99 Corollas, Plinko and More, Car Insurance Through The Roof, Live From Amplify 24

Unknown: 0:00Music.

‍Paul J Daly: 0:07

Tuesday, August 20. Wheels up. We're all over the country right now. But before that, I get to host the show with the one and only Jordan Cox, and we're gonna beam Kyle in from DC area somewhere.

Jordan Cox: 0:20

Look at that happy tuesday

Paul J Daly: 0:23

soda team is spread apart one side of the on that one side, kind of like up north side of the Coast, East Coast, top, bottom, all the places in between. You know, it's been kind of cooler in New York to start the week. It actually got to 50, like 50 degrees last night in upstate New York. Wow, that's nice. I know it messed like the whole internal climate thing up, but then I don't mind it. They're my favorite kind of that's my favorite weather when it's like hoodie at night time into the morning, right? And then, you know, Kyle and I, and Nathan, actually, by the end of today, we'll all be together in Miami, where it is not 50 degrees, yeah? That's right,

Jordan Cox: 1:04

it'll be like the exact opposite. But, you know, that's like marshmallow weather. So the other night, because it got cooler, my daughter wanted to make marshmallows, so we did that, which is, like the perfect weather for that.

Paul J Daly: 1:13

It is because you're not freezing, yeah, you're not freezing, but you're also not dying when you're standing next to a fire. Yeah? Well, Marshmallow weather is this? Mean, like, fire outside, yeah,

Jordan Cox: 1:24

yeah. We got like, a little fire pit thing. It's like tiny, so it's not like, huge. I

Paul J Daly: 1:28

mean, you know that company solo that makes those, like, stainless steel ones,

Unknown: 1:31

oh yeah,

Paul J Daly: 1:32

they have, they have, like, a desktop version now that, I mean, it's probably like, like six, seven inches in diameter. And you can just use, like, little twigs and stuff and like, explore that one. I can't I can see you. But today we're talking about $99 Corollas Plinko car insurance going through the roof. We're bringing in Kyle live from amplify in just a couple of minutes here. And yeah, we're trying to bring you a little feel from what's going on around the industry. We did release a new auto collabs episode, changing the culture through an employee stock ownership plan, aka and ESOP with Bethany sobjack corporate HR director for Fitzgerald Auto Mall, the ESOP conversation is growing, and you're seeing more and more people lean that way. So it's more than just Liza. Folks, more than just Liza. So you can search auto auto collabs, a, U, T, O, C, O, L, L, A, B, s, and then this week, like we mentioned, we are going to be on the ground at the name Ed annual meeting in Miami. Thank you to our event sponsor, TrueCar, or TrueCar, plus TrueCar, plus the new kind of offering from them. Our friend Matt Jones is leading up that product, and we're going to be on the ground in name ad, bringing you the best and brightest from that event. If you've never gotten to go, go, you're missing out. And we're going to bring you right to the front with some live coverage. Thank you so much to our friends at TrueCar who are helping us make that possible. Have you? You've never been to name, and maybe next year's your year. I

Jordan Cox: 2:55

think, I think next year is going to be the year Paul. There's so much that goes on there, like the the community built around name ad. I know that woke can does their annual lunch into there's just so many great opportunities for people. We may

Paul J Daly: 3:07

or may not have ordered special love people more than you love car shirts, prints that have that say woken instead of so do that's cool. So, and here's the deal, it's Tuesday. They're supposed to be delivered Tuesday, and if I can make them before I have to leave, then maybe we'll have them in person there. We'll see Yeah, but we'll have them. We'll have them either way, either way. But

Jordan Cox: 3:28

works out,

Paul J Daly: 3:29

I know me too. All right, let's get into some news. So we've been talking this dealer group has been in the, I don't know, the social sphere for a while. I'm not saying this because you went and did a vlog there, but Bob Robert, Toyota, Lafayette, Indiana, is shaking up car sales with a create some creative and fun promotions that attract customers and boost employee morale. This was an automotive news Zach kinchwarman, Toyota's GM, has created a marketing campaign for customers to engage in fun activities like dunk tanks, mechanical bull rides, watch it, sign the waiver and Plinko for discounts and prizes. Basically, some of these events, like offering a $99 Corolla during Black Friday, have led they track it to significant sales increases, with one event selling 34 vehicles in a day. So basically, an engaging atmosphere is helping employee retention doubling the average tenure of sales staff. Get this talk about an ROI 3.1 years to 6.6 years. That's more than double if you're doing the math. Event videos get shared on social. Some videos reach over a million views. Zach says, quote, buying a car shouldn't have to be miserable. And I think he's right. And you had some time. You were able to spend some time with him on the ground at the store, when you were saying, like, this point, go board. It's big, but is it a scam?

Jordan Cox: 4:48

That's right. Well, he's done a lot of great things, and so many of these creative marketing campaigns that they do come from his awesome mind. And I know you just talked about tenure, but I think it also has to do with Zach as a. Pm, at that store, because he's just such a great, solid, consistent leader. We featured him in a few areas between, like in the dirt breakout episodes. We did have a vlog with him recently. He was even on the wheelhouse he's in Peter near, sorry.

Paul J Daly: 5:16

Can you bring that? Could you hand that to me? I have a live update on this. Oh,

Jordan Cox: 5:20

man alive. Thank

Paul J Daly: 5:21

you. Thank you so much. It's here. Look at this. UPS Express, hold on. I hate to I mean, he's you gotta do this, and handed this out, but I was like, I think you gotta do it right here on the show folks, this when you get ups Express, next day air the whole thing, they actually show up early.

Jordan Cox: 5:41

That was some good foreshadowing. Paul, I

Paul J Daly: 5:43

did not plan. Oh, that's so cool. Yep, we got low woke and logo on the bottom, it's hard to see on the camera in woke yellow, all right, it's gonna happen. They're gonna be on site now. Okay, so you were saying it comes from the mind

Jordan Cox: 5:56

of Zach. It just comes from the mind of Zach, and he's just such a great leader. He loves his team. He believes in his team, and he empowers them. One of my favorite stories is about a guy that he had working for Logan. And Logan was in sales. He was struggling in that, but Zach believed in him, so we moved him to the service department. And I kid you not, Logan went to Zach and said, Zach, I really like working for you. I really appreciate everything you've done for me. But just so you know, this is not working out. I'm not good at this. There's just so many other things that I could be good at, but this is not one of them. And what Zach did was, well, let's try one more thing. So he actually created this new role for Logan that includes a lot of their social media and doing that event outreach like that. So, like, literally, Zach created this new role for Logan because he believed him in that much. And that just goes to show you how great leaders find the right spot for the right person.

Paul J Daly: 6:50

Man, I love that story. I love that story. How many stories like that are buried that we never hear about exactly, like legitimately, but obviously, this is not just about Zach the rohrman family, thinking of giving your leaders the runway to be able to do things like this? Yes, that's right. And they're, they're very quick, like, Zach's very quick to be like, Well, let's not leave all the credit here. The only reason I'm even free to do this is because I'm encouraged to do so and mentored to do so from the voormann family. So, yeah, that's right. I think it's just another example. And I love these stories are getting closer to the surface of conversation in the industry. I think we need more of it, like everyone's not going to build a giant Plinko board. But that doesn't mean there isn't one or two meaningful changes that you can make, because it's fine. And it's easy to say, well, this campaign, we believe, sold this many cars, right? That's easy, but what is the ROI of your staff, staying twice as long. What is that ROI? Yeah, it's unbelievable. Speaking of ROI or opposite? Oh, man, we're going backwards on this one. Auto insurance rates have risen. Get this 15% just in the first half of 2024, to an average annual premium of man, $2,329 on average, with predictions indicating that that 15% that we've seen in the first six months is going to make it to 22% by the end of year. Maryland has the highest average rate at 3400 3400 while New Hampshire is the lowest at 1000 it's like live free or die, right? It's New Hampshire low car insurance or die. States like California, Missouri, Minnesota, could see increases this year, buckle up 50% or more. Basically, repair costs, particularly for vehicles that have all these advanced driver features, are expensive. Repairs are 38% more than they were five years ago. Rising rates, basically higher underwriting losses, right? More total losses. Because repairs are expensive. Vehicle costs are growing, severe weather events, they're crediting for higher rates, additional factors, older vehicles, legislative change. They're just putting every excuse out there. It's not us, it's you, is really what they're saying. Here's a quote from Betsy Stella, VP of carrier management, management at insurify, says, as we experience tornadoes, hey, all the flooding places that weren't necessarily a threat before, the increased frequency and severity of events will need to be considered in pricing. I mean, it feels like it's all our fault. Yeah,

Jordan Cox: 9:22

it's not their fault. Well, the other thing they didn't bring up was the timeline to get some of those things fixed, because they're a little bit more advanced. They don't normally like, Yeah, I know this is like, a generalization, but a lot of those parts won't be stocked locally, so like, lead time actually creating those parts like, it takes exactly, it takes a lot longer to get a car fixed now than it used to. So I can only imagine, too, that that only adds to the cost, whether it's like storage or whether it's rental cars rent, rental Exactly? Yeah, they like just a downtime. Insurance companies like

Paul J Daly: 9:55

to move things through the books. Don't like things hanging out, so I'm sure that's worked into the actuary. I worked into the thing. So I wonder how you know the flip side of it, and I'm no actuary, trust me, spreadsheets and I just don't get along. But you have to think with all of the advanced driving capabilities that a lot of standard cars have now, the fact that every car has a backup camera, mandatory. You would think that those things offset losses quite a bit

Jordan Cox: 10:28

well. You would think, just look at Tesla's stats. If you look at Million Mile accidents exactly, and at one accident for how many million miles driven like it's it's nuts, or, I'm sorry, deaths and accidents related to that. It just goes to show how their automated, their automated features, their safety features, all that, yeah, really does create a safer environment because they are sometimes two or 3x of other manufacturers of vehicles. It's nuts,

Paul J Daly: 10:55

you know? And when you start to think about, I don't know, this is turning into an expose, but, but if you think of the expense related to an accident or people get injured, people could die. That's right, way more expensive than replacing a car, exactly like way lower, hundreds of 1000s, millions of dollars, lawsuits, all of those are the things that are removed when you have advanced driving capabilities and they're no longer accidents. So you'd think, like the fires and the floods. I mean, I guess a lot more vehicles are involved in that. I don't know. What do we know? We just, we don't, we don't make the news. We just report it. Yeah, but that's what's going on with car insurance. Everybody's feeling it. And again, it's just another part of the affordability conversation that's happening in showrooms all across the country. As consumers are saying, Can I avoid afford this vehicle or not. In the end, it all washes out in in the showroom when you're trying to pencil a deal. So dealers having to deal with this and maybe get creative around how you can help consumers with a little bump into helping them pay for their insurance. I don't know, but we get to do a fun thing right now is, I think he's there. We have Kyle standing by with Greg uland, the CMO of Reynolds become a great friend of asotu, and they're on site just outside Dulles Airport. I can't remember what the resort is called, but it's a beautiful place, and they're in it. I'm going to be in there later today, but let's bring in Kyle and Greg see how this works.

Kyle Mountsier: 12:18

Thanks, Paul. I am standing here with Greg Yulin CMO of Reynolds ray, ray, the paper company turned technology company, right? We keep going back to that often, but we're here outside of the beautiful Lansdowne resort or inside the beautiful resort here for amplify. We're on day two. Yesterday was full of golf. You and I, you know, struggled a little bit, but tell me what you're excited about today, both with not just the dealer in actions, but also the things that are going to be talked about throughout the content and the releases and what's going to happen. Yeah.

Greg Uland: 12:52

So three big things really excited about. First one we have, TSD here. TSD is our most recent acquisition. We announced that a couple weeks ago, huge in the rental car space, huge in the fleet management space inside a dealership. So really positive reactions from that, from the group here on that company. I'm excited to see where that goes for us. It's gonna be really fun. So that's a big one for us. Another big one for us. We announced that we rolled recontract and autovision together. So if you remember, those were a couple of acquisitions we've made over the last couple of years. Recontract for reconditioning and autovision for used vehicle management. So there are a lot of synergies, and we rolled those into one platform, so reconvision is now a part of autovision as reconvision versus recontract. So really excited about that. And a big one that we launched this you know, today this week, is spark AI. So spark AI is our AI data layer that we're building all of our AI tools on top of. So as you know, I mean, there's a million AI tools out there, inside of automotive, outside of automotive, but they all operate in silos, it seems like, and it's like going back to the future where everything's built, kind of purpose built, and operates independently of one another. By launching spark AI, we've kind of unified this data layer to allow all the tools to leverage each other's information. So some really cool stuff is coming out of that.

Kyle Mountsier: 14:05

Yeah, I think the attraction of some of the big, bigger companies in auto making these acquisitions is the future state of integrated data and its ability to all talk to each other, learn from each other, understand each other, and the dealer to have a central source of truth for their business operations. You know, this is the second year of amplify, and I love to hear like the team's vision going back a couple years when you said, hey, look, we're gonna actually put out an event that's, that's rental client, but also exterior is specific, to invite in and draw together people to talk about similar things. What was the vision for that? And then maybe, where are you hoping to see it grow over the next couple years?

Greg Uland: 14:42

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, we don't get together enough, it feels like we're always traveling, right? And it feels like we're always doing stuff. But when you take a step back and you look at it, there's really just a handful of larger events throughout the course of the year. Not that we need one every month, but it felt like, you know, we would kind of go nada, and then there's these little blips here and there, right? And we'd have a lot. Smaller conferences that we go to, or a lot of smaller meetings that we go to, and everybody sort of dissipates. So having another one at some point throughout the year was really important to us to be able to bring everybody together. Have that same energy. You guys do it with a soda con, right? You bring everybody together, you get that energy. And it matters. It makes a difference. Because coming out of these types of things, everybody's energized. Everybody gets more done. Everybody creates new things, more value across the board, right inside the dealership, outside the dealership. So it's, it's a ton of fun, and that's what we're excited about.

Kyle Mountsier: 15:28

That's awesome. Well, today, Paul and I are going to get into a little bit of trouble judging the automotive amplifiers contest. I'm really excited about it. Could it puts a full highlight on what dealers are doing in and around their businesses to excel with their employees and with their customers, both inside and outside. I appreciate you guys inviting us excited about the day, but for now, back to you. Paul,

Paul J Daly: 15:50

okay, Jordan, answer me one question, does Kyle look more muscular on camera? I don't know you're laughing, but I can't hear you. Are you muted? He's laughing. That was either that or he's been working out. Yeah, he's pretty beefy, right? Maybe it's a little

Jordan Cox: 16:08

bit of both, but he's right. He looks pretty muscular in person, really? Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 16:12

next, next is arm wrestling. Is going to be the next competition on more than cars. Yeah, I got to win one. I don't know that. I don't know I have to figure out something I can win at. So one thing I definitely wouldn't have won at is golf, which is, I'm glad that Greg and Kyle were out there golfing today, and I'm bringing up the rear, but Kyle and I are going to get in some trouble later today judging this competition. I already told Kyle, I'm like, you're going to be the Simon Cowell, right? You can say the hard truths, and I'll be like, Blake Shelton, right? Like, I just, I just want to support everybody. Good cop, bad cop. I love it. Well, look, if you're going to be at the Reynolds event, please make sure you come and say hi tonight. We're going to be at the name ad conference. Be there for the next few days if you're a name Ed, please come and say hi. Make sure you tune into the morning show for our coverage of the show. Thanks to our friends at TrueCar. You

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