The Struggle is Real. How Data is Destroying the Customer Experience.

Unknown Speaker  1:49  
Okay, question, technology, the big sin and closing every day or in that city. What are these three things have in common? You in less than a week is not your typical scientist. Fact, he's not one at all.

Speaker 1  2:10  
He is a sales genius and his science to my instincts told me there were real customers trapped in the website somehow. And I knew what the right technology, we'd be able to see everything customers were doing on the site. And we could see everything. sky was the limit. You know, I

Unknown Speaker  2:31  
was back in the market for a sports car. I was just on your website today. And let's just say I have a second set of eyes. For

Unknown Speaker  2:40  
even when it looks like they're not there, they're there.

Ann-Marie Johnson  2:57  
Hey, everyone, welcome back. I'm Anne Marie. This is another asoto edge webinar. Today, we're going to be joined by our friends over at four eyes, we're going to be talking about data. So the struggle is real. And data is destroying the customer experience. So we're going to be hearing from Dave Steinberg He is the founder and CEO of four eyes. And he's going to be joined by Jeff Ramsey, who's the variable Operations Director at oarsmen Automotive Group. So I'm gonna give it over to Paul and Kyle for a minute. And we'll see y'all in a little bit.

Paul Daly  3:26  
Kyle, how to commercial before I have it. And I'm like, I was smiling from ear to ear.

Kyle Mountsier  3:36  
I'm from I love it. Well, first of all, it's just super fun. We need more people just thinking of innovative content and auto because there needs to be less stuffiness. And everybody does the same thing. And here's a little like whiteboard video of what we do. So kudos when that when they come on, and we'll just give them a little kudos get. We're talking about data though, Paul. Yes. Or as you call data? No, you

Paul Daly  4:02  
call it data, I call it data. It's amazing. You'll get one day we're gonna like wear two T shirts, and he's gonna have the phonetic spelling of data, and he's gonna have the phonetic spelling of data. That's, that's actually how we're different people. That's that's the only really way that people can sell.

Kyle Mountsier  4:16  
That's the only way we're different. So here's, here's, here's what's tricky for me, Paul, right? Because I think that our industry, by and large has been talking about data or data for a significant amount of time. We've been like, we need good data. We need we need to fix this. We need to own your own data first party data. cookieless is cookieless future is upon us all of this type of stuff. And we we primarily talk about data as a trailing indicator for everything that we're doing. It's either a trailing indicator, or it's like, well, we have all this data, no know what to do about it. And there's no Ever been like a way to say, this is definitively what's going on in the space? This is how you can use it. And you don't have to just like, look at some reports and hope that not just a history lesson, right? It's not just a history lesson. And

Paul Daly  5:14  
that's the truth. You know, I think one of the one of the biggest problems with the conversation right now is that there are so many voices saying variations of the same thing, but in a way where the landing point is different. So I think a lot of people are just confused, right? You live in this world a lot more than I do. And I have to say from like, someone who doesn't like live in it, breathe it every day. It's like, super confusing. And I think that just leads to vendors or partners who are subpar to be able to, like sell a less than message, right? Because people just don't know, right? Because when you're on the call, and you don't know, you just feel you feel the need to like nod your head like, Okay, that sounds good. I don't fully understand it

Kyle Mountsier  5:57  
yet, or someone says AI. Right? And must haven't done yet. All right. And interestingly enough, AI and data are like, very intertwined, because they both understand each other very well. They look at each other, they inform each other. And so there's just a web to untangle. And the problem is, is when we don't untangle it, what starts to happen is, is we don't actually care for the customer on the other side, right? And that's, that's the biggest danger for me.

Paul Daly  6:26  
That's right. That's right. Well, I love our guests today. First of all, David is like an incurable entrepreneur, who, whom I always kind of like just gravitate toward people who just like, need to build the better mousetrap they need to see, they see that there's a better way, and they have to do it. So I you know, so I'm excited to have somebody who just like, levels that the amount of passion on everything they do, and if you can make commercials without Ferraris in them. That's

Kyle Mountsier  6:51  
pretty great, too. And then Jeff, you know, I've known Jeff for a few years now and been talking about just marketing and exactly what happens with the customer and just has a resolved outlook on how we approach customers, how we approach analytics, and what decisions we make on it now and has since crossed over from just being on the marketing side, but to being on the operation side. And I think as those two things come together as marketing and operations and data meets in the middle, we get a lot of great insight. So we don't want to talk too much because you know, they need to talk we got thoughts and ideas but we're gonna have some other people talk thoughts and ideas. So let's do this. Let's bring on in Jeff and David and let's get after it Yeah.

Yo, what's up everybody?

David Steinberg  8:01  
Paul, Kyle. Jeff, great to see you guys.

Kyle Mountsier  8:06  
All right, give us give us like the 30 seconds. What what what like describe what you do and who you do it for in 30 seconds or less? Jeff, your first

Jeff Ramsey  8:18  
Um, first and most important go first, but okay, I'm here. So I'm Jeff Ramsey. I'm the variable Operations Director for oarsmen, the oarsmen auto group so I oversee our blobs for 17 locations that are owned by Robert oarsmen. We're continuing to grow we've got more store with stores opening in the very near future. And so I received Sales and Marketing for this group and continually try to evolve things and and help grow the business and, and do it in the craziest market that we've ever experienced. I think it's crazier right now than during COVID. Because it's entirely unpredictable.

Kyle Mountsier  8:58  
Isn't that right? All right, Jeff. Or David, give it give it to us. Give it to us. Hi.

David Steinberg  9:03  
So for us is sales enablement, business intelligence software, right. So we serve we you know, about 1600, growing auto dealers, auto groups, we have some great big groups that including some of the best in the world that you probably know about that are using the platform that basically allows you to bring data together across your website, your CRM, your inventory, and really make sense of it sort of get the noise out and allow you to understand like, what's really happening how is performance speed, right get you get get data fast, like, if you can't get it fast, you can't really get it if something takes you three hours to run, like a lot of informations interesting sometimes. So if it takes you three hours to run to find out it's not interesting today, you're not going to do that exercise very much. So the question is, well, how do you get that tends to be 10 seconds. So when it is interesting, you can find those those opportunities. So I'm Jeff and Jeff has been a huge ally. And also, what's unique about Jeff is he's been on both sides of the house. But he also is really good. You know, like my, my, the thing we always say in our team is is good data doesn't answer questions. It asks better questions. So the job and us people who deliver information is not to try to answer or editorialize. It's to try to give information in a way that when they asked that better question, they can also drill down to that better question. And Jeff is a pro at sort of saying, like, here's what you're showing me, here's the better question. And so our teams grow constantly from from that process.

Kyle Mountsier  10:37  
That's awesome. Jeff, do me a favor, give me like the cliffnotes history of like, your journey, and maybe the dealer's journey over the last three, four or five years in, like, what it's felt like today to more to better understand what data is actually at your fingertips, and how, like, as it starts coming at you that changes your approach, what what have been the key moments that you think the dealers or yourself have kind of met over the last four or five years that have led us to where we're at presently.

Jeff Ramsey  11:14  
I mean, I can go way back. I mean, I've I've been my attorney to selling or to the automotive industry was I, my first real job was selling cars, and then the crash in like, oh eight occurred, I got a couple of months where I had nice income, and then it was all gone. And but during that time, you know, the introduction of Hey, Jeff, you know how to type. You're our internet guy now. So you can answer these four leads that we get a month help with this website, and that that's where the career started. And, you know, it's evolved to where finding? What, what, what guides the customer towards the sale, not looking at, like, for so long, it was just like, we're getting this many leads, we're converting at this percent. But finding like, Okay, well, what, let's get away from the actual lead. What, what makes that customer actually become a sale, you know, there's so much more traffic, if 1% of our website traffic is converting the other 99%? What's actually going on here. And so over the course of the last decade, well, I guess even further than a decade, I'm getting old, you get to get to really see what makes customers tick. Because at the end of the day, when everyone's talking about leads, I've always asked, Tell me the last lead you put in a system for anything, and most people look at me with a blank face, and say, so obviously, you don't shop that way. Why are we grading our entire industry that way? So, you know, I guess, for me, it's those are the big questions. It's always been how do I return people to the site? How do I how do I keep people thinking of me when they're ready to buy a car? There's? So I guess that's a really broad, general rambled answer of it's it's been a lot of years of trying to figure out what makes customers tick, how to make everything come together. You know, it's not leads, it's about that whole buying journey, customer experience everything, trying to figure out how to improve that. Was that answer the question? That one for 20 minutes? You said,

Paul Daly  13:26  
you said it was rambling. But I think the big takeaway is that you've been doing it from like the very beginning of us trying to measure things this way. Right. Like, I think that's the big takeaway. And as it comes in, as it comes in through that channel, right, like the conversation, you put it right back on the people that are saying, like, this is what I'm following. And you say, well, like do you do it that way? No. It's like, well, then how come? That's the standard all of a sudden, you know, and that's, I mean, just, I asked, but I often my wife is often the litmus test for me, because of like, I watch how she shops for things. Because she's not thinking about anything. She's not thinking about retargeting. She's not thinking about any of that stuff. So it's always like, when I watch her shop, I'm like, yeah, like, I would never have put that flow into a chart and said, like, this is how she's going to find your way to that product ever.

Kyle Mountsier  14:15  
Ever. Alright, so So then, David, give us because I think what's interesting about what Jeff just said, is, it's like he's like, I feel like that's super broad. It's just everything. There's just so much going in here. And though that's the case, and there's just this depth, it's almost like that's still only and kind of you put it this way, the tip of the iceberg. So, like walk us down from your, from your viewpoint, like where the status of of a dealer slash consumer data is right now, and auto.

David Steinberg  14:48  
What I think right right now, there's, there's been this huge problem and we're all talking about it right? We all like all US vendors say siloed data. siloed data is this big problem. Well, guess what? Like siloed data actually exists in every industry, right? You you're using software, and you're trying to get that software to talk to each other. And that software is not set up to talk to each other. That's not how they make their money. And so it's a really common problem in every industry. I think what's important to understand in automotive is there's a really sorted past, which is, normally what happens is a class of software emerges called integrators. And you can actually consider for is an integrator, classic integrator in automotive would be authentic come, hey, we're going to take your data, and we're going to allow you to connect it to other things. The sordid past in automotive is that those integrators have been, they've tried to shut them down. Right. So like, in other industries, they welcome the integrators because it sort of can connect and collect and solve a lot of the problems in the industry. Yeah, it's

Kyle Mountsier  15:48  
like in other industries, you know, the, the tech providers are actually going here, look, here's Zapier here, look, here's make him, Look, you guys should use this because it'll make you better with our stuff. And honestly, it probably reduces churn for them.

David Steinberg  16:04  
Exactly. So So that's other industries been automotive, they sue you, they shut you down, they try to get you into their certified integrations, the legal term would be cyber ransom, they cyber ransom your data, they do all of this stuff, right. And that, like, what's been interesting in our space, is that, you know, authentic comm came out and did a great service to the industry where they went against that, you know, they, David and Goliath, they slayed the giant, they want a really big lawsuit. That said that gave them the rights and some of that setup. But But now as first party data has been deemed more and more valuable, I'll tell you as an integrator, as someone who brings data together, we're watching those, what's the legal term would be database providers, but that's your CRM and your DMS, they're knocking on our door, and they're going, Hey, wait, we actually own this data. And we're going on No, you don't. And they're like, Yeah, we actually do. And we're going wait, that's not what you're saying in your sales pitches. That's not what you're saying here. And so what's happening is like, you look at a company like for us, we've spent over $20 million on our data collection system. It should not require automotive has been innovation has been held back the customer experience, like when people say, Why is the customer experience so bad in automotive, it's actually a data problem. Because like, if you go to the doctor, and you're like, Paul, you're worried about your health, and you went and got your blood checked your blood test, and you're, you're really worried about what that's going to say, you're really nervous about it, you go to the doctor, and you sit down with the doctor excited, not excited, but you're nervous to see the blood test results. And he's like, You know what, I'm having a hard time pulling them up. Let's just talk about how you feel. That's a bad doctor visit. Right? I feel that's a bad doctor visit. That's the automotive sales process. Because they're the they're the software can't all connect. That's what digital retailing failed, right? Yeah.

Paul Daly  17:59  
It reminds me of a chapter in Did you ever read Dell Pollock's book, like I see it? No. So it was I mean, it's probably this point six or seven years old. And he had a whole chapter talking about the lack of data availability, stifling innovation, and I can't remember who he talked about an innovative company bringing a really much needed solution to the industry. And they actually, they kind of like, packed up and went to another industry because it was too hard to get the data they needed to do it. The reality

David Steinberg  18:31  
is anybody working in automotive right now needs data. And the reality is that those data based providers serums, and DMS is are holding access, they're holding data hostage. And it's stopping all of the innovators from coming in. I mean, you look at the tech stack of forests. So we have Salesforce, we use Pardot, we have SalesLoft, we've got this great tech stack. And we're spending about a quarter of what an auto dealer pays on a far inferior tech stack. And the reason is, is because vendors that all of the tools that we use, cannot be used in an automotive setting because they can't be connected. And that's by that's by design. And so like you look at it and you go, Okay, so what's at risk? Well, the franchise auto dealer, the auto dealers future is at risk, because you're highly disruptive will when you can't evolve the customer experience. The OEM agency model is coming when you can't have your systems talk to each other. Right. So like solving these problems is huge for the industry. And the good news, the good news for us the thing that we feel so excited about and like, you know, we're getting ready to fight the fight. The fight, the struggle is real. But the good news actually is that there's a playbook happening right now that dealers just haven't woken up to and I think I'll drop a little news here with you guys. Like so. CCPA. Right. We all follow CCPA whether or not we're doing business in California. Well guess what? The great State of Arizona has something called the dealer data law. The dealer during the great state of Earth. Look it up right the dealer data law is The best in class dealer data law that basically prohibits cyber ransom. It clarifies that the dealer owns their data and specifically written for automotive dealers clarifies the dealer owns their data, it can't be ransomed off, they can't prohibit access, they have to be able to share it. If they can't share it, they can't prohibit you from doing it. It stops exactly what's happening in automotive. So now this law, the law was passed in 2019, CDKN, Reynolds and Reynolds sued to stop it, they lost in court to stop it. And so now now Oregon has new laws on the books Wyoming, Wyoming has gun laws on the books, Montana has new laws. But here's the thing. All you dealers need to do just same way we follow CCPA. Go to your vendors and say go to your CRMs and DMS and say you know what? I want you to follow the Arizona dealer law, it doesn't matter that I'm not an Arizona, you have to follow it in Arizona. So why are you choosing what parts of this law? Are you choosing not to follow? In my state? Tell me what parts of this law, right?

Kyle Mountsier  21:01  
So I mean, that's an action that's like write down all your vendors heading back to the phone,

David Steinberg  21:06  
you go right and follow me on LinkedIn, we're gonna continue we're gonna start really talking about this, but there's a huge opportunity for to quickly solve this problem. And when we have Arizona to thank for it. Jeff,

Kyle Mountsier  21:18  
where does this breakdown? Where does this like hamper your ability as like leading sales leading marketing? Or does it hamper your ability to be effective at at the dealership? And then, and then maybe expound on that? Where does it hamper the ability for the customer have to have a great experience? Can you pick out one or two pieces of that, that that are changed because the access to data so lost.

Jeff Ramsey  21:47  
So if, when, hold on, I got a phone ringing back here, gotta turn it off. Sorry, I'm in a random office for this meeting. Morpheus

Paul Daly  21:57  
will be okay. If you just duck down and crawl to the, to the window.

Jeff Ramsey  22:01  
I'll say with these systems not talking to each other. And behind it, I don't know paywalls. Between like, you have to pay so much money to get everything to connect, it seems like everyone is more excited to not connect with each other to where my job is to make an educated decision for the group with the best data I have available when nothing talks to each other, when every piece of information doesn't actually send to the next place that when you have all these different tools, like Dr is not always functioning and connecting with all of our other like all of our other advertising tools. And seems like there's so many extra steps to get things done. When we try to create a customer experience, it's seamless, and easy. And it's evolving. The educated decision I have to make is based off looking at 30 different places that I'll tell me they're the best that don't actually communicate with each other. It's a mess, like there is, you know, tell me, tell me five vendors that all want to talk to each other. None of them do. They all want to say we're the reason your doors are open. So for me daily, it's an issue that, you know, not owning my own data, I don't have the ability to call a company and say I need you to send this portion of data to this company. It's like, well, we can't we won't,

David Steinberg  23:20  
because I don't learn it. And you look at generative AI, right, so like, you know, chat GPT, all of those types of systems. So what's happening now the note? So let me ask you a question that notes that a salesperson enters on a lead, who owns that? Okay, but the CRMs in their certified interfaces do not allow you to get the access to the notes. So if you're building generative AI, that's going to look at the take all the data about Paul, and bring it in and give him a customer experience. If I don't have the notes. I'm not going to see Hey, Paul wants to toe and he really cares about only getting a black vehicle.

Kyle Mountsier  23:56  
Yeah, you're only going to see the vehicle that he's interested in and maybe address.

David Steinberg  24:02  
So now your generative AI seems dumb. It seems not that smart. You're like, this is not that that good. And so you blame the vendor. And you go, Hey, this tool just so you know, I blame anytime you're you sort of say You know what, I love the promise of that saw of that company. But I the delivery wasn't there. It's a data problem. So like, how does it affect everybody? Like I could go down the line at every single company and US, US founders of these companies. Let's see, as a company, we talked about this one on one about oh, man, these guys, they just knocked on my door. They tried to restrict access. They're forcing me to do this. And I'm losing all this access to data. And by the way, they tried to sign me to a contract that said, I can't say anything about it. And by the way, I'm not allowed to tell how much I'm having. I'm really paying for this. And by the way, I had to sign a document that said they really they own this data. This is like hugely problematic for All right,

Kyle Mountsier  24:55  
so let's put because like it's clearly a problem but let's flip to this because I want to there's things that can be done right now. And you guys, like Jeff and the team at four eyes, and the way that you've interacted together is, is opening up some of this so that we can make real time decisions and not take history lessons. What are what are some of those key things that you're doing right now, to enable, like, a better future without, like, obviously, the conversation and dealers getting into that is extremely important for our future. But what what can happen right now, to make sure that we give the best possible customer experience the best possible dealer experience at that's at our fingertips?

David Steinberg  25:36  
So I think one thing, and I have this and like one of the things we sent, but like, there's a framework for working with data that was taught to me by our data, or how to data science, which is a PhD in it. And so we were always, you know, looking at what we're going to build next, what are we doing next and, and he's like, let me help impose some discipline here. There's a way to work with data. And I think that if dealers understand this, they will work more productively with vendors who are coming in selling, all of our solutions are using data that this in 2023. And that process is what we call collect, connect, visualize, activate. And now the reason I'll tell you why this is so important. What if you're a big dealer group right now and you you're like, investing in data, what we see with most big dealer groups is they're in what we call collect and connect, while they're just trying to get like all this siloed data like to talk to each other. And they're spending a lot of time and resources, trying to stand up systems that can do that benefit for eyes, it's like, hey, let's just get you past that. And then to the higher value areas where you're going to visualize and activate. Now, the, the key piece here is, everybody always rushes to activate, right? Every every vendors, solution is an activation, I'm gonna take your data, and I'm gonna put it here, and I'm gonna put it here, and I'm gonna put it here. And it's all based off the implied assumption that that data is correct and accurate. And what I will tell you as a guy in the space is it takes a lot of work to get data correct and accurate. And so as a result, you go, okay, great, I'm gonna pay you 2500 bucks a month to do this, I love the promise of your tool. But you actually haven't verified that the data is correct and accurate. And so then you come and you're like, that doesn't feel right, or it's not delivering the results. And it's because underneath the hood, it wasn't actually they weren't able to get the right data. And that's,

Kyle Mountsier  27:25  
I had a really interesting story, I was working with a dealer, we pulled like 20,000 records, they have a massive wholesale business, and about 30% of their customer base are businesses well, because the data was entered in a way that was like consumer data, basically. And the big point of this whole thing was a text campaign that was going to come out of this. Yeah, those 30% All had business phone numbers in the cell phone line. Right? So it was like, clear, that's never gonna work.

David Steinberg  28:01  
You know, so Kyle, so Exactly. So let me give you let me give it so wide collect, connect, visualize, activate is such a good framework. So you as a as a dealer, as a buyer of software, if you're a dealer, move, move backwards down the chain. So hey, vendor, I really like what you can do with my data. And in order to do this with my data, you must be able to see the data you're working with. So show visualize with, for me, my data in your system, show me my data in your system, and that that will expose a lot of the problems that they're having, and really help I mean, that will help the vendor and help the dealer because the dealer will see to your point can you

Kyle Mountsier  28:41  
can you give I think you haven't. Like what's an example of the way data can be visualized in a platform maybe the way that you guys are doing Yeah,

David Steinberg  28:48  
I mean, so. Yeah. And and let's bring let's bring Jeff in a bit too. So like, we're in the we're in the UDP right now. And let's see, I'll go over to I'll start at the first the first line which is like and Jeff you can talk more about like Jeff uses this report all the all the time this is Not oarsmen, Stata, this is like a fake dealer group. These are real dealers, but we've just changed their name and put them in a dummy group. So your first what you're first looking at is like well, I want to bring I have a bunch of stores in a group I want to bring them all together. I want to compare apples to apples. So I'm not I'm not just trying to compare. You know like a lot of times what happens is you can have different different dealers on different CRMs or they're on the same serum but they're using their serum slightly differently. So coming in and Jeff you use you always start here I think right is how you start your day. Yeah,

Jeff Ramsey  29:45  
I mean, this is where we want to see kind of, this is where I can really judge where things are just on a you know, while I do understand, not all customers shop through leads, we get 1000s of leads A month, and we need to convert at the highest rate possible. So this helps me judge what vendors are driving in there, what? Who I can judge the stores against each other, I can see where things are going. And this, I mean, this allows me to help make an educated decision on, you know, do we need to tweak things? Is it? Is it the season? Is it? Yeah, it just helps me get a real feel for where our stores are with the vendors with the money we're spending.

David Steinberg  30:26  
So like, in this example, you know, good data doesn't ask, it doesn't answer questions that ask better questions. So it's like, okay, so a better drive, I'm just picking on something, they're down there leads are down 60. This month, they're close, right? It's actually a bit up, you know, I can see here, car time is way down on their leads. So then what's happening with them, and you can come in and very quickly see, Okay, now let's drill down into that location and see what's happening with their leads. And what's happening in the data that this is that's here is all of the leads, but not just their CRM activity. Also, the website activity is all brought into the system to drill down and see exactly what each leads website journey was. And so here, I can see that this dealer is basically pacing to have a bad month. Right? So Jeff, you drill down? How would you how would you interpret this?

Jeff Ramsey  31:20  
This for this is tell I mean, I can look at this and start asking questions, is it the market that we pull back advertising spend, where's our inventory? One thing that from on that previous slide, but in general, what anyone that has worked in automotive and work within a CRM with new vehicles, you know, that if you're trying to judge just your website, leads, it can be 15 different things, it could be the chat provider you added to the site, it could be the widget you put on your site to drive training leads, or to drive appointments, your actual website button, or your actual OEM that took over your site to now you have to, you're gonna have to check all these different places, do the math yourself and figure out what your real closing rate is just on traffic that's arrived at your site with this system allows me to do is to classify that all into one line and say, This is what my website traffic is actually converting at and then I can break it out into different platforms. So like,

David Steinberg  32:19  
for example, I'm looking here at paid Google and I'm seeing Okay, show me all the leads all the sales were they were influenced by paid Google. So this is Mary Katherine, she was a dealer, website, lead, these are all here, she these are all her interactions. Anything in blue was influenced by paid Google. So 84 days ago, she came on paid Google. And then she bought a vehicle 15 days ago, this Carol M. Again, we've we've obscured their PII, because we're in demo mode came directly from Google came in, bought a car in the CRM, they were attributed to referral. And so you all have the data, basically, all of that data is sitting here and organized. And all we're doing now is building reports that visualize different ways of looking at the data. But I think the other important thing is we thought we've also set it up so that that data can now be shared. So that that clean organized hygiene data, if you want to share it with a vendor, if you're saying, hey, this vendor is held back by by bad data, you can now share it with the data. That's where we're going is to say, let's open up the ability to share information here.

Kyle Mountsier  33:26  
Because I think that that's huge is like, it's almost like leading with the question right now what what you're bringing to light here is that every single conversation that that starts is like, how willing is your company to share data with the other companies that I'm connected with? Because if if I don't get that as a dealer there, like I am going to be at a loss for how I can serve my customers, serve my employees and grow my business incrementally. Like just a thing that sits out on an island is never going to solve all the problems for me. And that's what you're saying. It's like, Nope, we're just we're opening it up. Here it comes. Yeah. Go Yeah,

David Steinberg  34:10  
guess what? It's not our choice. It's the dealers data, right? So if we follow the letter of the law, we say this is not like, look, by opening it up, we're going to have people build copycats of our tools way easier. It's going to bastardize some of our revenue, I get that. But guess what, it's not my data to say yes or no. It's the dealers data. So Shoot, we're going that way. Anyway, let's open it up. Let's swim with the river of progress instead of swimming against it. Let's open it up. And let's trust our innovation skills. And so, you know, like, we partnered without sell, where we have a great partnership without selling. Now if a dealer wants to share the data without sell, they can just very quickly come and drop down, ship it over to them and outset and it's the dealer's choice to do that. And it's the dealers data, but the dealer can do that and outsell mine. compete with us on some of our products. That's not it's, it's not my data to to decide.

Jeff Ramsey  35:06  
And David part part of me, my gut tells me because I'm not as smart as you guys. So I have to say, my gut and I, my brain, the people limit things because they want you to stay within their system of products. And no one has mastered everything. I don't care who sits in front of me. No one has mastered every single aspect of advertising of the customer of the websites customer buying sure every not one person has figured it out. But the more they handcuff actually everything, the more you are married to them, and have to spend your money with them. And so does that give the customer the best experience possible? Absolutely not. But it certainly makes a company make more money, and are at the end of the day, my job for my customers is to give them the best experience possible not to have someone hang up on my information. And if I'm paying the money to drive, drive the customer to the site to collect the info, that's not anyone else's that is mine. And when I have when I get a call in the middle of a month that says, hey, our connection to this program has disconnected. And so now this, this other program that was held helping bring people back to my website can't work. And I have to go and make calls to get everything, reconnect, excuse me, get everything reconnected. I've lost time. It's frustrating. And it just, it doesn't make any sense. Like it feels like a giant waste of time.

Kyle Mountsier  36:37  
Jeff, can you give us just as we wrap up here, can you give us like one thing that has been an actionable takeaway in let's say, the last 60 days, from being able to visualize your data, like something that you saw that then you were able to immediately turn and go, we're gonna take action on this, because I'm able to see this real time?

Jeff Ramsey  36:57  
Sure. So we, I work directly with our stores, general managers, my, my having the experience I have in advertising and sales, some things naturally click in my head, where I say this is the correct decision to make. To visually show that to general managers to make them understand that at the end of the year, we spent eight figures on advertising. And here's why. One is social media advertising advertising, that doesn't directly create a lead, when, when through this UDP that I can go in and actually show them a customer's buying journey, I can show them where the customer has returned to the site 10 times, and it took them maybe a vendor brought them to the site. But Facebook brought them back 10 times or four eyes, email software, brought them back and helps justify why we're paying for these vendors and not just paying for leads. So within that system, you can pull up a solid customer and see the entire click journey. What brought them back, you know, having that visual to show GMs I think empowers the store to understand where the money is going and make better decisions.

David Steinberg  38:09  
And I'll say I got a call right before this from one of our dealer groups who said, they were like, look, we're using the the data more drill it in more. And one of the things we're finding is that our definition of success on the sales level, like we were punishing Paul, because he only sold 10 cars, and we thought he should have sold more. But we weren't looking at the quality of the leads he was getting. And so we realized that Paul was actually doing great considering the quality of leads he was getting, we just need to give him more better leads. And so we're seeing a lot. And that's been happening with a labor what's going on with the labor and I'm just going like this. And so a lot of those, like, our idea of what success is, you know, like our job is to keep our people and make them really efficient, effective for our business. And the way we're gonna do that is good access to data.

Paul Daly  38:58  
Well, David, there's a special offer for people that are on this webinar or watch it a little bit later. What is the offer?

David Steinberg  39:06  
What is it? I don't even know should I know this? Gosh, I mean, your

Kyle Mountsier  39:11  
your team has done the wonderful of giving your platform away for a year. I mean, sorry.

Paul Daly  39:16  
60 days, whatever, we want it now.

Jeff Ramsey  39:21  
Okay, no, yeah, no.

David Steinberg  39:25  
My team is gonna kill me for not knowing that. But But yeah, so So 60 day free trial. Yeah, great.

Paul Daly  39:32  
The how easy. How easy is it to actually get set up on that on the free trial?

David Steinberg  39:36  
Well, so our free trials are we've been doing it for a long time. And it's great because it's put our money where our mouth is it's no strings attached. It's not an auto enroll. It's 60 days and we sign you up and then we check in with you and we do it and you know what, we convert a really high amount because we prove that its value and what people see like we hear all the time the line for is just works. Yeah. And that's because we spend So much time making sure the data is correct. Right? We spend so much time actually getting the right data.

Paul Daly  40:05  
Gotta love that nothing is more automotive than try before you buy. David. Jeff, thank you so much for spending some time with us and talking about this incredibly important issue that probably doesn't get talked about enough but the volume and the intensity is getting louder. So thanks for joining us today to talk about

David Steinberg  40:23  
thank you guys. You're the best keep keep on keepin on and we'll we'll talk to you soon.

Kyle Mountsier  40:27  
Cell memory bring us home.

Ann-Marie Johnson  40:31  
Hey, everyone, hope you enjoyed that. I sure did. We'd love working with Dave and chatting with him and Jeff's insights are always fantastic too. So thank you so much for joining us. We will have another webinar coming up next month but if you or anyone you know missed this one, I guess not you because you're here, but if you want to share this pass it along. That email will be coming out on Friday and don't forget about the 60 day free trial. Thanks again. Bye everyone.