MAY 2019
With 2 weeks completed at head office, my first week at Escalla was about to begin.
The start of the week began with a brief introduction into meeting the other apprentices from the last intake. I was nice to see familiar faces Jess and Sophie, and I enjoyed meeting the others: Nisha, Jordan and Dan. We also met Em on Monday who I felt was very warm and welcome. On Monday, we began to cover the first part of the course: Level 3: Certificate in the principles of online and offline marketing. We learnt the 7P's of marketing and the product life cycle which we added to our reports and outlined how this reflects upon our own businesses. The week involved the learning of this new topic, and creating a report that runs alongside to add to the portfolio. We also had a visit from the Cheshire Police, Cheshire Fire & Rescue and Highways England to discuss road safety. I found each of the sessions really informative and also quite scary as some of the clips and the stories seemed quite alien to me. I found that the car which was previously in the car crash was a very difficult as it put into perspective how dangerous driving can be. With me only passing my test around a year and a half ago, the session has really changed the way I am on the roads, which in my opinion is very valuable.
My first week at the dealership had finally come around and I was incredibly nervous, but really excited!
On the first day, I was incredibly nervous as I knew that all of the other apprentices had already been in their dealerships for a week and that I was just about to start. When I arrived at Crewe VW, I was greeted by a sales administrator, Sharon who gave me a tour around the dealership and introduced me to everybody. I also attended my first ever 'morning meeting' with the sales executives where they discuss what handovers are going out that day as well as updates from the manufacturing side. After the meeting, I got settled where I was sitting for the day and began to create some posts for this week.
On the Wednesday it was national receptionist day, so I decided to create a Facebook post around this. I had a really positive response from this post, as it currently has 51 likes, this has a really good interaction rate compared to some of the posts previously. I also created a post for the Thursday that included a review that was left on Trustpilot. I decided to use a website called Canva to create a template for our reviews, this means that I can reuse the template to create consistency within my posts.
On Friday, I had a manager approach me to create a video to upload on Facebook instead of using a generic picture. He wanted to see whether a video would generate more of a response as we were holding a large quantity of Tiguans’. Using the gimble and iMovie, I created a video and used the Game of Thrones theme over the top as I knew that this was very fitting with trending TV series. I have scheduled to post it on Sunday, when the new GOT episode is due out to see whether I can get good interaction on it.
This week had a large focus on increasing our used car photo and video percentage as the weather was on our side and because our figures had dropped. I used Monday and Tuesday to shoot some of the 360 videos using a mobile app called vision. I asked one of the sales executives to help me move the cars whilst I took the walk around, this was the quickest and most efficient way of completing all of the vehicles. We managed to increase our percentage from 35% to 75.4% which pushed us up into the green section of the report. Once I had completed all of the cars that I could get done, I decided to draw up a table of cars that needed shooting next time, this way it would be quicker next time. Towards the end of the week, I decided to plan and schedule my posts for the next week as I'd be in Escalla. On Monday, it was 'national millionaires’ day' therefore I decided to create a post based upon this, using the new VW ID range. On Tuesday, I posted about the Swansway Blog - Torque Tips, the Wednesday it was a customer review. Thursday, I decided to post about the Spring Health Check as this is due to close soon and for the Friday, I posted a pre-registered Tiguan.
Towards the end of the week, I spent time with Ben Gilbert who is the Brand Director of VW. We spend some time on the forecourt and he walked through the best angles to take and what features I should be looking out for to capture. We had 3 pre-registered cars that needed to be uploaded onto AutoTrader, so we took the images and asked one of the sales executives to shoot some walkthrough videos so that we could get them uploaded. Once we'd done this, Ben showed me how to create a new listing on Autotrader. This included writing an attention grabber, description, images, videos and specification features. Once I had created 1, I was then able to put on a further 2 ads.
Although we had already visited Escalla for a training week previously, this week was our Induction week.
We completed a number of certificates during the first three days which provided us information and evidence to back up TC13's criteria. These included: Radicalisation, British Values, Citizenship, Equality & Diversity, Health & Safety, keeping safe online and also Safeguarding. I learnt a lot whilst sitting these online courses, and was able to consolidate my knowledge through the quizzes that followed the courses. David came to visit us on the Thursday afternoon and talked us through data studio, where social media stats are collated. We found that one of my latest posts about a Golf GTI TCR gained around 10,000 people in it's reach - I was really proud of this as it was more than a post from a member of the marketing team at head office!
On Thursday we discussed the various components that make up the apprenticeship qualification. We spoke about the End Point Assessment and how the gradings are determined as well as some of the questions they've asked in the past. Em also outlined what things need to be included in the portfolio and how to map criteria’s to certain aspects of the report.
Towards the end of the month, I really wanted to focus on improving our used car image and video report which meant I had to devise a way of being able to track and record all of my work. I decided to create a document that included the model, registration plate, images, videos, key peg number and also the status of the vehicle. I decided to note down the key peg numbers so that it was more efficient when it came to shooting the videos, and I used the 'Status' section to record where the car is, ie: service car or whether it had landed. By creating this document, I feel as though it's easier for myself to track what vehicles need images and videos. I am going to update and create a new document on the Monday of each week so that I have something to refer to throughout the week. Hopefully, if I use this approach, it will allow me to increase the percentages of our image and videos. I have inserted an example of my document below that I use to record all of my work and to stay on track.
