index.
Auto Trader’s purpose is Driving Change Together. Responsibly. Auto Trader is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture, it aims to build stronger partnerships with its customers and use its voice and influence to drive more environmentally friendly vehicle choices.
With the largest number of car buyers and the largest choice of trusted stock, Auto Trader’s marketplace sits at the heart of the UK car buying process. That marketplace is built on an industry-leading technology and data platform, which is increasingly used across the automotive industry. Auto Trader is continuing to bring more of the car buying journey online, creating an improved buying experience, whilst enabling all its retailer partners to sell vehicles online.
Auto Trader publishes a monthly used car Retail Price Index which is based on pricing analysis of circa 800,000 unique vehicles. The same data that powers the Index is used by the Office for National Statistics to make the UK’s official measures of inflation more robust, as well as the Bank of England to feed the broader UK economic indicators.
For more information, please visit: plc.autotrader.co.uk
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