Episode 92 – “Win by 1%: The Secret Strategy of Elite Competitors

Foreign. By 1%. This is the secret strategy of elite competitors. Everybody wants a breakthrough, but nobody wants to do the 100 unsexy reps that you have to do to get the breakthrough. You see, you think you're stuck because you're not doing enough. What if you're stuck because you're doing too much, too fast? Today, I'm handing you a new weapon. Win by 1%. Every day, every rep, every behavior. Now let me show you how the British cycling team shocked the world using this one tool. I'm Chris Hunsicker, and this is the dealership war room Leadership Fire. Built daily, fueled intentionally, and delivered relentlessly. This is where you light the fire so you can outlast the storm. So let's dive in onto how you can use the 1% rule that elite competitors use all around the world. In the early 2000s, British Cycling was a national embarrassment. They hadn't won the Tour de France ever, and they had only one gold medal in cycling in the last century. They were such an embarrassment that major bike manufacturers like Pinarello and Celo and Specialized refused to sell them their gear because they were afraid it would hurt their brand if people saw them riding it. Enter Sir David Brailsford. And he introduced them to the idea of the aggregation of marginal gains. He didn't promise big wins. He promised small, tiny 1% improvements, but spread across everything that they did. He didn't just train harder, he optimized every single element. He worked on absolutely dialing in the perfect sleep environment with the right amount of darkness and light and where it needed to be. Massage gels. He went through 17 different massage gels, testing every single one to see what could slightly improve their recovery. A little bit faster, a little bit stronger. He optimized hand washing so that they're the absolute optimal way of washing their hands. Small incremental improvements, 1% every day so they could reduce illness and increase the number of training days. He even went so far as to paint the bikes white so dust would show up easier, so they could find aerodynamic flaws and other challenges more quickly and make changes. Nothing was too small. If it could be improved, it was. And what happened? By 2008, they dominated the Beijing Olympics, winning 60% of the gold medals in London. In 2012, same thing. Repeat success. And in addition, seven Olympic records and nine world records by 2013 became the big breakthrough. Bradley Wiggins became the first first Brit to win the Tour de France. The next year, in 2014, it was Chris Froome. 2016, 15 Chris Froome 2016. Chris Froome. Three times in a row over four years, the British cycling dominated the Tour de France. Most leaders seek big gains. War room leaders. We stack small wins. And I'll be honest, there are seasons where I tried to leap forward. Big swings, big pushes, and the. And then you just try to white knuckle your way through it. Have you ever done something like that? That's happening right now with the podcast. We're stalled out at about 375 subscribers to the podcast. And I spent the last couple of weeks looking at where can I find a big win? Where can I find a hundred subscribers? How can I get 200 subscribers? Like, what can I do to massively change this? Because I wanted to get to a thousand. And then as I was preparing this podcast, I'm like, chris, you idiot. Marginal gains. Where can I pick up two or three people today and two or three people tomorrow and two or three people the next day? And it starts building and moving and going forward. But when I lock in and live the 1% mindset, those were my best months, Those were my healthiest seasons. And those are the moments when I feel like a pro. This is how you compete with yourself without burning out. You beat yesterday's version of you by. By 1%. And then you do it again. And then you do it again. So let me ask you this question. Where's a process that you have that's not broken, but you're not winning at it either? That's where you start. That's your 1%. Now let me show you how to break that down. Here is the 1% framework. Three simple steps. Step number one, inventory the game that you're playing. Step number two, find the friction. Step number three, stack, track and trust it. Let's dive in. Step one, inventory the game that you're playing. You see, you can't improve something if you haven't broken it down. As a matter of fact, one of the main reasons most improvement never happens is because we never take time to actually break it down, to find where the 1% stuff is. So let's look at both sides of your business, both sales and service. If you're on the sales side, you're not just selling cars, you're navigating. Prospecting, Greeting needs analysis, Test drive negotiation, Trade evaluation, follow up, CSI reputation management. Each one of those is a winnable 1% that you can create marginal gains and aggregate over time. Now flip to the service side. Appointment setting, service writing, walk around dispatch and technician communication Parts ordering. Time to diagnosis time to approval status, updates to customers, final delivery and pickup. Each of those stages has friction points and is a chance to level up. Not all at once, 1% at a time. Step two is find the friction. Marginal gains hide in the stuff that's not broken enough to fix, but it's still costing you every single day in sales. You stop following up after day two, your meet and greet falls flat. Your close hasn't evolved in six months. Service. The average time to write up a ticket drags by three minutes too long. You don't have a system for proactive upsells. The customer gets their car back without a thank you or even a reminder for the next service. And I'm sure you could think of a hundred other things and none of these are huge problems. But stacked up, they bleed margin, trust and momentum. Step three, Stack, track and trust it. You see, because the gains are marginal until they're not. I want you to pick three to five things that you're going to work on every week and improve them by 1%. Stack it, track it, and then trust the lag time. You see, it's like the stone cutter that's hitting a stone over and over and over again. And as a matter of fact, if you go into the San Antonio spurs locker room, when you walk in, there's a quote on the board that says this exact thing, that it wasn't the hundred and first stroke that cracked the stone. It was the hundred strokes, the hundred hits that went on all the way with no movement, no change, no nothing. And then the cumulative effect of stacking all those strokes on the 101st cracks the rock. That's exactly how. How marginal gains are marginal until they're not. So your war room challenge is simple. Pick one area, just one. And then I want you to ask yourself this question. What's the 1% upgrade I can make right now? Better prep, sharper closes, cleaner write ups, faster callbacks, more timely status updates. Then do it. Track it and keep swinging. Don't stop at the hundredth hit. Because 101st cracks the rock. Because here's the truth that no one is telling you. You don't become average overnight. You drift there one percent at a time. And you don't become elite overnight. You rise there 1% at a time. I want you to think about someone that you know that gained 20 pounds. It didn't happen in a week, it didn't happen in a month. It happened a little bit at a time. They very slowly lowered their standards. They very slowly dropped what they were doing until all of a sudden, they drifted 1% at a time into being 20 pounds overweight. You don't need a miracle. You need momentum, and you don't need a new market. You need a new mindset. And that mindset starts with understanding, aggregating marginal gains, finding the 1%, being absolutely relentless, and looking at tiny ways that you can improve each and every day to day after day, week after week, month after month. So we stack, we track, and then we trust. And you heard me earlier talking about me growing the podcast and kind of stalling out. And that's what I'm going to ask you today. If you found value in these podcasts, if this has helped you lead better, if you have felt a leadership fire, from what I'm sharing, would you pick one specific person today and call them up or text them and say, hey, I want to share with you some leadership fire? I found this guy, Chris Hunsicker, and he absolutely delivers stuff. It's part of my morning routine. Every morning I get up and I listen to him, and it's that little bit of shot that I need. I'm going to ask you, if this is delivered for you, if you felt leadership fire, if you've made improvement, would you pick one person and reach out to them and personally call them and invite them to be part of the podcast? Because here's the deal. As we light leadership fire, we can start to change the world. And with that, I will see you tomorrow in the dealership war room.