Engaging the Hispanic Consumer & Understanding the State of the Market

John Duran: 0:00

If you want to increase yourself in 30% just start building a team for the Latino community.

‍Ashley Cavazos: 0:07

I don't understand why we're still talking about this blend of service and sales when it's been 10 plus years that we've been working on doing this and we're still talking about how we need to blend these two departments together.

Daniel Govaer: 0:25

Welcome back, everybody to another episode of the wheelhouse, and this first part of this episode is one that has been a long time coming. I've been really looking forward to doing this. Incidentally, it coincides with Hispanic Heritage Month, but we are primarily going to be diving into all of the hot takes and things that we are missing or never even had a clue about with in regards to Hispanic marketing. So let me introduce the panel to you guys today. Ashley Cavazos, the marketing director at the de montre on the Auto Group, and as marketing director there, she's been an absolute trailblazer in digital transformation and AI driven strategies. She's a 2022 Automotive News 40 under 40 honoree and her expertise and customer experience and operational strategy definitely sets her apart. And she's also a VP of women of color at the women of color automotive network. She's definitely a driving force for diversity and innovation in the industry. One of my favorite people to run into at asotu con, Ashley Cavazos, John Duran, a bilingual relationship director, I believe that's the title at Beaver Toyota of company Georgia, with 18 years of service in Georgia's automotive industry, John leads a bilingual relations team at Beaver Toyota, delivering empathy and understanding to both customers and colleagues. He's a retired military veteran and Maxwell leadership certified trainer. He's passionate about empowering future leaders and recognized as one of Georgia's 50 most influential in 2022 it doesn't say influential what it just says most influential in 2022 and a seven time Toyota pro dedicated to serving in the Latino community and fostering some bilingual talent, which we'll talk about also chance Mayfield, founder and CEO at car fluent. Founder and CEO and Chase is definitely somebody who leads with tenacity and authenticity, driving innovation in the automotive space. With over a decade of experience across sales and digital marketing roles, it's built to balance, built reputation for balancing business success with customer satisfaction, and we're glad to have him here today and also hear a little bit about what carfluent does. Luis Delgado, co founder at Altura automotive, carved out a niche and really helping dealers tap into the Hispanic market, which we're hoping to talk about why that's a key to future success in the automotive industry. His background is in automotive finance and a passion for innovation. Luz travels the country, delivering proven strategies for growth. His commitment to reshaping automotive marketing continues to drive Altura success in an evolving marketplace that was you can all thank Jordan Cox for that. All those glowing introductions were much given to any of you guys, and then disclaimer that the views and opinions shared here, they're just like test drives. They're 100% personal, and they're not reflective of the dealership, the brand or the company. So please don't write angry letters to their companies. But we want a space here where we can all have an opportunity to talk freely. So let's get into some Hispanic marketing kind of really talk about why this isn't something that's talked about more even, and what's slipping through the cracks. And, you know, obviously, just in general, I'll just say this part that lo siento Nova Espanol con fluid, is it sort of so in your taki construm para hacia esta programa. And that was the best that I could do to explain to you guys why I'm just the schmuck that they got to do this part of the show, but in general, like, I apologize for that wholeheartedly. Let me just go around the horn here, right? And let me get a hot take, really, on why Hispanic marketing is a specific thing and why it matters. I'll give you guys each 15 seconds to hit us with some booms here and Luis. We'll go ahead and start with

Luis Delgado: 3:44

you. I'm ready, baby. Check this out. Based on the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, next year, 25% of all car sales in the United States are going to be done by Hispanics. In other words, if your dealer is not selling 25% of the cars to Hispanics, they're buying from somebody

Daniel Govaer: 4:03

else. Facts, all right, Ashley, 15 seconds on the clock for you.

Ashley Cavazos: 4:08

Well, on top of what Louise said, we are also usually buying multiple vehicles, and we are huge at referring our family and our friends to it. So we have to make sure that we're speaking to one of the fastest growing demographics in the United States,

Daniel Govaer: 4:21

awesome and done within the 15 seconds. All right, John, 15 seconds on the clock for

John Duran: 4:28

you. Well, out of 360,000 million people live in us. We are 20% 20% are Latinos, living, living in us. We are making money, and we love to spend the money. We don't keep the money. We spend money by we buy cars, we buy houses, we buy a lot of things. Chance

Unknown: 4:47

15 seconds

Daniel Govaer: 4:49

on the clock for you,

Chance Mayfield: 4:51

echoing what John said, buying power increasing, right? And we see great intent within Web leads from Spanish to be. When they reach out to dealers and they convert, great man. So let's all get in on this thing. Boom,

Daniel Govaer: 5:07

under 15 seconds. All right, no, no extra credit for that. We used to award points on it, though, but then we realized that, like, I'm too scatterbrained to keep track of them, so we don't do that anymore. All right, guys, let's let me. Let me start with some questions here in general, right? What? Why Does anybody understand? Why? Why aren't more dealers advertising in in markets where they think that maybe they don't have a Hispanic population? Why is this not more of an industry standard? Why is Hispanic marketing not an industry standard? Yet?

Luis Delgado: 5:35

I think it's because it's hard. It's not a low it's a low hanging fruit, but it's sort of like a, one of the like, like an, I want to say ugly low hanging fruit, but it's just a low hanging fruit that not everybody, that a lot of people, want to get it, but they don't, because they turn on ads, and then they start getting leads, and then it takes work to follow up with the to build a relationship. So they just don't do it. So it's easy, a lot easier, to continue doing what they're already doing.

Ashley Cavazos: 6:00

I think it also has to do with the knowledge of how to even untap that market. You know, maybe they don't have internally. I mean, if you look at exactly for the reason why we have woken right, we look at what women of color are automotive network in the automotive industry. Look at men in the industry. You know, what percentage of your employees are representing that demographic, and do you have anybody that you can use as a resource? And on top of it, as somebody who is a marketer, it's also a separate budget. So when you're trying to keep your dollars tight, right, and you're trying to figure out, where do I allocate these dollars now, I've got to make a separate budget for, you know, marketing, my my Hispanic customers as well. Or do I you know, that's the question, yeah,

John Duran: 6:42

one other thing that we we have to keep in mind is we have to be intentional. If we don't, if we got the budget for advertising for Latino community, but we don't have a team together that is going to be receiving the customers and taking care of the customer, we are basically wasting money, and that's probably the reason why people are doing I'm just like leaving that aside because they're not having the intention to put a team together to help the community. It's just like, if you do, if you are a tier one or tier two dealership, and you decide to spend money on credit challenge campaign, and you don't have good relationship with with secondary banks, you're just basically wasting the money. Same thing happened with Latino community. You don't have a team in place ready to receive the community. And we got one or two Garcia in the store that they don't speak the language is just basically, I'm going to jump

Chance Mayfield: 7:41

in here and say, tech limitations. Man, on top of what Luis said, because it is hard, right? Due to those tech limitations, we've got to think through, what are we missing, right? Where are the friction points? And it's unusual, where it happens with Spanish speakers versus English speakers? Man, we just set it, you know what? I mean? It automatically does its thing, right? We meet at the end of the month and talk about analytics. But you can't get analytics if you're driving somebody somewhere, they can't really read or engage. You know what I mean? So I, you know, tech limitations and really just spending time workshopping it, actually thinking through it, and, you know, putting themselves in these shoes, you know, in Spanish speakers shoes, right? And understanding what they're actually being presented through advertising, right? And what's also being presented in terms of merchandising inventory, right? It's, it's difficult to figure that stuff out with data driven platforms that, you know, the data is all in English, right? So, yeah, those,

Daniel Govaer: 8:39

yeah. So, moving, I mean moving then really, to the next thing I wanted to ask is, what are we, you know? What are dealers missing in their marketing efforts, you know, towards Hispanic or actually even, what are some of the biggest misconceptions, you know, and even just from a couple, like a little play devil's advocate, right? So it's like what, you know, Hispanic shoppers don't go on auto trader. They don't go on CarGurus. You know. Why do I need to do something special? What other things, you know? What are the other sort of biggest missteps?

Ashley Cavazos: 9:05

I think one, and this, you know, I'm Hispanic. I I can understand Spanish. I can't speak Spanish, right? And sometimes it's not even just having that Spanish language ad, but having your ads show people that look like the consumer, show me people that look like me on in your ads or in your showroom floor. I think a lot of times I think we have to have a separate English and a Spanish. And I do agree we do need Spanish speaking ads. But it's not always that complicated. Even if you just had some diversity in your in your ads, then you might see a lift in in that target area as well.

Luis Delgado: 9:44

Think the in what Ashley mentioned, we're really what we're all talking about, but essentially treating the community, the Hispanic community, almost like a different like with a different bucket, right? Is not, it's not like we have to, we have to embrace you. Whatsapp. We have to embrace like tools, like chance tools, that translates a website into the inventory, right? We have to embrace just new ways to approach it even, I believe, even to the level that even creating a different CRM that is specifically for the Hispanic market. I think tech, tech limitations might be, might be, uh, one of the things I think

Chance Mayfield: 10:26

you can't treat it the same, though, right? Like that much is, is very you know, dealers market different messages to Spanish speakers than they do English speakers, right? And like, one thing Ashley's saying, if we could put a face, right? I mean, we built a staff module on our homepage for this specific reason, right? I mean, in it, there's more engagement on the homepage now because of that, right? When they see a face name and some type of contact info, right? So, yeah, can't treat it the same. If you do, you're not gonna, you're not gonna be happy with it, because it's not the same, right? I mean, English speakers, we can go through this whole process, no, no sweat, man, you know what I mean. But if we're not aware of that, and staying aware of like those friction points or the fragmentation, it's not going to work as well, right? Or that's the perception anyway, that that this is a group of consumers that may not be worth as much investment as others, but that's untrue if we're actually connecting all the dots right for the experience for the consumer?

Ashley Cavazos: 11:23

Well, and John had a great point earlier when he mentioned, you know, don't like, you're gonna have Garcia's on the showroom floor. Make sure that they can speak Spanish too. But you know, don't put those ads out there if you don't have somebody that is able to help, and not just in one person in the whole dealership. Like, do you have somebody in service of your advisors? Do you have a parts counter person? Do you have a salesperson? You don't want to exhaust the person as having, you know, my my husband, was usually somebody that people look to, and he worked in parts, or you'd work in a different department, but they're like, Hey, you speak Spanish. Can you come help? You know, over here, and you don't want that person running all over your dealership, being in that that translator for your customers. So just making sure that you're thinking about that, if you're gonna target to your Hispanic market, make sure that you're equipped for it before, from a tech space, and, you know, a translation space as well. And maybe it's not the customer themselves. Maybe they're bringing their parents, and they want to be able to, you know, help explain that to their parents, and you can relate to them as well. One

John Duran: 12:22

of the other thing that we have to keep in mind is Latinos. We 80% of Latinos to speak Spanish at home. So when you, when you hear the language in a place where you want to spend your money, that makes it a little bit more familiar, and you, you're just going to be more comfortable making that kind of decision. Number one. Number two, we, we want to. We refer customers. We are the one who's gonna say, hey, go ahead and see Louis and beaver Toyota. Lewis is great. He's gonna help you. He's gonna just tell him that this is my friend. It's me, amigo. He's gonna help you buy a car. So that creates a relationship. And for that kind of thing, you have to be intentional again. You have to have the vehicles for the community. We don't buy the same kind of cars. We love trucks. We like big truck. We like that. So if you don't, I mean, there are just a lot of accommodation that you have to do in your dealership. And part of the what happened to beaverter was that I sit down with Patrick before I saw I started consulting with him. I said, well, listen, this is what, what it's going to take we make we need a bank that's going to help us with tax IDs, financing vehicles, number one, number two, we may need. He said, he asked me, John, send me the list of the inventory, the vehicle that I have to add to my inventory. Then how many people that we're going to have in a sales team? And can we have someone on finance? Can we have Yes, and we create a whole, the whole building, 50% of the dealership now speaking Spanish. We got people in service. We got people in finance. We get people in South parts, every single department. So out of the 250 people working at the dealership, 50% of the stores. And I think, and

Daniel Govaer: 14:11

I think there's a couple of good, good points there. I mean, one is, I mean, you know, even when I was a salesperson, I always was taught like, make sure you're the guy when you know somebody buys a car from you, you want them to be talking about you to their friends and their family, like you're their guy, and that they feel comfortable sending you along. But in the in the Hispanic community, though, then there's, there's a lot more of like the go see my guy. And I think talking about staffing in the dealership is really important, right? Like a bilingual finance manager, a bilingual service manager or advisor, like these things are helpful. But I'll also say this to listeners, if you're not in charge of the whole dealership operation, it very much can be you, right? Who's the go to person at your dealership? So there is some, some like ground level marketing that you could do for yourself to differentiate yourself and tap into that community. What? Let's just talk about first steps, like brass tax, the first I don't do my deals. We don't do Hispanic marketing. What's the. First thing I should do, right? Like, I would think maybe we want to ask my marketing company for demographic study so I can get the demographics on what I've got in my area. But what do you guys suggest is sort of like the first step, if somebody wants to take

Luis Delgado: 15:13

action, I'd like to bring up a point. And this, this topic actually comes back to what Ashley mentioned, and what John said. Ashley mentioned, yeah, we gotta staff ourselves. So to all the dealers that are like, Oh my gosh, I gotta staff. I gotta get people. Guys, there's no shortage of Hispanics. Like, literally, there's no shortage of Hispanics. And you'd be surprised how many of those of that population has no idea that the automotive industry can change their life. They have no idea. They're in waiters, they're in retail. They're, you know. So I think the first step is actually just going to restaurants, seeing the people that are the busiest, the ones that are, you know, the most, the most awakened when it comes to service. And, you know, bring them in, recruit them. I think that's, that's the first step. Just start recruiting people, getting to the marketplace, and get them involved, into the automotive space, because it could literally change their mind. And I guess the first step is changing that mentality of, I got a staff to, hey, there's that one Hispanic out there that's going to help me make 50% of my store bilingual. And when John, you know, when John brings that stat, like 50% of the staff is by a lot of dealers might be like, Wow, 50% Wow. And it comes back to the point there's no shortage,

John Duran: 16:31

okay. The funny thing about the 50% of the people who speak in Spanish is that that 50% is also going to be able to take care of your English speaker customer as well. So you got you're winning on both sides. There's something that we're working together with Louis is we believe on self motivated and sell customer generate people, meaning that if we are working on training bilingual people to generate their own traffic, so advertising for the whole store is probably going to be expensive, but if you as a salesperson, start creating your I mean having your own self sufficient advertising, yeah, so Well,

Daniel Govaer: 17:13

I'm just asking. So it's like, so going back to, like, with my experience talking to one website provider for a dealership was, you know, basically like, use Google Translate and translate your website. Is that? Is that the first step, or is that just a really bad idea?

Chance Mayfield: 17:26

No, it's a horrible idea. Horrible idea. Let's set the record straight, right? Google Translate is a the web widget is not supported by Google anymore. Guys, Google Translate does still exist, okay, but the website widget that you see on a website is unsupported, and has been for five years now, since 2019 right? And people don't trust it, you know what I mean? So, for the love of God, just stop using Google Translate for real. And I was just gonna say in terms of staffing, you know, I'll brag. I brag on Beaver Toyota often, right? Caitlyn, specifically, the receptionist up there, or a, you know, a receptionist up there. Caitlyn and many others, beaver Toyota's calls have this great way of transitioning from English to Spanish. Man, you know, it just, they can, you know, immediately, right? And it makes that entire conversation just so, I mean, it's, it's insane, the difference it makes when a receptionist can speak in Spanish to the person on the other end of the phone, man, you know, we hear people hanging up on phone prompts that don't mention Spanish. You know, we hear people hanging up as soon as it's a, you know, English speaker, right on receptionist then doesn't understand what they're you know, what's being said? It just, receptionist is such a critical touch point. And we got other stuff to focus on as dealers as well. But like that, handoff, man, I'm telling you, beaver is, you know, one of the best in the best at it. How

Daniel Govaer: 18:56

do I get a Spanish website? Do I get a spin? Do I need to get a Spanish website? Do I have Spanish page? What if,

Chance Mayfield: 19:01

I mean, yeah, look at the opportunity is different per per market. You know, it's gonna be case by case, man, you know, but we're, we're in this account, this attention economy right now, where we're battling dealers. You know what I mean for for consumer attention come by from us, and there's this huge group of consumers with the same needs in terms of automotive right? And more and more buying power, you know what I mean, just year after year. So hell yeah, you need a Spanish website, bro. You know what I mean, and that's just the deal. If we're trying to grow our customer base, it's the second largest group of consumers in the country. Let's start there first, right? So, yeah, you need one, right? Like, if I have

Daniel Govaer: 19:43

a marketing director that I'm going to say, like, I need another website, and it's got to be in Spanish, the marketing director is going to hit me over the head with something and saying, like, No, you're not going to take away relevance from our main site and have, like, another site that's in Spanish. What? What? What's

Chance Mayfield: 19:55

the right answer there?

John Duran: 19:56

I mean it, you know, you need a new directory. You need an open minded. Director, that's what you need, yeah, right.

Luis Delgado: 20:05

If they're losing, like, SEO traction because of a Spanish website, you're missing the whole

Chance Mayfield: 20:09

point. You know, that's, you know, very, very cart before the horse, right? You know what I mean, like, we're, who cares if we lose some, lose some of that presence, right? We can gain some of that back over time. All right, that's how SEO works, you know. And we've got to commit to, we can't half ass sell, you know, sell, sell, sell more cards to Spanish speakers, right? Like, if we're going to do it, we got to do it appropriately. It's 2024, we should be able to allow a Spanish speaker to engage with inventory online the same way anybody else can, right? So, if you've got a presence there in your market, Mr. Dealer, Yes, seriously, consider it, man, you know, because I'll kind of toot our own horn here, right? Like, I feel like we built this thing in a way where it's as hands off as possible, because websites are hard, you know what? I mean? You got to have a strategy. You got to think through it, you know? You got to commit time to it. But if you do with car fluent or any other you know any other option you may have there, there is a payoff, man, you know, there really is. What

Ashley Cavazos: 21:11

I was going to mention earlier too, is like, we also have to make sure we're getting involved in our community, like we were talking about digital ways to get in front of the customer. But what are you doing to get involved with that community, because it is a very face to face relationship interaction. So yes, go out and find your employees and and see who you can recruit into helping on that side of the business, but also make sure these customers know how to find you, that you exist, that you have people, because it's just going to take a few people to spread that word like wildfire, and they're going to be like, Oh, make sure you go visit de Mont because they've got half of their staff that speaks Spanish, and they've got people

Daniel Govaer: 21:50

ready to help you. But don't I need something on my website, though, you do, you

Ashley Cavazos: 21:54

do. But you want to make sure that you're ready on on both sides. No, it's not a one or the other, right? You have to make sure that you're, you're touching that part of the life cycle as well. And a lot of times we gravitate, and I'm, I'm very much in the like, it's a digital world, but I do know, when it comes to that community, what are we doing to get in front of them? And I am thinking of, you know, looking at Radio, because we still have a lot of the Hispanic community, you know, listen to regular radio. So are you getting in front of the Spanish radio stations all

Daniel Govaer: 22:27

day? Yeah, I know. I know listener stats from different parts of the country show just an amazing amount of usage from radio and connected radio on the on the Spanish channels. And as somebody

Ashley Cavazos: 22:37

whose family owns Spanish radio stations, I can speak for a fact that it is a very thriving market. You know, we have the largest Spanish radio station in San Antonio, and if you go look at their Facebook page, it is crazy how people connect with them. So also,

Daniel Govaer: 22:52

then, right? It's not like, I can't just take I have a good ad, and I'm just going to translate it into Spanish and then just use that ad that whether it's TV, radio, or static media like it should. It does need to look and read and sound different than just your your English counterpart to that is that, would that be a fair statement? Absolutely. Tell me a little bit about language, right? Because we're talking about, you know, the most spoken language on Earth. I think, certainly not everyone speaks the same variety. What's, what are, what are the things that, what are the pitfalls to look out for? What's the best way to do that wonderful

John Duran: 23:25

thing about languages? Latinos, we are diverse. When we get the census, we get we are white, Latinos, black, Latinos, Asian, Latinos. That's part of the question that they ask. Are you Hispanic? White, Hispanic, Black, Hispanic. So diversity, but we all speak the same language. Yeah, different terminology, and that makes a little bit of a difference, but it's nothing crazy, but the language plays a good, good, good. It's really important, just because, just to give you an idea, people are coming from, we are located on coming Georgia, but people are coming from Alabama, from tennis everywhere, from South Carolina and North Carolina, Florida to Beaverton, just to purchase a vehicle, because they know that they're going to be serving their own language. And just to give you an idea, by 2020, 51, out of three people in us is going to speak Spanish? Yeah, just to give you an idea,

Luis Delgado: 24:26

I'd like to point something out. What John said, he said, and he's right. People are driving like, six, seven hours to buy a car, and it's and let me tell you guys that is not it's not because they have a Spanish website. It's because of the relationship that they have with John and the team that they're driving past dozens of dealerships that have no idea that they have customers like driving past them to go to Beaver Toyota, right? It is because of the relationship. So, yeah, the website is important, you know, to make sure that we connect in the inland language. But the relationship, and that's part of why, is why approaching the market is hard. Is because it takes work to build the relationship, to make sure that they're present, being approachable by being in the community, like, like Bieber Toyota, and like John and Ashley mentioned being in the community, involved in the community, they see you there. They see you already. They see you on social media. And they're like, Wow, this guy is everywhere. You know, maybe I should, oh, I think I saw a tag of BB Toyota, you know what? Let's go check out. Let's go talk to John. They're not going to go and, oh, let's go see if they got a red Corolla. That's a platinum package. And, like, that's at this price point. And if they don't have it, I'm going to go to the one next door. No, they're going to go with John and say, Hey, John, how can you help me? What can I get? Right? They're not going to be like, I guess, like, like, white folks, they're like, I'm looking for a rent Tacoma with this package. With this package, do you have it or? No, I want it at this price. No, it's different, yeah,

Daniel Govaer: 25:48

and it's just all brand, right? Like, we're not talking about just a particular, I think that's the other thing, right? Yeah, we're not talking about any level of credit in specific. We're not talking about any particular type of car in specific, right? This applies to pretty much every brand that's out there, right? And we're not just talking about low end or imports or domestic. I mean, it should be. It's applicable to everybody. Yeah,

John Duran: 26:09

there's market for everybody, and we don't. I mean, we now that we're talking about in artificial intelligence, which is really important. But we Latinos, we stick another feeling another. We are more into the emotional intelligence. We want to feel, we want to see, we want a friend, we want to buy. And talking about credit, we got the money just to, just to give you an idea and keep it up. I mean, talking about numbers. 65% of the Latinos living in us are Mexican. 65% hard worker, making all the money working in construction. Latinos, we are working on that kind of job that people don't they don't want to work. We work the farm, we work construction, that kind of job that give us the money, and we got the opportunity. We want to buy the car. If we want to split the money, we are deadly dumb, please. I want to buy it from you. That's the kind of the customer that we have. Yeah,

Luis Delgado: 27:11

I agree. And something came to my mind. So I think a lot of Hispanics that maybe even, I don't even know what percentage, but I bet a lot of the people that go and buy a paper Toyota are not even in the market to buy a car. They're very emotional buyers, wouldn't you? Would you agree, John, like, they it just comes to like, at the right moment. They're like, driving back home, and they're in the same car that they've been driving for 10 years, and they're like, Man, I'm really tired of this. I'll eventually, I'll get it. Hey, John Duran, you should go see him to buy car, and then, and then there happened to be in the market, like, all of a sudden, and then they go by, right? So I think, what do you think, Jack, do you think that's that's true? Yeah,

John Duran: 27:48

sometimes people are just, Oh, can you take, can you give me a ride to the dealership? And then, yeah, I'll give you a ride. And at the end of the day, they're both buying cars from from the dealership. So that's the kind of things. And then when you feel comfortable, when you feel at home, and I don't know if you pro, you don't know beaver to but beverage is like a beautiful facility. We got a beautiful facility. I mean, if you go to the village, you don't feel that you're just walking into a diligence. And Latinos, we are used to go by, Go on, get car from the from a lot, or trailer, whatever it is that going to that place. Make you feel like, wow, yeah,

Chance Mayfield: 28:32

man, what a better experience. It happens. It's just repeat, you know, we get in this, you know, buy here, pay here, tilt the note, type, type cycle, you know. And dude, a lot of people white, you know, you know, Mexican, black, a lot of people, you know, assume they can't buy a car, a new car at a dealership, and they're wrong, you know, they're just, they're totally wrong, you know,

Daniel Govaer: 28:56

yeah, I'd also just like to say that the state of Alabama has never sounded better than when John Duran talks about it. But all right, guys, we're gonna, we're gonna be wrapping up here, but I want to go around one last time. Tell me the thing, if you can, if this is something you can put into the heads of everybody that's that's listening, that's at a dealership, and there's one thing that you can do to start your Hispanic marketing today, and it's going to be your first step. What's the one thing that you want to tell dealers to go ahead and get and start on,

Chance Mayfield: 29:29

find a receptionist, pay them well, the handoff matters, bro. I'm serious, man, you know, we all this spend has got to mean something. We've, we've, you know, we've got to attribute some type of revenue, right, some type of deal, to all this marketing spend, you know, all the money we're spending to drive the call, the form, the whatever it is, right? And, you know, on those calls, specifically, bilingual receptionist, dude, game changer, just saying, for real, and don't treat it the same, because it's different. Yeah. Read it different anyway, easy. If you

John Duran: 30:02

want to, if you want to increase yourself in 30% just start building a team for the Latino community, and that's going to pay you off.

Luis Delgado: 30:13

Yeah. Just start, yeah. There's no shortage of Hispanics, and they're going to buy 25% of the car sales, regardless of whether you sell it to them or a grab a lot sells it to them. So why wouldn't you want to sell the car through a legitimate franchise where they can get a good quality car with warranty, certified, pre owned, right? So it's almost like a dealer's duty to do it, because they're going to buy anyways. They're going to buy somewhere. So yeah,

Daniel Govaer: 30:40

if you if you build it, they will come Ashley, one thing, the first thing a dealer's got, the first step. What is it?

Ashley Cavazos: 30:46

Oh, gosh. I mean, I think it's just making sure you've got Spanish speakers ready on hand. That's the one thing you need to make sure that you're ready for. Don't just market for it. But I think also understanding, one thing I just wanted to mention is this is not a short term plan. This is going to definitely be a long term plan. I read a stat that the Hispanic demographic is 50% more likely to refer you to more customers, so the chances of you getting that customer back. Just know it's a long term game plan. You're not, you're gonna see some results, but be ready that you know you're gonna see the big ones later on.

Luis Delgado: 31:27

Yeah, and be ready to do the work,

Daniel Govaer: 31:31

guys. I can't thank you starting the conversation. I hope we were able to continue it. I hope you guys are able to continue it with other dealers. And we can. We can really expand this and make this and make this something that becomes just standard operating procedure in automotive retail here in the United States. Guys, thank you so much for joining us, and we will see everybody in another episode of the wheelhouse coming up next month. But right now, we're going to switch over to 30 minutes of reading some tea leaves in some Automotive News retail headlines, and making some sense of what we're seeing in the news for that. So thank you guys so much for joining us. All right, welcome into the news and headlining tactical and practical section of the wheelhouse. Quick just to introduce who we've got on the panel this morning. Noah Lee, Director of Product Consulting at Cox automotive, a guy who sees so far into the future he probably has contact lenses that see farther than most of us do. That's why he's wearing glasses for us today. Kyle Munster, COO at asotu goes as if I need any intro, maybe you've seen him on this channel before. And Ashley Cavazos, marketing director at da montau Auto Group, let us not delay any further, but go around the horn and I'm looking for your biggest unknown, the thing that still is not clear in your head as to how it's going to transpire for this last quarter in 2024 and Kyle, let's go ahead and kick it off with

Kyle Mountsier: 32:50

you how it's going to how the news is going to transpire, not general, the

Daniel Govaer: 32:55

biggest unknown in the market that you haven't you know you're just you wasted half your 15 seconds there. We're going to ask, can we reset the club and be an NFL ref

Kyle Mountsier: 33:02

here? Yeah. Reset the clock the biggest unknown in

Daniel Govaer: 33:06

the market for this last quarter in 2024

Kyle Mountsier: 33:12

interest rate, what is, what is going to be? Is the Fed going to drop the interest rate and buy how much, and how is that going to impact the market before the election?

Daniel Govaer: 33:21

Okay? All right, Ashley, 15 seconds on the clock for you. Hey,

Ashley Cavazos: 33:25

I think we've got a number of, you know, dealerships with inventory on the ground. We're trying to figure out what our manufacturers are doing to help us push these units. We've got interest rates to Kyle's point and EVs, and we're still trying to move those.

Daniel Govaer: 33:43

All right? And, Noah, 15 seconds on the clock for you. Well, Kyle,

Noah Lee: 33:47

you stole a line. But I'm going to say it again, interest rates, right? So if we drop the interest rates, is that going to overcook the market? And do we go back to that seller's market where everybody's charging over MSRP, because we've got all this pent up demand. Who knows?

Daniel Govaer: 34:03

That was one I didn't have on my bingo card? Yeah. And my question would even be like, are interest rates gonna matter at this point? I mean, is there is somebody going to do enough with an interest rate that it's actually going to do anything? And ultimately, do we need interest rates, or do we need leasing to come back stronger on things that aren't just EVs, right? But let's based on the interest rate

Kyle Mountsier: 34:25

too. Okay. I mean, I think

Daniel Govaer: 34:26

in also different different business units, different things, right? I mean different banks that are buying their money, you know, certain manufacturers, right? Their money, their business unit, of their overseas parent company. So they're buying money from overseas and then selling it to the US market, which results already an inherent markup. But let me, let me ask you guys so kind of just going off of a couple Cox auto reports, market report and then dealer sentiment report, right? So dealers are saying that they're feeling more and more pressure to discount cars, and we're gonna, for the moment, like, let's put an asterisk and say, For by and large, we're probably not talking about Toyota. I. Um, but it's hard, as far as pretty much everybody else that they're feeling pressure to discount vehicles. I looks like the average transaction price is still high, but hasn't it's staying relatively flat, and there is some incentive money coming across other brands, right? And so incentive spend as an industry whole is the highest it's been, at least in the last year, and then we've also, I think, according to dealer track, they saw 10% uptick in credit applications that didn't translate into more credit approvals. Help me make sense of how that plays into any what should the game plan be? What What does? How does that affect what you're planning for the rest of the year. If any of that makes sense? Yeah,

Noah Lee: 35:43

I can start it off. I mean, I think margin is going to get compressed regardless, and that's just going to be the reality of the situation where we're seeing more of a buyer's market right now. I think for dealerships, you got to really think about like that Cradle to Cradle life cycle for that chopper, so really making sure that you're scheduling that first service with that buyer on the day of purchase. Because if you do that, that increases the likelihood that they service the vehicle at the dealership for the next you know, or by 40% I mean, it's a pretty significant amount, and that's going to be covering your your bills at the end of the day. And the other thing too is, you know, depending on the manufacturer, we're starting to see the ability to price below invoice publicly, like Nissan is famous for doing that right now, and you know, we're starting to see some other manufacturers out there. But for those that you can't advertise below invoice, you know, think about using an instant e price tool. I know E price is kind of like a an old school tactic, but, you know, being able to unlock that lower than invoice price on your website is a really powerful tool to get people to, you know, show more interest in that vehicle, and then focus in on F and I, right? So thinking about GAP Insurance Service plans, that kind of stuff, incorporating that into your DR tool, into your sales process, earlier in the sales process is a great way to kind of boost that margin that you're losing in the lower price of vehicles that you have to sell. When, I

Ashley Cavazos: 37:04

think that's the interesting part. Noah, is, you know, we're talking about it being a buyer's market, and what are we doing to, you know, make sure that we're we're increasing our loyalty with our customers. It's not that market where we were waiting for customers to come, you know, come into us and and we can really make you know what we wanted to have happen. It's it's they've got options. There's a competitive market out there. You've got to make sure your pricing is on point. You've got to be looking at what your competition is doing. Like, this isn't a hey, let's get new car specials up and don't touch them again until the next month. It's consistently looking at your competition to make sure we're pricing aggressively and not thinking about the growth on the front end. But what can we do from accessories, F and I and also switching those customers and the service department before they even get to that part of their process? Right? Are you approaching these customers in the service drive? I know we talk a lot about acquisitions and what we need to do there, but you've got to look at swapping these customers out while they're in your waiting lounge. And I

Daniel Govaer: 38:05

think what's interesting too, is that okay?

Kyle Mountsier: 38:09

Well, you know, I think the opportunity right now, and going back to the interest rates thing, is proficiency in like sub, mid and near Prime customers, particularly sub amid just because it's it's been a, not a focus point of the industry right prime has been the majority of the buying matrix in new cars, especially because of price increases. But now that you do have incentives coming back into the market, it's an opportunity to win a market segment that hasn't been paid attention to for the greater part of the last three, four years. Yeah. As

Daniel Govaer: 38:45

we keep talking about interest rates, I just want to ask though, because, like, we saw the public's listed, what their F and I, their average FnI grocers were, and, you know, the headline sort of was, they're down, but I mean, you're talking about, you know, single digit percentages that they're so they're still way over. All the publics are still way over $2,000 a copy in finance. Yeah. Okay, so that's hundreds of stores, different brands all across the country, and all across the country, and all these different brands are still over $2,000 a copy in FnI. And traditionally, that's going to be primarily rate driven. So how much? You know, we keep talking about interest rates, but if we're if that's the case, we're still making that much money in reserve, and I'm saying that much, but I mean, that's a healthy number to be as a public as an average. How much does that act? Is that a boogeyman in our head, or is that actually something that's affecting us, getting deals done?

Kyle Mountsier: 39:32

Well, no, I don't think it's. I think the difference is, is the like and to Noah's company, you know, Jonathan smoke has been talking about this. A lot of bifurcated market, where you see prime still, still fine, right? There's still plenty of Cash in Bank, there's still plenty of access and disposable income. There's opportunity for not just, you know, and prime is, is well aware of the interest rate problem, but there's still. Willing to buy at high interest rates. So you still get the markup, you still get the reserve that you're looking for, but we still have a sideline buyer in because of price and interest rate. You know, the difference between a 3% and a 7% interest rate for a prime buyer isn't going to sideline them, but the difference between an 11% or a 17% is probably going to sideline, continue to sideline, you know, subprime buyer. So I, you know, I'm not in a finance department right now, but it's, it's tricklings that I've heard that that's still an opportunity in the market.

Daniel Govaer: 40:32

So let's, let's shift the focus a little bit and talk about what's going on our used car department. Okay, so we've seen a national average looks like deals coming in with with about 1900 and negative where there's negative equity. The national average is about$1,900 in negative equity. And used car interest rates are the ones that typically are staying except for submented rates are typically staying in the double digits. And like I said, we've seen an uptick in credit applications, not necessarily more more approvals. So let's talk about that with used cars and just doing a little bit of an informal survey, just asking and seeing what the reason for lost deals are, or deals that couldn't get done in the dealership. And a lot of it is, is too much negative or buried. And so does this change and but yet, you still have people that are that are able to acquire cars, you know, off the street. I imagine that's going to get a little bit harder. But how are we approaching trades any differently? Are we, are we still as eager to get trades, trades off the street? And what are some successful strategies

Ashley Cavazos: 41:31

for that? I think it's absolutely we need, we need as many of our trades as we can get, but also diversifying your inventory. So are your price ranges, you know, variable, because you don't want to, you want to make sure that you've got options out there for these customers in these situations. And a lot of times, we kind of stick to what we know, but making sure that you've got a wide range, similar to what Kyle mentioned with even looking at your subprime customers. Do you have options for these people? You know, I remember many times I was, you know, working in BDCs, and I'd get a lead, and a customer is looking at a five to $10,000 vehicle, and I'm like, Hey, you're looking to pay cash because you don't think you know you're able to get approved or the payments not going to work. But let's work together on putting a plan together, educating that customer on their options. I know this is going to be a higher interest rate. I know the payment is within your range. Keep making your payments on time, and we can come back with a better plan, but it's that education of the customer that we have to make sure that they're aware of, because they're seeing and hearing a lot of things on the news on top of it.

Noah Lee: 42:31

Yeah, I'll build on that, Ashley, I think I'm going to reference a study that one of my counterparts, this guy, George Magna, who's awesome, came out with, and it's all about maximizing your margin with the right cars. And what we're seeing is like, your car Manas, your car matches, they're over indexing on like, the five plus year old vehicles, and the reason why is because they're tying up less capital, but they're also generating more profit, and we're seeing a lot more consumer demand for those vehicles because, like, as Kyle said, Your subprime, your mid prime buyer, like they're not going after the brand new Tacoma. They're looking for something that's just going to get them to work, and a five plus year old vehicle in today's time is actually pretty solid ride to get you to where you need to go. So you also got to focus on getting as many trades as you can. And the reason why is because that's where you can get that get the most margin right, because if you're buying it from auction, you're paying auction fees all this different stuff. So you got to have a really aggressive strategy. One is definitely activate your service drive that's going to be your in house auction, that's always got vehicles coming through that you have a pretty good idea of, you know, the service history of them, and you're not paying auction fees for them. And then also looked at your non traditional marketplaces, so your Craigslist, your Facebook marketplace, those are great places to get those vehicles that somebody's just trying to get off the off their shoulders. Like I actually sold my I had a Lexus NX that I was working to deal with with a dealership on and I had it up on Facebook marketplace, and other dealerships swooped in and was like, hey, I'll give you $2,000 more for that. Cars. Okay, absolutely. And they snagged it and they sold it in 10 days. The other thing too is have a good exit strategy, you know. So don't be afraid to wholesale vehicles. Wholesale margins are still really healthy. Industry wide, we're seeing about a$1,200 average wholesale margin so, you know, just grab them and don't be afraid to wholesale.

Kyle Mountsier: 44:23

Yeah, I would say that. You know, one of the things that Dr tools don't help us out with, or or managers that maybe are expecting just to be pricing matrix, is they're not looking at deal structure as a margin, margin protection. And when you look at used cars and LTV values, not just interest rates impacting approval opportunities. You're gonna have to look at deal structure, front and back end to maximize profitability. Yeah,

Daniel Govaer: 44:47

and I think that manager involvement can't be under we can't, we can't underestimate how important or even overstate how important manager involvement is. And you know, because we hear a lot, you know, even we heard from a neatest out from Lithia, right? You. Know, if she said, like, we didn't do a great job of educating our sales staff during covid to how to sell after covid, and this is a lot of what the complaining that we have, you know going on around us right now, at the same time, the people that are best equipped to need to come in now, maybe managers have lost a little bit of it also, but essentially, like the idea of a salesperson, just salesperson to customer interaction, I don't think your chances are as good of being able to structure a deal and get through it as cleanly and as best as possible with great CSI, unless you have somebody getting up off the desk and helping in that interaction.

Kyle Mountsier: 45:31

Yeah, upfront vehicle selection for deal structure maximization is is crucial right now,

Daniel Govaer: 45:37

and, you know, staying a little bit on used cars. So, you know, some more interesting stats from Cox, you know, leads on used cars were up a little bit from previous month and maybe for the quarter, but they're still down year over year. Is there? Is that anything that we need to consider, like, are we changed? Should we change anything about how we're describing our used cars or putting them online, you know? Or is this also any telling tale about what's to come for used cars? Well,

Kyle Mountsier: 46:03

I can say this, you know, on the sites that I'm tracking, and I have currently access to a few 100 GA accounts through some consulting and tech work that I'm doing, and it's nowhere close to Cox, obviously, but what we're seeing is that people leveraged, you know, the Confirm availability CTA significantly through covid. And it was a known quantity or a known thing for consumers to say, Hey, this is something that I need to do prior to interaction with the dealership. So I would, I would definitely look at that as a CTA, and is it your best performing or best optimized for the consumer's knowledge of current availability. And then second, look at phone calls and in person interactions in the balance of that lead, because consumers knew they needed to confirm availability prior to to a visit. So you may be seeing showroom increase at this at a similar volume to lead to showroom differences from a year ago. So I still think we're seeing a balance in the showroom, because we're not seeing like massive dips in total overall traffic. But like, our brains are trained, like leads are down, sky is falling, but it's just consumer behavior is, is is allowed to change, because they no longer have to confirm availability before making

Daniel Govaer: 47:33

so it's just leads are down. That's, that's the stat. Leads are down. But that doesn't affect much. I mean, that's just it leads are down. That doesn't mean anything else, wider spread, but just that we might be seeing, like, the reason, but I'm saying, like, goodness. Also pigging back off. What you're saying isn't this also changing how we're going to market with our used cars and how we expect clients to interact with us. So if we're going to be in a mindset where it's like, we're okay, we're going to be getting fewer leads, what are we what do we replace that with? What are the best things for us to put our foot forward with? Replace that with we don't need but we still need the interaction and the transaction.

Ashley Cavazos: 48:03

I mean, obviously, when that lead comes in, what's that experience like for the customer? And are we, you know, working on retargeting? Are you using? There's a lot of technology out there that can help us stay relevant with this customer, but, you know, are we? One of the things I've always been big on is video, right? Especially with used cars. Like, as soon as that customer sends in a used car lead, like, Let's get them a video show them the quality, because the photos may look good and they may question it, but let's show them how great our car looks in person and answer any questions they have. The leads may be down, but what are you doing with those leads? I think is also what we have to think about and make sure that experience is going to separate ourselves and tell that customer why they need to come in now to see that are we priced aggressively figure out what they're looking for as well. Like a lot of times, customers may be thinking they want one vehicle, and turns out they need something else, but it sounds kind of basic when you think about it, but we kind of need to get back there a little bit.

Noah Lee: 49:04

So, Ashley, I think you had a great point there with video. I think that's so killer. Data driven part pricing. So getting away from using the gut feeling as how you price your vehicles over time, right? And be willing to hold on to your I'm going to steal, you know, Gail Pollock's strategy of, you know, your platinum level vehicles that are going to give you more margin. Look at how your price can appear to the market. Make sure you're doing what you can to lower your acquisition costs. The other thing is, merchandise your vehicles correctly. You wouldn't believe how many dealerships out there do not take good photos of their vehicles, even though we're in the year 2024 like, take some freaking photos of your vehicles, and take some videos of your vehicles. Like people want to see that, especially for use, because that's a bigger risk for that person, right? They don't want to find, you know, something hidden when they see that vehicle in person, optimize your calls to action. So, Kyle, you had a such a great point about that. So a big problem that a lot of dealerships have is they think that more is more when. It comes to calls to action. So they'll throw like 10, you know, clicks to action. And what that hap what happens is that actually drives down your conversion rate. So, you know, keep it to three. Think about the ones that are going to drive the next, you know, solid action for that shopper. So confirm availability still pretty strong right now. Schedule test drive is really good. Make sure you have a really good click to call button, because the majority of your shoppers are coming in on a mobile site, and that's easy for them. Boom, give your dealership a call. Get that conversation going. Have your team trained up

Daniel Govaer: 50:30

on how to handle it. Yeah. Click the call. Who doesn't? Yeah. If that's not something on your site, take a look at that. I think I had two questions, really. One on video. First of all, has, I mean, we've been in the video game, video that came out wrong. We've been doing videos for a while, but has the can the content of the video. Is it about time to change, along with consumer behavior? In other words, if I'm doing a 62nd video, and I've got the expectation that you're going to watch 30 to 40 ish seconds of it, should that entirely be of the car, or should it be somewhat of the car, but then also create the connection of me and the dealership that you're going to be coming to. And is that something that we need to start focusing on changing and not just sending the video? Hey, here's the car you saw mine. Here's me walking around the car. Add some things, right? And should it be like a little bit less car and then more me in the dealership? Does that have a bigger hook? I'd

Noah Lee: 51:17

say it's a little bit of both. And the reason being is, you know, role one of sales is you got to sell yourself. So you got to sell yourself in that video a little bit and then highlight the key points of that product that you're you're trying to sell. So you want to build that trust with that shopper, so they're willing to take that next step with you at the dealership. That's a big jump going from, you know, just researching that vehicle online, checking out some photos, to actually taking the time out of their day to visit the dealership, because most people think, oh, you know what? If I go to the dealership, I'm going to be spending 234, hours there. I don't know if I'm ready to. So you got to build that trust and connection with them remotely, and you can do that by selling yourself via video. Sorry to interrupt you, Ashley, go ahead.

Ashley Cavazos: 51:57

No. I mean, it's so true, and especially in today's video world, right? Like, I used to think 60 seconds was like, just right now I'm like, that definitely needs to be a lot shorter, because we look at, you know, these videos that are on Tiktok and Instagram reels and everywhere, these shorts, YouTube shorts, right? Like, I'm not watching a full YouTube video anymore. These days, I'm going to YouTube shorts to get the Cliff Notes version of it. And so making sure that we're doing that, but having some fun, selling ourselves. To Noah's point, if I've got to spend an hour to two hours with you in the dealership, I want to make sure that I'm going to enjoy sitting with that person for the next hour to two hours as well,

Kyle Mountsier: 52:32

and then from just a few months back. But I did a little round. I just submit some leads as many places as I possibly could. Got some videos back. And, you know, like, I think six, seven years ago, some people started talking about, Hey, we should maybe think about ripping templates out of the CRM because they're absolutely terrible and, and so we did that. And people were like, you know, kind of writing slightly better, unique emails to every single person, but they're still kind of templated, because you do the same thing. All of the videos that I got, of the few that I did, basically, were almost exactly the same. And I would just say like, Hey, don't forget, these people came from a different lead source, with a different interaction, with a different question, a different CTA that they clicked, a different type of car that they're interested in, and all of those should factor into the 30 to 45 seconds that you get with them if they are going to watch that video. So templates kind of exist in video too, so be careful there. Yeah.

Ashley Cavazos: 53:33

I mean, it's like, Hey, Kyle, I got your request on the 2020 Toyota four runner off CarGurus. I know you had a number of choices to choose from, but you chose ours, and I'm here to show you around, right? Like, call it out that, like you chose me, especially when you're on these third party sites, you got to acknowledge that they could have picked any other vehicle on that website, or the SRP, and they chose yours. The

Kyle Mountsier: 53:55

primary place where we're spending an exorbitant amount of money, in in in our ads is Google, right? Um, and keyword optimization is, well, you know, we could go on with a fight about p max or designing your own campaigns, but let's just say that you're designing your own campaigns, or your ad agency is and they're still running the same strategy on a keyword strategy from last year. Would encourage you to look at Google insights and kind of understand what questions customers are asking, because they're probably asking different questions about the used cars that you have in stock. And you might want to adjust that strategy from just like, a year, make model or dynamic inventory search, start answering their questions, instead of just like, put it instead of shouting at them.

Daniel Govaer: 54:38

There's, yeah, I mean, my question on I think optimizing CTAs is something that's such an easy, low hanging fruit that anybody listening can go and do is take a look at how many different buttons we have for a call to action on our website. What do you guys think there's a, there's a, I'm sure, more than one product out there that converts, eliminates forms, essentially, and it convert instead of a form, it converts that into a live chat. I. Um, we think that that's to me, that sounds engaging, and that sounds interesting. I'd like to have fewer CTAs, and I'd like to have it go directly into talking to somebody, any anybody working with that, or have any opinions on that? Yeah.

Ashley Cavazos: 55:11

I mean, I started doing that a few years ago when I was very my teams were very active with chat, and I was like, what if I could just get them in front of the customer right away, versus waiting for this lead form to come in. And it proved to be really well. And we've been working on it as well as I've been trying to revamp our websites. I came in and we had websites with 10 plus CTAs on them, and I'm like, what is happening right now? And so we've been cleaning those up, and we've been putting Converse con conversational commerce in front of them and versus lead forms. And it's really interesting to see what those conversion rates look like. It's something I've worked with, you know, my partner with, for the past, gosh, six, seven years on, on, on, getting them to this, this point. And it's, it's great when you can just get that customer in front of the expert right away. You're not trying to look at what's the engagement rate look like, because you're engaging with them right then and there. Let's,

Daniel Govaer: 56:06

let's, let's transition over to this, this other major part of dealerships that seems to maybe we can finally break down some silos, the service department, which seems to be operating overall, in some contrast to the sales department, they are having most, most service departments have no issues filling up and are beyond filled up for their schedules. Most service departments aren't seeing many people canceling or not keeping their appointments. Like, you know, fewer than, like, 1% I think, kind of is the national average. And obviously, as we've touched on before, that's the greatest area to create and continue to foster loyalty in the dealership. Are we going to finally see? Are there enough reasons? Are we going to finally see some real strategies to sort of blend sales and service together, or does it need to stay the service drive in the sales department? I'd

Noah Lee: 56:53

say you want to blend service and sales as much as you can, rather than them being in silos. They want to be best friends, because sales funnels into service. Service funnels into sales. So make sure your equity mining your service drive, use your CRM to look at your service appointments that are coming in, see what kind of offers you can send to people, right? And hey, you're probably going to miss on eight out of 10 of those, but those two that you get are going to be very high value vehicles that you're looking for to stock your inventory with. So create that system to generate those offers for shoppers. The dealership I just serviced my Tacoma through a big old flyer right in my rear view mirror saying, hey, we want to buy your car. Even though I bought the car from them two months ago, they're still putting it out there. I was like, geez, I don't know maybe, but make sure you're getting those offers out there, because you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. And the other thing is send out automated offers. So have a tool that can send out offers via text message. Hey, you got a service appointment coming in. We can create a deal for you to get you into a new Civic for 299 a month, with your trade and built in, or, you know, by email, by a text, by a direct mail. And then, if people interact with it, activate your sales people to reach out right make sure that they're talking to each other. I mean, it's such a no brainer. Yeah,

Ashley Cavazos: 58:05

I don't understand why we're still talking about this blend of service and sales when it's been 10 plus years that we've been working on doing this, and we're still talking about how we need to blend these two departments together. If you don't see the value in blending them together. What are you doing? Even our manufacturers are pushing us to do, you know, work on loyalty. I get the reports constantly of many of my OEMs that are like, Hey, this is your loyalty from pulling customers out of the service drive. So what what more do we have to do to make it clear, to blend these two together? I don't know what it's gonna take.

Daniel Govaer: 58:41

Let me throw just like a little bit of a red Kyle,

Kyle Mountsier: 58:45

yeah. I mean, one, yeah, the fact we don't have a technology, or multiple technology solutions that are sending, like, passive monthly updates about a vehicle's value with an easy sell my car right now, option is still blowing my mind, but I still think the most massive opportunity when it comes to service is sub service stations that are OEM branded. You know, you get three, four dealerships in a mid sized city, and everybody has to drive to those. It's just, we're never gonna increase loyalty and customer, you know, customer brand retention until we have, like, Jiffy Lube style stops in many, many places at a OEM brand level. So the OEM and the dealer has to figure out how that how that works, in my opinion. Let

Daniel Govaer: 59:37

me bring us into just our final round. And after everything that we've covered, I just want to hear from from everybody, one question, if you're at a dealership right now, in any type of position, what's a red flag? And we're doing an ultimate compilation of this at the end of the year. So what's, what's the red flag that you're going to see that you'd advise somebody see this red flag, you got to go. So biggest, biggest red flags. Time to break up that kind of. Kind of dating advice we want to give. So Ashley, let's start off with you. What's the biggest red

Ashley Cavazos: 1:00:04

flag you've heard one of mine before, so I'm not going to repeat that one again. But another one is, if they're not investing in your training and coaching, they're not challenging you, then that's definitely a red flag that your dealership isn't into you. You have to make sure that you keep growing and that they're wanting to invest in in you in that way, Kyle

Kyle Mountsier: 1:00:30

that the space is dirty, unkept, and the corners aren't clean. That means, if you can see dirt, then there's dirt you also can't see, and that's dangerous,

Daniel Govaer: 1:00:43

like the restaurant.

Noah Lee: 1:00:45

So I gotta admit, I never worked at a dealership, but I've worked with 1000s of them. I gotta pick one from a video I saw where it was a sales trainer saying you have to have a six pack to work for me. Probably don't want to work for that guy.

Daniel Govaer: 1:01:01

Have no idea who you're talking about, but that could be a valid point for a lot of people. Guys, thank you so much for joining me today and helping make sense of all the data that we got coming in about the industry that we love and work in. Every day, I appreciate you guys being here, and we will see everybody next month on another episode of the wheelhouse you.

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