yeah Jason I’ve been a fan of the I still use the Garmin handhelds we do a lot of hiking and
oh they’re the best yeah especially up here where cell phone service doesn’t
get so great in the woods oh yeah I’m so having the inreach system that peace of mind something happens you
can still pop a text off or hit Emergency Services through the satellites
yeah I mean I’ve got their scale I’ve got their RV nav system I’ve got the
heart rate monitors I got their bike on my bike light and the computer and
um for cycling and I got a ton of garment stuff the watches
well here we go we’re gonna turn this a show into a Garmin commercial and there we go
by the way I walked past your booth I think twice during NADA didn’t see it
but uh just gonna wave hello yeah I was in and out I was you know
taking advantage of things like this you know I think there’s like three or four opportunities
to go on some podcasts and stuff so I did that so I was in and out and of course trying to network with other vend
you know other companies that we partner with and stuff just to make sure everything’s tight there
yeah it’s mostly what I was there for too
we had a good show though first time I did the 20 by 20 it was a little nerve-wracking because it’s not cheap
but we were already been able to cover what we spent so we’re good
nice
it looks like you had some good activity going on when I was walking by
yeah we I think we had a uh it’s eight or nine store group that gave us a
12-month agreement so like I said once we opened it once we signed that up like all right we’re done that made it all
worth it yeah so we’re like all right no we yeah we signed other stores too but once we got that one I was like all
right we did pay for ourselves so the rest from here on out would just be edit bonus
nice
well 10 seconds fellas
to get to play Jeff’s favorite sound can’t wait
and there it was so hey everybody
man I didn’t even know it was Friday I woke up this morning totally thinking it was Thursday
I was going to be wearing my cheap stuff should be red Friday for the Super Bowl but I had two Demos in this interview so
I’m like I’ll just wear my work stuff [Music]
I think anyone would have faulted you no no or at least my hat or something my
Chief’s hat yeah I never got my lollipop bracelets
he never did no it’s from like three or four years ago when you first yeah when
you first brought them out and then we’ll send you some we got some
you know we didn’t have any for a while everybody didn’t worry about selling cars in the first 30 days they’re they’re making money on 100 AO cars
true now they’re getting popular again so I gotta pass I gotta go order some more
yeah what’s uh days on lot time looking like for you
we know the new cars is up and use this down or actually there is less used cars
in the market right now uh than this time last year now what’s funny is last year there was just as many as the
previous year people were talking all this car shortage and there really wasn’t fun other than new cars but new
cars are stacking and uh you know it’s funny with these used cars
I don’t know if it has to do with the lack of production so much over the last couple years because if you really look
at it we sold 13 15 million new cars still I mean yeah it’s down from 16 17
million but it’s still 2011 2012 type numbers so
um yeah and so um I think some of it two things that
I’ve seen maybe is affecting it is for a while now there’s been a lot of no sales at the auction upwards of 50
percent so you know there’s thousands of cars all over the country at these auctions that half of them aren’t being
sold because they’re trying to get more money for them so that’s bringing less vehicles to the retail and
and then another example would be um my wife she’s leasing a 20 20 Volvo
and we literally been trying to get out of it and the funny thing is you know
all these oems change the rules with these leases which kind of ticked me off because I always could either sell it
trade it right or buy it myself or walk away and now they only leave me with the
I can either buy it myself or turning into a Volvo store and buy a
new Volvo or a certified that’s it I can’t even go to a Volvo store and trade it in on a used car and give it back to
a Volvo store so this lease isn’t up for six months but my wife has been nipping at the heel
to get a new car a matter of fact we just bought one yesterday I used one and we just we’re gonna have two car
payments for a little bit but uh deal was good and I’m afraid interest rates still going up go ahead and just grab
the car now and then uh but I think you know July August is those summer sales-a-thon summer sales events where a
lot of new cars go out and new cars get leased and so if the OEM is not allowing people to they this my wife’s used car
could have came back into the market as a used car um but we can’t do nothing about it why
do you think they did that yeah is that just Volvo no all the oems did this where you can’t trade it into another
manufacturer um now some of them may be not as strict uh but it was the fact that they didn’t
have cars to give to their dealers so they wanted to make sure they get these lease returns to then give it back to
the dealers to have cars to sell so again I would have been happy to buy this car that this used this this used
car that the uh because I’m I didn’t want to lease another one well we typically lease or buy used in
um in here just the way rates are and money factors are right now leasing there’s not a lot of good leasing options right now at least on the cars
we’re looking at so figured we just buy a couple year old used one and we found one at the Volvo
store we couldn’t trade it in because it wasn’t a certified Volvo and when did that change happen that’s
stupid pretty much through that shortage so oh one range I mean
um so you contracted a car one way and they changed the agreement on you
part ways well well that’s what I addressed with Global Financial I said well hold on a second when I signed
these paperwork I had these options they said yeah but there’s always the clause in there this is Volvo store that our
Volvo’s car and and they have the ability to do what’s best for Volvo at any given time essentially
so it’s best for Volvos to get their car back so even the Volvo dealer obviously even if I traded into him he can’t own
it he has to give it back to Volvo let them run it through the lane and let others yeah buy it see so that’s why I
couldn’t trade it in on a used car at the Volvo store
um certified what’s that yeah unless it was certified yeah yeah and we weren’t looking at it
at that store so um yeah yeah so you know I think that
that shortage I think has a little bit to do with the no sale rates happening at the lane so cars are sitting there
it’s a bunch of lease returns that really can’t come back into the market um that are getting tied up I’m not
saying that’s all of it yeah there’s less cars but people are holding on to them longer you know 12 13 years now
cars on the road but I think what’s going to happen new car aging and cars are sitting out there
and um incentives are starting to come out and I think anybody that’s bought a car over the last few years might need
those incentives to get out of them and so yeah here comes the trade-ins over the next six months
especially if they have an older car they might go to a new upgrade I want to throw a PSA out based on your
story I wasn’t aware that the captive lenders had uh changed the the deal on
on leases um yeah I have a family member they had a Buick and um when he signed this is
was crazy too when he signed I think the residual value who could have bought it for like I don’t know let’s say 21 Grand
at the end of the lease and it was at the time when the values were really high like they’re retailing for like 30
or 35 and I’m like dude you got at least 10 grand Equity here um you could buy it and sell it or
something or trade it in on something else and when he went in to do that they
said no your payoff was like I don’t know 30 or 35 again it was like where he was barely breaking even or losing money
I’m like what that don’t make any sense and what happened there was again he had it one take it back to a Buick GMC store
but two was when um anybody who um I did
it I did it on my house and my my car um during covid where you can sign off and extend a miss a payment or two and
they added it to the end a lot of people did that and I think he did it too and uh once you did that
it renegotiated the contract essentially and so that’s what happened and so I’m
like that don’t make any sense I’m like let me call one of my friends up or whatever and then I said come to find out if anybody took advantage of that
extend the payment thing um that was a renegotiation of a contract and they wanted market value
for that car wasn’t going to let him make the 10 grand on it they wanted that 10 grand yeah
so here’s the PSA that’s it yeah that’s the PSA Alex the other lenders out there
who are not captives or Ally U.S bank and Chase and they do leases too and a
lot of the time on a lot of different cars they smoke the captives
that’s how I got mine thanks Alex we use Alex’s uh we used the illuma
quote piece uh to find my or you know to find out which bank would give the
lowest rate on Leasing and of course it was Ally and so funny I walked down to
the Toyota dealership I’m like I want that truck at this payment nothing down
Road tax and tags and this should they’re like what they’re so confused
I should have looked into that but they did they totally did it and they’re like they’re like man we had no I you know
because they they never used one of those Banks to do leasings you know now that you said that to me
I’m so mad I literally just bought another car for my wife last night and we should have maybe looked at a used
car lease because it’s a certified BMW and driver’s Financial is pretty good on
that it’s another bank that you know they don’t have anything to use too often
yeah yeah I’ve been telling you I’m dumb for not thinking about it I’ve been telling dealers a while back they should
start looking into that used car leasing programs because it would allow people to especially if they’re paying up for
these cars to get out of it in three years and not being tied up yeah I wonder what Shy’s dealerships away from
one is just because it’s just not something that you know that they think about you know or they got in trouble with it
in the LA you know in years prior I was just like it’s just not something that dealerships and sales people even
consider that I I can give you two um one typically the finance office
wants to control what’s being quoted out on the floor so they they try to keep the sales
managers ignorant so here’s just the the captive rates as they come out in the first you know day or two of the month
and and at the same time I don’t think anyone’s really watching how the Allies
the U.S banks and whatnot are competing throughout the rest of the month the rates change I think that’s a big
portion of it residuals change every day with them um yeah yeah
well I think another part is you know there’s a lot of dealers that even on new cars don’t even know how to handle
leasing you know I was lucky when Ford came out with a half a car program I got trained up really well and our store you
know it’s just like certified program but and leasing too it’s oh we tried that and it didn’t work well if you
tried it of course it didn’t work you got to be committed top down understanding the full benefits even a one pay lease it’s better than buying a
car why drive a lot of miles how to overcome that so I think they they have a hard time just being able to sell a
lease on a new car much less trying to figure out how to incentivize it or make it a good program unused
yeah we at least my wife’s last vehicle and she does a lot of mouths because she works for uh for direct and it dude it
still made so much sense to lease it and then pre-purchase some miles on top of it of course then covet hit and she
never even used mouse that we pre-purchased but we did just buy it out it didn’t
make sense for us just go ahead and buy it out and continue on with it but yeah but it does you know it made total sense
from a financial standpoint to you know Lisa pre-purchase those miles
and you know when you look at the payment the terms and everything it’s like this is more of a no-brainer than
plus it was a hybrid I wasn’t too keen on purchasing a hybrid at the time but
it’s been a solid car we’ve never had any issues with it and now you got me kicking myself not
thinking about that lease last night I’m sorry it’ll be all right
it’s just a car it’s just a payment try it out for 60. well the thing is the car
has been discounted nine grand since November nine thousand dollars from the original
asking price in November to now not saying something the dealer still had this car I was well how did they
have that much in the car I know I don’t know how much they lost but
again that’s why we went ahead and did the deal and we’ll just have to have two two payments for a little bit but that’s
fine yeah you’ll survive yeah I’ll I’ll drive her car I got a big F-350 Dually and I
only got six mile commute to work so I’ll just take your car every once in a
while you pull the RV with that don’t you yeah I do that thing’s a mess to try
to park though I like that so my wife and I did that for a little while
I would definitely prefer my car to hers but uh you know swapped cars but
well yeah oh go ahead no I saw you were posting something on
on Facebook the other day it was something about used car lead activity and I guess there’s a couple issues
around that you want to maybe dive into that a little bit yeah and I think last time we talked we
talked to um about it but now I got some data some data points behind it and what we what what I wanted to talk about was
and I think we we hit on it last time I was on the show was you know crms are designed to manage release based on the
lead to the lead which is irrelevant to where the customers in the buying cycle again example my wife the lease isn’t up
for six months but she shopped at multiple stores and uh went from car to
car to car different cars so she submitted a lead on a car and it sold I mean we’re looking at only like 35 to 50
Grand cars but looking at Porsche cayennes and mccanns and BMW’s X-Force
x6s I mean she was all over Jaguar f-pace I mean all over the place so if she spent a lead on up in my crayon and
it sold no one would have thought to talk her about the Jag or try to switch her or
um or even follow up for six months because I’m like well we could be buying a car now if we find a good enough dealer we’ll wait six months and turn
our keys and buy it buying one at that point in time or even buy out here release like you guys did so anyways you
know the the being able to follow up on leads based on the age of the lead is irrelevant to where she was in her
buying cycle I did not know where we were at when when and where and we would be pulling the trigger
on on what kind of car um so one if you have leads on sold cars
don’t be afraid to offer them an alternative something similar in that price point we knew we wanted that
mid to compact SUV and one at the more of a high line Porsche Mercedes BMW
whatever Jack um Volvo the um so you could have
offered her five different things and she probably would have considered it came in and looked at it um and she did and multiple stores I had
to apologize a few times I’m like I’m sorry she’s like uh season pass at Six Flags she’s just riding everything man
um but I said somebody takes care of her will earn her business because she felt she went to a store and the one girl is
just getting aggravated with her it’s like are you gonna commit to something and she literally felt uncomfortable
like she was putting this girl out and the other store took care of her so guess who we bought from
but anyways um yeah managed leads based on the lot
situation and not so much um the um age of the lead okay because you don’t
know where their customers and buying things so um not I want to show numbers can I show
numbers can I share my screen without yeah okay again let me
um do this oh not that one this one okay so I think you can share see my screen
over here so for example this dealer is heavy in intermediate sport utilities by
seven units okay now if we’re having an intermediate sport utilities and they need to get
selling well the point that we bring up to dealers is if you have leads on those
cars how often would you want to call and email those leads well most dealers will say well every day every other day
well if you go look at the leads you might have a 36 day old lead McHenry
here Amanda McHenry 60 it’s 36 day old lead your CRM is probably not set up to
call and email that customer every day every other day okay that’s why I mean managing leads based on the age of the
lead is irrelevant to the customer’s buying cycle if I have a problem on my inventory but here’s what I wanted to
point out if I’m not selling enough out of my intermediate SUVs is it because of
my pricing and so should I just go with drop pricing or should I follow up with this lead that hasn’t been followed up in 21 days and should I increase the
contact frequency of these leads and if I should increase the contact frequency
of these leads if you notice right here and I know it’s over running each other but contact it greater than two days
basically 87 percent of these leads haven’t been contacted in at least two
days okay so is that why the sale rates dropped off because we lost contact with
these leads right if that was down at 30 percent only we contacted 70 of these
leads in the last two days I guarantee the sell rate would go up right had to be something in there okay so let me and
and this is uh done by Jonathan my uh Jonathan Schreiber who’s my internet guy he does these calls with dealers and
we’re just starting to slice this data out so one I’m gonna I’m gonna start trending those
um can you see my screen now with the word document or no no we’re still looking at uh lot walk oh that’s weird
because I got a Word document I wonder if it won’t show let me do this [Music]
um because you have screenshots of um let me do this so while you’re
figuring that out I’ll back you up on something um it’s amazing we we light up dealerships
at frickin Tech and do a we call it a dead lead campaign
and go after all the customers who are or all the leads that are 90 days or more
and uh there we go oh okay gotcha
and uh it’s the number that shake out and are back in
wanting to talk to the dealership again because they haven’t bought yet is it blows my mind every time so these
a lot of these leads they they might get tripped into wanting to do something early
they’re they’re not really ready yet and you know yeah you gotta go three to six
months with some people at least yeah and so but again you know if it’s if
it’s a think about it if I had two leads to choose from today but that had to call or email would I pick the one that
the lead that still had the car in stock that I could sell them today or do I call the lead on that Corvette that sold
and I don’t have another Corvette to offer them well obviously I should work this week well if I have an issue you
know so uh BDC people or internet people they show up in the morning and they’ll be 80
tasks to do for the day but it’s like factory work three day call seven day email there’s no Rhyme or Reason to the
to the customers buying cycle or the issues on my lot and um so I wanted to show you some of
these numbers here so we’ll a lot of times we’ll track that activity for the BDC rep right right and you might say
Hey you know I want you to do 100 or 200 activities a day calls and emails is that pretty normal at most stores right
yeah so here’s a store on the left um that’s store number one and then a
store number two on the right now I’ll tell you the one on the left is a franchise dealer so they’re gonna have new car leads used car leads all that
the one on the right is actually an and a pretty large independent dealer now if
you notice um this dealer on the left these are the age of their units they only have two
units over 46 days old okay out of 140 cars
150 cars this dealer over here has 81 units over 60.
all right so let me show you some comparisons now store one over here versus store two if I looked at total
activity these These are activities by rep one rep did 217 activities one rep did 197 activities over here look at the
activities by rep 21 2159 not much activity but here’s the other kicker
what percentage of that activity was done on used cars in stock okay my
problems my my intermediate cars are sitting I need to contact and email those so if you notice is you know over
here 60 78 percent of these activity 79 of this person’s activity had nothing to
do with the used cars okay 214 activities only 46
activities that they did associated with a used car which would be kind of alarming but
again they got new so what what’s that other activity could be new car leads could be uh anniversary birthday leads
survey reminder calls they could be um you know uh service reminder calls
whatever maybe acquisition calls trying to buy cars but a lot of that activity had nothing to do with my used cars
over here they’re barely doing the activity well what how’s this breakdown if you looked at just on the left you got store one and
store two completed activities yesterday on in stock Vehicles they completed 350
activities on cars in stock yesterday remember they only had about 150 cars in stock this dealer the independent has
nothing but used cars did 57. each of them 220 leads 200 leads so pretty much
the same lead count so it wasn’t that this dealer had more or less leads it’s pretty much equal
but if you look at the bottom number Twi this dealer on the left that only had two cars over 45 days old only 12
percent of their active leads did not get contacted on those used cars over
here 64 percent of those active leads on cars unused cars did not get contacted
yesterday does that make do you see what I’m talking about yeah yeah so you know I
don’t yeah you know I don’t care if that rep did 300 leads or 300 activities I mean
how many of those activities had to do with help me selling my car how many of those activities have had to do with me
help get this sale rate going on these intermediate SUVs so I don’t have to go drop my price you know to get more leads
um and so it’s just it’s just weird how crms don’t engage car activity like that
you know and that’s just what we’re just starting to figure out there’s other metrics in here they’re
way more important than closing percentage response timely deployment ratios you know or activities our
activities per lead um that a lot of Internet departments track and I had for 25 years
I wonder who will have the first CRM out that has some of those new uh AI built into it be able to track some of
that stuff and actually give you somehow you know take all that data and be able to give you an actual more
accurate profile of that customer and what they’re doing and what they’re about to do yeah
but they don’t do anything with the vehicles in that regard gotcha
yeah and so I mean you can’t even really go to a lot of these crms and say hey give me my truck leads I mean in order
to do that export all those leads sorted by year make model and just start slicing you know Vehicles out
and then you got copy of the customer’s name and then go in the the system to see when’s the last time anybody’s called or emailed them and that’s again
what we focus on we we can do that in a click of a button I just showed you that you know and that’s where we’re just
starting to see numbers like this I’m like holy cow 87 percent of them in contact in two days maybe that’s why
we’re not selling any so I have to do erasing photos and descriptions that are used car manager would typically focus
on let’s focus on the leads that we got now do you do you um
do you guys provide or maybe you you support a system or you know or in your
opinion what would be the best way for dealerships from an automated standpoint to follow up with those customers
I am personally right to either create wind or partner up with the crms that
have it already but basically what well a couple things obviously text message you can do a Text Blast to those
leads and then see whoever hooks um you know I think one of the things we we talked about in the last one about
bringing it back up is you know what we’re finding is 60 to 80 percent of current active leads that a dealer is
working are on cars that sold so what are we doing are we switching
them like I was talking about my wife she submitted a lead on this Porsche it sells did you even consider talking to
her about the BMW same price point same segment no so um to be able to text message black
blast those switch leads and we’re talking hundreds if not thousands of them that dealers have
um this particular dealer I was showing you when I switched to the leads out of the 69 intermediate SUVs this
dealer has he has 111 leads on the car still in stock but we’re showing
747 total act abilities basically there’s 636 leads in his database of people
looking for intermediate sport Utilities in the similar price points that some of these the switch leads
so he has 111 leads on the ones in stock but he has over 600 leads
somebody was looking here’s a 31 day old lead that was looking at a 2020 Jeep Cherokee that sold
can we show them this 2021 Jeep Cherokee that’s in this bucket Okay so
that’s a lot of work to do right I was gonna say someone needs to get to work yeah but yeah if you could broadcast
email that data set of 600 and say hey that car sold would you be interested in
this hit yeah why for yes I’ll get you more information and then the people that do that you can maybe trigger into
phone calls or videos or photo links or something every time you come on Jason you give me
another idea yeah well I mean here you’re paying a lot for
these leads and a high pressure the better the better we got dealers with
Used Car Inventory management I thought their used car closing percentage would go up but it actually went down because
instead of getting one or two leads on a car and the car sells they’re getting four five six leads on a car in itself
so they had a high percentage of leads that I couldn’t sell anything to so the closing percentage dropped and I’m like
this doesn’t make sense but I go aha well instead of one or two leads you know you get two leads Car Sales you got one lead this guy has five leads the car
sales he’s got four leads left in that you’re not closing those unless you try to switch them yeah and um and most sales people are
just going to mark them inactive no longer in the market whatever it may be rather than taking the opportunity to
see if you can switch them so the two things like you should start trying to switch them right out of the
gate oh yeah multiple options immediately yeah and we we provide that we’ll say
hey this you know you got this car in stock and there’s four others you can talk to them about but um and what we’re doing is segments so
like compact SUV and if uh let’s say the the compact SUV they’re interested is 25
Grand what we’re doing is 25 below 2500 below 2500 ahead so do you have any
other compact SUVs 22 5 to 27.5 to talk to them about um but the um two things I’m trying to
figure out and one I think I’m really worried about is um one I can go in and say and you can
do this in your CRM and say give me all my leads that haven’t contacted in three days okay
I can do that how about what give me all my cards that I have in
stock that I that I haven’t contacted leads in three days I can’t do that on the car end and so we’re trying to
figure that out and what I mean by that is I can I can look at yeah I can look at the leads on these
cars and figure out which leads I’m in contact in three days but what cars do I have in stock that no one’s that we have
leads on that we have in contact here’s the math that we have to figure out though is if this car has five leads
and one of those leads were contacted yesterday will that car be on the list because
that car got worked yesterday but only one lead did not the other four that’s interesting I’m saying so I’m going okay
which what do we if it’s got five leads and three of them haven’t been contacted does that car come up on the list Even
though three have been worked because I think if I expose those cards and say hey here are the cars that haven’t been
contacted three days pretty much the whole inventory might be there because yeah I’m sure a lot of this so we got to
figure that out but the other thing I’m trying to figure out is are my worry my worry situation and I want to catch this
is what I think I want to catch imagine a 30-dale car and I bring up a 30 because it’s not fresh and it’s not age
so it’s really not on anybody’s major radar because if it’s fresh I got to get a photo price get it online if it’s age
I gotta blow it out so this little Sleeper Car sitting at 30 days old and imagine that car has 20 and 30 day
old leads Okay so a 20-day-old lead we’re not worried about either because it’s not fresh
right and we we haven’t so I guarantee you there’s a database of cars that are
just kind of off the radar with leads on them that are off the radar and those are the ones I think that we got to go
boom you know here here’s what you got to focus on today here’s the cars um so again we’re just Azure integrating
leads with cars this is it’s those type of metrics and those type of approaches both the lead management and inventory
management that no one’s doing right now and it’s kind of exciting to play around with this stuff
yeah I I every time you’re on my head’s thinking all right here’s how you build
the software to solve that and uh but where my head keeps going back just to uh web control you know and just the
buckets and like avv web controls right just bucking It Up by by uh vehicles and
yep yeah you could do that couldn’t you yeah but then you got pricing bucket I mean
so one of the things wheel dress is like you know if you’re not selling enough out of your 31 to 45 H bucket isolate
the cards basically you could build a widget that would insert into an HTML email
that would have this you know I would have multiple vehicles
and the software could actually just do that really easily anyway
no well again and out I’m gonna I’ll share that here I mean you can see my
screen right well that’s what we do I mean if you’re if you’re not selling enough out of your 31 to 45 age bucket
here are the cars and then the click of a button here are the leads um you know if I got I got no leads on a
37-day Sonata no leads but there’s 16 switch opportunities there’s 16 leads
right here that were on a similar car they’re look in 19 Grand car where they switch to
this so we you know for the inventory manager don’t drop the price call these switch leads as the internet person
to your point I can you know here’s this uh maybe van here this Pacifica the
customer the car’s still in stock I can talk to them about that one but I also have two other vans in stock I can talk
to them about or if they happen to be on a car that’s sold you know
um we can switch them from uh one car to the next a Kia Optima this 40 day old car won’t
lead one of the Kia Optima will he switch to this Ultima oh by the way I got five other vehicles to talk to them
about two so is that what you’re thinking about something like that but bringing the
actual leads in and making it actionable right there
yeah so one of the things I did on purpose is I didn’t bring the customer phone number email address into the
system I didn’t want to be a threat to a CRM I want to be able to work with I just want to point out the problems so I
didn’t pull that in press Privacy Act stuff I didn’t you know now that just copied some you can click on the
customer name and we can hyperlink to that lead provider like Vin Solutions if you use them but if it’s ID leads copy
the customer name pull them up and just call or email and ask them about this so yeah we we make it I wouldn’t say make
it cumbersome I mean obviously you got another step you got to do and the reason why I say I wouldn’t make it
cumbersome is because you can’t do that kind of stuff in this year you know yeah so to me I’m making a lot easier I’m
giving you the lead the low hanging fruit leads to work today especially to attack my issues
like I said I think a lot of this we’re just going to Trend out some of those metrics we’re going to be able to see
you know the reason why my sale rate dropped on my large pickup trucks is because the amount of leads not being
contacted went up and see if there’s a correlation between you know activity and sale rates because the more and more
I look at this it’s not typically a pricing problem it’s a process problem and a People problem
and it could be marketing you know if I don’t have a lead on that Sonata or whatever it was and I don’t have many
switch opportunities um I need to Market that thing [Music]
but that goes back to the other part and then people like well what kind of marketing how many leads should I have
per car um should I be on autotradercars.com CarGurus and these other listing sites
and the dealer the switch leads I think are huge because the dealer imagine having a
two day old car I’m typically on price at a low high because it’s fresh I don’t have photos
yet so of course I’m not getting any leads so but what if one dealer has two switch
opportunities they’re active leads on sold cars that are similar to this two day old car that you can call right now you don’t need the photos versus that
dealer that has 20 switch opportunities so the dealer that has two on a two day
old car versus the dealer has 20 on a two day old car he’s got a bigger opportunity to dealer with 20 to put
somebody on the studio car right out the gate so you’re going to want as many leads as possible but then if you’re
getting in too many leads then you know then you got to hire more people and you gotta do all this but yes and no if if
you just handle the leads that you need to handle and contact the ones you need to versus when you know if you can weed out the bad stuff and work the good but
to your point can you automate some of this um I don’t know
see away but the question is right
I don’t know if I’d call it a CRM what would you call it it’s more of a lot RM
right the last time you were on we were talking about managing the leads by inventory this is just putting more
um reason to do it that way um yeah the the
I see the problem with the current crms and I get really geeky here for a minute but it’s all in object models so the the
core of software is how each data point works with one another
so for instance a customer object model is going to have you know some sort of
customer thing usually an ID and then it’s got a phone number that hangs off of it an email that hangs off it might
have a co-bar that hangs off of it and crms are all built around this customer
for example whereas like a DMS has different silos and it might operate differently so you’ll have one that’s
built around a repair order another one that’s built around a sale transaction you know closed closed deal that kind of
thing so um anyway I said I’m getting a little geeky but it’s really a matter of is the
inventory itself a bolt-on on top of this customer system
and if it is and it’s going to be really damn hard to try and um
splice the the inventory and connect it to the lead and connect it to the customer and all this kind of stuff it’s
it’s quite a challenge you would have to probably the best way to do it would be to build it from the
ground up and so it’d be really hard for an e-leader than Solutions or somebody to pull it off or even a drive Centric
who’s the newest player um I ain’t got techie on coming they’ve already set their foundations if
they didn’t have this in mind from the get-go that’s going to be really hard to pull off um
so you’re saying I’m on to something I think you’re definitely onto something
well and again it’s 25 years a little Capital maybe we can put something together Jason there we go
but your software has come a long way man oh yeah well and that’s the thing you
know my first seven years this has been nine years that I’ve started this company in the first seven years is this
Google sheet for all day to dumping it once a week and it’s only been two years since the software and only about
a year that we started throwing in this lead data stuff and that’s where we’re just starting to slice and dice this I’m
like oh my gosh there’s so much here that we need to be looking at that we’re not
um what comes first you know if you I asked
the dealer we had we do a university here and I was looking out in a parking lot here and I said look at act like
this is your lot what comes first the car or the customer right obviously if you have a customer out there you’re
going to meet and greet them but when it comes to your strategies your approach your energy
do you got to focus on the cars and making sure the price and photo or you got to focus on the customer I don’t
think you can wait one heavier than the other um and again on the physical showroom
floor and the physical dealership we don’t we we meet and greet the customer we straighten out the car we fill the
holes but on our virtual lot we got a used car manager over here in an inventory tool thinking that’s the most
important thing and then we got a CRM over here in BDC Department that doesn’t talk cars and they think that’s the most
important thing and they’re putting there and but none of these are putting the energy together and working what they do cars and
customer every day and we’ve had virtual or your virtual dealership your virtual a lot you’re for
25 years and that’s again it’s kind of weird it’s a it and I say weird because how has this not been put
together before and so I’m in this Uncharted Territory which is fine
um because it’s fun to be able to you know innovate and see and not be stuck into some
narrow mindset of how it’s always been done um but it’s obviously if someone hasn’t
figured it out well but also too it’s hard one as a company marketing wise no one knows why
or what we do or how we do it it’s one thing this you talk about a booth at Nada people show up in NADA and say hey
I want to look at a new website company or a new inventory tool or a new whatever marketing company they don’t
know to come look for us you know because we’re not in any of those segments but two a lot of it’s kind of
some people might think it’s fluff or maybe over their head like oh you’re getting a little too deep here and I’m
like oh no this is basic stuff you got your trucks aren’t selling you got leads on trucks let’s call and email the leads
it’s pretty it’s calculated yeah yeah he’s complicated anything just pick
up the phone and make some calls all right um so yeah that’s the hard part too we’re also coming off of two years of
customers walking in and say hey you got a car look I see you can sell me a car right now I’ll pay anything you want for
it um yeah so you know they’re we’re gonna have to get past that now
um can I give you a story yeah on Facebook dealerships haven’t
what I was just gonna say sales people haven’t had to worry about switch cars
no they didn’t have and they didn’t even if they did most people had already narrowed it down
because of you know doing all the research and at least thinking that they’re doing all the research
you know so sales people just got I want to say lazy but just become
accustomed to it let me give you this example now
when I was backed up you could probably see I’ve got the Kansas City chief stuff back here so I’m in Olathe Kansas and I
shared this story on Facebook yeah there’s a Travis Kelsey and Tyree kill and Patrick Mahone so anyways
um a couple weekends ago my wife’s looking for a car I was telling you guys that earlier her lease is up and um that
it was a Saturday morning it was a playoff game the chiefs were playing and uh uh and it was um Buffalo right it was
a Saturday game but it wasn’t until 3 30. literally in the morning 10 11 o’clock in the morning I’m on my phone
on the couch my wife’s sitting in the chair on her phone and we’re texting cars back hey look at this car look at
this car look at this car well we’re having family over for the game at 3 30 but we’re picking up food at three it
got to be about one o’clock and my wife goes hey do you want to go maybe test drive that one car it was a Porsche
Macan or whatever at this it was at a Audi Audi or Volvo store here locally and it’s only 20 minutes away I said you
know what I think I can get ready in 15 minutes can you she’s like yeah I’m like she goes you think we’ve got enough time I’m like yeah we’ll be there by 1 30
we’ll drive it we’ll be back by 2 30 go pick up the food so she says hey before we leave let’s
call the dealership make sure the car was there what we call and um
operator answers hold on a second let me transfer it I’d ask about this car and the guy’s like yeah and it must have
been a management moment here matter of fact let me add this he said are you calling from St Louis because my cell phone number’s still from my St Louis
number and I said no I’m in Olathe Kansas oh you’re a nearby he goes yeah hold on that car’s here and let me get
you somebody so then he pushes me off to a salesperson so long story short which is too late
the salesperson goes um oh yeah that car’s still here um but we might be closing early I’m like oh
okay he goes yeah we might be closing around three you know for the big game and I’m like
yeah okay uh he goes but you know if you want to maybe if that don’t work you can
come by Monday and look at I’m like okay and I had it on speakerphone this
whole time my wife’s like huh and I’m like all right well um thanks bye you know and I’m like did I just did I just
hear it did that just happen and I’m looking at my phone I’m looking at her I’m like holy cow you know we’re jumping
through Hoots trying to figure out how we can get up there and get it back fast enough he just broomed us and I brought
up that game to watch he uh he they evidently have caller ID I mean why wouldn’t they at least called
me on Monday and say hey was that you that tried to call or they just and to the point here they just think customers
are coming in and stumbling over these vehicles you know and and they don’t have to sell anymore it’s like oh and I
don’t mind them you know I’ve even said I posted it on Facebook and I got about 150 different replies of people saying
well good for that dealer they should have you know honor you know let the employees have fun and other people chimed in and said no they should stayed
open and made a big event and had customers there to watch the game and blah blah blah and I know it would have
been a different conversation if I said hey that’s fine I’m in a hurry myself I got to get home for the game myself and
maybe he would have been fine come on in but why do I gotta drag that out why wouldn’t he had done it or if anything
saying hey if that doesn’t work let me bring the car to you on Monday you’re a no later you’re and they had my number
they knew I was you know why not and that’s just that to my point that story is this man it seems like we’re
I I went up there my I was sitting there thinking man they must be having record months still these cars must be just
flying off their shelves um to be able to do that did he even did he even ask for your contact information
that’s the thing no I didn’t ask for my name or nothing now obviously it had my phone number because again he said oh
you’re from but nothing on my name didn’t ask hey can I follow up with you can I bring it to your office or you
know you got something I mean nothing so wow I don’t know yeah so again you
answer the phone you never know if it’s going to be Jason rice is going to be talking about it on here I hate bringing up my path you
know it’s even at this dealership you know I don’t want nobody know who I am essentially but yeah I try to shop that
way too like don’t tell them I’m in the business yeah I know I see you know I hate it
when you hear those people you know people would would call the when I was selling cars and whatnot they’re like
yeah I’m in the business I know what your invoice is I know what they’re the worst ones yeah oh man so yeah yeah okay
oh great got Mr Know It All coming in I try not to say anything and then um
of course when you go on the test drive the salesman so what do you do for a living I don’t know don’t ask him
yeah working McDonald’s well the other thing I hate too is I I
don’t like and not that it’s a big deal I just that I guess I’m a private person but I always try to do financing on
myself on my own through my bank or something because I don’t want to go in a dealership and they have you know what I pay myself and you know our credit and
everything else and not that I got anything to hide but it’s like you know that’s pretty private stuff and I end up
doing business with you I really don’t want you know so not only am I going to beat you up on price but I’m also going
to sell my trade myself and I’m not going to bring any F and I so you don’t want me in your dealership basically
unless you leave the worst customer now but see no I buy one I mean I bought warranty and GAP but this is my wife’s
car my son’s everything you know I’m like hey I know I don’t know what warranty costs I don’t know how much
your money you’re making on me but it seems reasonable just I’ll take the deal you know I know I’ll give him a good deal on the car and you gotta make some
money somewhere else so that’s fine yep
yep yeah it is unfortunate I have heard stories about uh vendors buying from dealerships like the CEO of
the company or something and then them using that as a negotiation tactic against the vendor later
oh really yep wow yeah like I said I usually I was on the
phone with my bank for a little bit I did do financing there at the dealership but yeah I just again I I typically
don’t like doing that stuff they weren’t a client so I was just like whatever
like sit down and hide it’s not like that but we were uh I mean I’ve always wanted to
do this like uh as a as a business owner and like we do give our employees the
day off if they’re buying a car especially from one of our clients um and I’ve always wanted to be able to
say hey look uh you know if you uh give
the our employee a a good deal we will pay this difference and just give you
this money yeah I’ve always wanted to do that it’s a tough one to pull off because
but I I kind of did that um again my wife’s lease she wanted a always wanted an XC90
and so we had a dealership out of state and uh and I called him up he was and I said
hey my wife wants this lease but she don’t want a crazy payment and um I said how much down to get it to
this payment and it was like whatever five grand so I said hey you want a barter you know so I’ll give you
services for that down payment so when I come up with cash and ship me the car and would let’s do this and so we did we
did do a little bartering there with that kind of stuff but um yeah and it’s just uh that though was
a little bit harder to do because out of state lease is a little bit trickier but yeah no I didn’t think about giving them
a day off to buy a car especially from the client because yeah we’re there for four hours after you know I left work early and it was a long
day It’s mighty nice of you Alex yeah man you gotta you gotta help the
economy are you hiring Jason what do you what do you see him
Jason what are you seeing on the market Marketplace front well you know what’s weird to strap our
activities low you know so last year um tax season was about 15 to 20 percent
lower than the previous taxis and everybody thinks this tax season will get them out of their winter hangover of
sales and stuff well last year everybody kind of got and we’ve seen the patterns November December I was already worried
about it and then uh but everybody was talking about how there’s going to be a big tax return people are going to get
extra money and it’s going to be a boom and it just didn’t happen so the problem with that is we’re we’re down about five
to ten percent meaning Shopper activity not we as the Shopper activities down another five to ten percent than what it
was last year and so I don’t think this tax season is going to pan out as well because again
interest rates are higher I paid a stupid interest rate that I would have been two or three percent less
I think if we bought it a couple years ago a year or so ago but interest rates are
higher um the car values are still high I think customers are sick of paying for it two
if they need to get out of cars new cars are sitting there they’re going to throw in the rebates to get new cars in so then trade-ins come in so what’s funny
is right now wholesale is high or wholesale is going up so dealers are paying more for cars but the retail
Market’s not there like I said this guy this car that we just bought yesterday literally signed a paperwork last night
it was nine grand discount from November and I on my Facebook if anybody goes on there and looks I don’t know about a
week ago I gave it like eight screenshots of F-150s to Hondas to
um Porsche to I mean a mixture a Maxima these cars were discounted anywhere from
two to ten Grand and since November and so the retail prices are getting lower
but Wholesales higher and so that’s that Gap that spread is very thin right now of profitability and the only way that
if I gotta have to go to the Lane and pay up and assuming I can charge up and make my Gap in profit the only way I can
do do that is I gotta wait for these cheap cars to leave the market and by the time those cheap cars leave the
market I’m aged and I gotta drop my price and so the car
I’m buying today hoping for tax season will be aged by April 15th yeah it’ll be the age car when tax
season is over it really starts slowing down the first week of April you only got about a 45-60 day window between now
and April 15th early to get to some of these cars moving this tax season though
you’re not having to pay back those credits that were pulled forward so it might be a normal tax season for
most people again yeah I don’t know but last year was supposed to be the highest ever in
returns and it’ll only be in about two to four hundred dollars higher on average of a return people were getting
and um that got ate up by inflation
you know people were paying way more money for stuff and electric bill gone up gasp it’s gone up gas was high so the
extra few hundred bucks they had in their tax return just had to cover their spread on you know the household expenses and I think that’s why the tax
season wasn’t there inflation really has it’s gone down a bit but it’s still pretty high
and there was the other I shared two headlines there’s two headlines too where they said that the job market was
really strong it’s the best that it’s been uh unemployment’s low as it’s been but then the next headline there’s over
a trillion dollar in credit card debt and I’m liking well maybe these two headlines go go together maybe people
are going back to work the spouse has to go back to work or the kids are going back to work because parents can’t
afford their car you know the kids cell phone payment anymore I mean I think more people are pushed to the job market
because now they have to start paying these bills so job market looking strong don’t think that makes a strong economy
if people are a trillion dollars in credit card debt and paid five grand high on cars that you know 10 5 10 grand
higher on cars over the last few years too so I think it’s going to be this next
six months we’ll make or break this industry as far as where we’re headed I think again um by May or June wholesale
starts bottom you know the values of cars start really bottoming out
um for sure yeah because I say mayor June because
dealers don’t react typically till it’s painful and so it’ll it’ll they’ll see
the writing on the wall by mid-april and beginning of May and then it starts getting painful at the end of May and
June that where they’re going to have to start dumping cars or pricing slashing prices to get things moving and that’s
where I think the values really start going now I’m speculating that that system is kind of the way I’ve seen
things over the years of tracking no we’re we’re thinking the same that’s
Q2 is when a lot of realizations are going to be fully made
yeah I think this tax season will give some it’ll give you a push we’re gonna get busy and it’s gonna feel good and
you know it’s gonna make it kind of the pain go away for a little bit but again it’s short-lived and the car you’re
buying now if you don’t move it in that time you could be hurting in May or June when it’s aged
so that’s all the device he has such an upbeat thing to end on
yeah you know I got yeah we got a new car we should be
excited about that I told my wife that I’m like that’s what’s bad about being a car business is you get these new cars and it’s not it’s not that exciting
anymore no big deal yeah well it’s so exciting when it’s your wife’s car
no but I think here again I guess to wrap that up too I think you know again looking at leads um one easy for dealers
to do is don’t give up on any leads on sold cars don’t give up on leads after 30 to 40 days keep keep pushing through
those leads I do we we did do we do a lot of tracking on appointment log again this isn’t something that crms do we’ll
manually track the date we got the lead the date we contacted the customer the
date of their appointment okay and we’ll spread that out and that way we can
track the between the date of getting the lead and the date the customer showed up for the appointment
and and then how many appointments do we have zero to seven days old you know each weekly age bucket and what we found
was obviously if I can drag my average age to appointment higher that’s a good
thing we think it might be bad if you go from a two-day lead to appointment average to a five-day lead appointment
that’s actually good because that means you’re following up on 30 40 50-day leads and you’re getting them in the door then what we found was these older
leads these 30-day and higher older appointments I’m sorry those show up at a higher percentage
than the fresh leads it was like 95 which is like 80 something percent or 70 something percent well a lot of the
fresh leads are just starting their shopping so they’re not in a hurry yeah I’ll stop by by the time they’re 30 40
50 days old and you’ve been following they’re they’ve done enough research you’re ready to pull the trigger so
they’re they’re higher appointment ratios uh showing because of that so don’t give up on the age of leaves don’t
give up on the lead if it’s sold try to give them an alternative um and again we’ll have more data on the
tracking but I think looking when we’re I was jokingly saying at events I bet I was saying hey you know imagine your
person did 100 activities and only 20 of them were cars in stock the other 80 percent of their activity had nothing to
do with your inventory I was joking with that number it’s almost a reality no you are almost right there I was like gosh
dang it good activity [Music]
well that’s a way to end it on solid advice yep you’re always full of it the solid
advice that is always appreciate it and you talk to my wife
not that you need to plug anything but go ahead and give yourself uh opportunity to plug if anyone wants to
reach out to you check out laptop.com and yeah a lot pop our new lot walk tool where we put the two together and you
know follow me it’s j-a-s-e-n so Facebook LinkedIn and I try once uh um
YouTube uh laptop Inc or we do podcasts it’s called Lot Party Show podcast
um about once a week I threw out some tips on what we’re machine going on definitely give it a follow
for sure well thank you Jason yep everyone you guys have a great weekend
take care go ChiefsRefreshTest1