Do You Have a Sales Team or a Sales Prevention Team?

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

Chris Keene (00:17): here we go, folks, as we were backstage talking about he ha and B R five four nine, you have tuned back in to season three, episode 15

John Anderson (00:17): Hey, you.

Chris Keene (00:17): tuned back into lot talk powered by lot pop. I'm Chris Keene. One of the co-hosts joined by. We're just going to call it what it is. The Kramarjan Mr. John Anderson and the absolutely esteemed gentlemen of Mr. Ronaldo Leonard. Gentlemen, we've been on a roll. We've been on a roll and yeah, rolling, rolling. So, you know, I think.

Renaldo Leonard (00:17): Call us butter.

John Anderson (00:51): I'm fun. fun. I did some, I did some learning. The Gazenta's got into me over these last six weeks, brother.

Renaldo Leonard (00:51): Mm-hmm.

Chris Keene (00:51): But Brits backstage, you go to the gazebo. Why? goes into two goes into,

John Anderson (01:06): That's a good, you know what? kind of a, that's kind of a good, a good way to start the call, right? holding on to the old things, holding on to the old things.

Renaldo Leonard (01:06): Hehehehehe

Chris Keene (01:14): Hey, but well, hang on though, John, but sometimes the old things, know, I've said it, I've said it to dealer clients before, and I've said it in different venues that we've all been at. If you look, mullets back around. high-waisted jeans came back around.

Renaldo Leonard (01:14): There's no mullets on this show, by the way.

Chris Keene (01:14): No.

John Anderson (01:14): That's can grow, well, Chris can grow hair. Ronaldo, you and I are out on the mullet.

Chris Keene (01:36): I can still grow hair. Yeah, I can still grow hair. I just choose to keep mine short. But I mean, if you think about that mullets, high-waisted jeans, bell bottoms, all those things came back full circle. You know, nutters, man, let me tell you that. We were just, we was just talking about that. I was over at my friend's shop a couple of weeks back. man, that's what coach, that's what coach.

Renaldo Leonard (01:36): Yeah.

John Anderson (01:45): Nutters, nutters, nutters are popular again. You

Renaldo Leonard (01:45): Y'all gotta help me out on this one.

John Anderson (01:59): you don't remember Larry Bird back in the Boston days and the shorts, man, and nutters? the way up to there.

Renaldo Leonard (02:06): Okay. We just didn't refer to them as nutters.

Chris Keene (02:10): Yeah. I'ma tell you, there was nothing, there was nothing worse than their wrestling season and old coach Dequasey get down there and he's sitting there trying to coach you up. And you really just can't think straight because this Franken beans is out there hanging out at you. You know, I mean, it just, you can't think straight. I mean, it's like, want me to do what? You know, I can't even think about nothing. You got Franken beans going. So.

Renaldo Leonard (02:10): You

John Anderson (02:22): There's a friend of mine, his wife, Bethany posted a thing on social media yesterday with an ad from back in the seventies that you get 2.99 for dress shorts and they had, it was for Easter and they had shirts on with a tie and then you nutter shorts on. She goes, was this for real? I said, absolutely. It was for real. Nutter shorts.

Chris Keene (02:22): 100%. Then you, hey, then you wore the, you wore the penny loafers. You had to wear the penny loafers with the penny in it. If you didn't have the penny, you couldn't take the penny out. And if you, if you put some, you could put some old janky penny in there, had to be a shiny penny.

John Anderson (02:57): No doubt about it. No doubt about it. With the penny, with the penny in there, dude, you could, yeah, you couldn't take the penny out. No, the pennies, pennies got to stay in.

Renaldo Leonard (02:57): Yeah.

Chris Keene (03:09): Brett's like Penny. What? Yeah. But no, I, I bring that up there gentlemen, because of this. So, I mean, let's keep it real now. I bring it up because.

John Anderson (03:09): my goodness.

Renaldo Leonard (03:09): Mercy.

Chris Keene (03:19): because. Yeah. We look at today's time and there's all this fantastic advancements and hell for the last four or five, six weeks. Now we've been talking about AI. Okay. And all of that's fantastic. The book, one of the things. that we cannot, can't dismiss it. is we see a lot of these quote unquote advancements. really not that advanced because if you actually think about what they're doing is they're taking a page from back in time and bringing it forward. The AI piece, for example, you know, we we've been talking about that. AEO and the GEO and we talked very specific about how you need to have on the backside your websites. You need to have various pages general questions. Is that really anything new? mean, think about what the consumer has been saying. I have this question. Please answer it. So. Why, why are we trying to get extremely robust and I'll use, know, V autos back in the day, they don't do it today. They've got, you know, much more intelligence to it, but remember the cheese. Remember you had big cheese, little cheese when you did your descriptions and it had all this fancy stuff inside of it. But then they found out that customers don't read that shit. don't care about that.

Renaldo Leonard (03:19): Yep.

John Anderson (03:19): Yeah. Yeah. No.

Chris Keene (04:42): So what has everybody gone back to? Question, answer, question, layman's terms, break it down to me and talk to me like I'm a five year old and put it in big chief paper and crayon. So Why, why get ultra advanced? mean, John, I'm to go right into it. You brought up that one dealer that you've been working with and for, for the listeners, uh, we'll do our best to describe it, but for the viewers, I'm going to share a screen here. Okay. I'm going to share a screen and the screen I'm going to share. I'm going to preface all of it by saying this and then John, don't want to your glory on this one, but you got a dealer. You got a dealer.

John Anderson (04:42): You're good, brother.

Chris Keene (05:20): like is super excited about rearranging the photos, having them in the right order, doing this, doing that. But all he was doing is, is rearranging a pile of shit. It's still a pile of shit. It doesn't matter what order you put it in. But when you sit here and look, I took a couple of screenshots of it. This is a $93,000 vehicle. So back all the way up four or five, six weeks. And we've been talking about AI, get your AI, right? Make your vehicles findable. Do this, do that. Make sure that the, the, the consumer that you're answering their questions, you're meeting that customer where they're at to meet them here. You got to, you got a vehicle that you're trying to draw 93 whips out of. And it looks, this is the first thing you're going to show them. Man, miss me with that bullshit. I mean, why would you sit there and then pop this up at him? So you're starting off as your key photo is supposed to be. It's supposed to be. Wow. Look at me. But instead it's a $93,000 Denali Excel that looked like it'd been driving up and down the roads. Ain't got a lick of tire dressing.

John Anderson (06:28): Been in my neighborhood. Been in my neighborhood on the dirt road.

Chris Keene (06:28): Yeah, it better have been on the red dirt road. Okay. But then you flip to this. You flip to this wheel shot supposed to display the beautiful wheel. That's got a little road rash or a curb rash on it. Your wheel wells is dirty. Your fenders is dirty. They're like, okay, I'll give it a little bit of grace. Yo, I'm still looking at it, Olly, but then you get to the inside of it.

Renaldo Leonard (06:28): Thank No, whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. Back up to that other photo. Read your banner there.

John Anderson (06:28): Yeah, rear seat media system.

Chris Keene (07:01): Oh shit, I didn't even see that. You're describing this 22 inch wheel, this factory GMC Denali 22 inch wheel as a rear seat media system and it's a wheel.

John Anderson (07:01): Ugh.

Renaldo Leonard (07:01): been curb checked.

Chris Keene (07:17): Big project, okay? And then you get on the inside of this like It's beat to hell. I mean, look at this thing. Look at that. Look at that.

John Anderson (07:25): There you go, that's air ride adaptive suspension right there.

Chris Keene (07:28): Yeah, this is air ride adaptive suspension. It's the instrument cluster for the heat and air system.

John Anderson (07:36): You know, really, we're laughing, man, but this ain't funny.

Chris Keene (07:36): No, it's not funny because

Renaldo Leonard (07:36): Now, that's not funny at all.

John Anderson (07:40): There ain't nothing funny about this, man. This is, this is, this is what, this is what costs you customers, man. And then, and then, you know, we've been talking for the last six episodes about AI and, I'm all fired up on it. know it's helping me in areas I've learned a lot, right? But you know, if, if, if I'm a dealer and I go that and I start doing all that stuff and do all that work, have my team doing all that work and,

Chris Keene (07:40): No!

John Anderson (08:03): I'm a lead people to my, I'm a lead customers to my website and that's what they're going to find. mean, it's sad man, because you.

Chris Keene (08:03): Yeah.

Renaldo Leonard (08:09): You're doing the exact opposite. Yeah. doing the exact opposite of what we're trying to drive. You want to drive attention to the dealership. Say again.

John Anderson (08:09): Right, so...

Chris Keene (08:09): What? Expand all that,

John Anderson (08:09): Right.

Chris Keene (08:17): Expand on that. What do you mean we're doing the exact opposite?

Renaldo Leonard (08:17): Yeah, what we are what we work with dealers single day. First of all, you got to acquire the inventory and then you got to drive traffic to the inventory and using your website. Everything that we've been talking about, putting AI into that process is designed to attract more attention and make sure that we're answering all of those people's questions.

Chris Keene (08:17): Mm-hmm.

Renaldo Leonard (08:42): The only question you're answering in a situation like that that, yes, I to repel customers from my website and from this vehicle as opposed to attract them to the dealership because everything that you've done there has demonstrated that you're not going to take care of the details and you're not going to take care of that customer. You're going to take all kinds of shortcuts and have somebody come back to the dealership seven times to redo paperwork or

Chris Keene (08:42): Mm-hmm.

Renaldo Leonard (09:08): They're going have to come back to the dealership to make sure that all the terms that they've negotiated with their salesperson is intact and what they feel like they're negotiating. put a vehicle up and represent that your dealership is not the place that somebody wants to spend time because it is a headache. Every step of the sales process, there's a landmine there. when your representation of the dealership to the entire world what we just looked at, you don't stand a chance. There's too many other options out there. And do they solve that issue? Swipe to left, go to the next one. All right.

Chris Keene (09:08): Wait to be- Yeah, you became irrelevant just now.

Renaldo Leonard (09:46): Absolutely. And not off of an assumption. You've demonstrated that. You've answered the question before it even came to their lips or to their mind. We're like, hell, $93,000 for that?

Chris Keene (09:57): Yeah, I'm not doing business with you. mean, there's two teams inside the dealership. Unfortunately. Now hear me close on this. John and Bernardo. I didn't say this to y'all backstage. And I think Nando or John or both y'all, you've probably heard me say this to a dealer before, but unfortunately there's two teams inside of a dealership and you have to decide which team you want to be a part of.

Renaldo Leonard (09:57): Right.

Chris Keene (10:22): Do you want to be a part of the sales team or do you want to be a part of the sales prevention team? And whoever took these photos, there's one person, whoever is in charge of auditing their website to make sure that their frontline of inventory on their digital dealership, that's another person. Whoever their detailed person is, there's another person. Whoever the general manager, the general sales manager, the used car manager, sales manager, dealer principal, there's more people right there. Currently based upon this vehicle right here, they are all part of the sales prevention team and not the sales team. But yet that same owner and that same general manager want to raise nine kinds of hell. Why ain't we selling any cars? Oh my gosh, this is all a race to the bottom. Oh my gosh. Margins are compressing bullshit. You compress your own margins by taking a $93,000 vehicle and making it look like a $33,000 vehicle at best. Miss me with that bullshit there about it being a compressed margin about this market being soft. It's only as soft as you make this market. Miss me with that bullshit there about it being a compressed margin about this market being soft. It's only as soft as you make this market. And when you don't do things like audit your website, When you don't do things like the basic fundamental of inspect what you expect, stop screaming at everybody else that it's their problem. Cause it's not a premium vehicle. Yeah.

Renaldo Leonard (11:45): and you could have every piece of software available, single of software available on the marketplace. And that's the end result. What is it? It's either a no problem, K-N-O-W, or a no problem, N-O. Just not gonna do it. Throw at the problem and hope that fixes it.

Chris Keene (11:45): or no problem. John we're not going to call this dealer out, but unpack the email conversation that you were in the middle of about the whole photo order. And you got vehicles like this. mean, help our viewers, help our listeners understand we are so passionate about this this morning.

John Anderson (12:24): the Well, first of all, I wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't have old to the dealer. mean, that's he's, brand new to us. And quite frankly, this is one of the reasons why you hired us as to help uncover this kind of stuff. Right. So kudos to him, for looking for help. Right. I

Chris Keene (12:24): Mm-hmm.

John Anderson (12:41): You know, think there's a forgotten thing, a lot of times, or just ignored. And that is, you know, ever since the, I say nowadays has been going on for several years. you know, 20 years, ever since internet became a go-to option for customers. At that point,

Chris Keene (12:56): John that's that's 20. That's 25 years or

John Anderson (12:59): Yeah. I said 20 years. It was, yeah, no, it was, it was 2000. Yeah. so, but ever since that, ever since that became the thing, right. At that point, we started operating. we're, if we had a single point, if we were a general manager of a single store, we, now we suddenly became general manager of two stores. our bricks and mortar operation, and our virtual operation.

Chris Keene (12:59): Hmm.

John Anderson (13:23): And, I just don't think that we at it that way overall. know didn't, you know, transparency. I didn't when I was running a store, most of my attention, was on my physical bricks and mortar lot, because it had to be because that's where things were going on right in front of my face. And so. It took me, it took me a long time to understand that I had to have somebody within my organization that was paying attention to the virtual side of my organization. because know, we don't know, we don't know what customers are coming and leaving our virtual lot. We that's the honesty we don't. I tell you what we damn sure know who's driving on our physical lot. and stopping and or leaving and right. How many commerce seasons has there been with, you know, salesperson walking back in the door after they were out there talking to a customer and the customer's not with them, right? What's the first thing we're going to do? Pull them up to the sales desk or take them into an office and have a one-on-one with them and talk to them about, where's the customer and why'd we let them go? Right. But we're not, we're not doing anything like that with our virtual lot. And that's where a hundred percent of our customers are visiting our lot.

Renaldo Leonard (13:23): Thank

John Anderson (14:29): And so is it possible for you to do that? That's a tall task to have somebody monitor and everybody coming to your lot and, and, you know, just like you would your physical, but more what we're talking about this morning, Chris and Renaldo is exactly that. I have to be, I have to have somebody auditing everything that's going on in my virtual lot because I don't want to lose anybody that's coming to my virtual lot. So I've got to think about it from a

Chris Keene (14:29): huh.

John Anderson (14:54): I've got to think about it from a customer standpoint. it, whether I, whether the customer's coming through via, via AI, because I've set myself up as a trusted partner the industry. And sometimes I'm not doing anything to do that. It's just, we've been around for a long time. We got a lot of content out there. AI is picking up on the content and it's serving me up as a trusted partner. Right. But to Chris's point, What if this dealer served up as a trusted partner and somebody comes in to look at that Denali? All that, all that content that's been established over all those years to set me up as a trusted partner just got thrown out the window, right? Because customer comes in, customer comes in and sees this to Ronaldo's point, right? Man, if you don't think that that sends a signal to the customer on how

Chris Keene (14:54): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

John Anderson (15:42): What the, how they feel you do business, kidding yourself. You're kidding yourself. You know, now is that, is every, is anything that we talk about? I say this to dealers all the time, right? When I'm talking about strategies on a phone call with them, right? Are any of those plays a hundred percent play? No, but it's a higher percentage play. And I want to put myself in the best possible position to not lose a customer when they come to my virtual life.

Chris Keene (15:42): Mm-hmm.

John Anderson (16:09): I can, that's the, that's the, that's the control I have is to control the controllables so that when they come to my virtual lot, I don't, I run a, I run a higher percentage chance that they're not going to bounce. That's why we talk about photo arrangement, right? If I got to dig through 30 photos to find a picture of what you highlighted as a dealer, as a important item on that vehicle, right? And the feature highlights you put that the backup camera was a important highlight, but yet it's 30 pictures buried in your photo arrangement, right? Well, there's a higher, higher percentage likelihood that if there's a lot of those vehicles in the market and I'm on your website and I've got to dig through 30 photos, I'm probably going to get anxious and I'm going to, I'm going to bolt. I'm going to go look somewhere else where I can find what they're going to listen. I know this will be. astonishing to some people listening and watching this call or watching this, this podcast. But in our industry, there has actually been a few times where a customer has called a dealership and they have asked questions and their questions were answered. And then they took their time to drive into the dealership. And when they got to the dealership, they found out that the questions that were answered weren't truthful. that'll be astonishing to a lot of folks that that's ever happened in our industry.

Chris Keene (16:09): You

Renaldo Leonard (16:09): Thank

John Anderson (16:09): But it has. It has. And so people are researching inventory or anything for that matter with your dealership. They want to, they want to inspect what they expect. That's why I say, how many, how many of you dealers out there listening or watching, how many of you have a staff page on your website? How many of you have done a video with your salespeople to let them tell the customers a little bit about themselves? Do you think that

Chris Keene (17:55): Yeah, John, hold on. Let me, let me jump in on that real quick. You want to hear the number number one thing. And I find this so bizarre.

John Anderson (17:55): Yeah.

Chris Keene (18:03): When I've asked dealers that question, like, why don't you have a staff page? Do you want to hear the response I get?

John Anderson (18:08): I'm going to guess that it's probably, don't want to do a staff page because we're worried about them being around long enough and we got to change it up. I've heard that one enough. I've heard that one.

Renaldo Leonard (18:08): You

Chris Keene (18:19): heard that one. Here's the one that I've heard the most and it blows my mind. Yeah, we don't want to put our staff page out there because we don't want other dealers poaching our people.

John Anderson (18:19): Well, that's a, Hey, Mr. Dealer, that's a controllable. You can control that. Right. That's a controllable.

Renaldo Leonard (18:34): How can they control that? That's... How can they control that?

Chris Keene (18:39): I mean, make your place such a great place that your people never want to leave.

John Anderson (18:39): taking care of their people.

Renaldo Leonard (18:39): Ew. man.

Chris Keene (18:44): But even at that, if I got people getting poached from my store, that is a Testament to the type of operation we're running. And if I created this type of environment and trained and coached up those kinds of people to where they get poached to go somewhere else. And if that person decides to leave, so be it. Guess what? I could duplicate that because I already did it once, but that's, didn't mean to digress John, but I just find that so bizarre.

Renaldo Leonard (18:44): Absolutely.

John Anderson (18:44): Yep. Yep. No, you're fine. And I, and I got way off the point of your question, right? I just did an example of what we find on CRMs, right? You asked me a question and I talked about everything, but answering the question, right? So, so.

Chris Keene (18:44): Well, yeah, you did.

John Anderson (19:22): So I gave you an example, but to your point with the, with the dealer we're talking about, right? I got in on a com, I was copying on email that was got in on a conversation about them reaching out to their photo company and asking about the arrangement of photos. we, you know, because we talk about a specific photo arrangement, uh, that is more favorable to customers that are online. I kind of alluded to it, right. Uh, serving up those high visibility options that you pointed out that were high visibility, uh, early in the photo arrangement. so that he find it and they don't have to, you know, they're, they don't have to do a bunch of click throughs to find, to verify that that stuff's on the vehicle. Right. But, but he asked that question and, and that's where I started when, when I saw the email, cause I was copied in it, I just jumped over to their website and started looking through their photos and everything. that's when I started finding an example of what you brought up early, Chris. And, and so, you know,

Chris Keene (19:22): Right.

John Anderson (19:22): My point was, man, it doesn't matter if we rearrange photos right now, we've got a lot of work to do to get in there and start redoing, retaking photos, right? Because if we rearrange them and they're still crappy photos, it doesn't matter how we rearrange them, right? Now to this dealer, this dealer gets a lot of leads. They have a lot of leads coming in, right? But I also noticed that we're not responding to those leads the way we recommend, right? They're not.

Chris Keene (19:22): Mm-hmm.

John Anderson (20:43): there's a lot of leads sitting in there that haven't been responded to in well over, uh, you know, three, four or five days. Um, so they're not, you know, they've got, they've got a lot of leads on in-stock inventory, uh, that they've paid for, right? What do we say the average lead cost us $250 nationwide? So we got a lot of leads in our inventory, a lot of leads over a thousand leads that we've paid for to get to our store. And we're not.

Chris Keene (20:43): huh.

John Anderson (21:08): We're not taking care of those leads by reaching out and providing service to them. So back around to my original point, right? If we go to all that work to rearrange our photos, to all work it's going to take to reshoot all those photos, clean a lot of those vehicles, all that that we put in, and then we drive more customers to our virtual lot. And then our team is not taking care of our customers.

Chris Keene (21:08): Mm-hmm.

John Anderson (21:32): You see all this, all this is so interlinked and it's always the small things. It's no different. We always talk about it. We laugh off, off camera because we talk about athletics, right? It, when a team is way off, when a team has gotten way off of who they know themselves to be, what is the number one thing that the coach is always trying to bring them back to the fundamental, the basics, right? And so in a dealership, there are.

Chris Keene (21:32): The basics.

Renaldo Leonard (21:32): on the mouse.

John Anderson (21:59): are basics that have always been there. Basic fundamentals that have always been there. problem is with a lot of stores and then I'll, I'll turn it over to you guys, but the problem is quite frankly, let's be honest with ourselves, dealers, general assess your store and tell me, do you have enough people in your or have you, have you, have you thought about assigning the right person? to specific task so that it gets accomplished within your store. You need to have somebody auditing your merchandising on your website consistently. You need to find that stuff and that stuff's gonna consistently creep up. It is. So do we have enough bandwidth within our store because the majority of our attention is constantly gonna be pulled towards our bricks and mortar. It has to be. That's the stuff that's happening right in front of us. But while that, Hey, we see it all time guys. when, we're just coming out of it, we're in it right now, right? Spring selling season, right? And so when the spring selling season's up, customers are visiting the dealerships a lot more often. We got a lot more robust happening in the store. What happens to the online contacts with our, with our virtual customers? They drop. They typically drop, right? Cause the dealership is showing all that attention to those people walking in the door. And so they're not. They don't have enough bandwidth to handle both. And so that would be my challenge to dealers. After all this AI talk we've had, after everything that we talk about, challenge to you as a general manager, a dealer is really assess your store and go, okay, am I handling both my bricks and mortar and my virtual lot the same way? Cause that's the necessity. You actually have more customers visiting your virtual lot than your bricks and mortar. So in essence, you really need to show more attention to your virtual lot. Really.

Chris Keene (23:42): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So to back it up a smidge there and viewers and listeners, I don't want you to miss this point. At the dealership. You got 50,000 eyeballs on inventory on your front line. And generally speaking, we hold our lot porter accountable. for making sure that there are no holes in the front line, that we ain't got seven black vehicles parked next to each other, that something's not sitting there with the flat tire, et cetera, you know, dirty vehicle up front, whatever. But we we have a point person at the physical brick and mortar dealership identifying if those challenges are out there on your lot. To John's point, and I just want to make sure we drive this. You need to have a digital lot porter equally as much as you do a brick and mortar lot porter. Because last final point you put in there. You've got exponentially more ups eyeballs going to your digital dealership. So if I have exponentially more people driving by that dealership, pulling into that dealership, why wouldn't I make sure? that those cars are standing tall. In my digital dealership, like I do my brick and mortar. I mean, Ronaldo, the photos and sure we have a person standing on point there to make sure that that digital dealership looks good. Unpack the you had with the dealer partner of ours beyond the physical look. of what you come across with the piece inventory and it wasn't just one, was several of them within that dealer's inventory.

Renaldo Leonard (23:42): Yeah, well, man, into and diving into the actual content that a dealer has on their website. mean, on, we would always have the conversation about a description and ask a dealer to imagine, read that description to yourself and imagine that your salesperson talking to a prospect on the showroom floor. And if it was just, yeah, it didn't paint a picture of a vehicle or an organization that wanted to earn their business, how would you feel about that description? If it just said wheels, know, six seats, just regurgitated BS that that particular customer was not interested in, you would blow a gasket. We still have the same situation that it

Chris Keene (23:42): Mm-hmm.

Renaldo Leonard (23:42): that exists today. But beyond that, and we're talking about John Wooden fundamentals, and to kind of back that up, John Wooden, who won 13 NCAA championships in a row, because we're right in the middle of March Madness, every single year, first day of practice, this is how you put your socks on your feet. This is how you tie up your shoes.

Chris Keene (23:42): Mm-hmm.

Renaldo Leonard (28:21): to avoid blisters. Because if you got blisters, you were out of practice. You were out of practice. You were going to miss one of those cornerstones that we were going to build everything else upon. In this particular instance, those socks were just simple grammar and spelling. And we're going through a dealer's description of vehicles that they have on their website. we have misspelled words.

Chris Keene (28:21): Mm-hmm.

Renaldo Leonard (28:44): We have grammar that does not make sense. And no one's asking you to position a vehicle as if it were in Law Dictionary. Just make and make sure that everything is spelled properly. Because if you don't have those basics in place, and John talked about it a little bit earlier, playing the odds.

Chris Keene (28:44): nothing else matters.

Renaldo Leonard (29:06): When we look at the odds, what's going to position you to be more successful? And when that digital dealership is your dealership's representation of how you do business and everything that you do to the entire world, does that give the type of image that you want from your dealership? would suggest probably not. Capitalization, punctuation. Just the simple things that I guess, and I understand that the education system isn't what it once was. But if we are talking about and punctuation, I pray that they're still attacking that in schools. And I would think that if they are, that's kind of the stuff that happens in that third to sixth grade level. But.

Chris Keene (29:06): Yeah

Renaldo Leonard (29:52): You got to find somebody who will be attentive to that and will be laser focused to make sure that we're executing on that. You know, every day, every time without fail, no exceptions, because if we're not, we're putting an image out there into the world that is not going to increase traffic build confidence in the fact that if I get up from my desk right now and I go down to see that vehicle. That is the situation that I'm stepping into. And keep in mind, keep in mind with the prospects that we are bringing to the website and hopefully bringing down to the dealership, at one time we would always preach that they're gonna make the second largest purchase that they will ever make in their entire lifetime. And more and more often.

Chris Keene (29:52): Right. Any more, any more could be their first and only largest.

Renaldo Leonard (30:37): Absolutely, absolutely. So we got to attack it as such and it's not an overly complicated process to simply sit down and proofread what we're broadcasting out to the world. everybody has there at that dealership that they can count on to proofread their descriptions and make sure that just at the bare minimum, we dots where they need to go and we got big letters. where they need to be next to little letters. That, yeah. And so once that's pointed out, everybody gets it. On particular call that I was on, everybody understood that. But then asked the question, who's going to make sure that this is taken care of moving forward? Yeah, it's been out there. There's no telling how long it's been out there on the internet. do anything about

Chris Keene (30:37): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Renaldo Leonard (31:24): What we can do is make a conscious decision today that we're going to commit ourselves to making sure that we don't repeat that mistake, but who's going to be responsible for it? And then move on from there. So when I have that meeting with them tomorrow, it's going to be interesting. It's going to be interesting. Yeah. But that's fundamentals, the blocking and tackling.

Chris Keene (31:24): Ha ha ha ha. It is. It's those basics. I'm I'm baffled by just really baffled by it.

John Anderson (31:51): Well, you know what, Chris, I was sitting there thinking while Renata was talking, you know, think about when we were in a store and all the different, all the different things that, well, you know what our friend from, Ireland brought up a few weeks ago, right? How many things that had to do to

Chris Keene (31:51): my.

John Anderson (32:04): How many things that we had to do as a dealer to sell one car.

Renaldo Leonard (32:04): and yeah all of that stuff.

John Anderson (32:04): Right, right, remember the number?

Renaldo Leonard (32:04): 30, wasn't it? Yeah.

John Anderson (32:04): Yeah.

Chris Keene (32:04): Yeah, I thought, thought it was something like that over 2030.

John Anderson (32:18): Yeah, was 30. It was 30. So think about that. What we're talking about this morning, right? You know, I know we talked about before we, you know, our planning for this podcast, we wanted to kind of, you know, we've been hitting AI pretty hard and we, you know, which we should, it's relative relative and it's coming, but well, I mean, it's coming in a big way. It is here.

Chris Keene (32:38): No, it's here. It's here. Yeah.

John Anderson (32:44): But, you know, we decided we didn't, we didn't want, we needed to go back and talk about, you know, are we, are we taking our eye off the ball in certain areas? And man, I really need to say, cause you know, I know I have a few folks that cause they've, they've, you know, they've texted me they've been very nice in their comments about our podcast. And they're still in the industry. They're still in the dealership. they watch us. So I need to be very careful because remember this thing right here. where's my camp rail, right? You got. Right. That's, that's, that's one pointing and three pointing back at me. Right. And so a lot of these things that I'm talking about, that I refer to on our call, I wasn't so skilled at doing either. Right. But I've learned in my nine years with lot pop and watching dealers and where they struggle. If I went back into dealership today,

Renaldo Leonard (32:44): Point that finger.

John Anderson (33:35): man, it would be completely different in the way I operated a dealership. And that, that was part of what you and I were talking about yesterday, Chris, Saturday, whenever yesterday we were, what we were talking about was, you know, the, the philosophy, has changed, in a good way, but as dealers, right? did, was it max? Didn't he say that? we have, the audit industry is, it onto stuff. We're one of the slowest, right? The slowest adapting. Right. And so, you know, after all this AI discussion, that was one of the things that we wanted to talk about was going back to that very point, right? You know, these things we're talking about.

Chris Keene (33:35): The slower you adapt to change.

John Anderson (34:15): It's kind of the reason why I related to what he talked about 30, you got to do 30 things to get one deal. Right. it's kind of the same thing, right? We've, we've got all these, we've, we've hired all these companies to help us and, we've got all these small things that, a big difference. How are we, how are we, how are we managing those things? Right. Are we managing them? Are are they of sight, out of mind? Right? You know, You know, just, I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about full scale, just, just, just to bring a vehicle into inventory and get it on your inventory management tool and get it out to get it out to the public. Think about all the steps that you've got to go through, right. To get it to that point. And then, then we get a lead and we don't, we don't audit how

Chris Keene (34:15): Mmm. Mmm.

John Anderson (35:02): Our team is talking to our customers, right? We asked that question a lot of times on a call, where, you know, I ask it a lot, right? You see a, you see a vehicle that's got seven active leads, leads people that actually held their hands that I'm interested in this car. And then you also have another, you have another 10 that had a similar vehicle. They sent a lead in on, but it sold. Now this was a potential switch car. So now you got 17 people to talk to, right? On this car.

Chris Keene (35:02): Mm-hmm.

Renaldo Leonard (35:02): Thank

John Anderson (35:28): And the car is aging and not selling. And then I'm asking the question, hey, how many of those 17 people are viable options for this car? Have we asked that question or are we just leaving them there because they're there? Are we asking the question, right? Week after week, I see that lead count and I'm like, have we asked the question, these all, are these still viable options for this car? Cause it's not selling. So what are we talking to the customers about? Right. So it's just. Look, man, we could go on for days with this stuff. And that's why I think it's so important because it's, it's all these small things. And that's, I guess that's my point, right? Who do we have monitoring these things on a virtual lot? And it can't be, it can't be a revolver. We can't take a revolver and spend the barrel and take a shot. has to be somebody consistently, right? Because you got to know where you left off at. You got to, you got to continue to, to progress in this stuff, right? I've got to make sure that this stuff inspect what I expect. So I guess the first thing you got to do is what is your expectation? What is your expectation as a dealer with. when it comes to lead management, when it comes to inventory management, right? And then how do I inspect it? Because if you don't inspect it, it's going to get away from you.

Chris Keene (35:28): Mm-hmm.

John Anderson (36:37): We always say this man, and it, and it's never failed. Anything that, anything that I show my attention to gets lift. So how do I know what I got to show my attention to on the daily, weekly, and monthly basis? How do I, how do I, how do I find that out? And then on top of that, I got, if you're John Anderson, you got, you got 15, 20 different, tools that you've provided for your team to help. And all you've done is all you've done is throw a freaking confusion in there because these things overlap and we're not using their tools on our tool belt, but we're not using it. You know, we don't, we don't need our hammer every hour of every day. Right? We don't need our tape measure every hour of every day.

Renaldo Leonard (37:17): No. But you can't use that tape measure when that hammer's needed, right?

Chris Keene (37:17): Nope.

John Anderson (37:19): Right? Well, you can try, you can try, but it doesn't drive nails very good. That's for sure.

Renaldo Leonard (37:29): Right? Now, it's just difficult to really hone in on what's most important when you do have shiny things all over the place. But that discipline, yeah.

Chris Keene (37:29): You know.

John Anderson (37:29): Really is.

Chris Keene (37:38): Well, hang on though. Hang on though. It's it isn't hard. It's not hard because it's hard because we make it hard. Okay. But one thing that we have to continually remember the number one job of the used car manager. Fill the parking spots.

Renaldo Leonard (37:44): Now it's not hard, but it is difficult.

Chris Keene (38:02): drive activity to those cars at the parking spot. Yes. Are there ancillary jobs in between there to get the end result of the number one job of the use car manager, fill the parking spot, drive activity to it. Yes, there are a million ancillary jobs in there, but if the focus is filled the parking spot, drive activity to it. There is one cog in the wheel. Second cog in the wheel. The cars on the lot with the activity on it, the sales manager and the salespeople. And I understand some of you stores out there, you may be the used car manager and the sales manager at the same time. Fine. Take that hat off. Now put your sales manager hat on. Okay. That's fine. You have to take one hat off. You got to put the other hat on this. next is the cars on the lot with the activity.

John Anderson (38:41): Or you're wearing different hats. Yeah, you're wearing different hats.

Chris Keene (38:53): Pull the activity off, sell them, wash, rinse, repeat, do it again. It's literally that simple. If we focused on what our job is. Then there is simplicity in it. No, no, I didn't mean, I didn't mean to catch you off there, but you know, your point though, you know, it is hard because of John's point of the general manager that went to his 20 group and then ended up at NADA and bought 35 different software solutions to bring back to the dealership to sell three more cars. You know, now you're sitting there going, wait a minute. But my GM told me I need to work in this tool, that tool, this tool, that tool, this tool, that tool, because they're all supposed to help me sell more cars. Well, OK, forget all that shit. Forget every last bit of it. am I doing right now as the used car manager to drive activity to those cars a lot and the ones that don't have activity? What did I miss? To the activity to the lot as a sales manager, forget about all the metrics and the tools and. and all that bullshit out there. Which one of my salespeople, because if you take all these tools and put them to the side and you sat there and looked at the job of the sales manager, he's going to look up and he's going to see that salesperson has an up on the lot. So what's his focus? How do we take that up and turn them into a customer? Then he's going to look up and he's going to see these salespeople over here that don't have it up. What do we got to do to help them get it up? Okay, now lean back in your tools and find an opportunity for these guys over here. And then get off your ass, take the Velcro off and go help that salesperson that has the customer right now, just like in your digital dealership. see that I've got all these ups. see that I've got all these VDPs. Go your digital dealership and find out what it takes. to transact with them either digitally or at your brick and mortar. That's it. Stop making it harder than what it is. tools are only as good as you leverage them for that portion of the job. They're not going to fix everything for you. So, Naldo again, my apologies. Go ahead.

Renaldo Leonard (38:53): man. You it head on and were right on point with it. But the fact of the matter is, and we always draw these similarities between business and sports. And I'll just ask you this simple question. When you look Tom Brady and then you look Gosh, let's just use Tony Romo. Just look at Tony Romo and Tom Brady.

Chris Keene (38:53): Hey, let's go with the sheriff. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Can we use, we use, can we use? mean, I'm a Cowboys fan, can we, can we use like, can we use Peyton Manning and Brady?

Renaldo Leonard (38:53): Are you, you somebody else? No, well, no, because my point being they both had the same tools at their disposal. And one got a much different result than the other. And God bless him. We love him. You know, he was our quarterback for a while, but it's the same from dealership to dealership. Everybody has the same opportunity day in and day out. The results you get from it.

Chris Keene (38:53): okay.

John Anderson (38:53): Yes.

Renaldo Leonard (41:51): All just dials back to what it is that you're focused on. And what you've identified is the most important thing for you to do that day to get the most from the tools that you have to use. That's it. Now you could take it another step further to show that we had different coaching situations that also fostered the results that you were getting. That's where we come in. But

Chris Keene (41:51): Yeah.

John Anderson (41:51): That's great right there, Ronaldo.

Renaldo Leonard (42:15): At the end of the day, it's just that focus and that clarity, whether you're laser focused on getting those results or you're laser focused on avoiding the work that you're going to need to put in to get the results that you say you want. Bobby Knight, when we go to Indiana with the Bobby Knight said, everybody says that they are willing to win, but very few people are willing to do it takes in order to win. And so.

Chris Keene (42:15): Mm-hmm.

John Anderson (42:39): Indiana and tech, maybe Indiana, IU and tech Mr. Yeah.

Renaldo Leonard (42:45): Dude, not a banner day, not a banner day yesterday for Texas Tech, but we weren't gonna get into that.

Chris Keene (42:45): Yeah, then he went to tech, he started throwing chairs at people.

John Anderson (42:51): Hey, to Ronaldo's point too, what about this? everything he just brought up. then are we aligned as a talk about alignment, Ronaldo? Are we aligned as a store? Right. we aligned? Right. Do, do, do when you talk to the dealer and the general manager and the sales manager and the GSM, the, inventory or I'm sorry, the, buyer, appraiser.

Renaldo Leonard (42:51): Absolutely.

Chris Keene (42:51): Eugh.

Renaldo Leonard (42:51): Are they all right?

Chris Keene (42:51): The

John Anderson (43:16): the salespeople, the BDC or the right. Are we, are, is everybody in alignment within that store of what important at what if we're going to inspect what we expect, is everybody aligned with what the expectation is at that store?

Chris Keene (43:16): The BDC, yeah.

Renaldo Leonard (43:32): Right. Yeah. And if you're not, that's part of the fundamentals, right? We to be marching in the same direction and everybody knows exactly what their role and responsibility is. And their number one priority is to, I need to execute what my job and responsibility is.

Chris Keene (43:32): So I wanna...

John Anderson (43:50): What happens in the, what happens in the military, sorry, Chris, what happens in the, what, what happens in the military if we're a platoon out on duty and everybody's not aligned.

Chris Keene (43:50): No, you're fine.

Renaldo Leonard (43:50): Thank

Chris Keene (43:50): Somebody gonna die.

John Anderson (43:50): Exactly. Exactly. Why do you think, what, why do you think those guys, well, it's not that extreme, but to a point there's when you look at, when you look at, what happens from the point a young man gets off the bus basic training to the point that he, that he comes out of the military, alive, all this, all the steps and,

Chris Keene (43:50): No, it's not that extreme.

John Anderson (44:22): and the alignment that goes on in that, when you talk to them man after man after man, there's no question. about Navy SEALs, Rangers, There's no question what those guys, what their goal is, what they wanna accomplish and how they're aligned.

Renaldo Leonard (44:22): Absolutely.

Chris Keene (44:43): So, you know, that being said, mean, you both brought up really good analogies. One John, you know, with the military, Naldo bringing up Tom Brady and Roma better yet. would even say Tom Brady and that year, those accumulation of years that the Buffalo Bills went to the super bowl and just bless their souls. But you know, you bring up great analogies that those quarterbacks were all had the same tools at their availability, but it came down to coaching. came down to this, came down that. bring up military, John, and I'll expand that beyond our US military. And you look at different militaries across the world, and it still comes back to those resources, those tools, coaching, or the coaching or the leadership that they received. And what I want to share on the screen right now, as we near the close of this podcast today. What I want to share on the screen right now is the complete polar opposite of what we started with. What we started with, and this is to hopefully give everybody some hope. We started with kind of what not to do. And like John prefaced that previous dealer we were talking about, they're brand new to us here at Lotpop. And they identified, hey, got to some changes if going to level up. We've hit ceiling and they were smart enough to go. Let's bust through that ceiling and make it the new floor and let's go find a new ceiling. Here's a dealer that does that month in, month out. And what I'm showing you on the screen here is an accumulation of sold inventory over the last couple of weeks. But what I wanna point out to you is number one, it's a Ford store. But number two, what I wanna point out to you is, okay, cool, the first couple of vehicles are Fords. Then you got some Rams, some Dodges, some Subarus, some Jeeps, some Volvos, some Gray Cherokees, some Hyundai's, some Mazdas, some Mitsus. These are pieces of inventory that they sold. The next thing I wanna point out to you is look at the age of this inventory they sold. Seven days old, 14 days old, 11 days old, 10 days old, 12 days old. Now the next thing that is even more important because we hear it all the time. about this margin compression about you can't make gross. You can't do this. You can't do that. Oh my gosh. Everything's selling, you know, enormous, you know, we're selling at 95%, 96%, whatever. How are we supposed to buy cars at 87, 88, 90 %? Well, this dealer, 113, 106, 102, 101, 100%, 99%, 98%. Now, yeah, there are some... 95, 94, 96%, 99 % is in here. But also look at the enormous amount. I would tell you out of everything on this screen here, when we sit there and we count and we look, OK, we count and look at this. There are 68 units on here. Out of the 68 units, out of the 68 units, think about this for a minute, listeners and viewers. 34 of the half. They're selling above 100%. Now, how did they get there? They have their basic fundamentals. They manage their virtual dealership, not only from an inventory standpoint, but also from a lead management standpoint or an opportunity management standpoint. They manage both virtual dealership or sides of the virtual dealership without question, without fail, more importantly than they do their brick and mortar. Because that's where they get the most opportunity. and to give you just a little bit more insight, listeners and viewers. They recently, in the last six months, had one of their assistant sales managers get an opportunity with another group to go be the department head. but they wouldn't go unless that dealer group would agree to have the necessary tools. to create the success that they had and why they were getting recruited from this dealership. Why? Because that person knew that these specific tools created this type of culture of selling more of their inventory early in the cycle to draw this type of revenue. and create this kind of volume. So you heard it very clearly. They're driving revenue and volume simultaneously. You don't have to have one or the other. Simplistically put, that person has a process. They know what it takes to get that process. They know what that process is. They are very aligned. And for them to take this opportunity, that person led from the bottom up as they're telling ownership, if you are recruiting me to come do the same thing, at your group that I did with this group. These are the things that we have to get done. These are the things that we need. So to John's point, that alignment, that person from the ground up is creating that alignment within that group that that person is now at. Thoughts, John Ronaldo.

John Anderson (50:08): Well, one, I, one, I would say what impressed me with that is they, uh, there was some negatives on their man. So they're not, they're not playing around, right? They, they, uh, they know their market on their inventory and they move it here, regardless. They're not marketing it up a ton to try to make a bunch of money on it. If it's got to go, it's got to go. So pretty impressive. Um, and then the last thing I'd say is guys look, Chris, you kind of alluded to it and I don't. Look, last thing I ever wanted was this call to be perceived as negative. I, know, listen, these are some things that, we just see on the day in and day out, man, we're, you we're looking at, man, we're at tons of inventory. we're looking at data just, all day long every day. And so when we, that's what podcast was. That's what this podcast, how this podcast was brought about was we wanted to take what we're seeing on the day in and day out and communicate it in a way that hopefully some folks get some things from it that helps their operation to give back, right? By no means, no means any shape form am I saying I'm an expert and this how I've learned. like I said earlier, if I was going back into a dealership today, I would do things completely, on their head compared to the way I was previously as a GM from what I've learned from our dealer partners and my time with Lattpop because it, it's interesting, you know, as individual dealers, we're doing this, right? We got our blinders on, we're focused on what's happened at our store, right? We don't see outside those blinders a lot of times.

Chris Keene (50:08): Ha ha!

John Anderson (51:40): And it's so interesting. And I know you guys will agree. It doesn't matter if it's West coast, Southwest, Southeast, East coast, Midwest, Canada. It doesn't matter. The same things are going on across the country. And it doesn't matter if it's a 25 unit store or a 250 unit Dealers are battling the same things. And that perspective. that we see that we try to bring to this call to enlighten some folks of, Hey, man, here's what we're seeing. And here's the struggles we're seeing. Be aware of it and try to, try to change. Right. And try to try to that. think the one thing we brought up today that I, that, that we talked about that, the number one point it, your store in alignment across the board? Are you guys in alignment? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Keene (51:40): Yes, and that was in the recap. I've got that in here. Naldo, 30 seconds to what I shared with that dealer that is the polar opposite. So you can maybe give a little bit of hope to, some of the others that are listening and viewing out here that again, we're not, we're not trying to beat somebody over the head. We're trying to wake some folks up and show you some things that you may be missing that you may not even realize, but some, thoughts to the opposite end of that, of what we started with and how we're ending.

Renaldo Leonard (52:59): Yeah, so to the point that John just mentioned, you know, it doesn't matter where you are in the country. Doesn't matter what region, what state, you know, the makeup of your inventory. You know, if you're north or south of the border, we see the same issues. The good news is we see the same, we the same things work to turn those issues around as well. So there is problem, there's an issue, but there is also a solution. And so, I mean, it's not rocket science, we're not reinventing the wheel.

Chris Keene (52:59): fixable. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Renaldo Leonard (53:31): It's getting those teams aligned and putting those fundamentals in place, isolating those fundamentals, keying on those fundamentals, and then instilling a process in place that is going to make sure that we don't practice those fundamentals to get them right. We practice them until we don't get them wrong, and then we move on. And that's the difference. That's the difference maker. So yeah, it is good news.

Chris Keene (53:31): Yes. Yeah.

John Anderson (53:31): Good stuff. Good stuff. Good stuff. It is. There is a solution.

Renaldo Leonard (53:31): There's good news! Yes.

Chris Keene (53:31): There's definitely some good news. listeners and viewers, some takeaways from today. But some takeaways, these are some things that regardless of your role the dealership, the salesperson, BDC rep, dealer principal, all points in between. Three major takeaways. Walk your virtual inventory every day, regardless if you're an individual contributor, regardless if you're responsible for the use card department, regardless if you're responsible for the BDC department, regardless of you're an owner. Walk your virtual inventory every single day. Reengage those opportunities or how I like to put it, recycle your ad dollars. Yeah, you had 10 people on one vehicle. That vehicle is no longer there. What are you going to do with the other nine people? You sold it to one. What are you going to do with the other nine? Work those customers. Find inventory inside your existing inventory. Cross-refer to your CRM and your inventory management tool together. See if you can find some inventory that works for them. Okay. If you want more depth and understanding of that, reach out to us. We'll show you how to do it. And then the last one, which I think is probably the most important, alignment. Listen, we are nearing the end of Q1. And for some of us, we've had a phenomenal Q1. For some of us, we're still trying to figure it out. And for some of us, we've just got our heads bashed in. But regardless, if you're at the top of your class, hovered around that B minus C plus average, or if you're down there in remedial education level trying to figure out what the hell is going on, This is a great opportunity to start now before we kick off Q2, April 1, to get your team together and get yourselves vertically aligned to simplify all the processes use those power tools to your advantage, but using that tool when you need to use the tool and not use the tool on the wrong project. So this is a great opportunity listeners, viewers, as we near the end of Q1, we're dawning Q2, this is a great opportunity to get yourself realigned, okay? here at Lop Pop, and this is is 100 % a very cost way for you to get yourself realigned. Go to first 30 challenge dot com first 30 challenge dot com. This is an opportunity for you to get one-on-one with our CEO, founder, and president here at LotPop to help some of these. opportunities that you have to get your store realigned. Take this opportunity by going to first 30 challenge.com A total of 30 days. of working directly with our president, founder, CEO on some of these basic fundamentals not just keep yourself good for a 30 day period, but for every 30 day period to wash, rinse, repeat we get just absolutely automatic second nature at walk of that virtual inventory of re-engaging your switch opportunities sure that every single day we are aligned. That would be a great way to do it. First30challenge.com. Go check out that website. What's that?

John Anderson (53:31): exclusive group.

Renaldo Leonard (53:31): Yep, man.

John Anderson (53:31): only seven, right? So be an opportunity for, going to get, you're going to get a massive amount of attention from Jason. And then as Chris said, over the next 30 days, you get that same attention. So it'd be an awesome opportunity if you're struggling in some of these areas to come in and get some time away from the store where you're focused and get poured into, from, Jason Rice. So.

Renaldo Leonard (53:31): Seven spots.

Chris Keene (53:31): There's only seven you could do. Absolutely. Seven people. That's it. That's it. Seven people. So go to the website, first30challenge.com, get yourself registered. It's a great opportunity for you.

John Anderson (53:31): Seven People, the exclusive group.

Renaldo Leonard (53:31): Yeah.

Chris Keene (56:08): But until then, like, share, comment, continue to give us those reviews. Continue to like and share continue to save this continue to watch each and every week Because we are going to continue to do everything we can to bring you the most relevant content to help you Elevate yourself and improve just incremental steps along the way Okay, this was the you're not gonna get it done in a 30-day period of time You're not gonna sit there and get it done in a one-day period of time. This is an evolution This is an evolution. We've got to sit there and continue to get better reach it every day. And that's why we have lot talk powered by lot pop. I'm Chris Keen, one of the co-hosts on behalf of Mr. John Anderson, Mr. Ronaldo Leonard, everybody at the lot pop family. We thank you. We applaud you for taking the time here with us today. We'll catch you next week. Same bat time, same bat channel. And we out.

John Anderson (56:08): Peace.