Dealer Tech Tuesdays
S01E06 - Moneyball Your Dealership - Data Driven Sales and Processes
Dealer Tech Tuesday is a podcast and Clubhouse room on the Automotive Innovations Club. It airs at 2pm EST every Tuesday. It is a discussion and QA for anyone in the automotive space. VTech Dealer IT hosts the show, bringing in experts in their respective field.
This week's special guest is Geno Walsh of QVale Auto Group. You better not miss this one.
Visit us at: https://www.vtechdealerit.com/247-it-support/
Intro Music:
Eventide by mezhdunami. https://soundcloud.com/mezhdunami Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/2CbDcqd Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/GDT7XS30tTs
Dealer Tech Tuesday is a podcast and Clubhouse room on the Automotive Innovations Club. It airs at 2pm EST every Tuesday. It is a discussion and QA for anyone in the automotive space. VTech Dealer IT hosts the show, bringing in experts in their respective field.
This week's special guest is Geno Walsh of QVale Auto Group. You better not miss this one.
Visit us at: https://www.vtechdealerit.com/247-it-support/
Intro Music:
Eventide by mezhdunami. https://soundcloud.com/mezhdunami Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/2CbDcqd Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/GDT7XS30tTs
All right guys. So welcome to Dealer Tech Tuesdays. It is two o'clock on a Tuesday. You guys know what time it is. It's time for your weekly Dealer Tech Tuesday podcast. Today on the podcast, we have somebody I really look up to in the dealership space.
Speaker 1:It's only because you're short.
Speaker 2:The master of many things, the master of data analytics, gino Walsh. He's the executive manager of the Cavalli Auto Group. He's been working together for a long time, I mean, I would say six, seven years now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it feels like much more. It feels like much more. It feels like much more.
Speaker 2:Been through a lot of battles together, which is always a fun thing to do, spent a lot of time speaking about kind of operations of the dealership and how everything works. So that's always a fun process and always really beneficial for me, because I learn a lot about how the dealership operates from your perspective, which is not a perspective that I get a lot to, that I get to see a lot Right. So today we're going to be talking about money balling your dealership a concept that that we talked about a long time ago and kind of talked about the analytics and how to manage the organization. But before that, before I get into that, I wanted to kind of see and this is a question that I ask a lot of people that are, or the guests is like, how did you get into the car business?
Speaker 1:It's on accident, 100% on accident. Yeah, I talk about this quite a bit. I actually posted the other day. You know where did you start your car industry experience? Where did your journey start? I actually was coaching high school football.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And I was working at the United Way. I was taking a year off before I was going to go to law school and one of the coach one of the players I was coaching's dad came up to me and said, hey, what do you do for a living? And I just, you know, told him what I was doing and and obviously, working for United Way. It's not a very fruitful financial activity, but it gives back a lot of qualitative things, not a lot of quantitative things. And he handed me a business card.
Speaker 1:The business card had a bank name on it and I remember going to my wife like, hey look, this guy wants me to come and meet him and you know nice bank. And she's like, oh, you definitely got to go. And so I went over, spent some time with him and then he walked me right across the street to a double wide trailer which was a. There was about three or 400 cars on the lot. It was a buy here, pay here, okay, and it was called Anything on Wheels and it was about an eight hour interview process.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow I remember looking at the guy at the end of the day and I was like, so did I get the job? He goes, yeah, come back tomorrow. And so every time that I my wife says that I'm working too many hours or I have to fly too many places, I go it's all your fault. Like literally, it's all your fault. He thought I was going to get this cushy bank job and it wound up turning and being a retail. And you know, for me it's a happy accident. You know, it really has been the labor of love for me. Sometimes it's great, Sometimes it's not so great, but most of the times it's exciting and engaging and thrilling and you get to be part of where this thing's all going.
Speaker 2:So what were you doing at the buy here, pay here? I mean, were you?
Speaker 1:So I started off sales and then I did F&I, and then I did F&I and then I became an operations manager and I was going between three different stores, kind of just fitting in wherever they needed me to fit. In F&I sales I was a buyer for quite some time, so I was buying pre-owned vehicles. So my day started at like 5 in the morning going to the auction. This is before a lot of the online buying back in 2002, 2001. And I'd literally, you know, take a piece of paper and write down all the run lists. I had a black book, gray book and a big fat truck book. You know I'd check the dipsticks and you know, check all that.
Speaker 1:Literally I was doing that in the morning. I'd buy some cars, drive back to the retail, to the service facility, the reconditioning facility, approve my recon, get in a fight with the paint and body guy and the wheel cover guy, and then I'd run over to the dealership and spend the afternoon trying to sell cars and then, right before I left, I'd go and try to collect money on the vehicles that we sold to the people who had the captive financing loans, and then I'd stay till like 11. So it would be like a five to 11.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's insane.
Speaker 1:But that's how I got kind of the bones of what the industry is all about. It was beautiful really, honestly no.
Speaker 1:I'm serious yeah after that, everything's downhill, right. No, but it was just one of those things were like. You know, I remember being in, learning so much from that experience and and getting to see, like the the bottom level of our industry. You know the real supply demand side of it and the grittiness of repossessions and the grittiness of you fixing cars that were like not so perfect and dealing with you know, heat cases that were not. Hey, this form wasn't signed properly.
Speaker 1:It was more like no, you're taking the car back or I'm coming through the front window.
Speaker 2:If you drive it off the lot, it falls into pieces. You own both pieces.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it was a disaster, but it was like a beautiful disaster because I felt really gratified. You, you know some of the days we'd sell 20, 30 cars like oh geez yeah 20, 30 cars out of a double wide trailer with you know one toilet. And uh, wow, you know there was. We were the first independent dealership in the southeast, maybe even in the eastern um part of the united states, with a dealercom website. I remember doing that.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:You know, like my boss thought I was crazy for doing it. We used to have auto trader. They would take our inventory for free. It was like $99 a month or whatever it was to have a website. And I was like, no, we need to get a real website. And so we had a dealercom website. That's incredible, yeah.
Speaker 2:I and so we had a dealercom website. That's incredible. Yeah, I mean to spend that. That amount of money to for for an independent is usually out of sight, out of the cards, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, but I mean it. Anything on wheels was such a beautiful place because like, literally we sold anything on wheels and like we had really five hundred dollar cars and fifteen thousand dollar cars and thirty thousand dollar cars and man and man, and we had this thing where we would take all of our $100 cars that we'd taken in an appraisal and then once a year we'd write them down to a dollar and then we'd sell them for whatever the year of ownership was. I think it was like 29 years. Once we sold 29 cars for $29.
Speaker 2:Are you serious? Yeah, jeez, that's incredible so my experiences started down there.
Speaker 1:I think it was really good. It was a very good view of what it's like at that fundamental level, like the creation level of the automotive industry. So my entry point was different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, do you think that that entry point of the buy here, pay here, kind of your own special finance doing, I mean you're, you're a man of many hats at, at, at, where you are now, I mean you were a man of many hats.
Speaker 1:Nothing scared me after that. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I mean, if you're, if you're forged by the fires of of that, it's like anything else primordial fires of the auto industry.
Speaker 1:So but it was listen, it was wonderful, it was a beautiful time, customers were awesome.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's great.
Speaker 1:The challenges were difficult but it was fundamental stuff supply and demand. We didn't have a lot of the apparatuses the digital apparatuses that we have now that guide us. We had to deal with a lot of guts and feels and constant. What I would call back in the day was minding the crops. We'd go out there and touch cars once every two weeks and write the cars down and see what we had into them for inventory. It was a really physical experience as compared to what it is now.
Speaker 2:Tactile and operational right, yep, absolutely. Jeez, that's funny. So what skills do you think that you picked up from there, or that?
Speaker 1:Well, I remember my boss always used to say devil's in the details and that was probably one of the biggest life skills that I got out of that. If you want to be really, really successful in anything, you got to get down to the granular level. You have to be able to see like what was the impetus of that success. I never want to win by circumstance. I always want to win because you know I put it all on a field, I put it all out there and I got it all back.
Speaker 1:I don't want to be like, oh, we did really good, and at the end of the month you're like well, how the you know the data and you're like hey we probably could do a little bit better than that, yeah, and so that's one of the things I learned from that experience was, you know, getting deep into the details and building processes that you know helped you with efficiency, yeah, and then also being able to understand that you, you, you're responsible for everything when you're a single, you know dealership. And then also being able to understand that you, you, you're responsible for everything when you're a single, you know dealership and you don't have a new car franchise to bring you trade-ins. You're literally like you're in the boat all day long and you're paddling you live by the sword and die by the sword yeah, absolutely there's.
Speaker 2:No, there's no phone a friend right when you're an independent guy. No, wow, man, geez, Jeez. So what would you say? The you know, your, your, your hardest challenge during that time was, like what adaptation of being you know, like you come from a athletic background which is, you know, kind of a a great foundation for the car business? Like, how, how did you take those things and what was the hardest lesson that you learned through that process?
Speaker 1:Well, I definitely did a lot of. You know you would work throughout the week for game day, and game day would be the weekend, um, so that was a really good, you know, fundamental experience. You know you're buying your cars on Monday, tuesday, wednesday, getting them prepared on Thursday and Friday, and and then sale day Saturday and Sunday. You're building your marketing throughout the week that way, and so you know that kind of muscle memory repetition of your process that's. I definitely brought that into my current role. You know we were very structured in the way in which we communicate with each other.
Speaker 2:And that's pretty rare. Right For an independent dealers to say super process oriented, that you know you're creating a game book for the weekend or getting heavy process-driven on that level it's not necessarily common right.
Speaker 1:No, it's not common for people that are not in buy-here-pairs.
Speaker 2:Just in general, yeah just in general.
Speaker 1:Success sometimes is marginal, right, you can put a lot of effort in and not get a lot back. And those are the times in which you see some of your, even your staff members, kind of give up on activities and they're like the only two things we can control is our attitude and our activities.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Ain't that the truth? And then the activities is the only thing that you can really measure, right. Yeah, and then, and then the activities is the only thing that you can really measure Right. So that's what I always kind of stressed to everybody is, like you know, you have to have a plan and you have to work that plan and those activities and monitoring those activities they're going to be. You know, you're building that, that, that house.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And over a time period. You know it's, it's, it's the foundation, and then it's the roof, and then it's the inside, and before you know it you have this beautiful house but, like when you first look at it, it's daunting and it's challenging.
Speaker 1:But you know, with activities the same way, like you know, sometimes you're going to be terrible at phone calls for the day, or emails or text messages or car film apps or any of the things in which way we communicate and try to grow demand and create demand at the dealership level. Um, but if you do it consistent, consistently enough, right Cause consistency is greater than intensity Then on the other end of it you're going to see the success and then you'll look back and say how the hell did I ever perform without these things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, it was just dumb luck or something you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, I'd rather be lucky than good, but it's good to be good and lucky. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:It's like when preparation meets opportunity, right, I mean and that's the case like you know how much you know I resonate with that conversation that we have is that it's like don't look at the 30,. Look at the you know six months, look at the 12 months. It's like how are you going to get better over that arc? And I've always had that thought is like are the incentives set up correctly?
Speaker 1:You know, well, it just depends, like if, if a lot of our folks that are working on the ground level, they only see the ground level, right?
Speaker 2:Like it's.
Speaker 1:It's hard for them to see outside of even a day. Forget about 30 days so it's your job as a leader to kind of, you know, layer in the direction in which you're going. What we say now is that the road to success narrows and so, like, what was successful for you today is not going to be successful for you tomorrow or even today. And then you'll look back six months from now and you'll go wow, I can't believe we were doing it that bad Right.
Speaker 1:I can't believe we're doing it that bad. I'm serious, like it's. It's one of those things where you know you implement a new process and what I've learned over especially over the last two years, but even over the last five years is just start like like you're going to spend all this time trying to create this perfect process and then when you implement it, it's going to fall apart anyways.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah A hundred percent start.
Speaker 1:You have a good idea, you know you know three or four, maybe even five pillars of how you want to do this process, but the customer and and the and the people that work with you are going to be the ones that dictate how it's going to flow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a hundred percent, yeah, yeah. And if you don't take the feedback from how it is like how it's playing in the field, and don't adjust on that feedback, it's over, and so then we're really talking about cultural. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:That's probably one of the another thing that I got from working on anything else way back 20 years ago. The culture was good there. It was merit-based culture, that's huge yeah, we followed through, we did the processes, we did everything that was in front of us to make sure that we were successful. It wasn't circumstantial.
Speaker 2:And that could have gone either way. Right, it could have been like grow your process structural muscles or grow the toxicity. Right it could be go down the other path and you could be every day.
Speaker 1:You get a choice.
Speaker 2:Every choice, every choice, yeah, which?
Speaker 1:which? Which dog are you going to feed? Yeah, exactly Right, exactly You're going to feed the negative one? Are you going to feed the positive one?
Speaker 2:That's. That's so important, man. It's so important and I think you see it in the organization and I think I've been around you guys long enough to see, like once you get more people in those positions, that culture just permeates the whole organization and it's incredible to see it from an outsider's perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, we have seven commitments at QAG Kavali Auto Group, which which? Number one is to have the right attitude, go figure, yeah Right, you need that first and foremost. Number two is to be of service to your team members and clients. Yeah, number three is to have a definite team and personal goal and purpose. Number four, which I love is to apply innovation. So if you find something like a life hack in your business to make somebody else's life easier in your business to make somebody else's life easier, let's get it done.
Speaker 1:Number five is to have willingness, which means it's a state of readiness. Be prepared to learn new things Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of people are willing to not do anything. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's tough.
Speaker 1:Number six is to be productive. And when I mean productive. You've heard me say this before. It's like me and you both get the phone call. The internet is out, the fires, the electricity, and I have to like unstick people, yeah, and I go. Well, how do you become productive right now, like, do you have an iphone? They're like, yeah, okay, does does it have a wi-fi hotspot?
Speaker 1:yeah, it does I go do we use an ipad to sell cars now and they're like, yeah, so why don't we connect the ipad to that, and then we'll be able to sell cars now, and they're like, yeah, so why don't we connect the iPad to that, and then we'll be able to sell cars? Oh, wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:How did you think of that?
Speaker 1:That's what I mean Be productive, like water always finds its way, and if you choose to just be stagnant, then that's what your choice is Right. So, uh, or you can be productive, that's part of it, and then you know. Number seven is to hold yourself accountable, and, uh, our culture is what we allow.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That happens every day. So that's the feeding the positive and the negative dogs.
Speaker 2:Right, what do we allow? Yeah, yeah, like how, how big of a of a shift have you guys seen since starting to implement core values? I mean, I would. I would imagine that drilling those things down isn't easy and getting people to adapt to a new process. Well, the cool thing is I didn't write them.
Speaker 1:They got written by people much younger than me and we put them up on a board and they're the ones that kind of agreed that these are the things I'd like to work in an atmosphere that's like this you know, you talk about it with the team over and over again, you present it in front of the team over and over again and sometimes it's the bad moments that you know you get to bring it out and say here, where do we fail on these commitments?
Speaker 1:yeah like which one of these like did you have the right attitude? Because if you didn't, then this is probably why it happened and this is for life and business, of course, of course so you know, if you're not of service to people, if you're not trying to apply innovation, if you're not being productive, you people, if you're not trying to apply innovation, if you're not being productive, you're not willing. You don't set yourself a monthly, weekly, yearly goal, like next thing you know, you're like oh well, that was 2021.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, yeah, and then you're 70. Well, I'll get them next year. Yeah, exactly. And then you're 70 and you had an uneventful life. Yeah, so that's really what we're trying to do, is we're trying to train men and women to become the better version of themselves yeah, I mean that the the you know, the traditional, old way of looking at it is like there's a separation between who you are at home and who you are at work, and that to me, it doesn't exist no, you're the same it's not like you take.
Speaker 1:You know you become iron man and you take when you work as much as we do.
Speaker 1:It's blended for sure, yeah, exactly 100%, yeah, the other thing I would tell you is, if you're not extremely transparent with the people that work around you and when I mean transparent, it's like you're showing them on a daily basis why their position matters and what they do and how it affects everybody around them and especially how it affects our ability to be successful, and the financial statement is the ultimate barometer of success.
Speaker 1:Yeah and uh, you know, if they don't understand that, then they they won't feel the passion or the desire to fulfill that, that role, right. And then once they learn that, then they want to learn that, then they want to learn more. Right, they want to go from a sales manager or salesperson or team lead to become a general sales manager, or even a general manager or service manager from a service advisor. And so I think one of our it's not on our list of commitments, but I think one of the thread that weaves its way through our culture is the transparency and our ability to kind of coach and train and educate the people that work underneath us.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because that's how we're going to be the most successful. And you have to do it with this mindset that, like I, might train this person so well that someone's going to steal them. Yeah, yeah, and you got to be okay with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Right.
Speaker 1:Because if you limit their ability or you narrow their view, then you're not going to be the most successful operation that you possibly can be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think the common thread between all those core values is vulnerability.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like being open to like. You know, I'm going to put a little bit of my soft side out there. Oh yeah, right timing and they can leave and come back and just somewhat like fluidity in the organization rather than it being this rigid. You know I'm going to keep you down or whatever that looks like.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I have a saying that I stole from one of the by hair payer conventions that I went to and this is kind of. It works in opposite to the vulnerability thing. But you know, when holding somebody accountable, uh, I used to always think about this as if the tree isn't strong enough to hold you when you lean on it, then it's probably not going to hurt you when it falls down, Right, yeah, so if you're not willing to become vulnerable, to train, teach and motivate people underneath you and give it all that you possibly can, then that thing's never going to turn into a tree that you can even lean on.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because those are the ones that where they.
Speaker 2:Ain't that the truth?
Speaker 1:And you can walk away from somebody that you know you've given everything that you possibly can and you've grown them to the best version of who they're going to be at this moment and have a lot of confidence that you're going to be successful, or the best part of successful that you possibly can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah that's, I mean a possibly can. Yeah, yeah, yeah that's. I mean a lot of it's fear-based, right, it's like what are you, how are you driving the organization from a place of fear, from a place of you know, a place of lack or a place of abundance, you know? It's like how is what is your mentality look like? That's such like a mentality of, of the desert, or like red, red, hot chili peppers.
Speaker 1:Give it away, give it away. You literally have to give away everything that you've learned for such a period of time, because if you don't, then they're going to go find it somewhere especially these younger folks, these younger folks, are not willing to sit around and stagnate for four or five years and then they get to hit to the next level and stagnate for four or five years. They want it now.
Speaker 2:They want to be a dealer principal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like if you're not feeding their heads, then they're going to leave you and they're going to find somebody who is, and then you're going to be like why can't we keep anybody? Yeah, cause you're not wanting to develop anyone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's. I mean, there was a really interesting conversation. Oh, there's this. Like you know, one of those things that you see on LinkedIn is like the CEO talks to the CFO and is like you know, we need to train our staff and the CFO says what if we train them and they leave? And then the CEO says what if we train them and they?
Speaker 1:stay yeah. What if they train them and they stay?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like what if we don't train them and they stay? It's like what if we don't train them and they stay? It's like at what cost are you willing to kind of keep the thing held?
Speaker 1:Well, you can't grow if you're the only person with the information. There's no way. Yeah, no, there's no way.
Speaker 2:And I see you do that a lot is like you're constantly giving out information and you're willing to just share all the information as possible, because I think that that's how you grow a structure at scale. If you're not doing that and you're coming from a place of fear, it's like oh no, they're going to leave to somewhere else. It's like the cool thing is that I've seen the organization long enough that I see people cycle in and cycle out right, it's like people become better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, we've got people that worked with us that are now VPs of warranty companies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly. And COOs companies yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Coos of big industries that are in, you know, in our vertical and yeah you know which is general managers. And yeah, you know it's cool because you know that's what's supposed to happen.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's a certain amount of seats anyways. Yeah, there's only a certain amount of seats, yeah but you know that's.
Speaker 1:That goes back to. Number two is be of service to your team members and clients. Yeah, like you're limiting their ability to grow, then you're not being of service.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how are you guys adapting to the kind of the, the new landscape of post COVID, what everything's happening, the the constant change how are you guys adapting to that?
Speaker 1:Agility is always, like you know, one of the most important things that you can have as far as adaptation is concerned, but we took meetings that used to be done physically in place and we're doing it more in these little 15-minute to 30-minute increments Sometimes they're a little bit longer when we have more information to go over.
Speaker 1:I would say like the number one thing that I've gotten back over the last 16, 17, 18 months is that, like you spending all this money with these strategic partners, bring them into your Microsoft Teams meeting or your Zoom meeting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And make them present. Yeah, yeah, yeah 100%. And so we've gotten a lot out of that we hold people again number seven. Hold yourself accountable. We're holding them accountable because we're spending money with them and we've created these really cool cadenced meetings. So Mondays we're doing service meetings, tuesdays is your state union, wednesday is kind of my baby, which is the QAG Modern Retail webinar State Union.
Speaker 2:Wednesday is kind of my baby, which is the QAG Modern.
Speaker 1:Retail webinar. And so during lockdown months where we actually weren't allowed to have any sales people, we brought all the general managers in because they had to run the stores, but we literally brought in everybody to just do mass educations.
Speaker 1:And so whether it was V Auto or Car Wars or Update Promise, or we brought in, you know, claire boy, or we brought in Darwin, or we brought in dealer socket every single one of our vendors that were spending money on car film app we were like, okay, so now teach us all the new stuff and tell us if we're doing it right. And let's talk about reporting Right.
Speaker 2:Tell us if you're doing it right.
Speaker 1:If we're doing it right, it's huge yeah and so and and that like gave me an idea and a fundamental understanding of like. If I'm going to go out and try one of these vendors or one of these strategic partners, they have to have kind of three you know, benchmarks for me in order for me to be able to do it. Number one is it a unique experience for the consumer? Number two, does it have robust reporting? And number three, can I put a pay plan around it?
Speaker 1:so I call it the urp, the urp, yeah hopefully you're not the second p, you're the first p. So but but the europe right it's like, is it a unique experience, does have robust, you know, reporting around it. Can I put a pay plan around it? Because then I know that I can get that what the strategic partner or the vendor says is a reality, because a lot of it's just vapor, and then I can turn it into a reality, and we've been very, very, very successful with that methodology and approach.
Speaker 2:Because I think in some capacity forces a proper implementation of it. Yeah, which is really interesting, that's one of the things I see most organizations fail at is the implementation of a great product. That's terrible. And if you're designing your pay plan and you're messing with people's pay, you're ready getting buy-in from the get-go right, so you have to start bringing them in from you know, just like the most valuable point.
Speaker 1:You're incentivizing adoption. I wouldn't. You know what I mean? Yeah, Because if there's no skin in the deal for them, there's no reason for them to want to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Once you're like okay, well, we need 90% utilization. If we don't get 90% utilization, it's going to cost you X.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:There's no. If you have rules without consequences, whether they're pleasure or pain, then they're not really rules.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just suggestions.
Speaker 1:Wishes. Yeah, I suggest that you do this. You know, I know that's a subtle form of command, but at the same time.
Speaker 2:it's really not a rule. I wish that you do this yeah.
Speaker 1:We have a lot of people that are out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think the plain devil's advocate. You know the people on the other side of that think they say, well, I'm paying them to do a job, so they should do that I was like that doesn't compute, that's your process. You're paying them to do the minimum to accomplish their job exactly, show up on time and, you know, make the calls well, hire the right people.
Speaker 1:Why don't you do both? There's? A thing called the miracle of and the miracle of and hire the right people and hold them accountable. It's okay.
Speaker 2:I like to call that option D, all the above you know like do all the above, man. They're not mutually exclusive. We have these arguments a lot. It's like you either have to do this or this and it's like, no, you don't. You can do all the above. You can create a place that exists, that you would do all the options, where you create great people, you create great processes and pay them on the success of their effort.
Speaker 1:I agree 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's huge.
Speaker 1:But you know the thing is, once they start following a process and they implement it, it becomes, like you know, second nature for them. It's like now they know that they can go anywhere. It's almost like a trade.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it becomes a skill.
Speaker 1:They can go anywhere and they can implement it themselves. And then, next thing you know, they're becoming the service manager or the sales manager for some other store, yeah, which we've seen.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know we've had people leave and become like we've educated them so much and developed the process so much with them. That's huge. But they don't go from salesperson to like sales manager. They go from salesperson to like general sales manager because they have this unique experience. Oh, of some salesperson, like general sales manager, because they have this unique experience. Oh wow, and this, you know it's.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because they have f and I experience and they have sales management experience and use car trade experience and yeah, crm experience, yeah, that's, that's the level of training we do with each one of our team members, like we want to make them like little actualized automated business managers go out and do it yeah exactly Like we're. We're in your way. Well, let's get out of your way. How can I make your life faster and easier?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, and I think that your philosophy which, which I love, is one of my favorite philosophy is about removing excuses, like I'm going to remove all the excuses, so you, you don't have anything like okay, okay, okay, sure.
Speaker 1:Is that a problem? I'll remove that excuse.
Speaker 2:Is that a problem? I'll remove that excuse. And it's like where are we at now and they turn around and that's it, like it's their performance at the end of the day. That's huge. I love that philosophy. How did you come up with that? I?
Speaker 1:mean you pick it up from some of your own mentors. We have some pretty good mentors that work for us and they always said that to me. Like Brett Macy is a perfect one. He used to say removing objections. Same thing and that's what managers' jobs are to do is to remove all the objections for success, and if we don't have enough inventory, go out and buy some more inventory. If you don't have enough marketing.
Speaker 1:Go out and find the right marketing. If you don't, you know, if you have sales staff that doesn't understand the product, go out and teach them the same thing in service, right and um. Once you remove all the excuses, then it's about effort, it's about the activities and it's about the attitude.
Speaker 2:Right yeah.
Speaker 1:So those are the only two controllables you have in life is your attitude and your activities attitude and activity. Everything else is you know the outcomes are not certain. Yeah, you learn how to respond instead of react to things. You're going to be able to have a much greater length of adversity handling Because it isn't going to work out the way that you want it to.
Speaker 1:You put it on the dry erase board, you typed it up, you build this big beautiful manual and everything's supposed to go exactly to form, and then you get all the variables that come in.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The market, the people, the customers, the product. Those are all variables you're not in control over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it seems like you fine-tuned your process of getting adoption and buy-in from the staff over years, right? It's like how did you fine-tune that process?
Speaker 1:A lot of your failures are going to give you more insight to your future successes, which means that every implementation we do of the same process is a little bit different and you remove your inefficiencies as far as where you think that you're supposed to be. We've done single point of contact implementation nine times now. Nine times, wow. We've done it from where we built out a huge manual and got in a room and spent all the time and we thought we were smart, we were only going to use three people and they were our best and brightest and we created our own problems that way. You know what?
Speaker 1:I mean Because you took three, and then you created animosity on the floor, and then the three that were doing the single point of contact still had the avenue to go back to the old way.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which was to me. That was one of the failures, right, so, but that was a good learning lesson. That, like just starting, is probably the best thing to do. You know, the next time we did something, we did it half pregnant, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We started this process where we wanted to get somewhere and we only gave the people that were underneath us 50% of the full destination.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And so then, the moment we removed the blockage for the other side of it, that's when the success happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then after that I was like oh, just go, just go, just go, because you have it in your idea. If it's practical, then it's probably going to work.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You just need to get it going. I remember sitting down with somebody in Oakland and training them in three hours. These people are really smart. That work for us.
Speaker 1:We've got to give them a lot more credit, right? And so I did three hours of training with this person His name was Justin and the next day I know he immediately was like sitting there with a client going through the entire process, because you, you, you find a product or a unique experience that's got robust reporting and that you can put a pay plan around, and, uh, it's really intuitive, and then they just take off with it, right. So, and don't be afraid to change and adapt to your process as you're going, because what you think is the right way today, six months from now, will not be the right way, like when I said earlier we were doing it wrong. Yeah, we were doing it wrong, and be willing to change. Don't be so structured. It's really free-flowing, it's all brand new. This isn't a tried and true method, right, but make sure the data is collected on anything that you're doing. That's new yeah, the.
Speaker 2:The constant that seems to always be present is change.
Speaker 1:Like get really good at change yeah, get really good swim in adversity swim in adversity exactly, you're not going to have, uh, you know, glass waters. I don't know if you've been paying attention, but the last two years have been pretty adverse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and some of the best. It's been some of the most profitable years right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, but at the same time I'm just saying you have to be ready.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to be ready for anything. It's coming.
Speaker 1:Tomorrow, who knows what's next?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a book that I was reading that talks about an evolutionary force. An evolutionary force changes everything 9-11, the internet, you know good and bad right, world War II, all pandemic, everything that changes things on a mass scale. It's like in the car business it's always changing. There's always something Every day something's changing.
Speaker 1:I think what you're kind of pointing out is like there's usually like an event that occurs but at the same time the event occurs, there's technology right by it. Yeah, and you know, a lot of our generations are built by that event.
Speaker 1:And then this new piece of technology yeah, right, yeah so like, if you like, look at what happened last year. Um, I don't know what the technology is. It's probably more artificial intelligence than is anything. Yeah, but you know that generation that is currently sitting, just being born, or three years before that, they're never going to know a world pre-COVID.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, no, no, no, it doesn't exist.
Speaker 1:And, like my kids, don't know a world pre-9-11.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And you know.
Speaker 2:I don't remember a world pre-9-11 yeah, yeah, you know, and you know I don't remember a world pre jimmy carter. Gas hikes yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Or the moon, yeah, landing on vietnam, yeah exactly, or the end of world war, two like there's these different generational breaks, but there's technology. Like you came back from world war ii and then there was like tv in everybody's house yeah, yeah, exactly yeah we landed on the moon suburbs, yeah, and, and the computer was everywhere. The internet was like TV in everybody's house, yeah, yeah exactly. We landed on the moon suburbs and the computer was everywhere.
Speaker 1:The internet was like starting at that time, right, you know like come back from the Gulf war, and then the internet takes off.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And then smartphone after nine, 11. So there's pieces of technology that are like tied to these life events and then things change from there and that's kind of what's happening in our, our industry.
Speaker 1:Right, we have, you know, we've had uh many, many years to be protected by, you know, franchise laws, and the point of entry is really tough. But now you're looking at folks like the carvanas of the world and the teslas of the world and the rivians of the world and uh, I I tell these guys all the time it's like, well, I know carvana spends a lot of money in advertising, but I don't know how much money Tesla sends. Have you ever seen the Tesla commercial?
Speaker 2:Not really.
Speaker 1:Like Super Bowl ad Tesla.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. It almost comes out and tells you how great his car is. No, never seen it, right, yeah, no.
Speaker 1:Have you seen any of like you search for Tesla? Does it like you're fighting against 15 different dealerships?
Speaker 2:for the same keyword no.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the guy sold more cars than Audi the first half of the year in the United States of America. That's incredible, you know, an amazing quarter last quarter, right, you know, whatever way he did it, he still did it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So there's some lessons that you can learn from. There is that he's digitized his entire process, like if you haven't been to one of the kiosks at the mall or wherever it is, um, like they don't even follow up with you. Like, think about it, they don't spend any money on advertising, they don't have any cars, like big, huge lots that are sitting around that you can go to with the inflatable flapping guy and yeah yeah, and the wacky inflatable there's no radio ads, no tv ads yeah their sales staff doesn't get paid to sell you stuff.
Speaker 2:There's no follow-up. Yeah, there's no fast talk at the end of all that yeah, they don't send email blasts like.
Speaker 1:So you know, I don't know if we're doing it wrong, but whatever he's doing is working. And and I've asked every single manufacturer like, like, what's their retention rate? How many people buy a Tesla and leave after they buy it? They won't even tell you. Wow, you can ask some of your dealer partners and see if they know that answer and some of the products that they're selling. They have 98% of that market, like the X and the Y, the little SUVs and the bigger. They have 98% of that market Like the X and the Y, the little SUVs and the bigger. They have 98% of the electronic vehicle market on that. So they have 98% and they have a 75% retention rate. Now, something they're doing.
Speaker 1:They're doing something right, yeah, so you know, we don't have to do that, but we have the footprint, we have the connection to the community, so we can steal the parts we want yeah, exactly and leave the parts we don't want yeah, and meet the customer where they want to be met. You know, that's kind of what we talk about now with the Kabbali way, which is to we meet you there, whether it's online, offline or anywhere in between. We're going to meet you there and we're going to do it in a digital fashion. We're going to do it connected with efficiency and speed and something that we can track and monitor and try to make it better on a weekly, daily, monthly basis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's huge to say to really own the problem, run towards the problem rather than running away from it and saying, oh no, these guys are going to, you know, just, you know excuse my French, but shit on them and say, oh no, they don't have enough market share, they're going to spend too much money, they're losing money every and then you're sitting around and nobody's walking into your dealership and you're out of business, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've heard Brian Benstock say it's like the time to build a house is when it's not rainy season.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, it's a fix. Yeah, you've got to fix the roof when the sun is shining.
Speaker 1:When the sun's shining fix the roof.
Speaker 2:Yeah exactly, the sun is shining brighter than ever.
Speaker 1:So now is the time where you need to really develop your processes and you've got to try some stuff that might not be so successful, and it might be painful and icky, but you've got to get through that icky. If you get through that icky, then that's where the magic is.
Speaker 2:on the other, side, yeah, and that's where the magic is. On the other side, yeah, and that's the one of the industries that I see that most is. I don't want, I don't want to know. I don't know if it's self-cleaning, but it's. It's like, you know, um, I don't know if this is the right analogy, but we're, you know, the auto business is the sharks of, of of the ocean. It's cleaning the ecosystem on a regular basis, the ones that are failed listen, I resemble that comment but you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:It's like self-cleaning, and and dealers that are constantly um, evolving on a regular basis are the ones that survive and keep going and keep thriving, and the guys that don't are on the sell side of a buy sell, you know. I mean like just, and they kind of evolve on a regular basis and it's really interesting to see it from my perspective.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm sure it's pretty interesting, but you know, sometimes being on the sell side is not a bad side either.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're either getting all the money or you haven't adapted right. I mean, those are what I've kind of seen, the both sides. It's like you're getting all the money and somebody wants what you have really bad, or you haven't adapted. Yeah, and the haven't adapted is pretty common, so it's like this thing that moves forward. Right that it's like self-cleaning in some capacity more than any other business that's out there, water finds its way. Water finds its way.
Speaker 1:Exactly, if you get frozen, you're not going anywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you get frozen, you're not going anywhere.
Speaker 1:If you stay still long enough, you evaporate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So if you're coming from the mountains the Rocky Mountains, and you find the Rio Grande. If you're coming from the mountains the Rocky mountains and you find the Rio Grande, you're going to the Pacific ocean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you got to find that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, you got to find that way, cause then, once you get to Pacific ocean, the world's your, your oyster, right. Like you can go wherever you want. Yeah, oh, I world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you can't stay still you. And I think the thread through those seven kind of core values is vulnerable. It's like being willing to say from an egotistical side of being like I'm willing to be wrong and being open to change.
Speaker 1:Ego stands for easing greatness out. So if you lead from an ego standpoint, like you, go out and buy keywords that are in your name because you want to buy your name and be number one, your search engine optimization was going to do that bro.
Speaker 2:You just paid money for your own customer. Yeah, you're double paying.
Speaker 1:Yeah so those are some of the. That's like an instant, tangible thought process on it. But you've got to get out of the way of that big old ego and just move forward and try to be, as you know, helpful as you possibly can be a service to people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's huge.
Speaker 1:I love it when somebody else you know gets the limelight. That's like probably even more gratifying for me. You know Paul Gomez just got 40 under 40 with automotive news. You know, shout out to Paul Gomez and shout out to big, big shout out to Paul Gomez.
Speaker 2:But shout out to.
Speaker 1:Paul Gomez. Here's a gentleman that started with us. I remember we just opened up a brand new point. He just came in. There was a lot of like open up a new point, that's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a lot of fun. That's a whole other podcast. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:But you open up a brand new point and you usually don't keep anybody. He's been there since the first month.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And he started as a sales manager, turned into a general sales manager and now he's a general manager and now he's probably one of the leading people in single point of contact modern retail selling in the country, in the country, not just in the state of Florida or without it, but in the country, like people come to visit him and people call him. He's at NCM right now training Like we're sending him to dealer school, you know, which goes back to being a service to your team members.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly, um, but like that's so gratifying to see a guy like that succeed. You know, those are the future. You know leaders of our industry, right, and you know it's. It's really exciting to watch it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's huge, that's huge and I I love that. You guys do that, you know.
Speaker 1:But if you're somebody who leads from ego, they, they don't. They want to darken that cloud.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh that Paul Gomez shouldn't be open to change and shedding the light on somebody else and getting grow and and grow a team member, because I think that creates a vibe or whatever you want to call it in the organization that more people want to come join it, because they see that this is a place that people grow rather than get stomped on and smoked out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's nothing worse than being pigeonholed.
Speaker 2:Jeez. Isn't that the truth?
Speaker 1:And like no, this is you. You're going to print these labels. Yeah, exactly, and that's going to just be it.
Speaker 2:Yeah and be happy about it. Oh man, exactly, that's gonna just be it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and be happy about it. Oh man, I mean so going to the you know kind of money balling your dealership right the the today's, today's topic what, um, how did you guys make that shift? You know, was that a thing that always happened? I mean like leading through data analytics was so let's go fundamentally 2001.
Speaker 1:right, let's talk about my experience 2001,. There really wasn't that many CRMs. We had some DMSs that were out there. Like I said, we were one of the first dealercom websites for an independent. The internet was like this fax machine, literally. That's how leads came in. You sent in an internet lead and it came through a fax machine I remember first seeing that I was like what are they doing in that room? Oh, they're getting internet leads and I'm like through a fax machine, like what?
Speaker 2:like when gary glenn ross.
Speaker 1:That's what it was right, it was like this little room and it was off to the side, right. So like that's 2001, yeah, uh. And then you fast forward to 2010. Then the prerequisites change, right, like if you don't have a website, you're kidding me, right? If you don't, then it's like do you have a crm and are you actually using it?
Speaker 1:oh yeah, is it? You know, is it a place to just throw people's names and information in, or are you actually cultivating out of it? Are you putting together a sales process or a follow-up process through it? So fast forward to 2020, now we're talking about how are you communicating or engaging with a customer, because you couldn't do it face-to-face for like a year or at least six months.
Speaker 1:So these are some of the, like I said, like these event level changes that you were talking about before, like these are some of these event level changes and the prerequisites and the and the road to success narrowing and you get an ability now to you know, uh, keep moving forward. But anything that we apply, you know you can't. I can't track sharpies with smiley faces and like which color?
Speaker 2:worked best yeah, that's not. That's not an available thing. Yeah, that's not, it was the green marker.
Speaker 1:It was a green sharpie, it was a really elongated smile. Yeah, exactly. And then you put you in, meet you halfway. Yeah, like, so that does. That's not like a reality anymore. So the new reality is tracking your pencils, tracking where the customer's in the system. Like where was the drop-off? Like, was it in the interview process? Was it in the trade evaluation? Was it in the price, the payments, was it in the F&I presentation? Where is the drop-off? As far as following price, the payments Was it in the F&I presentation? You know where's the drop off. As far as following up with the customer, you know to the point where you know, like it's there, it's available to you. You know some of the stuff we're doing with attribution, which we have a meeting on tomorrow, from this company called Clairvoy. It's like we do IP scraping and then we do anonymous name match back with the IP addresses into our DMS. So now I can look in my budget and say let's not spend $65,000 on SEM, let's spend $6,500.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because it's not giving you anything.
Speaker 1:It's not giving you anything. And you can look at your endemics and see the same thing, like who's working, who's not working, right, and you can literally get. Not only can you get quantitative numbers, but you can get qualitative numbers too because you're using the dms right.
Speaker 2:So I can see.
Speaker 1:Like xyz, you know, third party used car listing site brought me 15 sales and out of those 15 sales my front end was 1500 a copy, my back end was $1,500 a copy. My back end was $1,500 a copy. Now, abc third-party listing site brought me five sales and those five sales my front end was negative $500, and my back end was $500. I can see my revenue, I can see all of that. I can see my cost per unit to produce from that advertising source. So those are some of the things we look at and we go okay. So let's quit looking at percentages because those are tricky, they can really mess with you, but let's look at like costs per unit produced.
Speaker 1:Yeah absolutely, and then we can like layer in our marketing conversation. So when people come and talk to you and they want to say, hey, all these people printed the map so they had to come here, it hey, all these people printed the map so they had to come here it's like, nah, bro, I can tell you they didn't. They might have printed it there so they can go get coffee or something, but they didn't come to our dealership. Here's the people who IP scraped from your site right, because they even have this on their site now.
Speaker 1:And here's the people that sold, and this is the value that you're bringing back to me from a revenue perspective and from a quantity perspective. So it's available to you. Why aren't you using it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's even difficult for people to start looking in that mind frame, to start looking at it from the metadata right. It's like how do people? This isn't quantum physics. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:To understand what the trap. I don't even need to know how they make the sausage. Exactly, I don't know how they make those round circular things that go from Florida to California with jet fuel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I just get on. Yeah, exactly, get on, just give me the information.
Speaker 1:So you get a little bit of information that makes you dangerous. You gotta, you know, obviously be with the strategic partner that it can explain it, or layer it down for you yeah, but I don't need to know the click path trails and I don't need to know I mean, some of the stuff I look at and I'm like this is scary, like you know, you can see, like where the guy started at your facebook ad and then went over to to your native website and then dropped off to you know AutoTrader.
Speaker 1:And then they jumped into another social media ad and then they went to your Google my Business and then they came back to your website and then they made a phone call to you and then three months later then they went back to your website. So it's pretty cool stuff that you're going to. It's available, like why don't you want to see?
Speaker 2:it and when you see you know 5,000 of those, it starts painting a picture.
Speaker 1:It takes a huge picture.
Speaker 2:That you can start pulling information out of which really, really, really, really makes sense.
Speaker 1:You can start spending your money wisely, exactly.
Speaker 2:You know, when I was at the dealer, I'd be like why is the showroom empty? He was like no, no, no, it's sunny. Everybody's at the beach, oh, yeah, yeah. He's like why is the showroom empty? No, no, no, it's raining. Nobody buys cars when it's raining.
Speaker 2:I was like I didn't know the car business so I'm like I don't believe you. I don't believe this at all. There has to be a reason. There's like 5 million, like why isn't the showroom full? And come to find out we weren't doing all the things that lead up to setting up the scaffolding, for it to be a good month, and then you'd see those ebbs and flows and start pulling data out of it. It was the only way I knew how to, how to run the dealership. I was like, put myself in this in these shoes, was like I don't know the car business so I can not deal with anything other than information or data yeah, and it's, and that's how you should live your life just everything about like you get in the car and you look at and see how much gas or range that you have left.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't just jump in. You know, I always tell the guys and gals that are leading people I'm like it's the beginning of the month, you're getting on the plane, check and make sure that your everything works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly you don't want to be halfway of the month. You're getting on a plane Check and make sure that everything works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly. You don't want to be halfway through the month and then find out that everything's not working.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of one of the big things that we look at, and if you start doing that, then they fundamentally understand it. And then we do a lot of reporting, like nightly reporting. So we have a process in sales. So we have a process in sales which is our checkout process, where you check in, check up and check out, and the managers are doing the same thing too, so they have to hold themselves accountable on a nightly basis and they get to see it granularly.
Speaker 1:You could say oh man, no wonder why such and such isn't having a good month.
Speaker 2:He's only got like 10 phone calls in a month it's the 15th. He's just sitting up at the front door. Yeah, you know the up bus quit coming right.
Speaker 1:We talked about that. The up bus quit coming. Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. And and you can't hide, somebody sold it.
Speaker 2:It had a microchip in it yeah, it's like you can't hide the data if everybody's exposing the data right? It's like you made 15 calls, you made 15 calls and john made four like and john isn't you know. Come, come to find out.
Speaker 1:John's not selling cars and what I've you know is that the people who are the most successful do the most amount of activities. Now, they might not put it in the right places as far as counting it in the systems, okay, but the ones that are the most successful are the ones that are making the most phone calls. Come to work, to work, engaging themselves, trying every single minute of every single day. And the thing that you have to do as a leader or a manager of your team is to get those really highly successful people to start recording all of their information and your tools, because once they do, once you do get them to do it, you get to put them on a pedestal.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, they do, once you do get them to do it, you get to put them on a pedestal.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, to go. Hey, you want to be like such and such. These are the things that you have to do to be like such and such yeah you know like he doesn't look at the scoreboard ever. You know, like nick savin says, everybody does the play yeah and at the end, if we do all the plays correctly, then the scoreboard will take care of yeah, exactly so it's the same thing with such and such.
Speaker 1:That person comes into work and they're like on a plan, they're following the process, they have the highest amount of activities.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And their bank account's the highest too.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and just come to find out that they've sold the most cars, yeah or they service the most amount of customers in the lane, or they're the best F&I manager, or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And how did, how do you guys get away from the hump? Or you know, like the, the objection of you're just, um, you know, like some people would say, you're just paying me to get to get your outcome, rather than you know them saying, hey, I'm here to do a job, you should be responsible enough to do that job. Because I've heard a lot of people say that when incentivizing processes or steps along the way to produce the results, incentivize the steps rather than incentivizing the outcome. Like, how do you make that mental shift?
Speaker 1:I mean, it seems you make it a business decision for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like you go, okay here, this is what we're going to pay you to do X. This is what we're going to pay you to do X. If you do Y, also, it's up to you. Are you mad at money, bro? Like, literally, are you mad at money Because X and Y pays you another 25% more. So are you interested in doing it your way, or are you interested in doing it the company's way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's like are you interested in being right? Listen, I'd rather be happy than right. Yeah, exactly, just throw that down yeah, like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:What happens is, once they start doing y yeah they don't know how to do x anymore without y yeah and then then, then you don't have to take care of it anymore yeah like we have these benchmarks for some of the sales guys that were like, okay, 300 phone calls, 150 emails, slash texts, and you know 30 car film apps and 25 appointments, or 20 appointments, whatever it is. And at first they're like, oh, this sucks, this is the worst, I can't believe you're doing this. I sell cars, I sell cars, I don't need to do all this stuff. And then you know, you hold their hand, you give them a mulligan every once in a while, yeah, and then you come back six months later they're doing you know 500 phone calls and 300 email slash texts and you know 50 car film apps and they're setting all kinds of appointments. You know like, oh, oh, they figured it out, they figured out like yeah these things work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like, once you wake up, it's hard to remember the dream.
Speaker 1:So it's. You know the URP is one of them. But the other thing is like if you really want something to work, you have to have what we call the three C's. It's not see the key, see the car, see you later. It's commitment to a process, consistent reporting and competition. The only way you can do competition is to pick you know, show them the winners and the losers. Yeah, yeah put it be transparent yeah here.
Speaker 1:Look, this is what happens when you're committed to the process and and you fill up this activity board that we can see in consistent reporting and guess who's the champion. Guess who's the yeah guess who's the competition winner? Yeah, you know those are that, like the red, yellow, greens, nobody wants to be red.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nobody wants to be red. Yeah, you're gonna get the green. Yeah, you want the green to get the green commitment, attitude, skills and habits, that's the cash yeah, commitment to the process.
Speaker 1:You have the right attitude, you work on your skills and do the right habits, you're gonna get the cash.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, that's Jay Abraham talks about. You know, just being 5% better, like get 5% better about everything that you're doing and you're going to be very successful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because then the next day you can do 5% more yeah. The road to success always narrows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah that's a really good point. Yeah, yeah, geez. Well, I think that's a great place to end it. So, gino, thank you so much for coming man. I really appreciate it. This will be on Spotify so everybody can listen to it, since we're recorded. So I really appreciate you coming on by man. It's always great to you know, get information from a great mind and a guy that I've seen transform organizations and transform dealerships through processes. So I really appreciate you coming by, man, and I hope we can do this again.
Speaker 1:Thanks for letting me be of service.
Speaker 2:Great man. Thanks, appreciate it. Bye-bye, Bye.