The 2026 used car market just flipped.

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

Chris Keene (00:03): That is self-inflicted, self-inflicted margin compression. Stop. Go back up. Stop hitting the panic button. It go look at your damn back folks. have tuned in. is lot talk powered by lot pop. I'm Chris Keene. One of the cohosts joined by the curmudgeon himself. Mr. John Anderson is straight up from the DFW straight guns up. Mr. Ronaldo Leonard. How we doing gentlemen? Wreck them.

Renaldo Leonard (00:37): You You break

JOHN ANDERSON (00:39): Fantastic.

Chris Keene (00:40): You guys read rock.

JOHN ANDERSON (00:40): Fantastic. Absolutely. I figure after last week, I figure after last week, I'm kind of going to sit in the corner as a fly in the wall.

Chris Keene (00:48): No, John, will, hey, nobody puts baby in the quarter. Nobody puts baby in the quarter. All right? So you ain't sitting in the quarter, brother, because trust me, I'll say something to get you pissed off and fired up. Let there be no doubt.

Renaldo Leonard (00:49): No, no. Yeah.

JOHN ANDERSON (00:53): Ha ha ha!

Renaldo Leonard (01:04): John, you hadn't figured out that's usually what the first seven minutes of the program is all about. He's trying to pull that, trying to yank that string.

JOHN ANDERSON (01:09): Exactly. Exactly.

Chris Keene (01:14): there ain't no trying. I'm just, pull that string. Let's get John all wound up. mean, John already wound up tight. All right. So, yeah, we just, we just gotta let them cut loose. We gotta let them cut loose.

Renaldo Leonard (01:20): Ha

JOHN ANDERSON (01:23): Yeah. I've been known to crack a couple of walnuts in my day. Yeah, I am wound up a little tight.

Renaldo Leonard (01:33): Alright.

Chris Keene (01:33): there's more than a couple. There's more than a couple of Walnus John that you're, you're, you're tied up there. So, listen, no dealers and you'll use car managers, C-suite members, sales BDC guys. I'm going to tell you now we're seeing some very significant shifts. So very, very significant shifts and it's amazing. Okay. So John and Bernalda both I'd pointed out to you guys.

JOHN ANDERSON (01:39): you

Chris Keene (02:00): You know, one of these dealer partner of ours sitting on the same piece of asphalt.

JOHN ANDERSON (02:05): Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Keene (02:06): One's a Subaru store, one's a Nissan store. They're a group. They're running the same type of advertising. They're running the same processes. But every time on this podcast you've ever heard us talk about how your store in your market with your people. It's the only thing that matters. Not what's going out in the rest of the market, but how are we either being proactive or reactive to what's going on? And we're looking at a dealer that has two stores literally sitting on the same asphalt. And one of them is shining like a diamond. And the other one.

JOHN ANDERSON (02:25): Yeah.

Chris Keene (02:44): mean, it looks like he couldn't sell free biscuits on a homeless train. Okay. It's horrible. I mean, it's two different worlds.

JOHN ANDERSON (02:52): That's the first time I've heard that one. No, that's the first time I've heard that one. That's a new one.

Renaldo Leonard (02:52): Maybe it is, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah. I think that that, I think that was overheard at the last happy hour.

JOHN ANDERSON (02:58): New one got it.

Chris Keene (03:04): I just hadn't brought that one down to cool minute, but the point there's a point to that though. Go ahead and although.

Renaldo Leonard (03:06): Yeah. But you know what? Yeah. I was just going to say, if you got a little gravy, you can get rid of those biscuits.

Chris Keene (03:13): You can, especially if it's a sausage gravy.

JOHN ANDERSON (03:14): Yep. Yep. Yep.

Renaldo Leonard (03:17): Is there another kind?

Chris Keene (03:19): Yeah. Go up to the new England States and you ask for biscuits and gravy. And they're like, sure. We only serve gravy at dinner. I'm like, what does that.

Renaldo Leonard (03:28): It just ain't right. Can't get right.

Chris Keene (03:29): Well, they told me I had to go to Cracker Barrel, but anyways, the point being is, is folks. Yeah, the market is shifting. But when you got two stores sitting right next to each other with two, arguably Subaru is supposed to be a lead over Nissan. And in this situation, it's not. I mean, this Subaru store is just getting beat down. I mean, they're getting the brakes beat off of them. And this little Nissan store sit right next door is just doing business. Now, why, why are they doing business? Well, they're sticking to their process. They're working and adjusting and adapting to the market. So speaking of that market listeners and viewers, we have pulled some data and we started looking at some things literally right before we started the show today. And it's, it's amazing. What's going on out. It is truly amazing. What's going on out there. John share that statistic about the E V's that you just had come across on your morning debrief.

JOHN ANDERSON (04:30): Well, a couple of things. The heading for it was 2026 will belong to the used car market. And then off-lease EV returns projected the top 300,000 units up 200 % year over year. So you got a, you got a ton of off-lease EV returns coming into it. If they haven't already started, they're coming into the market. So you're going to see a 200 % increase in EV off-lease units.

Chris Keene (04:56): So Nalda, what do you hear? How do you read the tea leaves on that one? Because I'll tell you, I read it one very specific way, but I want to hear how you read those tea leaves.

Renaldo Leonard (05:07): Well, you know, I always lean toward patterns and anytime that we have ever seen and keep in mind from the oil patch. And so I've paid more attention to it than a lot of folks have. But over the years, whenever you see the price of oil go up, price of fuel going up, people are making a shift to try to figure out a way that they can get to something with a little less consumption. with all of the EVs that are available out there in the marketplace, because they were incentivized a couple years ago, and now we're seeing the repercussions of that, it hasn't happened to the extent that it is going to, but people are starting to pay attention. Oil price is here. I've got to save some money. They're going to move in that direction.

Chris Keene (05:33): Okay.

Renaldo Leonard (05:56): And so if guys are paying attention to it, they would have started to make a shift to bring more of those vehicles in, or at least identify a pipeline where they will be able to bring those in as interest rises.

Chris Keene (06:13): That's definitely 100 % spot on. If the market hadn't been shifting. Here's what I mean by that because an article and statistic. So there's one thing when you have an article, the other thing, when you have data behind the article. So a publicist could say X fuel prices up. Evie's irrelevant. Et cetera, et cetera. I don't disagree that that could be the case. The tea leaves I read is as we have this abundance of off lease, Evie come back into the market. Supply is going to be high. It is the demand is not there with the supply. Now you're going to see very compressed market values. Of those EV cars, but to your point, although if we're saying, wait a minute. Fuel prices are up, so the EVs they're going to go up to it in normal cases, I would agree with that 100%. I'm going to share something on the screen here. that quite honestly, I was shocked and. It scares me, but does it scare me because we're bringing it to you and we're going to keep you ahead of the curve. We're going to keep you ahead of the curve here. But the reason why I say it scares me a little bit, because a lot of people think the same way you were thinking, Ronaldo, but listeners and viewers, what my suggestion would be with EVs. starting to hit the market as off-leash returns. I think we're going to see the complete opposite. All because of this stat I'm showing on the screen right now for the listeners only. Let me describe it to you. This is the relevancy or the search of hybrids over the EVs in the last 90 days. Now on the screen, you will see a red line in that EV search is pretty consistent, but there's been a surge of hybrid. And even through the last 90 days, the hybrid vehicles are still dominating over the EVs. So what I see is, is a bunch of EVs coming back into the market, which is great, but the market is going to compress on those and the values are going to change. Gentlemen, your thoughts.

Renaldo Leonard (08:34): I don't think that the values are going to change. You won't see a glut of EVs in the market. There's a lot coming in, but I also think that some of that interest with hybrids, because you did not have that increase of hybrids sold that was in conjunction with what EVs did, and we're talking about off-lease, so I think as... Folks are out there looking for hybrids now, and they find that there's limited availability in those hybrids, they will move to EV in order to keep that level. I don't think that there'll be a glut and you'll see prices go down. For those guys who

Chris Keene (09:15): So you think you'll see the search for EV go up?

Renaldo Leonard (09:18): I do.

Chris Keene (09:18): Okay. John, what's your thought? no, sorry. Renata, finish yours. Finish yours.

Renaldo Leonard (09:19): Because I was just gonna say, if there's not enough supply to satisfy the demand, Then they start to look alternatively. And in this chain, it's gonna be hybrid then to EV.

Chris Keene (09:34): Okay. That's valid. John did your report that you read? it say how much off lease is coming?

JOHN ANDERSON (09:39): Well, they're projecting 300,000 units.

Renaldo Leonard (09:41): So it was up 6 % over last year.

Chris Keene (09:43): okay.

JOHN ANDERSON (09:44): 200

Chris Keene (09:44): I miss that.

JOHN ANDERSON (09:45): % increase.

Chris Keene (09:46): home.

Renaldo Leonard (09:47): Ooh, that was a little off there, John.

JOHN ANDERSON (09:49): 200 % 200 % increase year over year. I, and I would probably, Chris, as you were talking, I was thinking the same thing kind of along the lines of my question as you were talking and sharing this chart, and then it kind of follows what Renalda was saying is I was wondering how much of that, EV inventory has landed yet. Right. Cause I could see where, and you can kind of see it at the end of that chart, the red trend line start arc up a little bit. Right. So I just wonder as more that EV inventory comes into the market, will you start to, will you continue to see a trend up in search? least, at least customers, you know, comparing, right? Cause I think to all this point, you know, one of the other, one of the other headlines, that caught my attention was US auto sales down 6 % in April as gas prices and tariffs bite. so, you know, Chris, you and I were talking on screen. was saying that, you know, I'm seeing some of my dealers, our dealers, that they have inventory that they've performed well with. And now all of sudden it's sitting in their inventory and Uh, we're seeing zero leads on it. And so my, my curiosity is, um, is, are the con now that shopper index is down 30 % and we got plenty of inventory. Now we're talking about this, this, uh, 200 % increase in EVs hit in the market. Um, I just think that you're going to start to see a lag at least up for the next month and a half. Uh, because obviously summer selling season will come and that index will climb, but at least for the next month and a half customers, they'd be pressing pause right now doing a lot of research, right? Based on what's happening out there in the world. And then to your point, Chris, uh, hybrid versus Evie. And right. I'm a customer that I don't, I don't know a lot about that. I'm going to take time to do the research. And now all of sudden I've got this, uh, glut of, Of, uh, EVs coming into the market. Okay. Well, let me compare. hadn't considered an EV, but there are a lot of them out there. I'm seeing them. Let me compare to hybrid, um, specifically with, you know, $4 and 50 cent gas out there. Um, and so I think it could, it has the potential to, to, it makes sense to me, I guess, as to why I'm seeing some of those inventory sitting, uh, that stores have had previous success with, but now all a sudden it's sitting and we're not getting some activity on it. I think customers are, are, are, taking some time now to, to, investigate other options. Right. And, and, and that happens occasionally. And so how are we prepared for that? in our dealerships, if we start, know, if we start seeing that, right, I just don't want, I don't want our dealer partners to fall under the ether and go, well, we always sell those. And then they, back off of it and it, and then it's there next week and then it's there the week after and it's there the week after. And we're not getting any activity still. And internally we're going, well, no, we sell these. be proactive, be proactive. Right. So.

Renaldo Leonard (12:58): Yep. yeah.

Chris Keene (13:01): So let's, let's, let's flip the coin here. It looks like at the other side of this. So we talked about Evie, Evie hybrid hybrid, and you know, in that data, I didn't show it on the screen, but I'll read it off. You know, the, the top searches to add a hybrid. Honda Hybrid, Hybrid RAV4, Hybrid SUV, Hybrid Cars. But let me flip the script then. Now I am going to share this on the screen. And this was something I'd pulled up earlier that I thought was really interesting, which was no surprise for anybody that has been following us for the last couple of years, for anybody that I've had conversation with over the years, you will know that I've said this a million times over that usually You know, Chrysler or in today's time, Stellantis is the first one to jump off a cliff in their new cars and start incentivizing the hell out of vehicles to start moving the market. And then Ford and General Motors are looking at each other going, which way y'all gonna jump next? You know, it start throwing out the biggest sit-ins and the rebates, cetera, et cetera. Look over the last 90 days here. Gentlemen, Ford. Customer interest trends. Ford declining. Chevrolet declining. GMC flat. Ram rising. Jeep flat. Dodge declining. Chrysler declining. Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Kia rising. Nissan Subaru declining. Subaru sharp decline.

JOHN ANDERSON (14:28): And you got those two stores sitting side by side, right? And he's sounding Subaru that you talked about earlier, right? Yeah.

Chris Keene (14:33): Yeah. I mean, so, so here's the thing. Are there, you know, for the listeners and viewers, are you in a region to where hybrid cars, electric cars are more relevant, heavily populated condensed areas? Yeah. Where, where commutes aren't very long, maybe I drive, you know, 10, 15 minutes to work or you're in a different set, your neck of the woods to where you're driving 35 miles, one way to work 70 miles round trip, not counting all the running around that you've got to do with, with your kids, events, personal life, et cetera, et cetera, to where an electric car really isn't feasible because you don't have the infrastructure for it, but maybe a hybrid is. Or maybe you're in that neck of the woods. Like you are John. am. I'll know you're from Oklahoma, Texas. We're for lack of better terms. We just don't give a shit. If it's four 50 a gallon, we're going to pay it because we need a truck. So if you're a Ram store, you're seeing the fruits of the labor. But if you're a Ford store, Chevrolet store, you're getting your teeth kicked in and me sharing that Ford and Chevrolet are declining in consumer interest. You're like, okay, tell me something I don't know. Well, question now is how reactive do you want to be about her or proactive? If I understand this here, I was on a call with a dealer the other day with Willard Byers and I asked him, I said, dude, why do you keep buying? $60,000 half ton Chevrolet pickups, $75,000 pre-owned Yukon Denali's.

Renaldo Leonard (16:10): Let me guess. That's what I can get?

Chris Keene (16:12): Well, that's what we sell. Okay, well, there's a that's what we always done. Man, miss me with that bullshit. All right. Listen, okay. In the the nineties, you know, there was a term I learned called mirror the market.

JOHN ANDERSON (16:13): It's what we've always done. It's what we've always done.

Chris Keene (16:25): If we've always done it, but it's not yielding us, why would you continue to keep doing it? I mean, isn't that the definition of insanity? Maybe we just can't figure out why we're not selling any cars. Well, you keep stocking the same bullshit that they sell it. That's why. I mean, come on now.

Renaldo Leonard (16:42): Which brings us some more insanity. Why don't you get rid of it? Well, I can replace it.

Chris Keene (16:46): Why would you want to replace it? I mean, that thing is colder than mother-in-law's kiss. Why would you want to replace it?

Renaldo Leonard (16:50): Bye.

Chris Keene (16:55): You know, so I guess really what I'm trying to say to everybody is. If there's demand for hybrid, I'm not saying go shed all your vehicles and lose your identity and not sell Chevrolet pickups, not sell F-150s, not sell Traversers and Explorers. But if you're needing a bump in your market, why don't you go mirror what your market's doing? But I need to back off a second before I really start to lose my mind here, but because it sounds so simple and I know it does. And for the viewers and listeners out there, you're going, okay, big boy, you're sitting behind a microphone or the computer all day.

Renaldo Leonard (17:33): I have to steal some Joey Imperado on that, right? What did he say? Easy preaching, tough living?

Chris Keene (17:35): Come on, steal it. Yup.

Renaldo Leonard (17:41): But let me go, I got a funny story about that's the way we've always done it. You know, I think I shared with you guys a few weeks back, was in the, I'd gone to a function and you had four generations of women sitting in getting ready for Sunday supper. And the youngest one who was just getting married pulls out a pot roast. And the first thing she does is she goes in and chops the end of the pot roast off.

Chris Keene (18:07): Ugh.

Renaldo Leonard (18:07): before she puts it in the pan to sear it up, right? And so the guy she's getting married to is like, why you cut the end of the roast off like that? And she just said, well, that's the way my mom taught me. And so he looked at the mom and said, why would you cut the end of the roast off? She said, well, that's just the way my mom taught me. So now we're to the grandmother and like, well, why did you start doing that? She said, well, That's how my mom taught me how to do it. And she happened to be sitting in the corner and at this point she's laughing her ass off.

JOHN ANDERSON (18:40): Ha ha ha ha.

Renaldo Leonard (18:41): And everybody's like, well, what's so funny? She's like, well, you know why I cut the end of the roast off? Because when I got married, the pan that I had, the average roast that I got from the grocery store wouldn't fit. So I had to cut the end off.

JOHN ANDERSON (18:50): Ha ha ha.

Renaldo Leonard (18:55): And there's all of them are sitting there laughing like, you got to be, I mean, it doesn't make it taste better or worse or anything like that. Yeah. And so that just goes to show the way that we've always done it. It came about for a particular circumstance and a particular situation. Just cause you did it that way back then doesn't mean that it's necessarily the best thing to do now.

Chris Keene (19:04): It don't matter, it just don't fit the damn pan.

Renaldo Leonard (19:22): So get out of that stinking thinking.

JOHN ANDERSON (19:22): And that's approved. Man, Ronaldo, is, Ronaldo, that is a, that is a phenomenal point. You tell you, you told me that story, already, but now just listening to you say, listen to you say it now, man, it just hit different because you know, her, she did that because a pan wasn't big enough to fit it in. Right. Think about all that.

Renaldo Leonard (19:26): Bye. Yeah.

Chris Keene (19:35): It resonates a little different.

Renaldo Leonard (19:47): you

JOHN ANDERSON (19:48): Think about all that wasted meat that those women have cut off over the years. Right. And, you know, at dealerships, you know, I'll give you one example, right? What do we always do when a car doesn't sell?

Chris Keene (20:00): Change prize.

JOHN ANDERSON (20:01): Right. And then what do we always do if that car continues not to sell and it ages on us? Then what do we always do? We bitch about.

Chris Keene (20:08): we'll spiff it. Don't forget we gotta spiff it.

JOHN ANDERSON (20:11): Right. Right. And then we bitch about, the money that we lost. Right. And it's because we've, we just continue, we get into a pattern of doing what we've always done and not, that's why that resident hit so differently is because things have changed so much, right? it's interesting to me. Sometimes I think our customers, we put our customers in a huge advantage over us. Now don't read that. Don't, don't read that wrong. And what I just said, I'm not saying, that customers shouldn't have, the best customer service that we can provide. I'm not saying that because they absolutely should. But I think we put them at a huge advantage over us because they have the ability to do the research that I'm not so sure all of us are yet at a point where we're willing to do the same thing. Right. I'm not so sure that we're willing to dig as deep, sometimes as our customers are doing out there.

Renaldo Leonard (21:07): Mm-hmm.

JOHN ANDERSON (21:14): and as a result, we don't know what is actually truly happening. Chris, to your point with at our store with our people in our market, right? Because we're not digging down or maybe it's that we're not, maybe we just don't have the, the appropriate, you know, we're getting all these shiny objects and I was one that did it all. I tried it all. Right.

Chris Keene (21:26): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Renaldo Leonard (21:40): You

JOHN ANDERSON (21:40): But, but, maybe we don't, maybe we need to reassess the tools that we do have and do they allow us to, to find the types of things that we need to find to stay on par with the type of research that our customers are doing. Right. Because just what we've been talking about this morning. Right. Do, am I truly looking at my inventory from a transition status? Right. How much of my inventory is not getting a views? How much of my, how much of my inventory has not had a lead in the last seven to 14 days? Right. all these.

Chris Keene (22:17): Or better yet, John, how much of my inventory is getting opportunities, but I'm not paying attention to it. And I keep playing whack a ball with the gross, which I like to refer to as self-inflicted margin compression. You bitch and moaning complaining about your gross, but are you just paying attention to the damn inventory that's getting the opportunity? Or are you sitting there looking at some crazy little box that says you haven't had a price change in the last seven to 14 days and you go in and start whacking the gross? That is self-inflicted, self-inflicted margin compression. Stop. Go back up. Stop hitting the panic button. It go look at your damn Take your inventory. Take your CRM. Put those two together and say, Hey, wait a minute. This car is getting activity. Hey, wait a minute.

Renaldo Leonard (23:05): next

Chris Keene (23:06): I responded to this customer going, are you still in the market for a car? No, I came in here for a ham sandwich. Yes, I'm interested in a core or a witness submitted to opportunity. So,

JOHN ANDERSON (23:16): Chris, but wait, wait, Chris, but wait.

Chris Keene (23:20): You sound like an infomercial, is there more?

JOHN ANDERSON (23:22): Yeah, there is more.

Renaldo Leonard (23:22): Yeah, but wait, there's a he went romp uphill.

JOHN ANDERSON (23:25): Chris, I can't get my people to do that.

Chris Keene (23:28): Then one of two things you need to check it, take a checkup from the deck up and understand, are you a leader? Are you the leader of the dealership? Okay. And listen, sometimes, and I do not, this is not negative. Sometimes. We not we may not be skill set sharpened. You're in the position at the dealership as a leader for a reason. You exemplified the ability to perform at a higher level. Sometimes we need to step back and go, hey, I need to go out to the woodshed, sharp my tools up. So I go train my people, if you can't get your people to do it. It's necessarily not their fault. I would I would literally implore you. Ask yourself two questions. Is it a KNOW problem or is it an O problem? And if it's a KNOW problem. They continue to coach, continue to drill, continue to rehearse. If it's an O problem. to continue to sharpen your indeed.

Renaldo Leonard (24:32): you

Chris Keene (24:32): applications.

Renaldo Leonard (24:33): Indeed!

JOHN ANDERSON (24:34): Hey. I got a couple of things along that lines that as you were talking Chris, it came to mind. One, I want to share another headline here that's appropriate to what we're talking about. Top 150 dealers grew without adding stores in 2026. And below that top

Chris Keene (24:53): Hold on, say that again. No, no, no, say that again.

JOHN ANDERSON (24:56): top 150 dealers grew without adding stores into 2026.

Chris Keene (25:02): Okay, I'm curious now.

JOHN ANDERSON (25:03): All right. All right. And so below that, here's, here's the highlight store level process execution, discipline pricing and service strength carried groups to grow that did not expand their stores.

Chris Keene (25:19): Two keywords stuck out. Two key words, process, discipline.

JOHN ANDERSON (25:23): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes, sir.

Chris Keene (25:25): process this, I'm going to give your Hoosiers from the 2025 football season, all the credit in the world here. They're not flashy. Excuse me. Not a lot of big names. For God's sake, their number one draft pick was what a third time transfer. Okay. But the one thing their head coach. their defensive coordinators, their position coaches. The one thing that they did have is those two keywords, process, discipline.

JOHN ANDERSON (25:56): If you Google them, no pun intended. If you Google them and you look them up and you hear them talk, they talk about the same thing every time they're doing an interview. It's the same thing that comes out of their mouth. This is what we do. Right. Every, every play has a life of its own. Right. You just hear them recite the same thing. Right. So to that point, I want to talk about, cause it just come to my mind while you're talking.

Chris Keene (25:59): Ahem.

JOHN ANDERSON (26:22): I had a training yesterday with a new dealer. The GM was on the training and we were introducing this to, well, they had already been introduced, but we were reintroducing it to the BDC to the BDC department. Right. And so, the GM stopped right in the middle.

Chris Keene (26:34): You

JOHN ANDERSON (26:42): When he stopped me is when I started talking about our goal for your store is that every two days you have an attempted contact, attempted contact to your in stock and switch lead customers. And he stopped me and he said, do we have to live by that process? I said, no brother, it's your store. He goes, so I can change that. said, absolutely. And so he stopped me and he goes, give me a second, John. And so he addressed each one of those BDC people by name. And he said, you guys received a login a couple of weeks ago when we had our first training session with John. And I'm looking at the scoreboard and none of you have logged in. So I want to say, I want to say emphatically that this is not an option. This is what we do. And if you're not going to participate, I'm going to find somebody that will. And we have three other stores on with Lotpop. And they're all participating and they're all kicking our ass. So this is, we're, this is not an option. You will live in lot pop lot walk. And we will contact our customers that are active in our CRM that you're seeing in lot walk on a daily basis. We will attempt to contact daily. was like, brother, I love you. No problem from that change that process all you want. But to a point he was adamant about. This is what we're doing and there is no negotiation in this going forward. This is how we're going to do it. Right. And he said, they were, they were, they were having one of those wall moments where they're trying, they're trying to communicate and you know, they're, they're not, they're forgetting to come off mute. and, and he's like, is there, is there by hearing me? And, and I could hear him go, my gosh. And he goes, take yourself off mute.

Chris Keene (28:16): I'm Hahaha!

JOHN ANDERSON (28:31): And, and, and, and, and then he gets, he got frustrated and he goes, John, you're going to have to skew. goes, you're going to have to excuse my team. He goes, we're a little bit shy of a full load this morning. He goes, can you guys take yourself off mute? And so it was hilarious. The way that was, and I was, I started laughing and, and, but, but to the point was this guy, this guy, this was our third training and it resonated with him. He had been on the previous two. And he had any, and he would check that he, and he specifically had his BDC team on this call because he had checked the scoreboard and he'd seen the ad logged in and he was going to make a statement to them. This is not optional. This is what we're doing. Right. And this is how we're going to do it. And so to the point we're talking about.

Chris Keene (29:16): Okay. So, with that, that, with that being said though, John, again, I mean, you're talking about a lot walk, you know, platform listeners and viewers. I'll care what platform it is. If you or your leadership of your dealership has said, Hey, we've got this shiny tool over here and it's going to help us improve our business. Two things.

JOHN ANDERSON (29:28): Right, right.

Chris Keene (29:40): Number one, if you don't know how to use it, pick up the phone and call that company and get the appropriate training you need to use it to its fullest extent. Number two, use the damn thing because they're not a company that just all of sudden came to the market yesterday. They've obviously got success stories showing where if you do it that way, it will yield fruit. Trust the process. You but you got to be educated in it. If it's something that's going to help you move the needle from good to great to elite. Didn't use the damn thing. It's what you've been doing isn't working if your sales for the overall store are down, if your profit margins are down. What you're doing is not working. That's not a newsflash. That is a fact. Use them. Be your own leader. Get yourself educated on those. And if the company that you're signed up with doesn't have resources for that training, for that continual education, then you might want to reconsider the company you're doing business with.

JOHN ANDERSON (30:50): Can I, can I, can I, can I say something? I, I, I, I, I'm going to anyway. Nevermind. I was asking for permission, but I'm going to anyway.

Chris Keene (30:57): I was like, why are you asking?

JOHN ANDERSON (30:59): Well, first of all, let me go back to the, I just described by that dealer when I brought up that headline, right? What I just described to you guys was store level execution process execution, right? He was saying, this is how we're going to do it. Right. And we're going to execute it this way. But, but, but can I say something? Uh, because we run into this occasionally and, and this is the point. If, if, if you're a person at the dealership that didn't make a decision, uh, on a, on a shiny object that was added, because the person that made decision felt like it was going to help us with where we need help at. And you don't give that every piece of effort that you have to understand how to execute it to the fullest extent. So it gives you the performance that you, the person that made the decision, brought it aboard for. I can't think of anything more disrespectful you could do as an employee of a dealership than that right there. I mean, we ran it, we run into this. And I just can't think of anything more disrespectful that you make a judgment call on something that you haven't taken the time to fully understand, fully train on and apply so that you get a realistic

Chris Keene (31:59): Mm-hmm.

JOHN ANDERSON (32:16): viewpoint of is that going to help us or not that you make a judgment call based on based on your individual ego edging greatness out because I don't like something for this reason that an upper level management brought on be that he or she felt like this is going to do something. This is going to be something that's going to help us with our performance. I just want to, I can't be more. want that. There's nothing more disrespectful to me than that. That you're, that you're cutting off something that I, I, and I am referring to our, our software and I'm not hear me out. It doesn't matter what it is. Like Chris said, if you're not giving it the, at some, at some level within your company, somebody felt like, Hey, this is going to help us. And you don't give it the full, you don't give it the full measure. To determine whether it will help you or not, use Chris's terminology. Miss me with that bullshit.

Chris Keene (33:08): Mm-hmm. It kind of rolls off the tongue nice just to say you know, Naldo go.

JOHN ANDERSON (33:17): does, it kind of flows pretty well, right? But in all seriousness, right?

Renaldo Leonard (33:22): You got it.

JOHN ANDERSON (33:23): Yeah, go ahead. It's Ronaldo. Sorry, brother.

Renaldo Leonard (33:25): No, I was just gonna say that you gotta put that inflection in there. You're gonna misbehave with that bullsh**.

Chris Keene (33:29): Yeah. And you got to that in there, but you don't know. I mean, you've got a heavy training coaching background. You know, obviously, you know, the car business. What's your take on this?

Renaldo Leonard (33:41): Well, in my three weeks of experience in the business, and I say that in jest just because of a conversation that I had today, same scenario. a group of new users to our software. and people that are tasked with managing that process of getting people in on the process and then hold them accountable for the work that they're doing there. And to your point, John, just the disrespect because and I guess that maybe it's a generational thing. Maybe it's just the way that I grew up. yeah, we're only given individually a skill set that we're just gifted with, But when we step into a place of employment, it used to be that if I walked into a building, I was going to give that man a dollar and 20 cents worth of effort for the dollar he was going to pay me to do the job. Where now it seems that in order to get that dollar, I'm going to give 35, 40 cents and come out ahead at the end of the day where that math never really works out. I'll give you a perfect example. I'm going through this group and we have an individual who's not using the tool. 80 % of his in-store or in-stock leads had not been contacted two or more days. I pointed out, response I get, well, he delivered 12 vehicles so far. And my question was, is why are you shortchanging him? If you look at those leads that he did not follow up with, he damn well could have delivered 20 vehicles, same amount of time, rather than letting them fall through the cracks.

Chris Keene (35:28): Yep.

Renaldo Leonard (35:29): All of these, and we've had, I mean, we could talk about it ad nauseum. Tools are designed to help you be more efficient and get to what's gonna make a difference in your results. And if you do not invest the time, once again to your point, John, to use it, to implement it, to give it a fair shake. in order to benefit yourself. Shame on you. Now, the dealer comes to it or should come to it with a mindset, I'm going to put this tool in place because overall it's going to benefit my business. But it's also going to benefit the individual. And how in the world could you walk into a situation and not look at something that's going to help you perform better, more efficient?

JOHN ANDERSON (35:51): Yeah.

Renaldo Leonard (36:10): More profitable. because you've already figured out a better way to underperform. And that's where you want to get in and fit in. I'm good right here. If I sell 10, 15 cars a month, I'm great. I don't have to pay too much in taxes. The rest of my obligations don't go up. I don't have to work too hard. But these tools are designed to give you better results.

Chris Keene (36:18): you Mm-hmm.

Renaldo Leonard (36:39): without more work. It's actually saving you work. But anyway, at the end of the day, dude, somebody's got to wake up, either the end user and say, okay, I'm going to trust my boss who's signing my checks. He's not going to put anything in front of me that is going to hurt my performance or end up cutting my pay, what I'm doing on a daily basis. And you know, I love the story that you told John about your dealer saying, can we adjust that? Well, let's push the bar a little higher. Let's put a little more pressure on it because he's got his eyes on the goal. He's also got his eyes on other people out there that he sees directly using the process and just whipping his ass with a belt.

JOHN ANDERSON (37:14): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. He sees the potential.

Renaldo Leonard (37:30): You

Chris Keene (37:30): Well, because that's the ceiling. Exactly, because all that they're saying there is is the ceiling. Becomes the new floor.

Renaldo Leonard (37:40): Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I promise you, I promise you, John, we're talking about IU, process, discipline. If you don't think that after they got off that stage from winning that national championship, they didn't go to work to try to figure out a way to get better, find out exactly where they were missing the mark.

JOHN ANDERSON (37:55): Right then.

Renaldo Leonard (37:59): and go to work to correct it, you're out of your mind. But that's the difference between great and elite.

JOHN ANDERSON (38:01): Right then.

Chris Keene (38:06): but that's the differentiator.

JOHN ANDERSON (38:08): That's why they're national champions. Yeah.

Renaldo Leonard (38:11): Absolutely,

Chris Keene (38:12): So, you know, really, Ronaldo at the end of the day, what you just said is using the, you know, IU piece inside there, what you just said was, is, yeah, they had a 13 and no perfect season and everybody would say, oh, let's just, we're just going to do that again. No, no, no. Take you to the world of automotive. If you're having a great month. Okay. Well, what are the things that we do really well? to have this great month and what are the things that we didn't do so well that could hinder us from having another great month again? Take this all back full circle. Let's take this back full circle to where we started. We started talking about hybrids, we started talking about EVs. I get it. You've been selling gas motor vehicles. You're a domestic store. You're predominantly selling large SUVs, pickup trucks. Okay, fine. But if the market is shifting and we have a bunch of EVs coming back into the market, if I'm a sales manager, if I'm a GM, a GSM, used car manager, owner, C-suite member. And I know that this inventory is coming back in to 300,000 units of off lease coming back into the market. two things I need to be prepared for trading for that inventory. buying that inventory, selling that inventory. I need to be prepared for that. If hybrids, if I'm a Ford store. If hybrids are a thing, OK, what does my hybrid fleet look like? New and used. If I know the the RAV4 hybrid is doing well in the market, am I telling you go buy 50 of them? No, not at all. But what it say is, is if you're paying attention to what's going on in the market, which is why we do this podcast is to bring some of those things out to you. If there's factual data out there showing you. The EVs are coming back into the market as off lease. Well, you better go out there and sharpen your EV knife and get educated. If there's data showing you that, yes, EVs are a thing. but hybrids are still above, you better go sharpen your hybrid knife. If you're a General Motors store and you're losing market share to the RAM, you better go sharpen your knife and figure out where you can get competitive. I know there's areas to where you're limited. because of assistance or help that you're getting from the manufacturer. that still doesn't mean that that piece of inventory you have sitting on the lot. Your floor plan company is not going to say, Hey, we're going to give you a break on your floor plan because Ram has incentives and you don't. You better go sharpen that knife and figure it out because you lose the market share. All of these things we've brought to you today is purely for that reason. Nautilus, your thought.

Renaldo Leonard (40:57): It's just, you know, when we talk about being in a proactive stance, as opposed to being reactive, all these little things, the process should be looking ahead, forecasting where you're going to end up, keeping an eye on the market, looking for trends. That's what our software is designed to do. Give everybody an opportunity to look at the numbers and be proactive as opposed to being reactive. Those two stores that you mentioned at the top of the hour, know, side by side, same resources, same tools, two different mindsets.

Chris Keene (41:23): Hmm applied differently.

Renaldo Leonard (41:37): Yes, absolutely.

Chris Keene (41:38): And listen, forget our software for a minute. Listen, I don't care if you're a Cox automotive customer. I don't care if you're Solera customer. I don't care if you're a cars, commerce customer, each one of those. Software's that you have each one of those tools that you have, they all have a backend tool. They all have analytics. They all have data. If there's one thing that will never lie to you, it's math. Two plus two was always going to equal four. Look at your data, look at your analytics, tap into those resources because the wave that is here and continuing to build, it ain't going nowhere.

Renaldo Leonard (42:15): Mmm, nope. Nope. And you know, Chris, a lot of people that we talked to about this, who here, have the information, they have the data, they have the conversations. mean, the conversations that we have here, we've had 20 or 30 times this week so far, right? But every once in a while, you'll come against that person who... They know better. Well, I understand what you're saying, but this is the way that we do it. You will, I mean, yeah, that'll get you what it gets you.

Chris Keene (42:49): You either live it or die in, and you know, if you want to keep living, you got to keep moving. And if you, you know, it's.

Renaldo Leonard (42:53): Mm-hmm. And the guys that are in that proactive stance, they have a lean inventory. They see this data where things are trending and they can take advantage of it. You know, and other guys are going to be stuck, you know, like hell I got 45 % of my inventory that's over 60 days and I just, I don't know what to do. What do I do? And it's. The beautiful thing about what we do and this industry, and I think that I could speak across the board for all three of us, our mission is to give back. But we can give back because we're passionate about what we've experienced in this business. It's not rocket science, because if it were rocket science, I don't think any three of us would be having a conversation about it. simple concepts. And those two that are life changing, world changing, game changing, we talked about earlier, process. Discipline. Process and discipline. And that's it. No matter what you're using as far as gathering your information and dissecting it, as long as you have process and you got discipline, there is no way that you cannot win. There is no way that you cannot win. And let me back up and say that again. It doesn't matter what tools you're using.

Chris Keene (43:55): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Renaldo Leonard (44:17): to gather information. If you have a process and if you have discipline, is nothing that can stop you. Absolutely nothing.

Chris Keene (44:18): Yes. Nothing at all, not a single thing. to recap, as we're approaching the top of the hour here to recap. Pay attention to your hybrid inventory. Pay attention to your EV inventory. Pay attention to what's coming into the market, because you could see some values, know, wholesale values start compressing there, especially if the demand doesn't go up for the EV and the demand is still staying higher on the hybrid versus the EV. So pay attention to that. Pay attention to your other OEMs in your market. Yeah, RAM right now is improving. Subaru, Nissan declining, Chevrolet declining, Toyota, Honda improving, Hyundai, Kia improving. Those are trends from the consumer. That is not from us. That is not from an AVA. That's not from men. That's what the consumer is doing. Pay attention to those things. Pay attention to the softwares that you're using to help improve your business. Reach back out to those software companies. Find out what type of continuing education and training that is available to you. And if there isn't any reconsider what you're using as a software company, because every last one of these should still provide you even after the ink has been dried. They should provide you with a level of service that's either one of two things. You can use the jogging place. And yeah, that'll create some stamina, improve your heart rate. Or you could go on a run. and go some distance. And at the end of that run, our goals and objectives met. So you could either sustain or you could move forward. It's completely up to you. We have a ton of resources, a ton of partners in our industry. We are always happy to get you connected with maybe even somebody else at a company you're already using. If you go to lottalkpodcast.com, you can reach out to John, Ronaldo, myself, and we will coach and partner and train with you, regardless of you being a lot pop customer, to help you move the needle the right direction, to help you find the resources you need. but you gotta pick up the phone. You gotta call, you gotta text, you gotta email us. We're happy to help. And if you don't wanna call us, call the people you're working with. That's fine too. Just do something different if you wanna be different. On behalf of Mr. John Anderson, Mr. Renato Leonard, our entire lot pop family. We thank you all a ton for tuning in this week and we look forward to seeing you next week. But until now or from now until then, we wish you nothing but the most success out there. Thank you again for tuning in guys. Have a great week.

Renaldo Leonard (47:15): Wreck