Wake up, Buy Here, Pay Here people.
It's a beautiful day.
Go grab yourself another cup of Joe and say hello to Jim and Michelle Rhodes on the Buy Here, Pay Here morning show.
Take it away, you two.
Hello, everybody.
Is it time to do another morning show?
Happy Friday.
Oh, it's Friday.
It's Friday.
Hey, we got snow in Utah today.
Oh, my goodness.
It's lovely.
Look up to my fresh dusting.
You know, I like snow when it's like clean.
And then when it starts to melt and you get all the gravel and the gunk and all of that, it's just, it's not as enjoyable to me.
But I just love it when you have a fresh snowfall.
It doesn't have to be a lot, but just, you know, all the trees are dusted.
I love it too when you can stay at home.
It's beautiful.
The last time it snowed last week, we decided, or I decided, and Jim was like, okay, if you feel like you need to.
We went out, got out of the house to go run an errand, and there's a steep hill coming up to where we live, and our development's not a main street.
It took us four tries to get up the street.
I'm sure you can find video on TikTok.
Somebody's ring...
The camera, you know, on their doorbell probably captured us in the street doing donuts.
Yeah, we actually had someone stop with their truck mid-hill.
It's like, do you guys need some help?
It's like, no, we got this.
I just told them, I said, we don't know yet.
We just started sliding.
So, happy winter.
Yeah, it's just a beautiful day.
And it is Friday, and we are getting closer and closer to the end of the year.
It's happening pretty soon.
We're going to be putting some things out on our social channels, talking about some of the topics that we're going to be covering for the balance of the year and asking for dealers if you would like to weigh in.
It seems that it's a lot more beneficial, too, in the education that we deliver on the podcast when we have...
some dealers that are there to have to add to the conversation.
Listen, dealers, don't be bashful.
You're not, we're not asking you to come here and be an expert.
I mean, obviously a lot of you are and have a lot of experience, but we really just have asking you to come be part of the conversation.
And I think most everybody that's ever done it said, Oh, that was a lot easier and more fun than I expected.
We just recently had Anna Maria Beck is someone that we work with.
She was so nervous before.
And after we're done, I said, was that that bad?
Cause you know, I was telling her it's just a conversation and,
And, you know, it's just, it's like a Zoom call that we have done a bazillion times before.
And when we finished, she's like, that wasn't bad at all.
She actually said it was fun.
She said it was fun.
I would do it again.
Exactly.
So, yeah.
So anyway, we're going to be reaching out.
Please, you know, put some stuff on social media.
Raise your hand if you want to be part of a certain conversation.
Or if you've got an idea for something you'd really like to hear about and have a conversation about or ask us to put together a conversation about.
Listen.
Listen, we're going to be here three days a week talking about buy here, pay here.
We might as well talk about the stuff you want to hear about.
Yeah, exactly.
That's exactly it.
Any announcements?
Oh, Brent Carmichael.
Yeah, that's a week from Monday.
That's a week from Monday.
I think so.
Yeah, it should be a week from Monday.
And I'm working on dates and I'm going to murder.
I'm going to ask you to say it, Fred.
Oh, Lennart, I think.
Lennart, okay.
Lennart's from The Car Guy, wrote an article recently in one of the NIIDA publications.
And so we're going to have him come on and talk about AI and, you know, how, how dealers can leverage into AI.
So, all right.
Good morning, George.
Hi, George, back in Florida.
Yeah, you're in warm, warm weather, warm country.
Okay, so.
We've got a couple of dealers standing by.
We've got some last minute information coming in from Mr. Brent Carmichael for this conversation today.
I really, really like that guy.
He's a good guy.
As I always say when he's around, he's all right.
I mean, he won't be listening this morning.
I don't think he's even on social at all.
No, he's not.
Well, I take that back.
He's on LinkedIn, but I don't think he's got time to listen to the show.
He's doing like 13 groups, some of which are buy here, pay here, most of which are buy here, pay here.
He's a 20-group moderator for NCM.
Yeah.
and a good friend of Jim's and mine and is just so willing to to just share of the things that he he's seeing and all of that so we're going to add a little bit of that yeah so we got some information to share from that so yeah let's bring in all righty let's bring in first Mr. Nathan Syme from Alabama there he's joining from the Birmingham area
good morning good morning i love the accent completely fake it's completely fake and then we've got um from uh north carolina yeah yeah uh canapolis how are you good morning accent i hear it all the time so i know if he's going to lay it on thick and yeah it's just the accent everybody
In the interest of full disclosure, we work directly with Casey routinely.
And so we know his operation.
And so we're happy to have Casey here to be part of the conversation.
Because, you know, we really kind of regret the title that we put out there for the podcast for today.
Because, you know, today I think we will go less about numbers and more about just kind of how you get to...
decision making, you know, as dealers, like especially on this lead generation, lead management thing, like how do you decide where to put your money and and how do you get to how do you decide what's working?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's kind of what we wanted to break down.
And we talked a little bit about lead management.
It'll be a recurring subject around here because we're all working to try to figure out how to get better at that.
And so I just wanted to hear from each of you today, just kind of what your experience has been and kind of how you go about tracking it.
I also know, because we know you both well enough to know that you're both on the same CRM slash underwriting tool.
So you're both, you know, managing CRM.
your leads through a similar process that way.
And it's not about the product and the actual, you know, tool or service that you use to do it.
We're just trying to figure out like, how do you get to it?
Maybe we'll start with you, Nathan.
Like, what do you, how do you find the information that you're looking for to help you make a judgment about where to put your ad dollars?
I mean, that's a, it's,
How do you find the information?
I think it comes from other dealers and their experiences.
You know, every ad, you know, service company or marketing company is going to tell you, you know, all the things that they think you want to hear.
But but I think that the, you know,
having measurable results that you can quantify in a per cost basis like that, that's harder to do.
I feel like I needed to get that information from other dealers.
So I reached out to other people in the space and
got their opinions on things, what worked, what didn't.
And I think that's why we're here talking today.
Sure.
What about you, Casey?
We see inside your numbers, you're able to drill into where your leads are coming from.
How do you go about making your decision about where you go with your dollars?
Yeah, I mean, it takes time.
It takes time in the beginning.
It's a lot of trial and error and seeing which works best.
And then as the leads come in, you would slowly increase it in one area.
But that only goes so far.
You do need to be able to
put numbers to it to, to, to make it work and to be able to accurately track how much you're spending, whether it's on Facebook, whether it's boosting posts, whether it's Facebook ads, um, whether it's been on Google and how much you're putting towards each.
So to be able to accurately track how many leads are coming from where, and to go one step farther and to be able to, um,
How many are you actually converting to sales from there and not just leads coming in?
It takes a lot of time spent on building out a system to be able to do it.
I love both of you.
It's like you've got to track.
You can't really say something works unless you actually can look at the numbers and track it.
So I appreciate that you both added that.
It's like
you know watching that and and measuring that and and especially Nathan when you are getting into really like stepping into advertising I love leveraging other dealers experiences to start and as you know to get things going and then and and
And also it's like, all right, so this isn't working as much.
What are you guys doing?
And, and, you know, what's in the market.
So it's really helpful too.
I, it's one thing to track the numbers, but it's also really helpful to see what's working with other people.
It is.
And, you know, some, some know I have franchise dealership experience and, you know, when you're running an ad spend, you've got a, you've got a,
franchise that's giving you money that's running advertising for you that's bringing all the information to you you're required to spend on and and it's a different animal so when when you're an independent i think that you don't have like a a massive franchise
you know, manufacturer behind you, feeding you the data, you've got to go in and dig it out yourself.
And it is not the same animal at all.
Yeah.
One of the things that I see, and this is part of why we wanted to bring this conversation today is like, you know, smaller independent dealers,
That's a lot to ask of a dealer to go out.
And even though you've got a very capable system at the core of your business, you still have to be the person to drive the connection between your CRM and your website, your CRM and your Facebook page and all the stuff.
And that's just a lot for dealers to manage.
when they're a smaller operation.
And so it's challenging to ever get the stuff working right.
Poor Casey, we've seen him working with website provider and trying to get that stuff dialed in.
And like, it's just challenging.
It's hard to ever feel like you've got all the information you need at your fingertips because you can't really attribute
you know, your leads to certain sources.
And so I've got some numbers.
Maybe before we go on, let me share some numbers that I got.
I'm fortunate to be able to pull in.
I'm going to read you directly from a text message this morning.
I said, last minute thought, I thought, I wonder if Brent Carmichael is available to give me some information.
Brent Carmichael is a 20 group moderator, runs multiple buy here, payer groups and has for 15 years.
So he's got a lot of data from dealers all over the U.S.
And I always, when we can, I like to have
direct information from a large enough data pool that we can when we share this kind of information i think these are these are numbers to write down because these are this is a large enough pool of data that it lets you know what you can do while jim's looking or pulling it up to the right place it's like brent answered in a heartbeat with with like this is down to you know the dollar on what the average and all of
He might have jumped on his laptop, but there's a chance he knew he was off the top of his head.
But he said that in 2022, the average across all of their groups was $220 ad spend per vehicle sold.
And that's down, I used to hear, around $300 in the independent space.
Could never be sure how much of that was independent retail and how much was buy here, pay here.
But we used to try to think, well, let's at least try to target being under $300 per car sold.
And so I just think what this tells us now is that that's possible.
And then he said Q3 of this year was $195 per vehicle sold.
And so we just know that that's great information.
That helps us know, you know, what's possible.
And I think, you know...
one of the things that occurs to me when I hear that is like, you know, that's probably for an established operation, a little easier number to get to because you can leverage your customer base and maybe Facebook followers and some of those kinds of things.
But I still think it's a good target.
And it really shows that dealers that are invested in improving their business
are really interested in getting to a better way of showing up in front of their customers.
It's like, how can we leverage these dollars?
And so it sounds to me, if they're able to do that kind of drop,
There's probably a lot of measuring going on and that they're always trying to find the best way to be able to leverage those dollars.
Yeah.
And Casey, I want to come back to you because we've been part of the implementation for you, this new CRM.
Like you made a switch from an old CRM to the new one.
And, you know, anytime there's a switch, there's a little bit of a painful thing.
But we know you're analytical and we know that you've been very persistent about getting all those connections made that we were talking about.
Yeah.
How are you feeling about that?
Are you feeling like you've got better information now to be able to make these kinds of decisions?
Much better.
And, and it's getting better all the time.
I was actually working.
Um, and this goes back with what Nathan was saying earlier about big, uh, corporations having all the pieces put together.
So the person doing the work, doing your, let's say it's, it's, it's Google ads.
It's a lot simpler where we were on the phone yesterday, actually making tweaks.
So the information comes in correctly and,
Right.
Much better.
We're getting much, much closer and better all the time.
And once it's there, then hopefully we'll have the ability to track it and push the dollar so that we can get down to that $195 per car sold.
I'm glad you said that because I was thinking it in my head.
It's like, what?
That's a lot lower than I am now.
But before you can get there, you have to be able to compute the data.
I mean, yeah, for sure.
Yeah, that's true.
Nathan, you're experiencing that.
Well, certainly.
I was laughing because I was thinking to myself, I am not 200 a car.
I promise you, most of our listeners are not.
And I think to Casey's point, it does take momentum.
I mean, if you're working in a Google, Facebook, click, that kind of environment, there's traction you need to get.
And then once you get traction, then it takes time.
to narrow it down.
And then once you narrow it down, you're narrowing it down some more, and then you keep going and going.
So when you start out, you're not spending 200 a car, you're spending 600 a car.
yeah you know it goes further than than just like the ad spend because it's obviously how are you handling your leads what are you closing you know all of that kind of stuff it kind of just narrows that gap but it starts with measuring something and you know seeing where things are coming from this is why the dealers when they say um when the customer says i have 2 000 down the dealers are saying could you do 2600 to cover my ass
We're not worried about tags and title.
I think what we see is that dealers are wrestling with this.
And I think what can happen, we talked about on our Wednesday broadcast with Anna Maria is this idea of, there's this kind of metaphor about having a shotgun approach to marketing versus a rifle of precision.
And Nathan, thinking back to your franchise days, I mean, those people had big budgets and big analytics and they could better identify the target consumer and serve ads.
And those of us with smaller independence, that's a little more difficult to get to.
I mean, there are some places we can go, but one of the things we see is there are some providers
out there who provide you know advertising solutions and what we're seeing with our own clients with some of them is they're spending some pretty big dollars and they're certainly generating lots of leads but we we're not seeing that those leads can be attributed to very many of the sales and so it's a question of how is it a shotgun method i mean we're that's what the data would suggest is that we're if when the when we're creating lots of leads but not translating into sales
then it just begs the question, are we, how precise are we in our marketing and our messaging to reaching the right consumer, right?
So this is part of what, so Casey, I know you guys have been working on that.
You've engaged some people to help that.
And we know that your Facebook in particular is driving more leads, right?
Correct.
It does.
Yeah, I looked at those numbers in your case last night, and I can see that, yeah, by far, regardless of your ad spend, you're definitely driving much more traffic from whatever dollars you put into Facebook.
And so we see that.
We basically get confirmation that we talked a little bit about that with Anna Maria on Wednesday is that.
we see across social media that dealers it's like still overwhelmingly like Facebook is still the king of the mountain on that they're still producing at least in the buy here pay here space they're the most productive and so I think I wonder maybe we'll ask you Nathan if you had success elsewhere besides Facebook any place else that you're seeing some results well I mean certainly have
seen some google response and interaction but no facebook i would agree is by far been the most productive for for us that makes sense i don't know that people are really uh being able to connect on tick tock yet we're not seeing much of that so uh um so casey back to you where else are you seeing some results i mean we feel like we know but maybe you can share with listeners where else you're picking up some some business
Yeah, well, I am getting some from Google, but the trackable part of it, what we were working on yesterday, getting it to correctly come over into my CRM.
I mean, I can track down, you know, tons of link clicks and actually filling out forms in the last 30 days, you know, 55 forms built out.
But then, you know, being able to track that next step of which form and which one turned into an app and which one was sold from those apps.
But those are the two main ones for me.
Yeah.
And I would say that any of our listeners today out there are dealers that are newer to this.
If you're not familiar with AB testing, I would get real familiar with that, especially in these social media tracks is like the ability to run two different kind of ads in parallel to the same audience, you know, because that lets you verify.
And then, you know, as Anna Maria suggested, you just monitor that.
And if,
If A performs better than B, then you start shifting your your budget over to A and drive that message because it is messaging.
And so it's not just getting the link clicks.
It's about attracting the right applicant who will become an owner.
Right.
And so that's what we got to kind of figure out.
And the A-B testing is part of how you get there.
So as well as, you know, there is some deeper tracking you can do within that as far as once you get everything in place, there's actually ways you can.
you can score the leads so it transfers back out to Google and they end up over time sending you better and better leads based on what you're looking for.
But again, that's just part of the whole, this takes time.
It takes time to build it out.
And I would imagine, you know, numbers that Jim shared from Brent Carmichael and the 20 groups that he works with is that they've been tweaking their process and their system and, you know, finding out how like that, like you just said, is that the more you tweak it, the more
the more refined the lead gets and they put it in front of the right person and then when you can start to really bring in the right lead, that it will translate to more qualified leads coming in and it increases your chance of being able to actually close
I didn't catch if you posted Mark Anderson's comments.
So yeah, let's do that because this is really definitely in keeping with the way we think about it and what we teach is, you know, he's really basically suggesting here that we really as buy here, pay here dealers, most of us could use some improvement in terms of learning how to promote our program and ourselves and less about cars.
So we see a lot of kind of inventory forward progress.
uh marketing and and buy here pay here we just think there are two problems with that i mean one is you know it puts you out there competing with all the other folks for one thing if you're just our centric yeah and you're advertising yeah but it's also missing the opportunity for us to dial into the consumer that is if we think about i call it sticky that customer who's going to be sticky and be a good customer with us for many years
Then, you know, in marketing, the specialists that we've been around, and we've learned a good amount about this, but they really spend a lot of time identifying what would be called an avatar or a persona.
Like it's to be able to figure out who is, like what is, paint the picture of your ideal customer who's with you for three to 10 years, as an example.
And then how do you then identify that market?
How do you begin to make sure that the leads that you're generating
Or over time, you know, you get better and better at that.
And look, I hear myself saying that out loud and I think, Jim, I don't have time for that.
I got, I got car decisions to make in the back.
I got transmissions to decide about.
You got all these different things going on.
And so all this deep analytics is, is challenging because most of us don't have the budget to hire the pro to do, you know, what we're talking about.
So what do you think, Nathan, when you hear that?
Yeah, it's a lot.
And I think it's a prioritization.
You know, it's,
to piggyback on some of what the dealer was mentioning that you showed before.
Anyway, I do think any of us can put a, you know, 2021 Dodge Challenger up there in a buyer payer space and get a lot of clicks, right?
You know, a lot of, a lot of five, $500 down.
Can I buy that car?
You know, that kind of thing.
You know, my,
Mine's more of like another question to your question, right?
So here's, here's, in my mind, this is what I think.
Okay.
I've got X number of cars and I can sell X number of cars.
And let's just say, I've got the inventory to increase my ad spend to therefore increase my sales.
Let's just assume that part.
Then, you know, what is my real purpose of what I'm trying to accomplish?
Because to me, I don't have as much of an issue with people coming into the dealership, trying to buy a car.
Um, but I have more of more of like, how can I improve the quality of my applicant?
Right.
So I think of it as a, as a volume thing.
Like if I've got, you know, a hundred applicants,
I'm probably going to get a larger number of quality applicants, but that may not always be the case.
So, you know, one of the things is like that inventory is, you know, once you move that car to that person that you pick,
that car is no longer available for the next person.
And we've lost really good quality applicants because we sold a car to somebody who was marginal and then didn't have the opportunity to serve the one that was quality.
Yeah, good point.
From my standpoint, it's like, how do we find that quality applicant more than how do I just jam leads into my CRM?
Because that we can do.
Yeah, that's a great point.
I think anybody can throw dollars out there and create those link clicks that you're talking about.
So then it's really that somebody said they use the spray and pray thing, which I heard on Facebook a few days ago.
It's like the spray and pray is kind of that shotgun thing about you just throwing stuff out there, you're just spending dollars.
And so by shifting to more of a sniper approach, that just takes time.
It takes somebody digging into the analytics and trying to figure out.
But I think if I were to give a short answer to that,
I think it's kind of going back to what Mark Anderson out of Illinois said, which is it's really about getting the hang.
And part of it's getting comfortable as dealers, getting comfortable with the idea of telling their story.
Like we believe in marketing and branding, especially with a buy here, pay here that.
many of us could get better at storytelling, getting out in front and telling our story, getting the community to know us.
Because when we're good folks and we can attract folks who also see that and value that, then we think that's going to help you attract an applicant that is better qualified.
I would say that's the way that we just, it's about targeting an applicant who better fits your program
And so I think in order to do that, we have to help the community get to understand our program and kind of how we do business.
And so this is part of why I think we, you know, we've we've heard for years the idea of sell the program, not the car.
You know, we're very much in the financing business.
Right.
And so we kind of got to get comfortable selling our financing or promoting our financing.
Some of that's organic, like some of that's just organic.
you know through our own social connections we can really leverage those you know you both probably have facebook followers that we can get out there and tell our story well through those channels then we think that's going to lead to referrals and a customer who's going to match better so it's really that's kind of what you're referring to nathan is an applicant who better fits the way you're you're planning to do business but you know i think we've kind of covered the parts of it that i wanted to cover today you have anything else michelle well i just i i love um
We have to be able to measure.
We have to, you know, really kind of dial in and measure what's coming in, how it's coming in, how we can tweak it, and all of those kind of things.
And then it's the messaging is another piece.
It's the measure and it's the messaging.
And I do, you know, I love what Mark said about it's about the program.
And the more that you have your message going out about who you are and your program, then people that might see it coming up in their feed when they have a friend or they have their kid or they have a neighbor or whatever, it's like, yeah, I really need a car.
They're going to say, you should go check these people out or whatever.
But it's being able to create an emotional hook, too, with the people that are seeing your messaging out on Google and on Facebook and all of those kind of things.
It really is.
It's measure and it's message.
What's your message as well?
Yeah, and our dealer friend, Jack Carter, won't mind us mentioning that you can go to follow their Facebook page, Turn and Burn Motors in the Atlanta area, Conyers, I think.
Jack does a nice job of being social, video, video, video.
I think that's going to be a big part, obviously, in today's industry.
environment video is where it's at so we want to be on video video let let the folks get to know us and so he's very personable and and has a lot of fun with social media and you kind of get to know who they are and what they're about which i think is super important and then you know there are others out there uh tyrone tyron automotive our dealer friend nick uh you can follow him up there in pennsylvania and they he also does a nice job with social just kind of allowing the community to get to know him we had to give nick a little bit of a nudge
to get out there, get in front of the camera and do the little selfie videos and that sort of thing.
But it's working.
They had a video off.
It's working.
Yeah, it was like, Jim sent a quick video and then he had to send another quick video just to kind of get used to it.
It's okay.
And it's just fun.
It's very natural.
And by the way, before we wrap up, I got to say, Casey, I can see you were kind of trying to protect you.
You had people reaching across you for a stapler or whatever.
Don't worry about that, guys.
No apology necessary.
That's part of what happens.
We're au naturel over here.
So we've had people from the car auction, you know, like it's the way it works.
Oh, yeah.
From their car, from wherever.
So, yeah.
And it makes it more real, Casey, because it's like, yeah, he's running a business, too.
So it's, yeah.
Okay.
But tell Monica we said hi.
I will.
Yeah.
Any closing thoughts, you guys, Nathan, do you want to, anything else you want to add to, you know, what, what it is that works and what it is that you're trying to, to trying to improve.
So I would just say that if you don't have a process to track what you're doing, then you need to develop that first.
a way a crm system or some way to bring those leads and qualify and quantify them and and otherwise i think it's very difficult to be efficient in your ad spending i think it's hard enough as it is with that so i would say you would start there and then i think after that um
it's okay to delve in a little bit and, and you don't have to go out and spend $10,000 a month, right?
I mean, you can, you can get something for a couple of hundred dollars a month, and then you just feel your way through that.
And I, I would, I would certainly not run out there, hire an ad firm immediately without having some sort of idea of how you're going to
track that in which we've talked about.
Sure.
Yeah, very good.
Casey, any thoughts from you?
No, I mean, I agree with what you just said.
The whole process thing, it just takes time.
And I know that
we can all get busy doing 20 other things.
There's always 20 things outside that I feel like I could go do, but I've intentionally dug in and said, you know, this is where my focus needs to be.
I think it's what could make one of the biggest differences in the business.
So for the past good little while, this is what I, you know, I was spending time on this, that other stuff can, we can get to it, but this is important.
And we've seen your volume creeping up.
So yeah, it's working.
So that's all good stuff.
And I would just, one closing thought, I would just say that let's all remember that the organic stuff, the relationships that we have with our current customers, past customers, anytime we can leverage that, that's gonna be a really affordable place for us to go.
And not to mention, maybe some of our better
connections that, you know, as far as, you know, who we might attract as a, as a referral.
So I would say, you know, especially in Christmas, boy, you throw a Christmas bonus out there, a referral reward for your current customers is let's leverage our, our relationships with our current customer base always.
And, and this would be an excellent time to do that.
So we should probably let you guys get back to running your dealerships.
We know there's a lot of work to do, so we appreciate you making time to, to add to the conversation and help some other dealers out there.
Absolutely.
Thank you guys.
Yeah.
If you can stand by for two more minutes, we'll wrap up and come right back.
Say a proper goodbye after we've closed up the broadcast.
Yeah.
So just hang on.
Thanks guys.
All right.
Um, if, if you, uh, we'd mentioned Anna Maria, who's someone that we've worked with for a while, uh, the, the broadcast you said Wednesday, it was on Monday, uh,
And there's some really great tips in there that can help dealers.
So if you haven't watched that, she really understands Facebook and a lot of the ways that you leverage.
And she has some very, very simple and actionable things that dealers can do to start bringing in more quality leads.
Right.
If you don't, you can reach out to us if you need to find her.
We have a handful of our clients use her very, and that works very well.
And if you need help getting a measuring system and, you know, starting to really dive into that, if you need some help, give us a holler.
Because we do that with a lot of different dealers and just kind of help them.
create systems and processes so that they can do, do the measure correctly or have it, you know, at least putting something in so that they can measure.
So if you need any help, you can call or text us 903-816-0216.
Anything else, honey?
No, let's let folks get back to their day.
We appreciate you tuning in.
We'll see you again next week.
Yeah, have a great Friday.
I hope you guys have a great weekend.
Finish getting some of those Christmas things taken care of, wrapped up.
We really appreciate you tuning in today.
Yeah, see you Monday at 11 Eastern.
