9:07 am, November 20, 2024
When Martin McGuire from JMC Used Cars joined the family trade, he didn’t know what a success his business would become.
This week on the Car Dealer Podcast, Jon Reay and James Baggott spoke to McGuire about the growth in his business in the last five years, and why he’s glad he made the switch from chef to car dealer.
He explained: ‘We started off five years ago. We’re now just off the M8, the main motorway going through Glasgow.
‘We started off similar to you [James] with just a few cars but now we’ve got a unit that holds around 45 cars.’
McGuire didn’t have a traditional start to a motor trade career, training as a chef after finishing school.
He said: ‘Out of school I trained as a chef and went into that, which was totally different.
‘But my dad has always been involved in the automotive industry so I’ve always been around the car trade and believe it or not that’s what I’ve always wanted to do – I wanted to sell cars.
‘I was involved in one of my dad’s businesses selling motorhomes and campervans but it gradually progressed.’
He said: ‘We wanted to open a place up in Glasgow and it just sort of took off.’
Most recently, JMC Used Cars recently won an Auto Trader award for best retailer under 50 cars.
On the show, which you can listen to on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, McGuire talks about his business and what’s working for him.
Host James asked whether there was anything the used car dealer wished he had focussed on more, to which McGuire said: ‘We need to get better at our social media.
‘We’ve focussed on that for around the last 18 months and get quite a bit from our Facebook.
‘It’s not from all platforms. We’ve only recently started using TikTok and we don’t get anything sales-wise off there but it’s just about getting your name out there.
‘The number of views you get, you will eventually get something from it.’
He added: ‘Our Facebook page has really started growing now and I think if we’d really focussed on that from the start, particularly through Covid times it would have made a big difference.’
Listen to this episode and more by searching for the Car Dealer Podcast.
