When shopper counts drop, most dealers panic. Do this instead.

Transcript is auto-generated from the episode recording and lightly formatted. It may contain transcription errors.

Chris Keene (0:00): And here we are, folks, we are back. This is Lot Talk powered by Lot Pop. I'm Chris Keene, one of the co-hosts joined by Mr. Ronaldo Leonard, Mr. John Anderson. Gentlemen, good morning, good morning, good morning. How in the hell are we doing?

Renaldo Leonard (0:15): On the right side of the grass, my man. It's all... Yes.

John Anderson (0:19): I'm waiting for one to run. I was waiting for one to run all those things, man. I didn't want to step on him, brother. I was waiting for it to come. “

Chris Keene (0:30): He said, I'm on this side of the grass making little, making little fists with my, with my toes. Thankful that I'm on this side.

Renaldo Leonard (0:38): Yeah, rather be... Yeah, rather be walking on it than fertilizing it.

John Anderson (0:42): There you go baby.

Chris Keene (0:43): Yeah, there you go. That's what I'm talking about. hey, dealers, we have, we got some stuff cooking.

Renaldo Leonard (0:49): “ yeah.

Chris Keene (0:50): Okay, we got some stuff cooking. We've had a couple dealers that have taken us up on our offer to join a dealer panel. We're getting that date put together, but it's gonna be coming here in the next couple weeks. So for the viewers, for the listeners, I don't care if you're a dealer principal, if you're a C-suite member, a GM, a GSM, salesperson, BDC rep, one of the managers, it makes no difference. We wanna have a nice full panel of you guys come join the show. share some things that have been troubling you, some best practice, some things that you guys are doing extremely well. We're not asking you to share all your trade secrets of what's creating you some success, but also giving you an opportunity to collaborate with one another, maybe take bits and pieces from things you've been listening to on our podcast and maybe have us elaborate a little bit more. But we've got a couple dealers, “ like three or four of right now that have raised their hand. Would love to have three or four more, be able to jump in on this dealer panel that we want to do with you guys. Let your voices be heard. That's number one. Number two, next episode we have coming out, we have some guests that were on with us last year. You guys may know them. They're the car guys, Coffee, Sweet Lou and Fred. They're going to be joining us on our next podcast. They have a lot of great nuggets that will really help you out as we've seen these markets kind of start downshifting on us But speaking of markets downshifting We see it and We've got some dealers that have also seen it, but they're two three steps ahead. So today We are going to share even just some of the basic fundamentals that they do that is helping them sustain above a downshifting market. Now there are a great deal of partners of ours so they don't mind us sharing some of their secrets, if you will, but we're going to share those today. And then, well, like we're not going to get in depth with it, but some basic good fundamentals, John.

John Anderson (2:55): Sure about that? Ha

Renaldo Leonard (2:56): They said, it on the DL.

John Anderson (2:58): Hey, hey, I was just gonna add that you better put your seat belts on when Lou and Fred come on, brother. You guys better be seat-bottled to your chair. Because they bring the juice, man. They bring the juice.

Chris Keene (3:11): How about this, we're not going to share their names.

Renaldo Leonard (3:14): There you go.

Chris Keene (3:15): “ million percent. Yeah, this, this, hey, no, no, it's past that Colombian coffee. This is like some, like some Italian coffee.

Renaldo Leonard (3:23): room amped up.

John Anderson (3:24): That's Cuban coffee. That's that little shot glass of thick Cuban coffee. That stuff you can hold upside down that just barely runs out of there, man. That black tar, black tar. That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Keene (3:36): It just trickles out.

Renaldo Leonard (3:38): like molasses. “ yeah.

Chris Keene (3:39): “ other “ brief announcement here guys 30 challenge calm the word first the number 30 “ Calm “ we've got dealer signing up it If you missed last week's episode or the week before that number one go back and watch them, but number two “ Jason Rice our president founder CEO here a lot pop he's doing a first 30 challenge a highly intensive to be able to help get you prepped “ Excuse me for the rest of year and It is a one day here at the office But more importantly, thefirst30challenge.com, the word first to number 30, challenge.com. You're gonna wanna take advantage of this. “ Get online, go that website. If you can't find it there, go to lotpop.com. You'll find the first 30 challenge there. But you're gonna want to take that because it's one day in the office and 30 days of one-on-one with Jason Rice. Listen closely. It does not matter if you are a client subscribing to one of our products. It does not matter if you're a client or not. We want to give back to the industry. And you're gonna get a wealth of knowledge. coming from the grand master himself, the pooh paw, the brain behind Lop Hop and the guy who has been for the last 30 years following this market and giving best practices from a performance management standpoint for years and years and years. If you want to stay three, four, five steps ahead like some of these dealers we're going to show you today, I highly encourage you to to first30challenge.com. If you want to stay ahead of the market, and you want to end your year on a high note. You want to end Q2, Q3, Q4 on a high note. You need to get onto that first30.com. Hurry up and get yourself registered. The date's coming soon. We want to make sure that you get your seat reserved because seats are limited. We need to sit there and we need to address the big pink elephant in the room. And the big pink elephant in the room is this. The shopper index per usual, which is not for us, earth shattering news. The shopper index has declined. Now, for the viewers, I'm gonna share with you on the screen here. I'm gonna share with you on the screen exactly what I'm talking about. We shared a little bit of it last week, maybe the week before. Red line here, the shopper index is showing where we hit that big peak back at the end of February, carried obviously into March. A lot of you guys had really good marches and a lot of you guys have gone out. in like trying to refill your inventory like, “ man, selling season's here, tax season's here. You gotta go buy a bunch of inventory. Well, look what's coming ahead. Shopper index is dramatically. Declined from where we hit that peak from a 55 % 62 % you seen a 7 % decrease there 7 % decrease heck it just rebounded a little bit from an 11 % decrease, or excuse me, 68 to 54, a 14 % decrease in there. Now we're at a 55 % shopper index. John, talk to that a little bit on that big decrease.

John Anderson (6:42): I mean, for us going back and tracking this data for as long as we have, I it's just routine. It's that time of year, right, where people geared up for the spring selling season. Yeah. And you got a little bit of a bounce right there, but then it's typically this time of year. I don't know, if you go back, Chris, this time last year, would it?

Chris Keene (7:05): Talk to you soon. there. “ yeah, I can tell you it is right here at the 15th because I've already looked at it. You know, there's that decline again. Boom falls, falls out.

John Anderson (7:16): Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you. Yeah, and you can go back all the way to 2004. I think is when they really started, you know, tracking this and and it you'll see the same trend. It's just this is one shoppers, you know, they're it's springtime. They got other things going on. You know, we don't like to we don't like to believe it, but, know, they're spending time. in their gardens, they're getting things ready, they've got their focus is shifting.

Chris Keene (7:43): Well, and a lot of them are getting prepared. Ronaldo, they're getting prepared for graduation. mean, hell, got my son and my daughter-in-law. They about to graduate from college. OK?

John Anderson (7:53): Yeah. They got proms are going on everywhere. They're spending money on, I just helped my grandson get a suit. it's just things. No, no, it's not. so it's just a shift in focus. And so now, and you can see it, Chris, in that trending and that green trend line, that's our dealer body, who we work with. And you start to see all these trends.

Renaldo Leonard (8:15): Yep.

Chris Keene (8:16): And that's an H-E.

John Anderson (8:17): “ You're seeing “ auction “ drop off. You're seeing, yeah, a days to turn it tipped down a little bit, but it was trending up and it'll go right back up. It's just the market's slowing down. We see this every year. The market's just slowing down. How do we proactively adapt to that?

Chris Keene (8:35): Mm-hmm blue line blue line. You see the wholesale sold going down

John Anderson (8:39): I tell you what, know what's happened a lot, Is dealers had a good spring selling season and then they went out and they want to go replace all that inventory, right? And now we're sitting with inventory on the lot that we made a judgment call based on the activity we had going on in February and March. And now what? Now shoppers are saying, this happens every year, right? And now shoppers are starting to starting to their interest are shifting. Right. And so now we've got this inventory and that's why, you know, we're seeing, excuse me, we're seeing it with our dealers and that trend, right. That two week selling rate starting to drop. Right. And maybe, maybe you didn't go out and specifically maybe you go out specifically get inventory you traded for it. Right. We got a lot of dealers that have a, you know, 80 % trade. They trade for most of their inventory and you're not going to not trade for inventory. So now you have this.

Chris Keene (9:37): Mm-hmm.

John Anderson (9:37): Now you have this inventory you're sitting there. Your last 15 days, you've sold 37 units and you got 50 units sitting in your zero to 15 day. I sold 37 in my last 15 days. I got 50 units sitting in my zero to 15 days. So I'm out over my skis a little bit. So now what? Now, other than...

Chris Keene (9:58): Mm-hmm. Well, “ we talk about it. We talk about it all the time, though. You know, one of the coaching pieces we give at Renaldo speak to this a little bit. But we talk about, OK, that's fine. Yes, the shopper index has declined. Does that mean the world's coming to an end? No, there are still in-market shoppers out there. OK, there are still in-market shoppers out there. But.

John Anderson (10:21): “ yeah.

Renaldo Leonard (10:22): Absolutely.

Chris Keene (10:22): Ronaldo, shouldn't we stock to our market? I mean, don't we always say stock what you sell?

Renaldo Leonard (10:28): Absolutely, absolutely. You know, and when we talk about that vertical alignment, working our leads with our inventory, working the inventory with the leads, when we do have some success on the selling side, we're selling more than 50 % of our inventory in two-week period of time. The sales that we had over the last two weeks came from lead generation. with those units that we had in stock. And so many times we'll go into someone's CRM and see that they had 10 leads on Equinox. That was under $20,000, right? And when we look at how their leads are trending, and this is something I picked up from you, Chris, over the last couple of weeks. you look at the number of switch leads that they have inside of their CRM and that number is declining, which means they're not stocking to the lead generation that's come into the store.

Chris Keene (11:18): So the leads they've already paid for, they've already paid for those leads.

Renaldo Leonard (11:23): Absolutely. Right. And those leads are an indication of what your market is in need of or what they are requiring from dealers in their market. So if you got 10 leads out there that we're looking at a Chevy Equinox, boom, I might need to go and get a compact SUV under 20 grand. So whether I'm looking at vehicles for trades. and I know that I have that class of vehicle in that price range come through, I'm going to jump all over. Because come hell or high water, I cannot lose out on this trade because I've got eight people looking for it. And so just using that data in a proactive stance as opposed to what we see every year, same time when those shopper counts go down, we've had a little success. So we go to the sale, we raise our hand. Look what I stole. We've all heard it. I stole one at the sale today. No, you're the last dude there with your hand in the air, right? Right. But going out there, reacting to the success that they've had, but not being strategic in what they're bringing back into the inventory and not being strategic in those calls that they're making for people who are selling vehicles out on the street.

Chris Keene (12:35): Did you really steal it? “ come on now.

Renaldo Leonard (12:38): That's the biggest thing that we're able to do with our dealers is to put them in a proactive stance so that when those shopper counts go down, we're not fazed by it because we've engineered our inventory to fill the need of what the market has told us they're looking for. And we've already captured those leads. We're just going to recycle them, take those dollars and... Have you touched on the number that you just most recently signed? What, it costs a dealer to generate a lead?

Chris Keene (13:07): Man, we're gonna touch on that on the next episode, but it's an astronomical number. it's, because I wanna get all the data put together right, make sure that I'm not misquoting anything, but it's astronomical.

Renaldo Leonard (13:19): Okay. “ my goodness. Yeah, okay. but it doesn't, you long story short, it doesn't matter if you're paying $30 a lead or $300 a lead. When you have an opportunity to recycle those by using that information to go and engineer our inventory, you keep the wheel going and you're not subject to conditions out in the marketplace. And that's the biggest difference between dealers who are still on pace doing their thing, they're turning that inventory, they're recycling their leads, and the majority of dealers who are out there being reactive, you know, think it was in Dante's Inferno, that was like the fourth layer of hell. You had people just chasing whichever way the wind was blowing, chasing flags down. That reactionary business model will get you killed every time.

Chris Keene (14:03): Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Renaldo Leonard (14:04): Those are the folks that, you know, another 45, 60 days down the road, they're sitting there with.

Chris Keene (14:10): “ they're going to give back all that profit that they made in March. They're going to give their last bit of it back. But let's elaborate because, folks, get your pen and paper out. Here's exactly what we're talking about. Here's exactly what Renalda was talking about. And this is one of our dealer partners. And the reason why I'm using this is because it's factual data. This is how they're performing.

Renaldo Leonard (14:34): Yep, absolutely, absolutely. Yep.

Chris Keene (14:35): Now for the viewers that are able to see this right now on the Spotify or on the YouTube, you know, you can see this for the listeners. I'm going to explain the best I possibly can. This green line here, you can see it trending upward. Now, what this is an indication of is exactly what we're in all that was talking about. The inventory that came back in is aligning with the opportunities that they already have. You can do this right now yourself. Go back in to your CRM, go look at everybody you ain't sold a car to and go look at which one of these cars started getting the most active activity, but yet I don't have the car anymore. What type of vehicle was it? What price bucket was it in? You could do that. Okay. So number one, understand what your market has an appetite for. Now you can see this dealer, the inventory they brought in, their opportunities went up with the recycling of their ad dollars. Meaning they already have paid for the opportunity in the vehicles they keep bringing in keep matching with open opportunities they have. So go measure that right now. But then when you measure that, look at this. You have a strategic approach once you understand that. And this dealer, he could quickly identify, heck, I'm not even going to talk about the easy routes. OK? The easy routes, everybody's like, oh, yeah, $20,000 $25,000 vehicle. Everybody needs those. OK? I'm not even going to talk about that. Look here. This dealer has 46 active opportunities right now, but only 17 large pickups in stock between $30,000 and $40,000. Think about that for a minute. 46 opportunities in only 17 trucks in stock. Let's just say all 46 of them were on the same kind of truck in that 30 to 40,000. Well, you could only sell 17 of them because you only got 17 trucks. Now, am I telling you to go stock 46 more trucks? No. But if I could quickly identify by pulling up my CRM data and understanding that I had five opportunities on a 23F150 that's around 38 in a nickel, well, I can only sell that to one person. What am I going to do when I sell that to the one person? What am I going to do with the other four leads? What am I going to do with the other four opportunities? So if I'm restocking inventory right now, I'm going to go find me another F-150 XLT crew cab that I can sell for around $38 a nickel and restock that piece of inventory. Why? Because my market has the appetite for it. My store has drawn that type of customer. So go into your CRM, take a look at that. Go into your inventory management tool, launch it. to help you find this piece of inventory here. That's exactly what Rinaldo was talking about there, all by simply knowing, and what John was talking about a minute ago, the two sides communicating together that haven't been communicating for years. But you can bridge that gap by knowing that information. I'm gonna pause that right there for a minute before we move on to something else. But Anderson, what's your two cents on that?

Renaldo Leonard (17:39): .

John Anderson (17:40): I can never deliver just two cents, brother.

Renaldo Leonard (17:42): Yeah

Chris Keene (17:43): Alright, what's your dollar eighty six?

John Anderson (17:45): Well, first I go back to what Ronaldo said when he said, don't care if your leads cost 30 or $300. So let me ask you a question, Chris. If you walked out the front door of the building right now and you saw $30 laying on the ground, would you just keep walking? How quickly would you pick it up?

Chris Keene (18:05): pick it up and go tell the receptionist somebody lost 10 bucks and I found it on the ground.

John Anderson (18:11): You My point being is, you know, I think sometimes we just don't think about. I mean, I see it. Look, I don't want to. You're showing a lot of what we do, and that's cool. And I don't want people to think that you guys were just trying to help you with strategies on what we know is coming and how do you stay proactive against this? Right. So let me address a little bit about this. “ And Chris, I'm going to ask you just because I don't have I know people are listening and watching, but I can't hear from them. So. “ when the market starts to attract from the market, and you've made a point earlier, right? People that are still out there in the market are active. Yes. Yeah, but here's what shifts. Chris, are cars emotional purchases?

Chris Keene (18:59): “ they're buyers. 1 million percent.

John Anderson (19:01): Right. And so if I'm a customer, “ tell me if I'm wrong, because again, I say this and I could be, it could have changed. But I think customers still, whether they're doing a zero click search or they're going to third party and once they determine where they're going to reach out to, I think

Chris Keene (19:19): Mm-hmm.

John Anderson (19:20): A large percentage of that time, that question that comes out of them first and foremost is, is this vehicle still available? Would you agree with that or am I wrong? Okay.

Chris Keene (19:30): Mm-hmm. Yeah, and half the autoresponders are exactly that. Is available.

John Anderson (19:34): Right, right. So if we agree that cars are emotional vehicles or emotional purchases and we agree that that first question is, is this vehicle still available? And during a time like we're shifting into now, the answer to that question they're going to hear more than not is yes.

Chris Keene (19:50): Mm-hmm.

John Anderson (19:51): Does that take the emotion out of it? It does, here's my point, when the market's moving like it was, when...

Chris Keene (19:58): Yeah, because when 12 people, because the average, to your point, John, the average amount of vehicles that a consumer is going to submit an opportunity on is 12. And when 12 people say it's still available, what time can you be here this morning or afternoon? Now there's no emotion. There's no urgency.

John Anderson (20:15): The second thing, there's no freaking urgency, right? When we're in “ February, March, and they're sending out those 12 leads and they're hearing, sorry, we sold it yesterday. “ We've taken a deposit on it. We have someone here right now looking at it, right? My point being is they're not getting the response. Yes, it's still available. They're getting the fact that

Renaldo Leonard (20:37): Alright.

John Anderson (20:37): it's moving, then if vehicles are emotional purchases, so then the consumer becomes a little bit more irrational. And so they start moving quicker because FOMO, fear of missing out, that's a real thing, fear of missing out, right? So they start moving quicker. And so now it's starting to shift the other direction and they're hearing that these vehicles are still available.

Chris Keene (20:58): “

John Anderson (20:58): So there's not fear of missing out. So they slow down. They slow down and they tend to search longer. They tend to look at things longer. They're vetting things out more. I do it myself. “ I buy most of my stuff online and I vet the hell out of it. I look at, I probably overanalyze things just because that's what I do for a living. So I freaking overanalyze stuff. But my point is customers, they start to slow down and they spend more time. Okay, so if that's the facts, then how do you change that? How do you change that mentality? Doing what we always done is not changing that mentality. It's not. So if the customer is slowing down, then what do we need to do as a dealer? We need to speed up. We need to speed up our contact rate to that customer because they're...

Renaldo Leonard (21:49): I need to speed him up.

John Anderson (21:51): I'm asking this to dealers out there that are listening and watching. How many times have you had a customer walk in your showroom floor and say, been watching this car for three or four weeks and noticed you were changing it every seven days and you got it to the price I wanted to pay, so now I'm here to buy it, right? “ That's a waiting, “ we're waiting and the whole time, the whole time we're doing that, we're just reducing our margin. We're lowering the price.

Chris Keene (22:20): Ugh.

Renaldo Leonard (22:21): you you

John Anderson (22:21): I cringe every time I hear a dealer and I hear it all the time. We change our prices every five days. I just cringe. I cringe every time. On all your cars? Absolutely. Even the ones with customers on them? Absolutely. So guys, listen, Chris pointed out, Renalda pointed out, you've already paid to get that, you've already spent to get that into the dealership.

Chris Keene (22:43): Why?

John Anderson (22:43): So why are we not doing everything we can to talk to that customer? Listen, I'm going to tell it myself. When I was selling cars, yes, back in those days, there was a CRM and I used the CRM, believe it not, Chris, they had CRMs back in the stone age.

Chris Keene (23:00): A daily game planner is not a CRM.

Renaldo Leonard (23:03): This is my first CRM. I them on the notebook.

John Anderson (23:06): Shit, Daily Game Planner, that red book was, that was the bomb, brother. so, but, but anyway, “ I would look at, I would look at leads that were in my name and my task schedule and maybe I hadn't sold a car in a couple of days and I'm going through that task schedule and I'm vetting in my mind who's the most likely person going to buy a car. And then I start canceling and I'm like, they're not going to buy anything. I'm like, so I don't, I don't reach out to them. I don't reach out to them.

Renaldo Leonard (23:40): You

John Anderson (23:40): And so I'll make them buy into Sizzon's for them. Exactly. And my dealer, and then, know, Chris has said it before, you know, salesperson will walk into the manager and go, Hey, the manager goes, Hey, what can I do for you? You can get me some more leads boss. then boss goes in, looks at their lead contacts and we got, we got contact agents that we got, we got a customer on an in-stock vehicle that's still in stock, still sitting out on a lot. We haven't talked to them in 10, 11, 12 days. Right.

Renaldo Leonard (24:13): You're making buying decisions for them, right?

John Anderson (24:15): Guys, this is, to me, this is, don't think your customers don't want to hear from you. They do want to hear from you. What they don't want to hear is on the first time they send you a lead for you to call them up and go, hey, when can you be here? They don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear that. They want, listen, they're not any different than you are. I want to know how much you care before I care how much you know, right? So do you care about what I'm interested in and why I sent you a lead on this vehicle? Have you asked me those questions? Did I ask you a question and you didn't answer it? You just ignored it and you sent me a script off your CRM, right? So these are some, look, these are, to me, these are simple things. Are they small and incremental? Yes, they are. But they're simple things that we can manage and we can do. If I've got, if I have 40, Compact SUVs sitting on my lot today. And I know that in the last 15 days, we've sold five. If I keep up that same pace, I'm going to sell 10 with 40 in stock. So I'd best, as a manager, be looking at my CRM and what leads do I have on compact SUVs and getting my team making contacts, attempted contacts. The more attempted contacts we make, the more contacts we make. So we turn that up all the way across, right? Instead of just going in there and change it, here's what we've always done, a car's not selling, what do I do? I go and change the price, right? And then I change it again.

Chris Keene (25:55): Man, I'm so sick and tired of this, of what we've always done. Listen, if you want to consistently be inconsistent, then keep doing what you're doing. I'm gonna say it again. If you want to be consistently inconsistent, keep doing what you're doing.

John Anderson (26:09): Exactly. Guys, I'm not, listen, Chris and I, Chris, Renaldo, and myself are not being too hard right now, because we see it on our end. We look at it and we see this kind of flow. We sell cars and then we age. And then we sell cars and then we age. And then we sell cars and we age. We contact our customers and then we stop contacting our customers. We contact our customers and it's just this uneven cycle when it doesn't have to be that way. It just doesn't have to be that way. And it's not something ... It's not something complex that you guys have to do in your stores to change this whole thing. It's not. It's simple stuff that you just need to go in there and dig in there and find our look. In most dealerships, you got your sales managers over here and guys, I get it. You're wearing a thousand hats. I got to praise trades. I got a salesman that called in today because his wife's sick. I got service heat back there. I go talk to a server. I got to work a deal. I got to submit a deal to a bank. You got all these things you're doing, right? I get it. But You need to set aside time in your day, preferably first thing in the morning, to communicate with your team as talking to your customer. That needs to be priority number one. Listen, if you get a fresh lead in, you make that priority number one. I get a lead in overnight. You know that's getting contacted, right? But what about those leads that are sitting on inventory that I still have in stock? And maybe that lead has followed that unit. Maybe that unit now is 45 days old and that lead was sent to you at day 10 and it's followed down through there. And now I got a 35 day old lead on a 45 day old unit.

Chris Keene (28:01): Yeah, because your CRM, your CRM is not going to tell you that you need to contact that customer back. It's just not. We've listen, we've worked with every damn near every CRM out there and we've had some of the best, some of the best users, all CRMs be able to try to crack this code. It's uncrackable. Okay. I'm going tell you that you cannot get your CRM to do these things that we're talking about. So, I mean, with that being said, John, okay, there, there's

John Anderson (28:31): Is that Lea?

Chris Keene (28:32): There's a perfect takeaway right there. Second takeaway, first takeaway, understand, and this is what Renalda was talking about, what opportunities that you still have, but the vehicle of interest is sold, backfill that inventory to recycle your ad dollars. The second takeaway, have a daily huddle with your team and... I would even push that to quarter lease, meaning quarter checks throughout the day. Yes, to start the day, the quarter point of the day, the three quarter point of the day towards the end of the day in huddle with your team. Look at those opportunities that you have on in stock vehicles. Ronaldo. How many times? I mean, it just baffles me. But how many times do we sit there and look at the opportunity? With the client. or a prospective client of ours. And we're looking into CRM as I will see it. See, I called him. I've called this guy six times now in last seven days. Okay, but you keep calling him at 9 37 in the morning. Where do you think that guy is? And all you did was pick up the phone and call them. I'm glad you called them.

Renaldo Leonard (29:37): Right? Yeah, it baffles me. “ Especially you look at it and you see that you got the lead 430 in the afternoon. I'm going to try to mirror that guy as best I can. If I knew he said that lead at 430, know, his day's winding down. Maybe he's on his ride home, whatever. I'll say, okay, I'm going call you at 430. Because if I call him at 930 five times in a row.

Chris Keene (30:02): Thank you.

John Anderson (30:03): Great stuff. Great stuff.

Renaldo Leonard (30:04): “ well, I try. Yeah. I'm watching my language. I'm trying to, trying to.

Chris Keene (30:09): But, Reynaldo, when you called him at 9.30, though, hey, Reynaldo, I missed you, but I'm going to call you back at 4.30. Wouldn't you leave an expectation? OK.

Renaldo Leonard (30:19): Absolutely. Absolutely. I will call you back at 430 or if there's a better time for me to call, let me know when you want me to reach out to you because apparently I'm missing you the last five days. I'm here to help you. We're going to go Jerry Maguire. Help me help you. I got something you're looking for and I want to be the man that serves you. Make sure you get that taken care of.

John Anderson (30:45): I'm gonna email ya. I'm gonna call ya. I'm gonna email ya.

Renaldo Leonard (30:49): Just let me know what I have to do in order to get... Yes! Yes!

Chris Keene (30:54): You are going to be their ambassador of Quan. Now, hang on. Let me ask a question, Would you say something like this, and listeners and viewers, I know this sounds so elementary, but take note, because I promise you, it ain't get done 2 thirds of the time. Would you say, hey, I've missed you five times now. I've called you around 930, but I'm going to call you at 430. But I'm also going to send you a text message.

Renaldo Leonard (31:21): Hmm.

Chris Keene (31:21): Because if there's a better time for me to reach out to you, just shoot me a quick text back and let me know when. Didn't you just set an expectation? One, that you're texting them. Two, you're trying. And three, you're trying to cater to their schedule. You're not asking them to give you anything other than what's best for them, because you're trying to move them further down that funnel. Am I right or wrong?

Renaldo Leonard (31:46): You're right. You're right. But the most important thing that you're doing is you're setting up that communication from there on out.

Chris Keene (31:54): There it is.

Renaldo Leonard (31:55): They know that we're going to be having a conversation. It's a dialogue. I'm not calling, hey, can you be here at 415? No, we're going to work through this process together. And in order for me to do my job as best as possible, I have to have a line of communication with you. You should know what you should expect from me. This is what I'm expecting from you.

Chris Keene (32:18): Okay.

Renaldo Leonard (32:18): Period. paragraph.

Chris Keene (32:19): So with that being said, I'm going to share my screen one more time here. We showed you viewers, listeners, we told you about it. Yeah, the shopper index is declining. We're in that little bit of the lull before the selling season comes back, which we all know after graduations, after all that's done, after everybody's got their game plan set for summer, the selling season comes back around.

Renaldo Leonard (32:42): Hmm.

Chris Keene (32:42): That summer sell-a-thon it comes around but what I want to share with you guys is something very important here Now again, yes, we're showing you dealers from lot pop, but it's because we have their data This is a dealer on the East Coast a large dealer in the middle of nowhere 351 used cars on the ground tracking to sell their 300. Okay. Now they're a little bit off right now. That's only just because they picked up this huge amount of inventory here. Okay. So yeah, their volume come down a little bit, but it won't stay down there for long because as you see, when they fall down into that, what I call a valley, they bounce back very quickly because they've got their processes in place. This is a dealer that 96 % of their inventory is zero to 30 days old. And as a matter of fact, to kind of break that down even more, 291 pieces. of their 351 car inventory is 0 to 15 days old. So no wonder why their sell rate fell a little bit. But they're coming back. Here's the thing that you need to understand, 87 % of their sales are coming from the first 30. So take away number three. Understand how much inventory you have that's 0 to 30 days old. Understand you could pull it at any. Inventory management tool go into your inventory management tool understand how much inventories in your first 30 understand How much of your sales in the last several weeks have been coming from that first 30 now your focus is closing the gap between what you're stocking and what you're selling. This dealer, stocking 96 % of their inventory in the first 30, selling 87 % of their sales from that first 30 inventory. So what are they focused on? They're focused on closing that gap between 87 and 96%. This is something that we strongly recommend that you do. understand that data right there. Again, you don't have to be a client of ours to do this. You can go do it yourself. Go know where you're at. But furthermore, what creates a lot of success for this dealer, back to the follow-up side of it, and I'm going to paraphrase because I don't remember exactly how they say it, but I've talked to their owner, I've talked to their executive vice president a gazillion times. One of the things that they say to the consumer, regardless if that consumer lives around the block or three hours away. They asked the consumer, hey, yes, they answered the question first. Yes, it's available. Yes, it has double power seats in it. Yes, it's got a moon roof, whatever. But hey, I noticed that you're three hours away. Did you and your family plan on taking and making this just a day trip to come visit us and see all the cool things we have in our area? Or did you want to go ahead? and do everything remote and digitally. If it's somebody that lives around the block, they live two blocks from the dealership. Hey, I noticed you're here local. Did you want to go ahead and just continue to do your full transaction digitally? Or did you want to schedule time to come in? Why? Because the consumer can. They don't want to. The data shows it. But if consumer can transact their entire car deal without stepping foot at your dealership. So why create tension or friction between you and the customer? Ask them. Because if you ask them, they will tell you how to sell them. But instead, y'all keep trying to put square pegs in a round hole. Am I saying never ask for a deployment? No, because I just did. I just asked for a deployment.

Renaldo Leonard (36:15): And you gave options.

Chris Keene (36:16): whether it's an appointment, whether it's appointment at my digital dealership or an appointment at my brick and mortar, I ask for an appointment. But I let them tell me how to sell them. Because the very last thing I'm ever gonna do is sell my car. Pause there in the few minutes we have left. John, what's your thought on that?

John Anderson (36:37): say differently than what you said. mean, you're spot on. You're meeting the customer where they live at. That's where they, know, customer first has to be that way, you know, and especially, you know, in an age now where guys, including myself, will tip good for average service, right? Doesn't, doesn't, it doesn't take much. You just got to acknowledge, you got to acknowledge where the customer's living at and how they want to do business. They'll tell you. They'll tell you, you got too many tools out there nowadays. don't have to, you can deliver a car to their door. can have somebody do, you got various ways the paperwork can be done. So, they don't.

Chris Keene (37:15): They can't, we used to joke around, John, I don't know if y'all did this up in Indy, but we did it in Oklahoma. You know, when the interweb came around and people say, well, I was online and my vehicle's worth X. Well, we used to point blank, tell a customer, hey, do me a favor. Go on to www.printmeacheck.com and see if they'll give you a check for that vehicle. Cause there's only one.

Renaldo Leonard (37:41): you

Chris Keene (37:41): There is only one book that'll buy that vehicle from me, sir. And it's my checkbook. But that service wasn't available. Today's time? Man, I wouldn't dare tell a customer that. You know why? They gonna go to KBB. They gonna go to CarMax. They gonna go to Carvana. They gonna go to Accutre. And somebody gonna write up a check right there. All live.

John Anderson (38:02): Checkbook. Yeah.

Renaldo Leonard (38:03): Hahaha!

John Anderson (38:03): Yeah. I guess that ultimately, Chris, that's the point, right? I think a lot of times we still fail to realize that where we're at now as an age in our industry, right? Customers have everything at their fingertips. So you guys are trying to do some of these old school “ things. I jumped on it. I think I was looking at, I think it was somebody that reached out to us. I jumped on their website because I was going to do a review of their inventory. “ And what did I see? What do call them? No, what is it called? A snag page or they didn't put prices on their inventory. Call for a price. mean, what is that called? I wanted to say snag page. But I mean, what are we doing? What are we doing?

Chris Keene (38:50): Bunch of dirty whores. Well, for price, I was like... Why are we even worried about a form field to try to capture people's information? No way they're gonna move on to the next car.

John Anderson (39:01): Well, who's going to do that? Who's going to do that? Who's going to do that? Right. Right. And I think sometimes we just, I think sometimes we just, you know, we just forget that. And, know, all these things that we've been talking about today, guys and gals out there that are watching and listening, I mean, these are all things that Chris showed that dealer that he just showed. If he would have gone back 365 days,

Renaldo Leonard (39:28): Nobody. Too many other options. Too many other options.

John Anderson (39:30): and showed you the consistency with which they make attempted contacts to their customer. It's like clockwork. It's like every three days, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And you just see that consistency of where they're selling cars at. This is not rocket science. Consistency breeds consistency, right? And we just get trapped in all these other things that take our attention.

Chris Keene (39:51): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

John Anderson (39:52): doesn't have to be that way. It comes down to the fact that I've got a vehicle sitting on my lot. Now what? I've got to find a customer for that vehicle so that we have an opportunity to to sell that vehicle. That's now what? “ And if I'm not getting customers on that vehicle, what do I got to do other than just constantly changing the price? There are so many things and we can get in this another time because I know we're coming up on it, but there are just so many things that can be done “ “ don't have to go in there and change the price. How does your merchandise? When's the last time you did a self audit on your website? Right? So there's just a lot of things that that's what we want to bring to that's what I, that's what we want to talk about today is look, there's no doubt things are shifting and that's no reason to panic. It's just what happens every year. Right?

Chris Keene (40:50): But when you have less shoppers, John, you have to be buttoned up tight because when business is good, it's easy to hide mistakes.

John Anderson (40:58): Yes, yes. 100, 100, 100, right?

Renaldo Leonard (41:00): Yep. Yep.

Chris Keene (41:01): Naldo, one last takeaway for the viewers and listeners before we have to wrap here.

Renaldo Leonard (41:06): “ man. “ I mean the things that you have to do in order to be watertight with the process is just going back to square one. John just mentioned it. Sharp accounts down. Be tight on your process. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Consistency. “ That... That... Yes. And here's what I have to say to that.

Chris Keene (41:25): with quality, with quality.

Renaldo Leonard (41:26): Because every time I get on a training call with salesperson or BDC agent, what are we supposed to do if a prospect doesn't reply to us? change how you're trying to contact them. Change your template, your email template. Change the phone number that you call from. Just change something. Because you're sending them the same 12 messages they're getting from everybody else. And they don't know you from Adam. And you don't know Sicken from Come Here. So just pull out your text. I love this one.

Chris Keene (41:56): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Renaldo Leonard (41:57): because everybody's jaw drops when I do that. I'll just pull out your cell phone, send a text to that phone number, say, just got a new phone, who's this? What do I say when they reply? Introduce yourself. You've been trying to get in contact with them, would you tell me? Six days in a row? Now you got contact with them. Now you can follow up with them and now you can follow up. But consistency. Consistency. Stay on it. And get on it if you're not doing it now.

Chris Keene (42:27): Yeah, you can follow her. I like that. Well, there you have it, folks. Just as a quick recap. know what opportunities you still have, but the vehicle of interest is sold. Backfill to that because your market has an appetite for it. Don't waste those leads. daily huddle with your team to identify those opportunities on vehicles that are still in stock. Who can I call and sell a vehicle to today? Well, the easiest one is on the cars that you still have in stock. When you call leave message, leave an expectation. Ask for the best way to communicate with them. Read your leads. We're on this point. The guy submitted a lead at 430 and you keep calling him at 930 in the morning. He don't answer and you're scratching your head trying to figure it out. Well, hello McFly. Okay. He sent you an email at or a submission at 430. Okay. Well, once you mirror that.

Renaldo Leonard (43:21): Hmm

Chris Keene (43:21): Go back and look at the quality of your follow-up, which ties back into, when you call them and leave it expectation. Look at the quality of your follow-up. Are you meeting the customer where they're at? Are you trying to bring them further down in that funnel, but in a way that's frictionless? make sure that you go back and look at the quality of the follow-up. One last final takeaway. We didn't talk about it, but I'm gonna tell you now, this is something that I have ran into a million times. well that guy was off yesterday, that's why he didn't follow up. Okay, if you don't have a buddy system “ up, “ somebody, if you have a BDC set up to cover people when they're off, that customer does not give a damn if that salesperson is off. Cause there is no worse feeling than as a salesperson. You come back to work the next day, you pick up the phone, you go to call the person. “ man, I called the dealership yesterday. You weren't there. So I went ahead and bought that other vehicle down the street. So set you up a buddy system. “ you did. Yeah. So set you up a buddy system for your leads, whether it's two salespeople that cover each other when they're off.

John Anderson (44:36): That's the old, oh you did did you call. Oh you did did you.

Renaldo Leonard (44:40): “ you did? “

Chris Keene (44:41): or whether it's your BDC, if you have a BDC or internet sales team that are covering that salesperson when they're off. Okay? Have your buddy system set up when you have less in-market shoppers. Yes, you have less at bats, but that does not mean the world's coming to an end. All that simply means is you better be like a midget at a urinal. You better be on your toes. Okay? You got to be on your toes, folks. So, wee!

John Anderson (45:09): went to call. We did it.

Chris Keene (45:11): There was a call.

John Anderson (45:12): We're doing it. We did great. And they went to call. We're doing it. We did great. And they went to call.

Chris Keene (45:19): Bear Bear

Renaldo Leonard (45:20): Brett's got his hand on the, he's about to pull the plug.

Chris Keene (45:24): with the call. edit, edit. So there you have it folks. First 30 challenge. Go back inside your tool, back to the inventory the right way. Make sure you have quality follow up. Tune in to the next episode because we're gonna have Sweet Lou and Fred back on. They're gonna give you even more nuggets.

John Anderson (45:43): the whole bunch, the whole...

Chris Keene (45:44): on how to best manage these opportunities that we're not getting a lot of right now, but there's still opportunity out there. Hit us up if you want to be part of the dealer panel, but most importantly for us. Please continue to like, continue to share. And if you get an opportunity, take 30 seconds, go onto Apple, write us a review. We greatly appreciate it. As always, lottalkpodcast.com. You can reach out to Bernaldo, myself, John. We're happy to answer any questions. We're happy to take any ass-whipping you want to throw our way because you thought we might've been too hard on you today. Call us, text us, email us. We are here to give back to you. On behalf of Mr. Anderson, Mr. Leonard, and our entire LotPop family, we thank you for tuning in to Lot Talk. I'm Chris Keene. We'll see you next week, and we are out.