36 WINTER 2007Perspective

‘Life is what you make it.’

People

You have to admire anyone who excels at what they do, but you ad-mire them even more when they are disabled.

Nick Burling is severely affected by cerebral palsy and some people thought he would never succeed as a new car salesman, but Nick has proven them wrong. He has not only succeeded, he has become the best sales person in his dealership.

“All I have ever asked for is to be treated like anyone else,” he says in his office at Windsor Toyota, NSW.

“I got into this business because my parents, who used to own the dealership, gave me the opportunity but I continue to sell cars because I love dealing with people and I love cars. I can’t do everything other sales-

man do, but people tell me I have the gift of the gab and that seems to make up for it.”

Nick’s disability was caused by problems at birth that deprived his brain of oxygen causing damage to the movement centres of his brain. But in other respects he is as mentally equipped as anyone else.

At the age of 33 he drives his own car, is paying off his own home, goes out and socialises unassisted and has even travelled solo overseas.

He believes one thing that has enabled him to fit into a relatively normal lifestyle is the fact that he went to a regular school – the first disabled person to do so at the school he attended. “I must have done pretty well,” he laughs, “be-

cause that school now has many disabled students.”

He admits, though, that it wasn’t always easy. He received more than his share of rough treatment from school bullies, but brushes that off as part of life for many people.

“Some disabled people seem to have a weird view,” he says. “They seem to think the world owes them. My parents taught me that life is the same for everyone – you make life what you want to make it, whoever you are.”

Windsor Toyota has grown from a relatively small family business that was established in a converted work-shop. After he left school and spent some time as a motoring journalist,

By William West

Nick Burling in the scooter he uses to get around the showroom at his dealership

WINTER 200736 PERSPECTIVE

continued on page 37

WINTER 2007 Perspective 37

Disability is in the eye of the beholdercontinued from page 36

Nick Burling at work in his office

‘Generally, I am like everyone else. After all, we are all disabled in some way, it’s just that 99 per cent of the

time you can’t see it.’

People

Nick’s parents offered him a position as a stock controller, but it wasn’t until the business was sold and ex-panded that the new General Man-ager, Craig Atkinson, decided it was time Nick was promoted to sales. “We have never regretted the decision,” Mr Atkinson said. “It’s not a case of making allowances for Nick. When you work with him you actually forget that he is disabled, so when someone mentions it it’s a reminder.

“Apart from anything else, his performance is not what you would expect from someone who has a dis-ability. We don’t have to set targets for him – he tends to set his own and frankly his targets can be quite stag-gering.”

After 13 years in the business, what does Nick see as his secret for success?

“There is no exact method for selling a motor car,” he says, “but a big part of it is the way you deal with people. Often a car will sell itself, but the reason a person chooses to buy it from you and not from someone else, is how you treat them.

“Being successful at selling cars is all about looking after people. If you take care of them they will keep coming back and they will bring their friends and relatives as well.”

Nick says that most customers are not both-ered at all by the fact that he gets about the showroom in a motorised scooter. Although he has restricted movement with his left arm and hand he compensates to some extent by having a very strong right arm that he uses to lift himself into and out of vehicles, including four-wheel drives.

But despite the fact that he is just as competent at his job as his peers, Nick still strikes problems with the occasional customer who shuns him

because of his disability.“Sometimes you get a big,

macho bloke come in who makes it clear that he is not going to deal with ‘that little bloke in the wheelchair’, but I just have to take that in my stride,” he says.

“There can also be problems when the roles are reversed and I go shopping. Some sales people take a look at you and you can tell they think you can’t have much buying

power and they will ignore you. If someone who is not disabled is with you they will start delivering their sales pitch to them, rather than to you, even though they’re not buying.

“Being in the business, I am very aware that they are making a big mistake. If you want to make a sale you have to treat everyone equally. After all, you can have a wealthy person come into your shop in shorts and thongs and if you treat them as

someone of no account you will be making a big mistake. It is always important not to judge someone on the way they look.”

And that is all that Nick asks of other people. He doesn’t want to be given special treatment, just to be given a fair go. Thankfully most peo-ple he meets are happy to do that, to the point where he says he also forgets that he is disabled. He rarely socialises with other disabled people, not be-

cause he doesn’t want to, but because he is leading a normal life he simply doesn’t come into contact with them any more than anyone else.

He says he enjoys life, even though he would sometimes like to walk or run or get around in the same way

as everyone else. But on the whole he has the same struggles in life that other people have, fighting things like bad moods and laziness. And like most other young men he says he would like to meet the right girl and settle down.

“Generally, I am like everyone else,” he says. “After all, we are all disabled in some way, it’s just that 99 per cent of the time you can’t see it.”