For The Love of Automotive with Steve Laureys

Michael Cirillo: 0:00Did I ever tell you about that time I moved to Australia?\

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:08

This is auto collabs. Is it serious, no, but I bet they. I bet they say La Croix correctly.

Michael Cirillo: 0:19

I'm gonna teach, okay, I'm gonna teach both of you to speak Australian right now. Say that for me.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:26

Rise up lights.

Michael Cirillo: 0:28

Say it again Just say in your. American accent Rise up lights.

Paul J Daly: 0:32

Rise up lights.

Michael Cirillo: 0:34

Yeah, rise up lights. What is it? What are you saying in Australian?

Paul J Daly: 0:38

Yes, it's actually.

Michael Cirillo: 0:40

Yeah, rise up lights rise up lights. Um. So when I was there, I met a guy and he goes and I introduce you hey, I'm michael, who are you and? And he says, yeah, I'm tiny. And I'm like tiny. He says, yeah, I'm tiny. Oh, is that like a sarcastic thing because you're bigger than me. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I'm like spell that for me. He goes t o and y tiny, I think.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:08

What.

Paul J Daly: 1:08

I. What I always wonder is when you're in the elementary school class, are they like hey, are the kids hey, and they're like I Like. How does that actually sound? Are they like oh, it was like oh, and they're like tiny?

Michael Cirillo: 1:23

Yeah, but everything, everything's a question. I and I think even Australian, like you make a statement like what would a statement be like Um, I like blue hats right, I like blue hats there. It'd be like I like blue hats, it's like you're like, you're like, do you? Though?

Kyle Mountsier: 1:42

You sure about?

Paul J Daly: 1:42

that, oh man, we have to. We have to get some more Aussies on this show, because I feel like this is a deep conversation, wait and I think I don't think Steve is an Aussie, I don't, we're just gonna go with.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:54

He's not so Steve.

Paul J Daly: 1:56

He's gonna be all right. How do you say his last name with the most late? Lory's?

Kyle Mountsier: 2:00

Lory.

Paul J Daly: 2:01

Yeah.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:01

I could fit. Yeah, maybe that's something though what it is.

Paul J Daly: 2:05

He has no idea what he's getting into.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:06

Lory's lory's, lory's, lory's.

Paul J Daly: 2:10

We're gonna say whatever lory's, lory's oh with relevant dealers on the show today.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:15

He's gonna be at a soda con. Got a booth there hanging out and uh, he's a big, big part of the soda community these days and we can't wait to have this conversation. So it's probably not gonna be anything about Australia, but we hope you enjoyed that and never, do enjoyed in this. All right, Steve lory's thanks for joining us here on auto collabs today.

Steve Laureys: 2:41

Thank you. I appreciate you guys having us.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:43

Yeah, man. So my first, the first question we got to ask and and if you are listening on the podcast, there's about 845 lanyards behind you With what looks like Every conference since, like 2001, hanging from the back there. What's your like? Do you have a count on the number of conferences You've been to in and outside of automotive at this point?

Steve Laureys: 3:11

No, so it's funny, as I started collecting those about 10 years ago and you know it was just one of those random things where it was like sort in a box and more things were added to the box and if I was like man, I should do something with this box of these. Right you to throw them away or do something with them? There's about 70 up there right now and you know from speaker positions. Exhibitor. There you go. Yes, my man.

Paul J Daly: 3:41

You know what these are from about the last 10 years. I feel like we've probably be it in all the same place.

Michael Cirillo: 3:48

At all the same time. You guys need to put those together and make a quilt.

Paul J Daly: 3:56

How we can escape from a third-story window with our land, yours easy.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:01

Yeah, are they all auto, or have you been?

Steve Laureys: 4:07

But you know, like Maz Khan, which isn't specifically, but what's that.

Paul J Daly: 4:12

What's that one? What's Maz Khan? That's right, maz.

Steve Laureys: 4:16

Khan is Maz SEO. So they do their right, their yearly thing, and it's not an automotive specific, it's got all industries.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:24

So which one was your favorite one, and why was it a? So do con.

Paul J Daly: 4:33

No yeah.

Steve Laureys: 4:36

So I would say it's probably would have been one of the driving sales when they were first doing driving sales. Oh gee that's a different view, right, yeah, different inside different speakers. Just it was not that, you know, basic internet manager, basic BBC wrap first First conference type thing. You know we got into a lot of the meats potatoes really designed for the executive roles.

Michael Cirillo: 5:00

Yeah, and I'm just also looking at the environment. Is there, are there? Is there a coffee machine for every one of those lanyards as well?

Paul J Daly: 5:09

I count two, three.

Steve Laureys: 5:12

Pots there. That's not my accident, do they?

Michael Cirillo: 5:14

different types of coffee. What's happening here? Are you a copy Machine?

Steve Laureys: 5:22

No man, 30 years in the dealerships, right? So it's always just black coffee, but you got the cure for the like. I just need a cup now. You got the full, the bond, which is the full pot get the day started and the other ones for the any flavor stuff that you might need For the evening stuff.

Paul J Daly: 5:39

Is there a soundtrack?

Michael Cirillo: 5:41

with each of those.

Paul J Daly: 5:43

There's a playlist for each of the three things that you just described. Right, there is, if he's matching the dealership.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:49

He's got like classical music playing for the morning pot, right, because, like before, when just service gets there, it's classical music, and also, like for the cure gets like pop rock which is very, very curing Right and then, like the night crowd comes back and gets like smooth jazz right for the light or Bruno Mars, depending on which way.

Paul J Daly: 6:12

Okay, I have a work question. Now I have a grown-up question. So I noticed that there is an auto auto genius member In your LinkedIn profile. How did that come about?

Steve Laureys: 6:30

so that came about one of our.

Paul J Daly: 6:32

You know, prior to Starting relevant dealer, I was working with a dealer group which is okay, that was, that was the connection, because I was like I know you can't get one of those in less.

Steve Laureys: 6:43

Yeah, so they've made us, our are made me their CMO for their group. And so he's just like man, you got to check out this group, this auto genius group. Man, like there's all kinds of great information that's coming on and like I want you to be able to utilize this for our marketing so I can you get into this group.

Paul J Daly: 7:00

It's like all right, I'll see what I can do right, it's awesome, it's been great.

Steve Laureys: 7:04

I mean it's open in my other window right now. Nice.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:07

So are you, like you said, 30 years in the dealership? Has it been mainly around the marketing side of stuff that you've been in auto, or have you kind of touched everything at this point?

Steve Laureys: 7:16

No, it's been pretty much everything, so I started off in a Ford Hyundai Azuzu lot.

Paul J Daly: 7:22

Whoa, I could never. I could never hear Azuzu without smiling because of Joe Azuzu. But go ahead.

Steve Laureys: 7:28

Oh yeah, that was back when hot day was like terrible. They forced me to sell three of their cars. So anyway, I was with them. I started off there as sales and in like within nine months I was I'll drink him one night with and met a couple of guys from this. It was a Chrysler, plymouth, dodge, Pontiac, view, a GMC store and we get the cute miss. You know the conversation around and he was like, hey, man, like if yours, you know, if you're half as good as I think you are, you should be our sales manager. So that started my first understanding of maybe I can't stay at the same dealership to gain that elevation right this back obviously 94. So I from there. I was a sales manager at a few stores and was a GM and Then a later on in the career got. This have been about 12, 15 years ago. I had one of our partners I was working with who's a website builder and he's like we were, I was out there on site, was Working with him here and now occurred in me and he's like, by the way, I know of a group that's looking for an e-commerce director, you know Basically newer or bigger group. They got like 13 stores here locally, whatever. So if you know somebody they're actively looking. I'm like cool, what's the e-commerce director?

Kyle Mountsier: 8:44

Well, that was what 2008 or something like that.

Steve Laureys: 8:47

Yeah, yeah, real close to that, so that's that was a real question.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:51

That's a real question. Like we maybe had some internet managers out there, they were just basically glorified leads people right, but like for a group to be thinking e-commerce director at that point.

Steve Laureys: 9:01

That's a very new question right, it was, but like anything in sales, I'd know 1% more than the owner did, and so I became their e-commerce director over the 13 stores. Yep so, and I just started studying and figuring out everything that that we could figure out as it was going on.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:17

What was one of the coolest learnings that you had out of that like early time? Because that's you know, you know what. What did you like learn or see or do that? Maybe was you know bleeding or cutting edge, that that was still kind of like Early could be wrong, type stuff.

Steve Laureys: 9:33

Yeah, so I think the first thing was really I was actually at a meeting with Audi, so it was one of the regional meetings and you know, we had two Audi stores at the time, and so they got into using behavior and using Behavior analysis to determine how to deliver ads. And I was like man, I read a couple articles on that, right, like I kind of get the gist of what that is. So as we were talking, they were asking questions and the moderator, the speaker, really couldn't Answer to him. So I was, you know, raised my hand and like hey, I know that answer. So they stopped me afterwards or at lunchtime, right before lunch, and said, hey, after the break, would you mind talking longer on that? Like, could you do like 30 minutes on on this section? Sure, it forced me on the spot to start like digging into this thing, right? So my wife calls me. While I'm doing on my county I I got to speak in like 20 minutes on Behavior analysis and how it relates to paid search ads. Like I got to study up on this. You don't know what you're speaking out. I said I didn't know a speaking, but after that that really started a really cool path for us, you know, and really understanding how the behavior points and how we can measure them and then apply them back to paid search.

Michael Cirillo: 10:54

It blows my mind that before the internet, I mean, there were obviously people doing this. You have, like, what was that? What was that Music company that would send you a subscription in the mail like Columbia house, columbia house. Like it's cool to hear how companies like that were tracking behavior pre-internet. But how, to your point, mainstream most companies didn't realize wait, there's more to a customer's behavior than walking on a lot and then leaving the lot without talking to anybody. And just how many touch points there are. Have you seen any evolution of of that behavior, an analysis from the time that you were first exposed to it to now? Like are we, are we able to track more, or is it still relevant or relatively the same?

Steve Laureys: 11:39

say relevance, a great word, but there is been a Substantial change in that right. So, like one of the tools that that we deploy, allows us to be able to tell who's on the website Whether they complete a form or not. Right, so it's taking what we know, what's known about them through 27 other different data sources. Right, it's creating like a profile of these people externally. So when that maids ID, that individual device ID, then visits the site, we already know a little bit about who they are, right, including their name, their address, their phone number, and that allows us then to be able to create them in the sec, in the different segment of list. And that really wasn't available, you know, two and a half, three years ago at least. You know, to marketing in general, we saw some applications, obviously in the military and outside, into the you know the government issues, but nothing that we were able to access for marketing purposes. So getting down to that level and really that's the new, best thing right is creating the profiles of who the users are. So we're stopped talking about 30,000 visitors to the site and we started getting into who these visitors are and why they didn't shop with us and if they were really shopper to begin with.

Paul J Daly: 12:50

You've seen, you've been around now that you've seen several transitions of technology, right, and the evolution over the last 20 years has been has been very regular. Right every six or seven years something comes along. That kind of changes the game, maybe even at a faster pace. Do you see any common threads between those and like to where we are right now? Obviously, right now we're in another one of those moments. Right a year or two ago, we thought web 3 was going to disrupt things faster. Right, and it's doing things right and it is working in the background, but this whole conversation around AI and what that's going to do for the marketing ecosystem, if you think about all these transitions, do you see a common thread and how People typically react to them from a marketing standpoint and you see like, oh, I see this pattern, here comes again.

Steve Laureys: 13:35

Yeah, I think the one thing that they kind of coincides with that, right, which is how we find success with those, because really it doesn't. You can have two different programs that are running. One is very old-school, old-tech, using basic display ads and basic paid search ads, running them off an Excel spreadsheet, and be more successful. Then someone that's using fully programming, right. But it all comes down to how the dealership is ready to receive those customers when they come to the site. That's the biggest thing, right. So we talked to one of our dealers just the other day and they're like man, you know, I feel like we're hitting everything to exactly what should be. The web metrics all look great, we've got great engagement on site, or, you know, our overall conversion rate is extremely high, but our sales aren't lifting Right.

Kyle Mountsier: 14:22

There's still not lifting.

Steve Laureys: 14:23

What's the problem? So, like we say, you know, let's take a look through the CRM, let's take a look at some regular metrics looks like. Look at the. You know the number of people that we're reaching out to. How many are we making contact with, how many are we asking for an appointment with, how many are they setting the fight with and how many of those people are showing up. Let's just look at basics for a minute. And it was unmistakable. I mean, it was a 50% increase that they can gain without spending any more money in marketing. Just covering their basics.

Paul J Daly: 14:49

What are some of the basics, like what's the low hanging fruit out there for everyone listening?

Steve Laureys: 14:53

Yeah, the two biggest things are phone and internet, right, a lot of dealerships on the phone side of things, they're not really tracking any of those, those calls that are coming in. Some have phone tracking services where they're going in and listening to them periodically, but they're not comparing that to the CRM, right? So they look at the end of the month and they said, oh, I had 20 phone ups for the month, two more than last month. We're doing better, right, but there's no way that phone only rang 20 times for the period after the entire month.

Kyle Mountsier: 15:20

Right, yeah, we connect like we got that person into a place that's trackable and we can actually Measure whether or not we were successful on the end of it for sure.

Steve Laureys: 15:31

Correct, and then same thing on the internet side of it. Right, I'm before. The pandemic before was Telling customers, basically, if you don't like the M S R P of this vehicle, we don't have to sell it to you. Wait till the next person comes in, right, because we're sold out for months. Six months in advance. Inventory is a rebounding right. We're starting to see that every day. We've got dealers that are now sitting with cars a lot and going man, I'm gonna have to start discounting these again. But really the first step they need to do is take a look at their follow up process. Are you even reaching out to these customers after they put a lead in? Or have you conditioned the team so much over the last two years that if someone's not responsive to you inside of 24 or 48 hours that it's a dead lead? Kill it, move on to the next one?

Kyle Mountsier: 16:14

Right, it is. I've heard that multiple times and what's scary to me is and I don't know if you're seeing this, but I'm starting to hear this like well, margins are starting to be compressed again, right, volume isn't maybe quite where it was, or maybe it's just one or the other, not both, and there's a little bit of a recoil on marketing budgets out there and we're recoiling on marketing budgets, yet we could expand them if process was great on the back end. Are you seeing some of that recoil, or at least attempt to recoil in clients or dealers that you're working with?

Steve Laureys: 16:55

Yeah, and I think that's sometimes where the challenge comes in for stores, right? Is that their sales process, their sales follow up systems are managed usually by somebody different than the person that is doing their marketing for them, right? So there's often a lack of synergy or a blaming of each other, right, oh, our sales are all darn marketing. The market is like, oh well, you're killing my budget, it's because you guys can't sell anything, right? Instead of someone to be able to look at those things holistically and to see what those challenges are, right, cause, again, if I spend another $10,000 in marketing but my sales funnel, my sales team, isn't ready to deliver those right, then I'm wasting that money into that. So recoiling that spend is generally not the answer. It's take it a moment, re-look at your processes and make those changes for it. But, yes, absolutely. We're seeing some folks were saying, hey, we've got to cut our spend by 30%. Why? Well, cause, our sales are down 30%.

Kyle Mountsier: 17:50

Wow, yeah, just like counterintuitive in my book at least. Right, I'm like wait sales are marketing. I maybe need more people.

Paul J Daly: 17:58

Cause you're a marketer.

Steve Laureys: 18:01

Well, it is a downward spiral, right you? Understand the chicken and the egg right, right, but it's a downward spiral. If you keep cutting your marketing and because your sales are down and you're not fixing your process, your sales are just going to keep going down.

Paul J Daly: 18:13

Yeah, you can't cut your way to growth.

Steve Laureys: 18:14

That's correct.

Michael Cirillo: 18:16

I mean, you see a way that this is happening day in and day out, where teams are gaming the CRM right. So a lead comes in and they immediately mark it as lost because it shows that their response time was faster, and then it just like games the whole system and then they forget that they need to go mark that as unlost when they actually try to go follow up with it. But by the time they actually try and go follow up with it, it's actually lost because I personally buy somewhere else.

Steve Laureys: 18:46

Exactly.

Kyle Mountsier: 18:47

Exactly, or they send that clock up to me.

Michael Cirillo: 18:48

Did.

Kyle Mountsier: 18:49

I just scram a corncile. I'm just I'm about to go like cry in a corner somewhere. You guys just come find me. Okay, all these thoughts and feelings that are coming up in my head. So what is like when you go in, because, as you're working with dealers, with relevant dealer and you're you know, obviously you have clients. But when you go in and you're kind of like taking a first look at the way you know strategy and campaign and process are where, what are the things that you're doing first? Like if someone wants to take fresh eyes at their business right and kind of attack the things that are most likely places where they can find gaps, where would you encourage them to go? Look for those gaps first and maybe it matches kind of like your process.

Steve Laureys: 19:39

Yeah, so it depends on the client, right? So we've got some that utilize us as a fractional CMO, so essentially, we're taking care of their digital marketing decisions and helping them with make sure that they're they're getting the most out of their campaigns, that they're running right. We're in a fractional scenario. Our first plan of attack is to look at their Google my Business listing, look at their directory listings and look at their website. Right, cause that's the foundation of everything marketing. If you're spending $10,000 a month to drive search traffic to a website, that is rough right.

Kyle Mountsier: 20:12

You got images that are broken.

Paul J Daly: 20:14

Kind.

Steve Laureys: 20:15

Yeah, I mean, and you see all of that right, especially as you look through different dealer sites, and sometimes we'll proactively reach out to somebody and be like dude, I was looking at your site, just happened to be looking at it as a competitive site to someone working with, and here's five things that like, just fix them. Like you don't have to email me back, like you don't have to respond to me, just please fix these things.

Paul J Daly: 20:35

Please, for the love of automotive, fix these things For the love of automotive. That's a great shirt. Yeah, that is.

Steve Laureys: 20:43

Yeah.

Paul J Daly: 20:44

We had one guy that had to.

Steve Laureys: 20:45

you know, his map view was showing that his dealership was in China. They were like how do you? Oh my goodness. Please oh my goodness, like man he's like oh, we got the website handle, don't worry about it. You know cool. So you're not in China, that's all I'm saying. I mean so we want to make sure they're out of a very, very solid foundation. Right, directory listings typically these folks have got, you know, 10 or 15% of those that are claimed or are showing their information and the rest of them are showing them really poorly. Right, and that helps. There's all the things of all these different channels that a customer can find them, on making sure that they can actually contact them. And then under Google, my Business listings, a lot of times they're not filling that out completely or they don't even have their market areas that are indicated in there, or what model. You know that they're a Hyundai dealer versus just a car dealer or, worse, a parts store. We've seen those as well. So once that foundation is laid, then we'll start talking about. Here's how we would advise that from there, right.

Kyle Mountsier: 21:49

It's almost like you know, when, like I don't know, bar rescue goes in, what do they do? They're like okay. First of all, this place looks terrible. We're going to make it look good and then we'll apply it to people on the process, Like change the light bulb, make sure that the lights turn, sweep the floor. Yeah, sweep the floor, like that's. What you're saying is like hey, if people can't get in touch, if the digital showroom just isn't ready to receive someone, then we can't talk about sending the right people there, because they're just going to get lost along the way anyway, correct?

Steve Laureys: 22:22

And they're not going to see results from what we do. Yeah right, If we send another 10,000 people to that site doesn't mean they're going to convert and they won't. Yep, right, Exactly, they're going to lose interest pretty quickly. So yeah, that's a great analogy. I like that analogy with a bar rescue. I was like he's frustrated already.

Kyle Mountsier: 22:40

I'm enraged, I'm insane with anger.

Michael Cirillo: 22:43

You can tell I'm gnashing my teeth with rage.

Steve Laureys: 22:49

Gnashing, Gnashing by the way.

Michael Cirillo: 22:52

Yeah well, just similar to Kyle a few minutes ago. I'm like I need to go lay down in the corner.

Kyle Mountsier: 22:58

I've been on all of these sites you're telling me about.

Michael Cirillo: 23:01

I've seen them, but on that note this has been so much fun.

Kyle Mountsier: 23:06

This has been a blast. I love it.

Michael Cirillo: 23:08

Steven Lorries man, Thank you so much for spending some time with us. How can those listening or watching get in touch with you?

Steve Laureys: 23:15

Absolutely. They can reach out to me directly at stevenrelevantdealercom or business at relevantdealercom.

Michael Cirillo: 23:21

Hey, thanks so much for joining us here on auto clubs. Thank you guys as well.

Paul J Daly: 23:28

You know I've been waiting. I have recorded hundreds, literally hundreds of podcasts in my career. And well, there's a segue to this because, speaking of bragging, I have been waiting for an opportunity to put on all of my conference lanyards, and I forever Oste for giving me the opportunity to do that.

Kyle Mountsier: 23:50

Yeah, look, you guys could probably go toe to toe. I don't have you done 70. What did you say? 74 conferences, you think you?

Paul J Daly: 23:59

think I have 74? I don't have 74. That's a lot.

Kyle Mountsier: 24:02

That's a lot of moving around, so I'm going to count.

Paul J Daly: 24:04

You know I have to count them now.

Kyle Mountsier: 24:06

What? What you can tell is like you know, some people go to conferences like straight up for the community. That's all they're doing. And when I say community, I really mean the drinks after the conference and some people go to do some real learning and it's very kind here that that Steve has done some clear learning Like his. Just the fact that he said hey, look, the early days of driving sales, those were my favorite. Like he's going to take notes and implement things when he goes to all these conferences and you can tell like even just his approach is like hey, every once in a while I'll be on a competitive dealer site, find five things wrong and just tell them. They don't even have to email me back, this is a free gift.

Paul J Daly: 24:53

Like, please just go for the love of automotive the love of automotive.

Kyle Mountsier: 24:57

He just cares for the industry in that way and, and being around 74 industry events over 10 years, kudos to him, goodness, I love like hearing about the some of those guys that were here for the early days of ecom and and internet in automotive.

Michael Cirillo: 25:15

Like it brought to my mind the late Ralph Paglia who, in a similar vein, was like one of the one of the first guys who ever started rapping his head around ecom and and had this, this hilarious story. He's like one time at a conference he's like hey, michael, you want to know how to how to get allocation from the OEM. I said what he's like. Well, when they redesigned the Corvette I took in a half million dollars of down payments and Chevy had to come back and be like uh no, I don't think you could do that. He's like well, now we got to deliver. Corvette's, because I just have a half million dollars.

Paul J Daly: 25:50

He's like apparently I can.

Kyle Mountsier: 25:54

Wow.

Michael Cirillo: 25:55

Yeah, talked about digital retail back in the early 2000s.

Paul J Daly: 25:59

Oh man. Well, this was so much fun to spend some time with you. Thank you for tuning into Auto Collabs, as always. On behalf of Kyle Mount Sear, Michael Cerrillo and myself. We'll see you next time.

Kyle Mountsier: 26:41

Welcome to Auto Collabs. We're recording. We're rolling.

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