Popping “Tires”, Buying A Phone Is As Bad As Buying A Car, Google Analytics Can’t Quantify Love

Paul J Daly: 0:05

Music. It's Thursday, August 8. We have a really different and we're excited about the new show format, not in total, but just for today. Today, we're talking about the best of LinkedIn with a whole bunch of your friends. And our friends, if they're not your friends, they should be your friends. Should be they will be your friends. After this episode,Kyle Mountsier: 0:26

without a doubt, you should be following, checking out, listening to their content, watching their content. So we're I'm excited about this show because I you know, commenting on this stuff is just it's the way to be.

Paul J Daly: 0:39

It also highlights real conversations. Sometimes in the news, you get just like standard conversation or just top level topics. We're going to dig in. We're digging into some things that we find interesting, some of the best comments and discussions going on, in our opinion. And let's just face it, automotive news right now, not the not the organization. We love the news in the automotive industry. Yeah, there you go. It's just, I mean, it's, it's hard, it's

Kyle Mountsier: 1:04

August. Dealers are just selling cars. God

Paul J Daly: 1:07

bless the team at automotive news that has to find the news to talk about. We just get to ride on their coattails every morning and be like, what's there? What's in Wall Street Journal, what's in writers, the people who are actually have reporters. That's

Kyle Mountsier: 1:18

right, that's right. Hey, speaking of a bunch of content, we have a couple content pieces that you should check out. One, we have a new auto collabs episode out with Greg Ulin. We're talking about the upcoming amplify retail summit that is happening in just a couple weeks. Paul and I will be there. We're gonna be there. We're gonna we got to talk to him about exactly what they're gonna be exposing. It's the second year of this event. Greg is always fantastic to be on. It's not just about the event. He talks about some other things that are going on the industry. Always a great, insightful conversation. So check it out. Search it anywhere you can find podcast called Auto collabs. Also, we had a webinar yesterday that it was awesome. Man, absolutely insane. You can go to our website, chill, check still, check it out, or head over to LinkedIn, to our events tab on LinkedIn and check out the webinar. But we were talking about the cars rule, and there were a ton of questions, comments, back and forth. Last Jim laid it out. There were laughs He had he landed the plane like so eloquently, like he had done it a billion times before.

Paul J Daly: 2:24

So what would you expect from a man in a red bow tie?

Kyle Mountsier: 2:27

Just unbelievable. I mean, you got you and I don't know if I could pull off a red bow tie. I

Paul J Daly: 2:32

definitely could not. I definitely could not look like a circus clown. I would, I totally would

Kyle Mountsier: 2:42

turn you with a red, red, red button nose as well at

Paul J Daly: 2:46

the same Exactly. That's how I feel. Just doesn't fit. You gotta be to thine own self. Be true. There you go. It's not me, but Jim gahther rocks like a boss. I'll tell you that. All right, let's get into it. So today, we're going to give you a little overview of some of the things we've seen. Some things as early as like 30 minutes ago on LinkedIn, and then some were posted earlier this week. First and foremost, we want to shout out Steve Greenfield with this post this morning. This dude. It was a picture. Here it is. Picture of his boarding pass and the boarding time. If you're not watching, you're listening to so as if, as you would expect, a diamond medallion elite plus. I don't know what the plus is, but boarding pass, and it is from Detroit to Atlanta with a

boarding time of 4: 3:29

40am this morning, and his his the copy reads the magic of the early morning flight. Thank you Delta Airlines for getting me home before the work day begins,

Kyle Mountsier: 3:42

after my own heart, you you know, I love the the early morning flight. It's like, Get up, get there. You know, have a day, right? And but 4:40am

Paul J Daly: 3:52

that's hot. Well, that's 440 boarding time, which means you're at the airport at four, which means you are up at three. I mean, like, Oh, yeah. Why go to bed? Why even go to bed? It feels like one day next up. What's this next one? Oh, Alex Lawrence and George. Sleep again. Kyle. Intro, this one.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:10

This is so it's a video, and you're going to want to go to Alex Lawrence's LinkedIn profile. He's incredible on LinkedIn, if you don't follow Alex, he is the owner of EV auto out west, a solely EV dealership, used car dealership, but he goes and hangs out with George Saliba, which George kind of became famous more on Tiktok, and also is of recent fame, kind of the guy that gave the the Fisker to marques brown Lee, so they're having this conversation. And what struck me, and actually the reason why I got kind of interested in it, is Steve, and I can't pronounce his last names, because, because gow was, was commenting on it, saying, you know, because. Kind of the read in between the lines here of what is happening in EVs is that these things aren't just like another vehicle. They're actually kind of a prize, right? And the whole conversation start like if you read in between the lines, you recognize that these are all. Every EV that these guys have has a little like unique personality or or a buyer persona that would that would be interested in the particular vehicle, whether it's wrapped or whether it has a certain technology or has a certain trim level. It's they're all these, almost one of ones, even though they're not one of ones interesting, but they they consider them in the retail environment, one of one, right? They're like,

Paul J Daly: 5:48

let's find the unique person for this car in a different way that you think that about a nice, really, really interesting, very cool. And we just, so you know, if you're just listening or you're watching, we link all of these up in our show notes so you can go back, look at the post, give them some love, follow them, connect with them. We said they should be your friends and they should make a comment. Heckle them, whatever you want to do. It's the internet. Yeah. All right. Next up our friends at the West Herr Auto Group. We were there about a year ago filming episode three of the more than cars Docu series, where we were at this gigantic carnival that they put on for their team. And we were there with the 1000s of team members there. And you can go back and watch that at more than cars.tv but over the weekend, they posted about a private concert. So every year they do something different. Yes, that is Carrie Underwood on the stage. They also had Josh Allen, the quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, throwing footballs out to the team. They had 15,000 so all of their team members got to invite a few friends, and they had a private concert with 15,000 people. Brought in Carrie Underwood, the full band, all the stuff. And they're definitely an organization that really does go above and beyond for their team. And Scott Bueller, the owner, says, this is like, Christmas. He's like, it's my favorite day of the year when we interview him. So go check out the post and or you can go to more than cars.tv and watch Episode Three West Herr. You will see the carnival last year in full effect as I tried to beat little kids in carnival games. And look,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:13

I don't think there's many reasons why most people want to move to Buffalo after seeing all the snow storms that they've had, but working for West herd certainly could.

Paul J Daly: 7:21

He's definitely one of those. And the wings and that breakfast place you and I ate at. Oh, that breakfast place. Come on now. It's definitely top. Top three of all time. Yep, top. Uh, what's next? Oh, this one. This one caught some fire, got chippy, some heat. So you can do it. I'll do it. Oh,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:36

I got it. Okay. So in response to Netflix new series tires, if you haven't seen it. It's a little bit crass. Brian Romans, CEO of rohrman Automotive Group, addressed the outdated stereotypes it perpetuates about car dealerships and auto shops, saying, and in his words, this portrayal is not only inaccurate, but also fails to acknowledge the significant strides we've made in recent years. The show is all about a family owned auto shop with a whole bunch of cliches on around upselling, unpress unprofessional behavior, creating an uncomfortable environments for customers and even auditors and different things like that. Roman said, the reality is far different today. Our industry now features state of the art facilities, cutting edge innovations and a customer first experience that prioritizes comfort and transparency. Their dealerships have things like golf simulators, workout areas, movie theaters, children's indoor playgrounds. He said, as CEO, my mission is to build on our 60 year legacy while reimagining the experience for our employees and customers like that order creating a culture that is supportive, inclusive and innovative. So, yeah,

Paul J Daly: 8:47

I mean, then the comments began right lit up. It was some people were some people were like, you. You know, the industries earned it, and this, this post was actually included a press like, a print article that went out in an Indiana newspaper. And then you have, you know, auto, auto staples like Alex Vetter, CEO of cars, jumping in and saying, like, this kind of a Mic drop. He's like, 10 million reviews a year, and less than 1% of them are negative that. Come on, who's going to argue with that? Right? What other business are you going to say less than 1% negative reviews and be like, Wow, we're really destroying this place. So look, kudos Ryan for just continually talking about the good things that are happening inside dealerships every day, the truth that is happening inside dealerships every day, the leadership that's happening, the vision and focus. Like, what other companies do you hear talking about building a 50 year legacy? Yeah, I

Kyle Mountsier: 9:46

actually, I follow another one of his, like, younger employees on LinkedIn. They just graduated a clash of a class of, like, young leaders that are looking to become managers in the future of like 20 people. That went through an entire training mechanism for young leaders like, this is not, this is not your grandparents card via the show. It is not. This is this is not the way quote, unquote, used to be. So

Paul J Daly: 10:15

check out that post. Go and get in the comments, look at some of the negative stuff, and understand, I think, like, it's easy to like, have this come back across as, like, we're very defensive, not being defensive. Go read the comments, because how someone feels is actually their reality. So that's right. Listen to the people and what they're saying about like, the pushback they're giving to the good story, and that's all based in experience. So I feel like there's a segue speaking of how people feel and experience segue. And I kind of do that because the next one is my post. All right, so I was I posted yesterday an experience that I had at the Apple store last weekend, and where I went in to my my 12 year old daughter been saving her money. She wanted to buy an iPhone, so, like, okay, she wanted to go to the store and look at all the colors. Typically, I'd stay away from the store, just order it online and be done with it. Got to the store, had a bit of an experience. We're going to play the video, and then I'll unpack it a little bit more. And also, I caught a little heat in the comments for this one. So go ahead, let's play the video. So we're here at the Apple Store. We're buying a phone. We've been here at the table for how long now, 20

Unknown: 11:20

minutes at least, since we've told them we want to just buy a phone, we know what we want, we know the model, we know all that stuff. And you just said what it's like, this is my wife. It's like,

Paul J Daly: 11:32

it's the first time she compared buying a phone at the outsore, which everybody always says, is the amazing experience. She's like, this feels like buying a car because it's taking forever. That's an ouch on a lot of levels for me.

Kyle Mountsier: 11:47

Yeah, because it's also a dig. Comparison is the automotive retail

Paul J Daly: 11:52

experience, yes. And so like, I will say, and like, I wrote a kind of extensive copy on this post because I wanted to make sure, like, why, why I was even posting this, and like, what my takeaways for and what I think we can learn, my wife has not. And in this, I explained, like my wife's only car buying experience was, like 15 years ago, right? Like before any of this existed, but like she understands, she knows so many dealers now, and she knows how they care about people, but she still never had an experience, and she associates just this endless waiting, right? Or seemingly endless waiting about with buying a car. So I'm at this place, and 20 we walked in greet or greets us. You know, we said we're looking at the phones table right there in the front. There's one employee there serving like three people. It was a Saturday morning, 10 o'clock mall just open. It was, it was definitely not like super crowded, but it had a had a crowd in there, and we knew what we wanted. We told we knew we wanted, ready to buy a phone. Literally, it was like, 20 or 30 minutes, we're just standing there, and we got our four year old, and then so I made this video. I was like, Okay, this will be a good like thing to talk about, because we're always thinking about that. Make a video. The greeter walks over to me with not a happy face on, and he's like, What was that video you were just making? Like, con it was, like, confrontational. I was like, so taken aback, because, you know me, I hate confrontation, but, but at the same time, I was like, Well, you know, I do a lot in retail, talk about the retail experience. So he's like, You really shouldn't do that. You really shouldn't do that. We told you we would be with you, right? He's like, I can get my manager to come over and talk to you. I was like, that actually, that would be great. I was like, I know. I was like, Well, for me, I was like, that'll be great send them over, right? I would love to talk to you manager, right? Yeah, absolutely. And then the person working at the table actually left the three customers he was working with came over to me and said, you know, it really doesn't make us feel good when you do stuff like that. And then went back to help the three customers. I was like, What is going on right now? What and now my daughter's like, watching this go on. She's like, What is, which one is happening, and so I'll end the story here. But eventually we were helped the guy who came over and said, it doesn't make us feel real good, like, like, we ended up having an awesome time with him. He was fantastic. He's been there for nine years, right? He was obviously overwhelmed. They were understaffed. The manager never came over, by the way. I went back and asked, and so it just highlighted the fact that, like, even Apple gets it wrong, because retail is really hard. It

Kyle Mountsier: 14:08

is really hard. And all staffed right now, just in general, absolutely,

Paul J Daly: 14:12

I think that the big learning is, and this isn't dealership, non dealership, any retail, the way your team reacts is make or break. That's it. They really like all that greeter had to do was come over and say, Hey, I know this is taking so long. I'm so sorry, right? But we're a little understaffed, but we're gonna give you and when we get to you like you're gonna get the royal treatment

Kyle Mountsier: 14:32

done over you'd have been great, exactly. No post, nothing to talk about today, nothing to talk about if they'd have done that. Speaking of things that I'm talking about, stop segway, Ben's been talking a lot. We've had Ben Hadley on the show quite often, but recently he's he's dropped a couple videos you're gonna wanna check out his LinkedIn. One, one recent one, the. He dropped, is talking about the power of brand and how it shouldn't be overlooked, saying that in this world of data and that emphasis on data and tracking, even Google Analytics and similar tools can never measure the intangible factors like love and feelings and adherence or attachment to one's brand. He argues that there's a risk in actually prioritizing short term ROI over long term brand loyalty. We've maybe heard that before, attracting impulsive buyers through targeted ads might yield quick sales, but can result in dissatisfied customers and harm the brand's reputation in the long run. He actually kind of took it all the way to TV campaigns saying, despite their high costs, could positively influence brands perception, because it starts to signal to customers that effort finance finances have been put into this broader campaign that has a little little Bit more of like a brand level perception. So, yeah, interesting. Kind of like, especially Ben being such a data geek and data guy, going, Hey, look, the data might not be all it's cracked up to be, because it's very fleeting and short term. It doesn't have a lot of lifetime value or brand built in. Yeah.

Paul J Daly: 16:18

And so listen. Ben Hadley, he also released another post this morning that was, he's just, he's just in the zone right now. He's just in the zone. I think all of this, all of this, the reason we're highlighting this stuff, hopefully, is that you connect with some people who are thinking critically about things, and you may agree, you may disagree, right in my comments, or a lot of people that disagree, they're like, why would you wait in the store for a phone I wouldn't put my family. There's all kinds of fun stuff in there to talk about the beauty of that. And I love those conversations, because no, no two people think the same way, no two people perceive things the same way, and the perception is actual, actually the reality. So your customers that are coming in every day, they have a perception that's their reality. The more you understand about how people think, the better your systems, the better your training, the better your people, the better you can love people more than you love cars. And I think when that happens, the better off we will all be. We'll see you here tomorrow.

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