Qore Conversations
Tune in for engaging conversations about the latest technology, innovations, and trending issues in the automotive industry. QoreAi's podcast delivers expert insights, practical tips and problem-solving solutions. Stay informed and inspired with every episode.
Qore Conversations
The Hidden Gold Mine: Unlocking Your Dealership's Data Value
Discover how your dealership’s data holds the key to unlocking smarter sales, marketing, and customer retention strategies in this episode of Qore Conversations. Todd Smith, CEO & Founder of QoreAI, who is a leading expert in AI and data optimization, shares how dealerships can make better use of their CRM, DMS, and digital exhaust data to drive real results. He breaks down the costly consequences of disconnected data, from wasted marketing dollars to missed opportunities—like when multiple locations within the same dealer group send redundant messages to the same customer.
This conversation goes beyond the buzzwords, diving into the real-world challenges of data mismanagement and the game-changing solutions AI can provide. Discover how predictive analytics can identify high-value customers, automate personalized outreach, and ensure that marketing efforts actually drive revenue instead of getting lost in the noise. Todd reveals why many dealers are unknowingly operating at a disadvantage due to vendor-controlled data and what steps they must take to reclaim ownership of their most valuable asset—their customer information.
We also explore the power of AI-driven insights, from detecting service decline trends before a major weather event to leveraging modular infrastructure for seamless data organization. With Todd’s expert guidance, we break down how dealerships can move beyond outdated marketing tactics and embrace a future where AI makes every interaction more strategic and effective. If you’re ready to tap into the full value of your dealership’s data and outpace the competition, this episode is a must-listen.
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Podcast Directed and Produced by Hired Guns Agency: https://www.hiredgunsagency.com
Welcome back to Core Conversations with Sean and Todd Todd. How's it going today?
Speaker 2:It's great. You know I'm excited we're recording on a Saturday and for me it's special because no distractions that we can just sit here and have a really cool and in-depth conversation about data, ai and whatever else we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 1:Some of the people that are following you probably know this, but is it Saturdays or Sundays or both, when it's either green tea or matcha or yeah, so that's always my Sundays.
Speaker 2:Now listen, I am one of those people. I drink green tea every day. Sometimes I'll throw a little matcha in there as well. And here's a fun fact for you you, uh, sean, I've never tried coffee in my life, ever, never, never tried it. And I can tell you exactly why.
Speaker 2:So I had everyone kind of want to know I had a 10th grade latin teacher named miss breslin who would always come in with coffee and smoking breath and lean over you as your score and that smell to Tay still like, repulses me like a coffee shop. That smell I just I cannot stand the smell of coffee or and I've also never smoked a cigarette. I never tried a cigarette in my life. So I thank Mrs Breslin for giving me healthy habits through her unhealthy habits and I leaned into green tea, obviously traveling all over the world to surf and all, and realizing tea is not only really good for your body and antioxidants but it's ceremony. So I've enjoyed the process of green tea, so that's it.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll have to get tips on green tea from you, and I wish I could say I've never had coffee or cigarettes, but I've had both and I gave up the cigarettes a long time ago and I'm thankful. I can only blame high school friends on that. I succumb to the peer pressure, but I've been a cold brew guy now for quite some time and I'd like to thank Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney and Wrexham Football Club for letting Stoke, because they have been my favorite cold brew for a long time. But now you've made me self-conscious about my breasts. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Oh listen, I don't know, I just found it. You know, like everything, you're a kid in high school and you know she would lean in check in your work than your kid in high school and you know she would lean in check in your work. And I, you know like cigarettes permeate people and then the breath of you know that, coupled with coffee, I mean I don't know, I just that was it. That's all I needed.
Speaker 1:Well, it makes sense. I get it so okay. So what are we talking about today? For all of you that are listening and or watching, we're going to do a few things today. Of course, it's all going to be around data and AI, because, well, todd is a data and AI expert and if you don't follow him, then you're okay.
Speaker 1:Maybe new to this, but he is so dedicated to helping dealers leverage this data, unlock new opportunities, and I know because I get the pleasure of hosting you on these episodes to dig out all the gold from your brain around these things, and I love the fact that you have some might call it contrarian, but you're not afraid to go outside of what the automotive industry has painted as black and white, and this is the way we've always done things and we're going to do things within these frameworks.
Speaker 1:The future and innovation requires a lot of those things to get broken up or at least to be thought about differently, and I always think about people who are kind of the trailblazers when I see content after these conversations, because it makes so much sense. So, audience, we're going to talk about some of the types of data. Dealerships are already in possession of some of the missed opportunities. I think it's really important that dealers really key into the things that you say, todd, because it is coming from a perspective that is not common. There's a lot of people that stay in these shark-infested red ocean waters highly competitive, and you don't get a lot of people thinking differently there, and so I love to use surf analogies and ocean analogies with you because I know how much you love the water.
Speaker 2:But let's just get into it. It resonates, man, it resonates.
Speaker 1:Yep, you said this to me and I'll just restate it. You asked the question and this would be the question for dealers. What if we told you that you're sitting, your dealership is sitting on a gold mine of customer insights that could completely transform your dealership, your dealer group, your business? That would probably get the interest of anybody who's really paying attention to be a successful operator. So the first area we're going to look at, as far as maybe some of these overlooked points of treasure, is existing data assets. What would you say, todd, are the most valuable types of data that dealers possess right now but often overlook.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know if I look at that and I frame that question up, you know there's lots of data that surrounds a dealership operation. We can talk about the main ones. First, right, dms data is transactional right, as well as what I consider a longevity of ownership data. Right, because it's how they're interacting with your business post-sale through service.
Speaker 2:I look at the CRM. The CRM to me is obviously leads, but the deeper side of CRM data is the conversational data. Layered with the longevity of service data, you start to build a really interesting picture. I think if we add on top of that how the consumer is behaving and interacting with your dealership. It could be on your website, it could be interacting with video content you've put out on social media platforms or, take your pick, whether it's a YouTube, tiktok, instagram, facebook, all the way down the road how they're interacting with your marketing per se. So there's so much which I call there's foundational data, and then there's a proliferation of what I call exhaust data, all these little touch points that dealers. It's there, it's right there in front, but a lot of it isn't captured. And even if it is captured, it's rarely in a format that it can be effectively utilized.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what are your thoughts on customer histories out of the CRM, the patterns in CRM data being used to drive, maybe, retention strategies, cross-selling opportunities?
Speaker 2:I look at the CRM, and what the CRM value is today is taking in exterior data around that consumer, so IDing the consumer. So the CRM is going to first allow us to ID them and put a wrapper around the data they provided. So think about it. Most leads are basic, right, you have a name, email name, email phone, product of interest. You have that. You can expand that, though, and when you expand that now, you have deeper intelligence. So, if I can now map the propensity to purchase to that like, is this customer like low funnel and like they're going to buy, is this customer in a shopping mode? Is this customer tire kicker? So we don't see all this global signals that surround them around their purchase journey. We don't see them. They haven't tried to pull their credit, they haven't shopped across multiple brands looking at sites, their car's, relatively new, like.
Speaker 2:There's thousands of indicators that we can track and I think inside there first being able to identify these inbound opportunities and put them in a bucket. Right now you go to CRM, they're all in the same bucket, right, they're all there to buy, and that's not the case when we put the same amount of energy against all of them, and to me that's inefficient operation. So I'm always like, okay, how do we create better efficiency? And also by starting to really understand your customers. You understand the sources of those opportunities that are coming from you and different sources will provide different types of consumers. Right and look, you'll get a blend, maybe across all the top third-party lead sites, but some will absolutely.
Speaker 2:They're targeting the lower funnel buyers. Some are targeting shopping modes, some are targeting anything they can get to sell the dealer elite. So I look at that and when I have that first piece, then you have all the conversation that wraps the emails, the text messages, maybe recorded phone calls. If all that can be encased around where the customer's at in a journey, this creates a whole new world of what's possible. Leveraging CRM data and though I haven't seen it in real life quite yet, because that data most of it is still fractured across multiple systems, the reality is, if you could get all that in and we're starting to for some of the groups where we're able to get access to phone records or text messages or the email string associated, even if they penciled the deal all that data and now match that with all the other data we have that we've augmented, I think it's going to be a profound change in how we engage customers from CRM.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the possibilities are pretty exciting actually when you start to think about them. And relative to the CRM obviously is also within DMS service records in DMS. Love to get some more of your thoughts around that as well, because I well, I just I really want to know what you're thinking there. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I feel, once we get to transactional data, we know this customer bought, we know the deal structure and now we see how they're interacting with the organization over time or not. You know, it's interesting with groups that have, let's say, multiple of the same franchise. We've seen, obviously, occurrences where customer buys in the one store but services in the other. Now, for store A, where they bought, this would be considered a defector. Store B, the salespeople don't even know about them because they're just stuck in the service data. The sales people don't even know about them because they're just stuck in the service data. And I think when you can start to peel back the layers of these onions and to see people as they're globally interacting organizationally, you start understanding them. Now, once that happens and you have all the transaction and then continuous service interaction, data and behavior. Transaction and then continuous service interaction, data and behavior. Now this is where AI just turns on. Frankly, this is where because AI is amazing at spotting patterns that humans just would never make and create correlations on behavior that it can see across thousands and thousands of people. So it's for us interesting things like okay, if a customer hasn't been in an 18 or greater months, spends more than $500, the car is at least three years old or older. Once we see that customer pop back in, there is a propensity we'll see that car either sold or traded in a near term. There's also very interesting behavior where you know we can see customers. You know they'll come in for service right and they're not. Or they hit exactly the cadence that the OEM is requiring, like you know. And then there's people who disregard that completely and they are more random. Or we see upticks around interesting times School lets out right or school's about to go back, people fix cars, it's about to be winter.
Speaker 2:In the first snowstorm People go get their tires, get brakes done, like all these very interesting patterns emerge. So case in point big snowstorm was just happening up north so we went back and looked at decline service records over the previous 90 days where the consumer turned down a tires or brakes. So now think about this. It's not going to be a giant list, it's a small list. That's a curated list. You can call those people really quick and say hey, sean, you know I just wanted to reach out. I know last time you were in you declined to get new tires. We saw this storm is coming and our customer safety is a very big concern to us and I'd like to know would you like to come in now, before the storm hits, to get those new tires on? That's a much different conversation than what we're seeing in average retail and, with good data, data, hygiene, normalization and enhancement, you can start having those conversations right now.
Speaker 1:It's new playbooks that can be written because the capabilities exist and just to, I like to hear you share, because the audience cares about what you have to say. But let me contextualize a minute from my own experience. I've been a Toyota guy for a long time. I've probably even on the year podcast here, talked about my Tundra. It's not the first Tundra I've owned, it's just the one I own right now and I will own another Tundra because they won in terms of loyalty, everything about that truck reliability, resale, all those things. But I bought that Tundra just a few years ago from a group. They're owned by the same people, but closer to the Dallas side and I live out past Fort Worth now. Well, they happen to have a store in my little town as well where I go for service and they don't know it.
Speaker 1:All the things that you were just talking about. There is no clue about it. And so the way they communicate with me, it's the same playbook that every dealer uses. Are they using it because I've got my cell phone? Yes, I'm getting text messages from them on an interval. Am I getting emails? Yes, am I getting snail mail? Yes, they're doing all the things that they've been told by a playbook that was written many years ago without any insights to what's going on in the modern world today, where other industries are already like they're going and they're missing things, because I can't tell you how many times I open the snail mail, I get the text message, I get the phone calls where they're either trying to buy my Tundra, which I have no interest in because it's very low mileage I don't drive a lot all these different reasons, but they are missing on the real core things that you talked about in terms of opportunity, because they just recently told me something about brakes.
Speaker 1:I'm like okay, um, they just recently said something about my tires. Um, and what just happened in texas? Well, we just got a little snowstorm. It's rare when we do this week, um, and they not only don't know that I bought within their same organization, they don't realize that I'm servicing because I'm two hours away from where I bought and there are so many opportunities for them to communicate differently and make offers to me through service that some I might say, yeah, it certainly is. Like you said, it's a completely different conversation if your data is free and if you're using all the things that you need to to tell the stories and set up these opportunities that are literally sitting in front of dealers. They just have to have all the things in place to put it together and show them. It's very interesting.
Speaker 2:And to add to that, I look at it as if you have those two stores like these two are Toyota stores, the one you bought in Dallas and now the one outside Fort Worth where you're actually servicing the Dallas one, you're a defector. They're sending you cheap oil change coupons, they're trying to get you in service, right, and then you take those and then you go apply them into the Fort Worth. The other one's close to you, same group. So basically they're shooting themselves in the foot because you would probably pay normal price for the oil change and things and you're a loyal company to them organizationally but they're blind to it because they just again, this always will come back.
Speaker 2:Clean data, organized data, hygiene data, evergreen meaning, keeping it up to date is the key to unlock everything forward. And I look at things where all this as you said, snail mail coming to you, text message, email they cost money to send all this stuff and this is why we've seen the continued cost increase for marketing per vehicle retail. So NADA says like $703. So let's just say that's wrong. Let's say it's $500. That's insanely expensive to sell a car. Why isn't it getting cheaper?
Speaker 2:We have all this new technology. We should be so much more operationally efficient. It should be $100 a car sold, or $120, but it's $700. And I think this rolls back to and we strip it back to first principles, because they have no clue about the data and there's no organization of the data. Costs have spun out of control and I think dealer groups especially have to get their data organized and I think once they do, it obviously unlocks a huge potential for savings in marketing, operational efficiency, better consumer experience and, honestly, just generating what I consider a truly organizationally efficient system. And that's what data does. And that's what data does really well if you know what you're doing with Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you know what you're doing with, yeah, tons of opportunities. Let me ask you about website behavior, the digital footprint. It's obviously really important, critical for identifying all kinds of untapped sales opportunities. But how about you spin that a little bit into you know, understanding how it? Maybe there are some hidden treasures that dealers are not picking up on.
Speaker 2:So I look at website interactions and now with technology we can like de-anonymize 50 plus percent of website visitors, right. So I know that, oh, sean is my customer and he's on my website right Right now. Most dealers are just in the dark, like everyone coming to their website is just a website visitor. They're tagged and then they're all just marketed, retargeted to and paid ads on Google, facebook et cetera. But if I know you're a customer, then I see a world where you could add personalization on the website experience. Like you just bought a car. I don't need to try to sell you a car anymore. I should be leaning you into service experience, right, like personalization at scale. But let's break it down on a more interesting one. So this is kind of low hanging fruit. We just did this for a dealer group, which I loved because I thought it was super cool. So, like every dealer, people visit your website and then visit your service scheduler page. Your customers and most dealers go oh, I get appointments through whatever tool they're using. Next time, take your pick, I get appointments and that goes into DMS and the customer shows up. So, but how many people are visiting that page and then bouncing? How many people are visiting that page your customers and not filling it out. And it's fascinating because we see people every day that are dealership customers. Again, not a lot.
Speaker 2:Curated list A couple people every day adds up over time to 30, 50, 60, 75 a month or more. And so here's a simple low-hanging fruit the anonymize the website visitor. Ah, that is my customer, they're on my service schedule page but they didn't book. I wait 24 hours. Small curated list. Call them up, say hey, sean is super valued customer. You know, I noticed you haven't been in in a whileed to give you a quick call, see if there's anything I can do for you.
Speaker 2:Serendipity moment, right, like hey, todd, hey, thanks for calling me. You know what? I started to fill out an online the scheduler, but my kid fell off the chair and I got distracted. Or I a call and I got distracted, or I started to fill it out and, oh my God, you had to click 17 things and I hadn't done an online scheduler for auto and it asked me for some op code. I have no idea what the op code. I have a thumping in the back, so I abandoned the process and to me it's being able to catch people in these moments by leveraging data to create better outcomes for the consumer, while also preserving and boosting revenue for the dealership. And again, I'm not a marketer, I'm a data guy.
Speaker 1:But to me, the best marketing will be driven by powerful For sure, especially in this day and age, it will save you a ton of money if it's done right and it will be much more effective right. People ask all the time like, is my marketing working? All marketing works. It may not do what you want it to do, but it works, even if you think it's a failure if you didn't take your learnings from that.
Speaker 1:But what you're talking about in this context, it certainly takes that to a completely new level that honestly didn't exist just a couple of years ago. It's why I love it, and every time I'm listening to you I'm always trying to kind of frame this inside of my own experiences with dealers, my own experience in the industry. And it makes to me such obvious sense because you're taking the things that have existed and become fragmented over decades and realizing that there's something new on the playground, on the battlefield, that could give you a massive competitive advantage. But it's going to require you to think a little bit differently. But as soon as you get to that, the points of clarity just seem to, I think, manifest quite easily and it starts to open up all these different ways of thinking about the future. And the futures now you talk about that a lot Like when are you?
Speaker 1:going to start running the rate Because the other people that started, you're never going to catch them.
Speaker 2:That's the thing I think. Once you start organizing your data and this should be for every dealer who's listening today to 25, if you do one thing different, one organize your data you don't have to do it. Even with us, I don't really care. If you want to set your business up for absolute success, it's going to start with data. You do succession planning for when you're going to pass. You do all this for your kids coming into business. You do all this work, but I see a definitely future. You will not be competitive without data because you can't leverage AI. Then, without data, ai only operates with.
Speaker 2:To me and my analogy to this was very simple People ask like AI? It's like I don't care about AI. Ai is like electricity it's going to power everything. Data is the wiring. So you have bad wires guess what? Electricity is fractured, flowing through it and it's less efficient. But if you have great wires, tons of electricity can go through it and accelerate you, and I think it's super important to think about it this way. But you're just not going to add AI to what you have today.
Speaker 2:You have to organize your data and it sucks because, as you're right, our industry has become fragmented, with pools because of the siloing of data, and this is what has to be broken and it just needs to be reorganized and you can extract data from pretty much every system, not every. There's a couple of CRMs who do not let data out for whatever reason. They don't want to, they can't, I don't know. It's kind of hard for me to chew on that because I believe the dealer should own the data and the dealer. But it's not the case with some of these other services that they own the data, which makes no sense. There's no other outside of auto product I can think of where, if I put my stuff in it, I don't own it. I could never see. I cannot see HubSpot going. Todd, you want to move data to another tool like Gong for sales enablement? No, no, no, we're going to charge you for that.
Speaker 2:It's only in our business that this perverse attitude and activities have happened around data monetization and it's a shame and it has hurt our industry and it's hurt dealers because of the sheer fragmentation. And who it's benefiting are the DMSs, the CRMs that are controlling the AKA. What do you call it? A system of record, which not really none of them are, because system of record means one centralized place and none of them are the one centralized place. So to me I find this again very interesting, where you know, for dealers to thrive, organize your data 25 should be about one thing Get all your data in one spot. Even if you don't leverage ML, don't leverage a ton of AI, get all your data in one spot, like build and own that data layer organizationally. And anyone who hears this, you will thank me, you will write me letters because it will change your business.
Speaker 1:I've said this to a number of dealers over the years that if you have a vendor that treats your data like it's a hostage, you probably shouldn't be doing business with them, right, because there will eventually become a crisis, and I think that a lot of what you share it makes me think of that. It makes me think when you have all of these different systems whether it's a DMS provider, crm provider or God forbid, both your CRM and your DMS provider are like that, like they treat your data. It's like like it's a hostage. When it's your data and none of the people that exist in there the data that exists in there would have gotten to those two silos unless your business existed. There are so many reasons to say, hmm, like we need a revolution, like and should this? Can it be peaceful or is it going to be? Because if you're the dealer that wakes up one day and then finally realizes, yeah, that's my data and you're using it like a hostage, crisis or negotiation tool with me, it's not only wrong, they're monetizing it.
Speaker 2:These companies. That's the craziest part. Like you look at, the average dealer probably at least spends, let's say, $1,000 a month, okay, on data, just exchanging fees, and then the vendors are paying the same right. But let's say so, you're paying these, your companies. You're already paying, like high dollar tickets for auto CRMs, dmss, very expensive software products. To me the value that they offer, especially when you again look outside the industry for compatible things. So I look at this and it's very interesting that you okay, $1,000 store, 17,000 stores, roughly that equates to what probably a little over 200 million dollars a year in data fees dealers are paying. Think about, at a thousand dollars, about that, 17 000 uh dollars, uh a year per store or 12 000 a year per store, like that's astronomical and there's no value there. But it's making these other companies a fortune.
Speaker 2:These legacy companies. They have monetized, they've weaponized and monetized data and it it's funny because I I believe I maybe I'm a conspiracy, maybe I watched too much netflix sean, maybe I've dug too deep into like a three body problem, I don't know, but I really believe these legacy companies were looked at, all these new innovative companies that were coming out and they're like how do we slow them down. And how do we make money? Because now we're going to compete with these little companies on the dealership's dollar spent, and I think it got to like, hmm, if we own and control the data, the little guys are going to need it, so we can charge them money and the dealership we can get a little bit more money out of them because they want to do business with these other smaller companies, so they'll pay to do that.
Speaker 2:We can make money just moving data, not adding any real value, and we can monetize both sides of this equation and I absolutely believe it. Look, this is a smart business, though it stymies growth and innovation as a category industry. But this, to me, is why we have so much data fragmentation. It is without question in my mind. This is where it stands.
Speaker 1:Um, I'm not going to mention it because people maybe feel polarized by who the author is, but I will tell you that topically, it talks about people who are the pioneers of the future and the prison guards of the past. And the way it lays out things within not just automotive, but in, uh, health and science and all these things, this is a plague in automotive, it really is. And so, as you share all of that, I think it's. I think it's what makes the lights go on for people. Um, maybe one at a time, and then, all of a sudden, I think what's going to happen is room by room, and then the whole industry. It's either going to happen for them, where they are embracing all of this because they see it and they're maybe they're not on the bleeding edge, so they're not having to sacrifice a whole lot of drops of blood, but they're at least close to the early adopter stage.
Speaker 1:I think all those people are going to get the wins and they're going to feel a sense of relief. And I think, once we have mass adoption and then even on maybe, the downside, where you weren't first, it's going to be really painful for people like that, and well, some of them won't even be able to make it. It's not sustainable. If you really project into the future of what's going to and has started to happen, it's really, really interesting. I don't want to get too down the rabbit hole on that. I have two things that I did want to ask you. On this first segment of areas where the data could be overlooked, it's just sitting there and you can feel free to give me as long or short answer as you want, but family connections, I think, is one of them.
Speaker 1:And I think, service and sale potential is another area.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So look, obviously understanding households super important. It's not just one person buying from you. What is the household makeup? How many people are in that household? How many people are in that household and old enough to drive? Are they driving cars off from you? I think understanding the makeup of householding is super important. Amazon really focuses on that. I'm using a non-industry example. They really understand the household makeup, the dynamics of it, and I think there's a lot of great lessons you can easily apply into auto to manage data more effectively.
Speaker 2:I think the whole service to sales potential is by monitoring people's service patterns. Again, through pattern matching, you can discover that service customers are in market through propensity to purchase, scoring and just looking at their actual behavior. You know what. I think we're beyond the time. And look, you spent time in auto retail, like I did, and one of the interesting things, we always worked from the least end list or loan, last payment list this marketing automation, let's call them. They're paying off their 60-month loan in two months. Right, let's get them into a new car.
Speaker 2:But a lot of times if you look back through the history, you may go, wow, that person pays off a car and drives it for two more years, and I'm not going to say 100% of the time. They'll always do that. But there is a predictive nature in weighing that. Look, this customer has a 95% chance they're just going to keep driving that car. This customer though, we see propensity to purchase is high and they're coming up to their last payment. Okay, I see correlations at that point, kind of changes the conversation. I think. The same with lease. But the problem with lease nobody's been leasing. So we are three years out of the pandemic plus at this point and nobody leased. So where normally dealers were able to truly had a whole book of lease, now turn-ins, you know, uh, maybe they had 10, 20 of them a month, damn three.
Speaker 2:And there were obviously times and I don't know about your start, my start, I had a. I had 30, 40 lease turn-ins in the back all the time waiting for, like you know, gmac to come pick them up. Or I would call up and be like, hey, this one, this one's been sitting here. Will you take less? I would negotiate for those because I knew the car, most likely I'd service the car. So I feel like, now go to any dealership. You do not see that and I think so banking that you're going to get lease renewal stuff. Nope.
Speaker 2:I think the real key, though, is understanding your service customers deep enough, how they interact with you organizationally. Then spot the opportune time, ones where we're showing hey, these people are back in market. Maybe they come in, they just repaired their car and we see they're in market. Know what that's a perfect customer to say, hey, while you're in, say, would you like me to appraise your vehicle? They don't even know that. We know that they're in market, so I offer that one a free appraisal. These are the things you can do with data right now to make impact.
Speaker 1:I love that, all really good stuff. So that's kind of the first segment I had for you. I want to go into, like maybe our next part, which is really for all you dealers that are listening out there or people that talk to dealers and you'll take all these things that you're learning from Todd as you're having these conversations with dealers costs of ignoring some of these kind of points of data, and so I know you have a bunch of and you're already sharing some real world examples, but switch into that gear of like some of these risks that dealerships face when they're ignoring the data. I know there's a few different because I've heard you write and talk about some of them, so I want to share on that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so look, I feel like the first thing. I think many dealers have enough money and habit of marketing to everybody the same like big sale hit our whole database, big service opportunity hit everyone who hasn't been in and are, like the last five years, service customers or whatever it is right. So this broadcasting costs a lot of money and for anyone who's not in market, that's getting these broadcast things to me you're training them to ignore you. You're literally writing the playbook of ignore, ignore. Because if you're not, look, we only care about things that we care about at that moment. Everything else we're like nope, distraction, nope, ignore. Why is this dealership sending me all this crap? This is stupid. I'm not buying, I'm not servicing, I'm not doing it. So we're training them to ignore when it's important. But when it's important, we should time our marketing to the consumer's behavior and really focus in using data, the dealer's data and outside data to make that correlation like perfect. And I believe with AI it's going to get there. And I think it's going to get there and I think it's going to get there pretty quick. And I look at the first thing also, when you think about this broadcasting, if you're broadcasting bad or inefficient data, many things go wrong. First, I see on many stores their DMS 30 plus 40% of the people in that don't even own those cars any longer. So dealers start from a warped reality of true owners of the products. Double down that out of CRM. Even DMS email addresses deteriorate at 2.5% a month, over 30%. So annualize. You haven't cleaned your data in a couple of years. The literal vast majority of stuff in your system is bad. So you're like excited. You're like, ah, let's send out 10,000 mailers, send out 10,000 mailers and but only maybe 2,000 get delivered If that. And then you're yelling because you're like man, we said 10,000. What happened If that? And then you're yelling because you're like man, we said 10,000, what happened? It's bad data gets bad results hands down, and bad data makes AI really bad, like it doesn't work. And bad data makes everything bad. So it's not like it makes your marketing bad and it'll piss your salespeople off. Because do you really want to make 100 phone calls and 80 of them are bad numbers? Or I don't own that car, or you know what I mean, or don't stop calling me.
Speaker 2:I feel like you want to set your team up with the best possible outcome and for that I mean it's a positive experience and interaction with the consumer on the other end of the line. Breaking that down, let's prepare them with the right data, right information so they can make those calls. So I look at those things and you know we talk about like lease ends, right. So we always say timing. But if we look at data and history, you probably have customers inside your database that lease consistently and they will pull out of a lease three months early because maybe there's a pull ahead or there's something like that, or they roll right to the last month, or they roll and then purchase. So if I'm marketing, hey, come in, get a new one, and you're the purchaser. I'm trying to sell you a fruit salad when you want the cheese plate Again, wrong messaging.
Speaker 2:So understanding your consumer's behavior should be job one. This is your 2025 job Organize your data, understand your customers, then create much more personalized experience. That's what personalized experience actually means. Right, it is target the right message to the right consumer, and I'm not a marketer, but I've been around long enough to realize you know you want bees. You know put some honey out. You know like this is the key to success.
Speaker 2:Now you could say, todd, we're big, we're just going to muscle it and you can do that. But I guarantee a competitor is going to get more efficient than you then and he will still beat you in the long term because you'll have to throw more money at per vehicle retail. They'll start throwing less, they'll be more efficient, they'll start selling more cars. You won't know what to do and then you're in this super pickle to me. So I think again, like this is the change of the guard. It kind of has you said you know the prisoner's dilemma Like we're at a point where we need to kind of break free from traditional thinking in a lot of cases and we need to do that.
Speaker 2:First, principles thinking rip everything back to absolute fact, and absolute fact is good data equals better everything. There's no point that good data equals bad anything. So I know that to be true, I know that to be factual, I can work from that and I think that's a critical point that constantly many dealers are not financially calculating it that way and I think it's time that we put more effort into the data as much as because data is going to affect everything. It's not just I'm telling you about marketing ideas, but what about inventory? Think about this and I'm going to give you an interesting one.
Speaker 2:So right now, we average dealer will go buy cars or try to acquire anything all the time and stock for the next month and et cetera, the next 45 days. Right, we're constantly stocking cars to keep our lots full. What do we determine what we stock? Well, we determine what we're stocking in the future based on what sold in the past. But those people bought cars. They're not buying again. And this is why we see absolutely in the data where some cars age out because, wow, he's buying trucks and now there's no one in the future month. That's the truck buyer. So they start aging out and maybe by the next month, maybe he's able to get rid of them. And I think we're going to see very fast which we can already do.
Speaker 2:We know that this customer in the dealership is in market right now. We can tell you what they can afford. We can also say, most likely they're going to buy one of these cars because everybody lives in a cohort there's 74 cohorts and inside cohort there's hundreds and hundreds of data points. So we can kind of frame that hey, there's a very high probability they're going to buy one of these. Now we also base that they've also owned these cars in the past or continue to own them today.
Speaker 2:So if I see someone's in market, they're an F-150 customer, they're still leaning F-150, and I know within the next 30 days they're going to buy. I should probably have an F-150 around and I know within the next 30 days they're going to buy. I should probably have an F-150 around and I think we're going to be able to use data and use understanding our customers and all of them who are going to come in the market over the next 30 days existing customers. That, to me, is absolutely achievable with some basic machine learning, understanding and data. And, the most important thing about when you think about that, it increases dealer return, which increases profitability, which reduces floor plan cost, which again creates better experience. I'm not having to discount cars that I've now stocked because of past events. I'm stocking based on future customers who I know are my customers and are now coming into market.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a beautiful way to run a car dealership.
Speaker 2:But this is the way. Look. As the Mandalorian says, this is the way I. As the Mandalorian says, this is the way I got through the hard work.
Speaker 1:There were so many nuggets, great, great points in that answer. I can't uncover all the buried leads there, but there's a couple of things that really struck out to me. Can't uncover all the buried leads there, but there's a couple of things that really stuck out to me. One I think dealers should be asking themselves the question are you training your customers to ignore you? And this isn't just a tier three, it's a tier one why I still receive direct mail pieces, still receive direct mail pieces. I still receive content marketing waste on a Jeep Wrangler that my wife used to drive and own, that we haven't had for a couple of years. Probably that's not the first vehicle, and I think as soon as I say that other people can relate to yep, that happens.
Speaker 1:You get in this cycle of which then speaks to another thing you mentioned about email. Right? Most dealers I don't, at least I would say I don't think are cleaning their email lists and list management like I have to. In the B2B marketing world, if we're working with somebody that's doing something around email, it's catastrophic because most people don't know what they're doing. But there is a lot of effort that needs to go in and even when you have cleaned and verified your email marketing database the best you possibly can. The first time you send an email against it, you're certainly going to have a few bounces, so that's really critical. And then what you're describing is how to win, and that's by design. This is winning by design, right, with this goal of how much could a 50% more efficient dealership mean to your bottom line, to your dealer group, to your single point, whatever it is, the amount of efficiency that's sitting there through data that exists today is. I think some people are overwhelmed by it, but I think that's why it's important for people like you to be out there and the fact that you're so active with content, because it would only take but a few minutes for them to realize that you're a person to talk to about it. Right, at least you were there to give good advice, practical tips on, and from somebody who you have spent years on the retail side of it, and I think that's really important for the audience.
Speaker 1:As you listen to episodes where Todd is sharing, whether it's here on the Core Conversations podcast or when he's guesting in other places, you're not hearing from somebody that it is a void of experience in the trench of retail. This is somebody who that's literally where they started all of this and then started to think about all of these capabilities outside as a service provider and how technology can help. And I think that's really important, because the absence of that type of experience exists in a lot of companies that use data as a hostage, that take advantage of dealers because they bury them in technical jargon and the type of super speak that I don't even know the acronyms around this. I mean, how many years did we go through people? Just poor dealers. We made them feel bad, that they didn't understand what the difference between SEO and SEM was. This happens all the time and so, anyway, a lot of buried leads in that. But man, that was full of so many really great tips awesome.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I laugh at you know, like, I feel like our industry, probably like many industries, we create acronyms to sell new products and to create newness is pretty common, right and all to me. Yeah, a lot of it's, you know. Um, there's a lot of single-use widgets there. A lot of it's, you know. There's a lot of single use widgets. There's a lot of wasted technology in our space that has limited functionality and a lot of times for dealers, the learn curve to make some things effective isn't worth it. Yeah, to make some things effective isn't worth it. And then the other side is I always look at like you know, I'm a big believer, judge a book by the cover. And yeah, I don't think you're supposed to do that, but I do. But I look at any company. How they get paid is the business they're in. So I see many companies are like, oh, we're data, but they're paid to market, like these, like average CDP and auto. And I look at that. I'm like, no, you're a marketing company because you're actually paid to do marketing services, not data. Now, data is a piece of what they're doing, but it's not their primary focus. They're not trying to write new algorithms around data, clean data, exhaustfully enhance the data. That's not their business. Their business is to send emails, text messages, push it to social media and monetize the dealer at a marketing level, which is fine. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. Dealers need marketing. They need marketing help. They don't want to do it themselves. I totally with that. Dealers need marketing. They need marketing help. They don't want to do it themselves. I totally get that. But the world of AI will only chew the data, Like all the marketing stuff. Yeah, you could absorb it and say, okay, we're going to re-optimize ads based on what worked, what didn't right and AI would be really good at that, and I'm sure we're going to see that soon and write stuff. I mean, I think we both use AI to write things right, Like, or help us frame what we're trying to say more simply, or take out the buzzwords right. I think we do that constantly and, again, I'm a huge believer that for dealers to truly find the success with AI, data will be at the center of that. You will not buy a product off the shelf that just has AI and it'll work. And what I've also started to see just in auto in general, we have all these silos and now we have all these siloed AI tools built. So think about it, and this runs through my mind all the time.
Speaker 2:Sean is like, okay, you've seen just a proliferation of voice AI tools which are super cool. Right, let's make the dealer more efficient. Let's take all income calls so no one gets dropped. Let's do outreach via AI right. So they have to access a pool of data to be all helpful. Now you can train them on general LLM stuff, but you have to have some auto-specific training and some data to funnel to make that work. And then you have a chatbot on the website which is totally different and accessing a different data source and trained differently. And then you have something coming out of the CRM that's an email or text message to the customer, again trained off different core data.
Speaker 2:So I feel like man, all these systems are going to be telling customers different things.
Speaker 2:All these systems are going to be telling customers different things. We're going to create far more problems than solutions and experience for the consumer, and I look at that as like no, no, no, Dealers should own all the data in the bottom. Then let these tools plug into it, but the dealer's data is at the heart of this and that's where we have to get to, and then these systems are going to work amazingly well because they're all accessing the same underlying data and it's all resting back into the same thing. It's like oh Sean, I saw you called the dealership earlier. Do you want me to continue that in the chatbot on the website, or vice versa? Hey, I saw you chatted earlier today. Do you want to pick up that conversation or do you need to talk about something else? If you, if you receive that type of interaction, you'd be like dude, this is incredibly helpful. But right now, that's not what happens, and I think, again, data is going to draw. Data is going to be at the center of that story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, just again. You just made me think of a lot of things. You made me think of businesses, companies, processes that are active today in the industry, on the retail side, that are absolutely the wrong way to do it. I'm just not going to bring it up because then people will get mad at me. I try to keep the Sean's a nice guy image, but every once in a while things just get me so agitated.
Speaker 2:You know, the eye of your flaws come out.
Speaker 1:What's that?
Speaker 1:Eye of your flaws come out. Yes, right, instead of teddy bear, you get the grizzly, but I'm going to be good on that as I try to get us to where we'll wind down a little bit. I do want to get a few thoughts from you, just obviously. The revolution that's happening, the whole AI and automotive thing is awesome. I want to get any maybe closing thoughts there before. I want to get some thoughts specifically around, maybe some action steps. We'll go through a few bullets as we end the episode, but before I get there, anything just that you still want to share around, just revolutionary parts of what's going on in terms of action, of what's happening with AI.
Speaker 2:You know, ai is crazy, right, like as much as I look at AI today, and like you know, I think our industry has always flowed data through like FTP right, like full flat file transfer, right, like has been a thing. And then now we've had limited APIs and or pay for APIs. One of the things I think that's been topical on my mind was when Claude came out with computer use. I don't know if you've seen or played with this, but we have a lot and I think the birth of the Gentic or autonomous agents are going to redefine how data flows, because with an autonomous agent I could write, hey, just go log into that system as you're that person, go get this data or put this data in and then come back out and then I could hand that to another agent that says, now go do this with it. And he goes, that agent does that test and says then it hands it to the other agent that does something else. So you know, as much as my hope for the industry has been look, let's have open APIs, let's create standards for data schemas and for APIs for the industry, let's make them free to be able to move data. I think much of this can literally be overrun with autonomous agents and I'm going to say a relatively short period of time let's say it's 24, 36 months and I think that's a real extended timeline, I think, because we're already using them to do certain things. I just see them getting more and more powerful and faster.
Speaker 2:So I think, from a technology point also, the other key thing we've realized is infrastructure has to be very modular and flexible now. So before everything that was built was kind of monolithic architecture, kind of really like steel beams and girder type stuff right, of how data was in tables and relational tables that you'll be able to plug in modules in and out of it as new LLMs come to pass or new autonomous agents are built. I think we're going to change and I also see a massive flattening. So right now we have data, then we have all these like SaaS components, that kind of ride on it. I think SaaS just gets mushed and why? I think you'll build tool and functionality that will directly access data. I don't think you'll need the middleware of a very heavy UX UI right Like big frame that we're accessing. I think we'll train things to go do those workloads in the back and I think we'll have very limited type of thing. So like apps, all this stuff, I just don't see. I see the fundamental pinnings of that, the data and ML and AI engines working, but I just don't see this thing on top.
Speaker 2:And it's funny because I thought about that for a while and then the CEO of Microsoft came out and said the same thing and for me that was AKA. I was like, yeah, cool, I think somehow we came to the same conclusion. I'm sure he's way smarter than me and he came to it far earlier than I did, but just now verbalized it while I'm guessing and verbalizing it right A little bit. But, more interesting enough, he even realizes it cannibalizes his own company. So think about that from a CEO like giant. So think about Excel no app you just need to access, go do these things, create X no Word. He's like God, the guy's about to eat himself because of their bet down with AI and what's going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I found that it was a super awesome interview he did and I left there even more jazzed and more that how I'm trying to approach auto is right that it all will begin with the data layer. Get your data house in order and build off of it, and you can build off of it at whatever speed you can organizationally tolerate and because of that, I think the business dramatically shifts to data first, optimize for efficiency. I think the cost per transaction goes down. I think dealers sell more cars and I think deliver happier, better experiences for consumers and create timing where service purchases on timing to the consumer and dealer are in alignment versus what we see today and it's a blanket gap.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes all the sense in the world. I've got a couple of last questions in this episode for you. Maybe they're short, but when it comes to unlocking the value of data, I'd love to get from your expert opinion what you think is what would be like a first step or first steps for dealers that they should be taking when they're looking to uncover these kind of points of hidden data.
Speaker 2:Go to every one of your providers, get the documentation of what data is available to be exported out. First thing if they don't export data out, probably not a provider I'd probably keep long-term I'd probably-.
Speaker 2:Red flag, super red flag, because that means what are they doing? Like it's, there can't be a SaaS in the world today that's going to lock your data out, Like that doesn't make sense to me and then there shouldn't be any. So, red flag, get what data is available. And you kind of build like, OK, now I can get all this data. Well, now you got to build something to get all that data. So they're either coming to us or there's other companies that are non-auto, specific, that do similar things.
Speaker 2:You can go to Databricks. You could go to I don't know, take your pick Snowflake. You can go to lots of very big companies that are super expensive, generic, that do this type of thing. Where it's hey, I'm going to aggregate all the organizational data, Because I think for a dealer, you want more than just the marketing data. You want your operational data. I want to know like hey, this customer's in, go check. Like make the autonomous agent check the recall list. Does that car have a recall? Oh, there is a recall. Now go check to see if that part is in stock. Because I don't want to tell, hey, Sean, you need to come in for a recall. It's a safety recall. And then you come in and you're like, well, I don't have the part and you're just so annoyed.
Speaker 2:So I think again, organizing the data. So, step one map all your vendors, what data is available, what data is duplicated, then get that data flowing into a centralized system. And at that point it's about normalizing the data, tabling the data in a format that you could then push it forward into what's called a graph, and vectoring the data, because this will eventually allow you to take advantage of ai. And I was like that's primary thing right there, that's a this year project. It's a project it takes all. It's not. This is not done. You don't flip a switch it. It doesn't work. It's what you're going to do with it in the future.
Speaker 1:What would you recommend for leaders trying to achieve this? I mean, you've got retail experience, you get it. You're kind of a 360 all around the industry. So what are your thoughts there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, first, I feel like any leader, no matter how old you are, you need to experiment with it. You need to get chat, cbt, get clawed, get perplexity, just mess around with it, ask it things, and I think it's really hard to just go. I'm old, I want my next generation to do that Right. The kids are the people who are younger. That's dangerous Because now they're going to start building things. You have no conceptual understanding how they run and you're the business person, you're the leader, and this leadership requires knowledge and experience. You can't just push these types of tasks downstream because nobody's you. And I think it's important. And look, you don't need to know everything. You don't ever need to learn how to code, though I have a great deal of friends. Scott Falkner, the dude, went back to school to learn how to do prompt engineering and has gone and certified himself through different testing to be able to really start to leverage the powers of these tools. And he's a dealer. He's very busy, but he made the commitment and it's funny. He built his own application and what it does is so cool. It basically makes the salesperson sits with the customer. Customer's like well, it's $20 too much. They put in. Well, tell me do you have coffee? Do you have this? All the questions and it readjusts. Well, that's $40 a month. You can save that if you cut it. And you know that thing. We would normally banter with people like one less soda a day or one less Starbucks run Dude, you could have this car today. Same type of thing, but it's an interactive experience he built using chat, gpt. It's a program that runs on all the salespeople's desks. Who does this? And I love it because to me, this is the future and being able to do things like this. And I don't know what it may be version two or three of it already, because he's back always tweaking it, like, oh, if they do this, like this. And I don't know what it may be version two or three of it already, because he's back always tweaking it Like, oh, if they do this, like, do that. And I think number one is educating. Two, getting team alignment.
Speaker 2:Look, you want people who want to go to the future. You do not want people who are trying to keep you into the past. We are going to leave a time when used car managers like dude. We are going to leave a time when used car managers like dude. My gut tells me we should buy this. My gut tells me this your gut doesn't matter anymore. It has to be rooted in pure, absolute data and numbers and the numbers. Look, the one thing I will tell you about numbers they're just like you tell it once and it gets it right it will never forget it, ever. So I look at that. Humans have a tendency I'll give you a good example of one that when I was at used car week and I spoke, I said that used car managers were always gut. And even when I was like, oh no, that's a good car for the store, oh, that's a good one, no, I never. I had a Ram truck five months ago and I lost 2K. So no matter what I'm going to hit it so far under, I probably will always lose the deal because now I just don't see it. So I said you know what, we're going to enter a time very quickly.
Speaker 2:So when a used car manager appraises a car, think about the steps we go through. First thing I do maybe I go on MRR and I look okay, what are they running for? Okay, same similar. Boom, boom, boom. I look at a few. I make the adjustments. I understand that. Then what do I? Do? I go look at, maybe, car gurus, trader cars. I look at what's out there, what's everything priced at right, how many, how competitive. I'm going to make a cursory view of this process right. Then I'm going to look at the individual deal. Maybe I don't, maybe I don't really care. Are they a customer? Are they not a customer? Do I somewhere in my brain think I need this car? Can I pay up for it? Or am I going to hit it low? And I'm going to go through these steps right and right now we do this all human, emotionally driven process.
Speaker 2:I believe we can start using AI to do pieces of that. I believe we can start using AI to do pieces of that. It's like put the data in, go to MR, give me back all the data. Yep, this is your high, low, this is where you need to be. Okay, go to the market, take an autonomous agent, go find this car, match it up. At least 80% components, meaning ads to the car. Right, go find them, bring them back. Okay, do you have 37 in market? Okay, now I have this, this and this, and now I go. Well, the last 50 of them we had. This is how we sold them or didn't sell them. And now, and each one of these little AI components will do tasks, and so I feel, through time, we'll start using AI to do work alongside us, like it's going to just speed us up. Speed us up so that 30 minute appraisal turns to 15, turns to five, turns to three minutes. One minute 10 seconds, and this is the road we're going.
Speaker 2:So you want a staff that is open-minded and wants to embrace this. Now, we can embrace it cautiously, we can monitor it and monitor did it work or did it not. But we want people with an open mind, because when you have a closed mind and I'll give you a great example I always looked Lee Iacocca genius, right, I mean, dude, ford Mustang. Dude, he created the freaking minivan that every man in America hated but every mom loved, right, he, just, he built a whole category, dude, he, he, he took Chrysler from bankruptcy back out and rebuilt this American icon brand, ok, and then what happened? Start surrounding himself by all yes, men, close mind. Oh, if they don't follow how I like to do it, I fire them. And he created a closed loop of an echo chamber of only his own voice. What happens? Chrysler goes bankrupt again.
Speaker 2:And you look at this and go success happens with an open mind. Businesses grow with an open mind. Our greatest achievements are going to happen when you have an open mind. Andes grow with an open mind. Our greatest achievements are going to happen when you have an open mind. And yeah, I mean, is it easy? No, is it worth it? Yes. And if you want a team that's challenging, no, let's try something. Hey, not everything's going to work because not everything they do today works. In fact, I would absolutely sit here and say dealers make far more mistakes with marketing spend today than they did five years ago or 10 years ago. They're just as inefficient as they were. In fact, it's probably worse because you have more technology, so you have more choices, which makes more budget, which makes way more opportunity for mistake.
Speaker 1:So you have more choices, which makes more budget which makes way more opportunity from a state.
Speaker 2:So true, it's not less Dude. Listen, when I started in 1990, what did I have? They're either on billboards, they're in the newspaper, they're on television right or the radio.
Speaker 1:Or the radio.
Speaker 2:Now what is it? It's like a thousand things. I'm on OTT, I'm on this, I'm on cable, I'm over on SEM, I'm on SEO, as we talked about. I'm over here, I have an email newsletter. The fracture of I'm on TikTok, like so. It's only gotten far more complex, and yet we're still, as you said, we're still using old thinking to new technology, and that never works long.
Speaker 1:I mean just all of that, consider. I think somebody should actually do a deep dive on exactly how NADA comes up with that average cost per vehicle sold if it's in the $700 range, Because I would be shocked if they keep it fresh, based on things like well, has Google's average cost per click and average conversion rate changed over that? Like, how much does it cost you to get the same click you got last year, five years ago, 10 years ago? There are so many different variables within the digital marketing spectrum that I don't think are accounted for, and I think that I don't know how much I trust that number because I don't know how they actually truly calculate it. The variables on the digital marketing side alone have made me very suspicious for you, I think.
Speaker 2:I get it a lot from the NADA 20 group, composite of all the dealers. But I think, as you point out, I remember when I would market SEM and Tahoe's in North Jersey. I remember I was freaked out that I was spending $5 to $7. For insight, mm-hmm, and that was 2007.
Speaker 1:So fast forward, they're not cheaper today and the conversion rates are not better today, they're worse, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I don't know who I was talking to. Before they were paying like $30 or something or $28. I mean, it was way. I was like for a click. I was like it's not even a lead. I was like it's a click to a VDP page. I was like how would I pay that? And I was like, well, you can't do it organic anymore because everything is ads. Like the top 10, they used to be the three right, it used to be the three and the three and I always took position two on the right. That was my sweet spot.
Speaker 2:And now I look at it and I'm like, no way, like I, I, you can't make content fast. Well, you could use AI to make content fast enough and try to overwhelm, but you can't outspend the third-party sites who are advertising your inventory to get the clicks to their property to then sell you the lead. And they have a little economy of scale, me a scale, um, but yeah, I, I just as a single dealer, I, I don't, I, I don't think it's like, I don't think it's a viable space anymore for that type of marketing and that's why I think I'd lean back into the data, back into your customers. First, own your customers know when they're going to potentially defect, know if they keep driving that car, know if they have a life-changing event. And then watch my website traffic match to customers. Yeah, put on a graph, Put it in Facebook, put it on Google. Very personalized messaging at least as much as you can today.
Speaker 2:You can't go one-to-one, or at least as much as you can today. Right, you can't go one-to-one, but at least create better buckets if you're going to continue to try to compete at that level for those things. But I think if you really monetize your existing data and your existing customers, honestly I think it profoundly changes your business because, look, your marketing efficiency goes. It profoundly changes your business because, look, your marketing efficiency goes and I've heard everything you're 5%, 25% more efficient, like financially effective to maintain an existing customer than get a new customer. So if that's the case, if it is $700, let's say it's $500, it would technically probably cost you $100 if it's five times. So why wouldn't I do more of that? And the crazy thing is I think up until today or recently, it's been harder to do that. So dealers are taking the faster path, which is just trying to capture new customers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in the end.
Speaker 2:That's what I, I, I I believe that.
Speaker 1:So, yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, a lot of great insight there. Um, I will say, when you were talking about even in team alignment, I think it's really important for dealers and they probably got it from what you were talking about. But you, we can look back in history so that we don't repeat it and say, well, when you were basically saying I don't want to get into computers on desks, right, and so you decided to let somebody else, the newer generation, that actually is familiar with the keyboard and the screen and all that, and then it was well, I don't really want to get into having to communicate with this new thing called email and well, I don't know about this whole internet thing and all of these, not to use this for anything other than, I think, a teachable moment in retail, especially for dealers that have been in it for decades. Right, most dealers that have been in it for decades and, right, most dealers that have been in it for decades and can relate to all those examples that I just provided, probably have a story to tell about somebody who was allowed to run down those channels because they weren't afraid of it, that then ended up leveraging it back against you because you didn't know, and I always have told dealers around these points of technology most of them internet related over the last now almost 30 years.
Speaker 1:You don't have to be as proficient as Todd Smith. You don't have to be able to go as deep on all these points of data and where AI is going to take all these things. You don't have to know as much as the people that you learn a lot from. But without a foundational knowledge of understanding, you can't even have a proper conversation with the people that would come in and want to sell you things that could literally turn dark days into sunny days for your dealership. There's so many things that you could articulate in that of just outsourcing it to somebody that you think I don't have the gas in the tank anymore. Then there's probably a bigger point of consideration if you don't want to be involved in any of these new things that are innovative and new, because when you don't do that, it opens up leverage back against you. That literally could be the worst thing that could happen to you. So a lot of really great thoughts. Any closing thought before I land the plane no, listen.
Speaker 2:In the end, I think my mantra is always the same Free your data to find your truth and, as a dealer today, moving in for January 2025, get a hold of your data. Own your data, put it in a system that you control and that you can leverage to do everything out of, and if you do that, you will transform your dealership. You will financially transform your dealership. You'll operationally transform your dealership. You'll just gain more customers that are happier. You'll have happier employees. I just know, as I said, ai is the electricity, but you need the wiring, and that's your data. So, if you're investing in anything in 25 and you're listening to this, start right there. Start with the data.
Speaker 1:Love it. Free your data dealers. Once again, another we conclude another great episode of core conversations. If you're not following todd smith, especially on linkedin, he's hot and heavy there. You want all the not just the hot takes, but he actually is one of the experts in automotive that his long form content is actually super rich in data points and learnings and insights. So, whether you get him from the short clips from the podcast, you watch these full episodes. Oh, by the way, you can go do that over on YouTube.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of points of connection that are very easy for you with both Todd Smith the individual, and I would highly recommend starting at LinkedIn. You can also follow Core AI there. You can also follow Core AI there. You can also follow Core AI on all the socials. You can go to coreaicom and get a little deeper dive on what's going on with them as a business, because Todd isn't very selfish in the way he talks about that business on these podcasts, because he wants you to understand really the underpinnings of why you should be looking at companies like that in the first place. So thanks for your time. We never want to waste it. We appreciate you showing up for these episodes. Stay tuned, because we'll be back before you know it with another opportunity to consume one of these Core Conversation podcast episodes. Thanks everybody for joining, thank you.