Hard-To-Get Floorplans, Voice Control Over Physical Buttons, Online Choice Overload

Kyle Mountsier  0:00  
Music. Good morning. Monday morning, the first Monday in November, I've got Cirillo on that side. We're hanging out talking about hard to get floor plans, voice controller of physical buttons and online choice over. Let go. The people really want to know who I is and who I be. There's something sublime. I just need you to know. Cirillo, there's something sublime about nailing the drop on a Monday, right? Oh, dude,

Michael Cirillo  0:27  
it's all about the drop. I was like, here he goes. I can feel it. You were halfway through. I'm like, he's gonna hit it.

Speaker 1  0:34  
You never know. Like, sometimes you get into it and you're like, Whoa, where did my words go? And sometimes you're like, Okay,

Kyle Mountsier  0:40  
I need a few more words. And then sometimes you get a Monday morning and you just drop it right on the right, on the button, right. Because we don't screw up these things. We're just like, ad libbing, you know, November already. Wait, November already. How did that happen? Dude, I don't know about where you are. Well, you're in Texas. It's like, always warm there. But it was like, you know, I went out for a run. It was 62 degrees this morning. What is that the best? It's amazing. That's the best is what it is. Well, you know what it's the best for? It's great for car sales, like November, sometimes you get into this vibe and everybody's like, Oh, buckling down for the winner. We'll wait for the Christmas sales. But like, people are going to be out and about on lots this this fall. There's no bad. Oh yeah, I'm ready for it. Yeah,

Michael Cirillo  1:26  
it's going to be amazing. It's amazing, I mean, and the test drives and the clean cars, that's what I was thinking about, because around this time of year in Canada, crew is already like, we're gonna have to shovel off the cars every day. Can't

Kyle Mountsier  1:40  
imagine. Oh no, no, no, no, no. Hey, we got a couple of things going on this week. We got an ASOTU Edge Quick Shot webinar on Wednesday at 2pm we are chatting with our friends at stream companies about auditing your 2024 advertising performance. So a little look back for a look forward. It'll be a two part serious. So don't miss it. You can go to asotu.com scroll down and register for that guy. Also, in a week and a half from today, we are releasing episode four of season one, finally, long awaited of more than cars, and we've got a few big, big announcements keyed up for that. You're not going to want to want to miss it. Go to our LinkedIn profile. You can find the event there, November 13, 1pm make sure you're there. Don't miss it. Be on the live stream. We'll be in the chat. It's just a ton of fun chatting with us, being in the vibe of the room and and Jiren and John over, over the episode details. So there we go. That's all the stuff we should get into it. Cirillo, what do you think? Let's go. Hey, new and smaller, smaller auto dealers are facing mounting difficulties, specifically this year, in securing essential floor plan loans, a crucial step, obviously, in dealership ownership, rising interest rates, cautious lending practices, and lenders who are increasingly reluctant to finance smaller deals are making it a little bit tougher on first time auto dealers, banks and lenders now often require floor plans to exceed ten million and many first time buyers are confronted with last minute cash demands. Sometimes they just need that extra 200,000 to a million dollars as collateral, and not that ten million stake, friend of friend of the families. Just let let us who's was aiming to buy a Chevy store earlier this year, was denied floor plans because the deal was it was just hard to get, and that collapse cost him about $60,000 just in fees from not being able to get the loans. Another dealer, Chad Chase, faced a similar setback when stellantis unacceptably unexpectedly pulled out of financing. Potential owners are shifting focus to used or independent dealerships, as opposed to new car dealerships, where for plan financing is often more accessible. Here's Connor Duncan of Live Oak Bank reports that while they've successfully financed New Dealers in the past 2024 environment has led to stalled deals. So it's not just buying and selling cars, buying and selling dealerships and getting in on the early ground level is getting a little bit tougher out there.

Michael Cirillo  4:21  
You know, this kind of goes back to a thought I had, you know, mid 2020, 21 which was, you know, single points are going to try and pick up a second point. Mid tier, like 234, rooftop groups are going to try and get a few more of those one to two rooftop groups. And then the big dogs are just going to come in and sweep everybody else. And this is, I don't know, maybe I'm off base here. I'd love to hear in the comments. But this is, I'm kind of seeing this the banks are like, Why would I try and help the more difficult deal when, say, an auto nation or a Penske or whatever, who's self financed and has more than enough leverage can just come in and scoot. Up these, these deals without, you know, high

Kyle Mountsier  5:02  
risk. Yeah, I mean, it's similar to the car buying market, where there's a little bit of a bifurcated market, where you've got, you know, pretty wide open lending, probably in what we would consider as, like the prime credit, or the prime lending scenario in auto and and then you've got, like, net new lending, lower lower access to cash or funds getting a little bit tight. You know, for me, it's like, Ah, man. You know, we've got so many great operators out there that are just looking for that first step. You know, we go to the name ad conference and you just see all of these OEMs really leaning into and banks like Chase and other banks leaning into, how do we fund these early stage, you know, entrepreneurial dealers that are trying to get in. But when you've got such high interest rates and you know, loan lending is getting a little bit more chippy out there, it starts to be tougher. And look, you got 20 rooftops and some cash flow that looks real nice for a bank.

Michael Cirillo  6:03  
So, and I mean, honestly, my other thought on this is fantastic. You know, every generation has had its constriction of, you know, ability, and what that does is it actually weeds out all of the people that don't know how committed they are yet, right? And so, you know, when we look at our society and our, you know, capitalist culture and the way that we're set up, I mean, this is how this happens, there will be fewer, more committed people who are willing to do whatever it takes to push a deal forward, and that just kind of knock down walls, separates it up. So hopefully you're one of those. Yep,

Kyle Mountsier  6:42  
speaking of being only one of those, segway, it's slimming out there when it comes to the great button, verse, touchscreen, debate, rivians, Chief software officer was doubled down on voice controls, as the future saying in car buttons will be, quote, an anomaly at Tech Crunch Disrupt 2024 he noted that physical controls are a bug, not a feature. Very interesting, advocating that voice interaction should replace touch and physical controls. Rivian is aiming to make every vehicle function accessible by voice with AI advancements, potentially solving current issues and voice assistance technology on top of this, Ben said, called Apple CarPlay, which isn't available in rivians, a lazy option that oversimplifies the UI, which rivian plans to build out with proprietary, integrated software features. They're getting rid of buttons Apple CarPlay and bringing their own software to the game Cirillo.

Michael Cirillo  7:42  
And you know what I did while you were reading this? I went and muted my Alexa, because that stupid thing doesn't know when to shut up, right? Yeah. And half the time I don't even know the right thing to say

Kyle Mountsier  7:57  
to it. That's okay, see now you getting to the heart of it? Yep, yes.

Michael Cirillo  8:01  
Like, have you ever, I don't know about you and guys, chime in on the comments. Have you ever been in a group of people who are experiencing the slightest amount of pressure, and by slightest amount of pressure, I mean trying to decide where everyone wants to go for dinner that night, stuttering. It's on the inability to form a sentence. And now all of a sudden, you want me to concentrate on driving a car right in traffic and know precisely what command to say to this deal? I don't know, yeah,

Kyle Mountsier  8:36  
recalling all of the unique commands like I've I've, there are entire YouTube tutorials on just how to use Siri, right? Because if you ask Siri something, one way, it will respond with action, and then the other way, it'll be like, I can't even do that, but you wanted the same outcome, right? And this is where, in a car, I'm telling you what, I go back to Mazda a lot, but they've done something that I think, and I think Mercedes tried this back in the day, but Mazda has this whole like, what they call command center, right? And it's this little tactile thing that's right on your hand. It's, you don't have to reach up high, but it's four buttons and a knob. And there's something going back to, like, you remember when, you know when, when? T9 texting, and someone could, like text, you know, behind their back, basically, with with a nine key, right? There's something to kind of like the tactile memory and our brain, right? That that allows you to more quickly do tasks that don't have to just recall by memory, but like, connect memory function to tactile function. And I just can't get over the fact that that linkage, especially when driving is already active. And I just, man, I'm concerned about this move. You know,

Michael Cirillo  9:58  
it's. Some poor individual out there who will have had to steer aggressively to not get, you know, rear end somebody, because somebody slammed on their brakes, gonna jump the curb, heaven forbid, hit, hit a stop sign or a pole or something, and they're gonna go, rivian, call 911, and rivian is gonna go, are you asking about the time? Right? No, I just see, I just see it's, it's gonna

Kyle Mountsier  10:26  
be, my problem is gonna be, it's gonna like, recognize my kids voice, and they're gonna be like, rivian play bluey soundtrack. I'm gonna be like,

Michael Cirillo  10:38  
the airbag. You'll program it for the airbags deploy, because you'll do anything to get out of hearing that sound.

Kyle Mountsier  10:47  
Oh, speaking of doing anything to get out of it.

Michael Cirillo  10:54  
Oh, man, you want me to read this. Do it. Do it. I

Kyle Mountsier  10:56  
feel you. I feel like you got opinions on this one. Okay?

Michael Cirillo  11:00  
With endless options and extensive product information, today's online shopping experience can feel less like convenience and more like an exhausting chore. Research suggests that too much choice is paralyzing, creating a phenomenon some called choice overload. Oh, you're right. I already so. A recent Accenture survey revealed 74% of customers abandoned online shopping carts due to feeling overwhelmed by choices and content. And top abandoned online shopping carts included clothing, 79% flights at 72% snacks at 70% people abandoning, they just home goods and electronics. Barry Schwartz, who's a psychologist of the paradox of choice, explains that while variety can make us happier, initially, too many options complicate decision making. Come on now and now this one right? Because we all know this one. We all need to have the filters. Tools like filters and recommendations often backfire by introducing more factors to consider, which can make shopping fatigue worse, according to NYU, Raluca, Ursa,

Kyle Mountsier  12:08  
look, here's, let me say this the whole like recommend, after you've already said, let's check out thing. Yeah, bugs the heck out of me. And I know that there's so many studies on like, increased, you know, revenue and all that type of stuff, but I gotta believe that a large swath of this 70 to 80% that are bouncing from these carts are going give it up already, like you already got me with the Instagram ad. I fought through the mobile app experience, and now I'm finally ready to pay you and you're just begging for more, like it is. It's, it's exhausting out there, I think, in the E comm world, because everybody's fighting for this for this dollar.

Michael Cirillo  12:49  
It's the, I love how you said fight through the mobile experience. Because even if you look in terms of a car dealer's website, how the customer has to fight like you land on the site, next thing you get a pop up that nobody, I mean, just, I know the web company that develops these things says it works, but right immediately upon closing that you get the chat pop up, and immediately upon closing that you get some other thing asking for your location from the top left, and we're not considering, you know, for for an industry, here's my salty bit, for an industry That talks so much about improving the customer experience, look at how many stop signs you put in the way to just get to something as simple as shopping activity. And my other thought is this, I mean, years ago, I interviewed a guy named Rico all injure and he and I were talking about conversion rate optimization, and one of the things he brought up is that when you introduce more options into the mix, the less likely people are to feel confident in any one of those decisions. It increases abandonment, and more than one CTA on a page actually will decrease. Will decrease conversion rate by like 30% just in that one thing. So then you go to a vehicle detail page on a car dealer website, and there's 170,000 Yays. Yes, still, and we're still debating this in 2024 I just feel like here's the real world example that I think everyone can get behind to demonstrate what we're talking about here. You're driving down the freeway, you see the billboard that says 180 flavors of soft serve, and you're like, that sounds great. Then you're standing in front of 180 flavors of soft serve, and you're like, the panic

Kyle Mountsier  14:33  
the heart, yeah, actually, I point to this a lot. There's a there's no brain games. I don't know if you ever watched that show series, but there's an old brain games where they they basically put, like, heart monitors and eye monitors on people, and they gave them the choice of, do you want to go to the ice cream shop with the bunch of flavors, or the ice cream shop with the the three flavors and. Yeah, like the people that ended up picking the three flavors had a much more clean and easy experience. It is. It's wild, like the the overwhelming option of choice in anything. I mean, you go back actually, like, think about the old BDC scripts and how you would get someone to move into an appointment. It's all about only giving ever two choices, right? Yeah, would you like morning or afternoon, one o'clock or three o'clock? And that still works today, because limiting choices actually provides greater clarity for the user. And so when you think about the number of clicks it takes to get to a VDP, right? Limit, the limit the number of no's that you can potentially put in front of someone's face when it takes when it comes to like, what, what to do next. Limit the number of options, right? And think about this when you say CTAs. A lot of people think about like, the number of buttons that are on the VDP in the CTA quote, unquote stack, but like the window sticker button, the share button, the like button, the phone call button, those are all CTAs too. So now you go from, let's just say you have four or five. Now you've added 789, 10, and all sudden, people are just crowded with decision fatigue, and they're gone. So our banded carts are a lot, a little bit different than E Comm, but not also do all too different. You got us on we got ourselves on a little bit of a train this morning. Cirillo

Michael Cirillo  16:28  
forever on this one. We follow ups on this we

Kyle Mountsier  16:30  
could go with follow ups on this one, but hey, today's a Monday, and you got to get to it, because there's people to love, customers to serve, employees to train and exert. Let's get after it. Sell some cars service some cars do good. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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