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. happy wednesday yeah welcome to everybody who will be here live and all of those who listen on um our syndicated podcast stations yeah so catch that on audio yeah we're welcome uh welcome welcome yeah grateful to have you have you here um back for another wednesday we've got uh distinguished guest brent carmichael standing in the wings so we will uh yeah bringing him in uh shortly a couple quick announcements we have a why are you I was just like I told Brent, I said, I got to put you backstage. He goes, put baby in the corner. I'm like, nobody puts baby in the corner. You're just going backstage. It's a different thing. So he's fine. So a couple of quick announcements. We got V8 group one meets tomorrow night. We still have time. You'd have to hurry to get with me and get your data in and sit in that meeting tomorrow night. But it could still happen. That's for groups. Uh, that's group one is 200 to 500 accounts. And so that's, uh, tomorrow evening. So we're pulling together. Had a really good one last night with, uh, your big group to those 500 plus accounts. And yeah, that was a very, um, successful meeting. Very interesting. And a lot of good stuff coming out of that. And, uh, Then a couple other things. We've got our virtual dealer roundup, which is coming up next Thursday. By the way, I noticed a lot of our material that went out did not say it was virtual. I think people probably figured that out about the roundup, but it's all virtual on the 18th. And Michael will co-moderate that day with us. We've got three sessions and our panelists are coming together for that. So we'll be announcing all of our panelists in the days to come. Neo User Summit. The 23rd in Las Vegas at the Bellagio. Come say hi. Yep. And our guest today, Brent Carmack, will be speaking at BHPH United. I know on that following morning, Wednesday the 24th, I saw him on the agenda for that morning. He can tell us better his schedule. You know, when he joined us and then and I know Brent also has on May 6th, which is a Monday in San Antonio, he's doing his presentation for collect the cash, not the car. He'll clarify if I've said that wrong. So collect the cash, not the car. I sometimes have to think about what that title is, but I know the premise. And so you definitely want to catch that if you're available here. I'm pretty sure that people, this is a Texas IADA, TX IADA event, but I would venture that others that would like to come are welcome. You better not say that. Well, I see backstage, not in the corner. Brent is emphatically nodding. Others can attend. Okay. So San Antonio, May 6th. chance to see Brent's presentation, which has always got excellent feedback and great reviews. And there's a reason he's done it for consecutive years for a long time. So it's good stuff. So shall we bring it in? I think we shall. I think we shall. All right, Brent. should have just had you in yeah we should have just yeah I mean correct the stuff as we said it right exactly no corrections at all well good morning guys great to be here as always thank you for uh for the opportunity always appreciate it always good to hang out with you too we love having you yeah for sure and uh I think you know you're a guy who has you know lived a lot of this stuff we want to talk about today it's around the sales department and we've been working with some people recently that are looking to hire general managers and and we're working with quite a few people who are brand new to the business and so this stuff always comes up about you know what should I be looking for in terms of sales people and I know you've seen it where people you know tire what we call car dogs that's one of our topics for this dealer roundup that we're doing on the 18th is that it's um kind of around this idea that You know, you hire people that are experienced car salespeople. They're coming out of retail background, you know, used retail or maybe a franchise dealer. And when they haven't done buy here, pay here, it's always just a question about how different is it? So for you, you know, let's start with, you know, if you were advising a dealer to look for certain traits in their applicants and their interviews and hiring salespeople for a brand new buy here, pay here store, what kind of traits would you be advising they look for? Um, the first one for me is just sheer personality. Yeah. It's kind of got that, that it factor doesn't necessarily have to come from a sales background. I mean, it could, um, It could be one of my dealers. I know they hired their best salesperson or what they think is their best salesperson ever was actually in the drive-thru at a Long John Silver's. That wasn't supposed to be working the drive-thru. They were shorthanded that day. It was actually somebody just supposed to be cooking that happened to take their order as they went through and just kind of blew him away with, you know, if this guy's got this much of a positive mental attitude working the drive-thru at Long John Silver's. I can't imagine what he would do if I put him out somewhere, sold cars where he could make some real money. And he bought extra hush puppies. Yeah. That's one of the things that some of our clients in the past, when they're looking for people that we've suggested, one suggestion is to have some business cards printed up with... your contact information and that you have in your wallet and so when you run across people is just say contact me contact me you know and so you're you're prepared you're ready to to be able to do that but I love that story so first believer that you should be recruiting all the time everywhere you go I mean and again I'm not saying that everybody has bad staffs out there but you know there's always that you know is there somebody out there that in your staff that may be a C plus, maybe a B minus, and you come across that A, but you should always be looking for good people. I have a dealer client that every two times a month, I guess it is, their managers are required to come to a weekly manager's meeting with at least one to three names of people that they've talked to over the past two weeks about a possible position there. So they're forcing their managers to constantly recruit, again, a larger operation, a pretty good sized operation, 100 plus employees, but where they have to be recruiting on an ongoing basis because of turnover. But it's part of their management responsibility is that they're supposed to be out there somewhere in the community talking to people on a regular basis. Great idea. So personality was number one on the list. Well, you said the it factor. Yeah. So what would you define that? That was a personality thing. And to me, if you start there, I'm arrogant enough to think that I can teach everything else. I can't teach you to wake up on the right side of the bed every day. There's just nothing there that I can do with that. So personality is positive? Definitely. It's what the young people on TikTok call Riz. You guys familiar? Not at all because I don't. I'll let some of our listeners chime in on the comments. Yeah. Yeah. Riz is going to become short for charisma. So we got to keep up. Okay. All right. So now Riz, I'm writing this down. Are you writing it down? Jim's one of his job requirements, instead of going out there trying to find people to hire, is he's got to figure out what the new slang is for the younger generation. That's one of his, you know, every two weeks, it's like, what have you come up with? I bring them to Michelle. It's nothing. She's never heard of it. Anyway, so you said, so this kind of personality, charisma, you know, that sort of thing that we like, and I understand why you'd like that. Any other skills or criteria? Yeah. It's kind of hard to quantify this one, but there does have to be a a minimum intelligence level, if that makes any sense. I mean, some basic salespeople need to be able to math on the fly as opposed to because there's some things there. But again, you're talking kind of on down the road with that and don't want to go into the weeds of are they on time and how do they show up for interviews or anything like that? Because we know where that goes these days. If you talk to some of your dealers, it's scary what some of these people that actually do show up for an interview. uh, show up wearing. So, you know, there used to be other things obviously at the top of the list, but as generations have changed, uh, to me, it always just kind of falls back to what are they like in person up front. Yeah. Um, but just quick, Brent, uh, Hugo Sanchez, obviously a fan. Brent is all Riz, no cat. I don't know what cat is. Yeah. You can actually email me because I'm not in. Yeah. Right. Right. So, you know, one of the things we lost you, your audio dropped. Could be internet. We'll hopefully you'll come back in there. I don't see everything looks good on the setting. So we just lost you on our side. So. so if if all you could hear brent before that would be our you know let us know if um start talking brent so if you can hear brent let us know so we know it's on if it's on our side um and sometimes it may work it may work for you to disconnect and come back yeah because uh that sometimes resets the audio connection so we might try that okay You know, one of the things that I was when he mentioned minimum intelligence and maybe I should hold it until Brent gets back because, you know, this it's not that big of a deal. But, you know, one thing that we see frequently with dealers is, yeah, I got this and it's it's around this old car dog. I've got this old car dog, but they don't do computers. Right. or they don't you know it's like they're they just they're they just don't do computers and nowadays um you know how many of us are uh our team members are they on a on a pad or a computer and they've they've got to be able to to um navigate that are you there No, I can't hear you still. Audio gone. So we need to wait and see if our listeners are hearing us. Yeah, please. I mean, we've got a bunch of people listening, so let us know if you can hear Brad. Yeah, chime in and just make sure if you can hear us, let us know. Odds are it's... But those of those of you who, you know, I can I can make the mention and Brent can use like mime hand signals, you know. Yeah. Right. Is is that with this minimal intelligence that be able to navigate a computer. Mm hmm. You know, we see a lot of dealers that are like, he's been in the car industry for so long, but he doesn't do computers. So we're just going to need to have someone there to help them. We hear you all, not Brent. This is from Rudy. That's y'all. That's a Texas. Y'all. Yeah. Hey, Rudy. So one thing you might try, Brent, is on your, in the panel there at the very bottom on our panel, it shows from the left mute and then settings in the middle. Sometimes, you know, your settings. I hear you now. Yay. I'm not sure. Something dropped there. Yeah. Rudy and George, thank you for letting us know that. So, yeah, that that seems to be something that we have heard from multiple dealers. It's like, yeah, we're looking for someone and we've got this guy that doesn't want to do, you know, he's been in the car business forever, but he just doesn't do computers. Yeah, which is a whole different conversation, which we're having at our dealer roundup as well around outsourcing BDC. Because one of the things I see and one of the things we'll talk about that day is that sometimes the people that are good in person, all that personality that you're talking about, the long John Silver, they're great in person, but they may not be the same people who are good at chatting online. And doing the stuff that has to happen over there in those threads. And so that's kind of just different. It's different skill sets. It's not surprising. I mean, the people who have that sort of character and talent aren't always the same people. And they may also not be great at just organizing their day and, you know, doing work in their leads and this kind of stuff that comes along with that sort of that side of it. So I think for other things, any other talents come to mind, I have one in mind for me that I would be looking for. But you mentioned, because I also had kind of on my list, the thing about at least a level of intelligence allows them to be good with the math slash financing and some technology. Like they're going to have to work the CRM and be decent on that side. Yeah. And George Spat, I don't know if you're familiar with who George is out of Florida. If someone has not learned anything about computers, that might indicate that they're not willing to learn anything if they haven't, you know, to improve their thing. This old dog learned a few things about computers, so I'm talking about me. He learned TikTok, which is where we get... That's easy. It just requires one thumb. You know, it's a single, single kind of thing. All right. What else do we got? So I would just say the other thing for me is just listening skills, right? I mean, I think especially in the, in the sales team and a buy here, pay here environment, I would look for them to do a lot more listening than speaking. And, you know, obviously the way I typically describe it to folks who are new to it, Brent is also, you know, we, we, we like to think of this more of as a customer service role where in a buy here, pay here situation, it's, it's more assisting a customer through an application process than it is selling them typically. And, and I think we, the conclusion I often would make there and keep in mind, you know, I was, I worked in new cars. I was, I owned my own sporting goods pawn shop business for years. Then I stepped into new car sales because I closed the sporting goods business without a plan to what I was going to do next. I started selling cars to make a living. And, uh, And I figured it out, right? I mean, because it's really the people side of it. I stepped in and had some success in the sales side, but I was never a real polished man. I worked with some really charismatic salespeople who could just, you know, sell ice to an Eskimo kind of thing. But, you know, it's like we don't really require that in the buy here, pay here space. We don't want to oversell the customer because we can pay a price for that. So I know you've seen that. What's been your experience there? Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, we're not selling the vehicle, obviously, in buy here, pay here. We're selling the plan, the financing. Excuse me. But still, there are some sales skills there. I mean, there's still some closing skills. Excuse me. How to understand how to explain the features and benefits of what we do is more about helping reestablish credit and some of those other things that go along with it. So, again, great points. I mean, in this day and age, they have to be computer savvy. They have to, unlike myself, be social media savvy. I mean, they do. Those are huge things. tools in the belt of salespeople, not only for buy here, pay here, but in the retail environment in general. And a great point by George there. I mean, I would hesitate to say there isn't anybody that probably doesn't know computer. Well, maybe not a computer, a laptop itself, but at least a smartphone or tablet in this day and age. And it's a great point. If somebody came in in that that younger generation that had no exposure or didn't want any exposure to that, then to George's point, yeah, I probably don't want them at all with us. So, but, but yeah, it's not the, you know, do you want the green one or the blue one kind of thing? It's here's what you can afford with what you have now and the payment that we've got to be able to convince them or tell them on the fact that that's the best option for them. So there are some selling skills. There are some closing skills. Obviously not anywhere close to what there would be in a retail environment or retail use. So skill sets. And yeah, I keep hearing over and over that our salespeople in the buy here, pay here business are becoming more order takers. than actual sales people. Your point, Jim, that it's come in and fill out the application and then you turn it over to underwriting or the sales manager, they structure the deal and then come back to you and say, well, here's the cars, you know, go drive, go test drive them on these. So a little bit of a different environment, definitely. Yeah, I think, you know, we would be advising dealers to think about, especially those that are new and setting up that quote unquote sales department is think about that, you know, the salespeople are really just when they're assisting this customer through the process, they know the inventory and they know the process. So, you know, their job is to kind of help the customer who does not know the inventory or the process, help them through that thing and figure out, you know, how to make it work for everybody. And I told Michelle this morning, I was reminded and thinking about this topic that, Years ago, I was called in on a consulting visit for two or three days, and when I got there, it became clear I was really just there to be a referee. I had this dealership group that was selling 400 buy here, pay here deals a month, and When I walked in, it was like, you know, 12 sales desks and felt very much like, and this was a franchise organization that had a used car department and they started pushing buy here, pay here, and they were doing a lot of volume, but they had this conflict, you know, internally in their management team that was pretty heated. Um, you know, you got these sales managers who are saying, you know, we got the, the, the underwriters won't buy this paper. We got a strong deal here and they, they won't take it. And, and, you know, with salesperson did their job and I got a commission, you know, right. And then we're trying to get the deals done and, and it was just a mess. And it's like, it's a, it's a, And you can probably imagine how that one turned out, but I think it's really an exaggerated example of where, and I told you I want to talk about how the interest of the dealer, who's the one who hired me to come in and help sort this out, it's like the interest of the dealer versus the interest of the sales manager here, for example. I'm really trying to think about... You know, we understand that sales manager has a job and we understand that some operations grow to a point where people have different responsibilities, may have different pay plans. Right. And so they have, you know, that can certainly happen. But I think one of the challenges that we have in our buyer payer space is a little different is because of the ownership that we have in that account. after they take delivery. This is why, you know, for people who are new to it, they may not immediately understand from hearing us talk about this. It may not immediately understand the problem that is created from overselling. So you kind of want to talk about that. And it's kind of what you've seen, I know in your consulting experience, you've seen it. Definitely. There's an inherent conflict between sales and collections in our business. And obviously in a retail environment, we don't care because it's going to one of 50 banks and obviously in our world, we sell them and in the good old days, they came back every Friday to make a payment. So yeah, we call them on a regular basis, obviously not as prevalent now as it used to be, but right. Now, we do have to be a little bit careful on the front end about overselling. And I hear this a lot when I'm working with dealers on the on-site side of the business where I'll hear a salesperson say, yeah, if you ever have any problems with your payment, just call us, right? Which is true to a certain extent. But I promise you what our customer hears is, is all I have to do is call you and I don't have to make a payment. Right. So and again, we're in that space and salespeople are not doing that to try to undermine the collection department. They're just letting the customer know that, hey, we are here for you. So you definitely got to be a little bit careful with that. But. can tell you from operating a multi-state, multi-point business back in the day, yeah, my sales managers and my underwriters did not get along very well. As much as we tried to, it was, I'm paid to sell cars, underwriters are paid to put the best deals on the books in the best interest of the owner. And for the smaller dealers, obviously it's the same thing. And then where is that? Like you said, So and so, CAC would buy this deal, but we won't buy this deal. And you kind of mentioned something there. The one that you went to was part of a new car store. And I'm telling you, that is a huge challenge to sell, buy here, pay here out of a new car store. I know some that do it. Fairly well, I'd be honest with you. I've never come across anybody that I would consider being a high volume dealer, being able to do it. Because again, when somebody comes in, if I can get them sold to an outside bank or credit union, chances are that's where they're going to go. And as you mentioned earlier, Jim, they're completely different sales processes. Yeah. You know, sell them on the car first and then we'll work the deal. Buy here, pay here is the exact opposite. We got to work the deal first. Yeah. Then find the car that fits the deal. Yeah. And to be clear, this was a separate building and a separate sales team, but it, you know, it was on the row of, you know, here's Bob's Mitsubishi and Bob's Ford. And then here's Bob's used cars, you know, Bob's buy here, pay here. And so you've got this place. It's just one big franchise. Yeah. uh sort of it was a way for them they're right there together yeah yeah you know I get that question all the time most of the dealers I work with getting into the business come from the franchise world I mean they want to get into buy here pay here yeah and the first question I ask is it going to be a separate facility and they say no it's going to be in the same one are going to have separate sales people and they'll typically say no Excuse me. And I say, are you sure? Because they're two different sales processes. They just are. Like I said, we teach them in the retail world to walk around the lot with them, build that rapport out there, but settle them on a vehicle, then bring them into the building. Buy here, pay here. We got to get them in the building as fast as humanly possible. Get them on paper, determine what we're comfortable with them buying, then take them back out and show them what they can buy at that point. Yeah. Like I said, completely different environments there. And again, there's an inherent conflict, especially since we are keeping that customer to raise, so to speak, or kick him in and has to collect. And even from the service side of it, as far as repairs are concerned. So we always teach, be careful. Your features and benefits is more about who we are, what we do, how you can make payments, those kinds of things. We try to teach staying away from 115 point inspections and those kinds of things because No matter how many things you inspect on a buy here, pay here card, Jim, you know, this one thing is not going to work. And that'll be the one that the customer goes away to me. You checked 115 things and that wasn't one of them. Right. Sure. Just certain areas. We got to kind of stay away from overselling those parts of the, those parts of what we offer. Yeah, definitely. I think, uh, yeah, you've touched on it. I think one of the things that I see when we have our dealer roundup that session on, on car dogs and car people, we can break down this thing. We try not to talk in the morning show much about pay plans because obviously we sometimes we'll have people listening who are. you know in the management level or sales department whatever so it's challenging to talk about this even though most of our listeners are going to be dealers and vendors but I think the uh the thing that we see is that when we when you think about pay plans we've struggled you know try to help dealers and we'll just tell them look pay plans in our our segment are just challenging like it's hard to create a pay plan that is comprehensive enough, certainly at the management level. But when I think about a sales person, I think, you know, I wouldn't have a big, heavy front end commission because now you just create that scenario where, you know, Michelle's my customer and she says, I ask her, how long has she been on the job? And maybe I'm doing a paper application. Maybe I'm typing into the thing. And she says, I've been on my job, you know, Four months and the salesperson. Yeah, I heard that one year and four months. God, you know, right. I mean, that's just the natural. I mean, underwriting is doing its job. The salesperson would just absolutely love it like that. I mean, they would probably say nine months. I guess maybe I saw things in the car business you guys haven't seen. I would have said four years, not four months. Okay, four years. How long have you been? Yeah. If you just fudged it by one year, four months, that would have been like four years. And then that's what they said. Right. But, you know, it's comical, but it's like it's a reality that that whole motivation that we create when it's my commission on the line, I know I got to get the deal done in order for, you know, me to earn that commission. And so it just we create that conflict sometimes in our pay plans. And it's like now we understand why our underwriters and our collectors are frustrated about the first payment defaults or whatever that looks like. You know, it's like some of these problems I always talk about. Michelle's heard me say it like. we're going to have headaches in the buy here, pay here space. What I try to avoid with our clients is let's don't create our own, you know, let's try to avoid creating our own headaches in this, this thing. And I think we can do that. It's still create plenty of volume. I'm not, I'm not suggesting that we're going to stunt volume in anything we're talking about. So all the things that you've kind of alluded to are the same things we would, think about in terms of you know it just we for those who are new and we're we're fortunate to be working with some people who are new now and and they just some of them are never been in the car business and so they you know what they know about car sales is what they've encountered in their own shopping experience you know what it means to be a car salesperson and so we just have to kind of slow that whole thing down and and say this is the problem that we create when we when we do this That's one of the things that what a used car salesman looks like is what we're trying to steer away from. The stereotypical used car salesman. At one time, I think they were the least trusted Jobs was like lawyer and car salesman, used car salesman. They were like one and two for many years because of that. I mean, and there's some great cartoons out there, some great segments online you can find on YouTube with those guys wearing the plaid jackets and what were actual, what they look like when I got in the business. Now I'm laughing, I'm going, wait a minute, that guy. I was sharp back in the day. I'm just telling you that. Oh, yeah. Gold chain, and man, I got something for you. We're like, yeah, but obviously, thank God, times have changed. The guy was definitely due for a wardrobe update, but when I was hired in the sales department in 1995, the guy was wearing a green leisure suit, the guy that interviewed me. 95. Stereotypical. That's 20 years outdated because it's like the 70s is green leisure suit. It almost looked like a suit he'd had since he started. coming back I've still got mine and I know okay big big colors excellent well I mean they're made out of like an inch and a half thick polyester so they're going to last for forever exactly they've got a shelf life of like four centuries well they don't de they don't decompose if you wouldn't mind wearing that brent to the dealer would you please you can put an ncm on the chest there so Well, I thought about it. I was going to try to find a white hat for today, but I didn't. Oh, yeah. Or the jump up or the zipper jumper. Jumpsuit. Yeah. Whatever. Sorry. I digress. I think it's time for us to wrap up. We're definitely falling off. What else have we got? No, that's it. We can recap the announcements. Reminder, I've got our V8 Group 1 tomorrow. That's the 200, 500 counts. Brent is joining us. By the way, on the success with those. Thank you. It's phenomenal. It's been a worthwhile undertaking where, you know, dealers are responding to that and they like that format. You know, it's for some that they we had some dealers say, no, thanks. I want to travel. I enjoy the travel. And others say, you know, I like this because I don't I have young kids. And so, yeah, well, and it's it's I would say that there's a decent percentage of people that do both. Yeah, we're seeing some of that. So we got that roundup on the 18th. Brent will be joining us in all three sessions to co-moderate that. And so we've got some great conversations. One is car dogs. The other is outsourcing BDC. And the last one is going to be private money, where to find it and how to use it. And then we got the user summit on the 23rd of April in Vegas at the Bellagio. And those of you who are looking for tickets for the Dealer Roundup, you can get on Eventbrite. We've also been putting out some marketing on that so you can find it on any of our social pages. Did you end up creating a morning show code? You remember what it was? No, but I can share it on Friday. We'll put it on the comments. But yeah, that's a, that's all good. We appreciate you folks tuning in. We'll we appreciate you joining us again. If you can stand by just a minute, we'll wrap up the show and bring you back for so long. Thanks to you guys. Thanks to everybody out there. So appreciate it. Good to see everybody. Oh, you know what we didn't do? I think I probably got it. We can find it and put it on the thing, but be Carmichael at NCM associates. Do you have seats available in your 20 groups for buy here, pay here? We do. We have a couple of openings in what we consider our small volume group, so under $10 million in portfolio. And I do have one of my larger volume groups that does have an opening or two currently. Awesome. Got a few spots out there still. Nice. Okay. We appreciate you joining us. We'll put you backstage, not back in the corner. Yeah. It's a lot longer than the corner. Yeah. All right. So we didn't put it. We didn't put his email. You can always find Brent through us. Get a message. Yeah. NCM Associates is the website. And I was just perusing it the other day. And it's it's pretty darn impressive. They've got a ton of good stuff over there. And, you know, they're the ones who came up with the 20 group process back in the 40s. If I recall, they've been doing it and they do they do 20 groups for. you know other industries besides automotive and so they've got that yeah I think that brent does like a harley one and some other ones too besides buy here pay here so you know I'm just I'm waiting for my discount yeah yeah we'll talk to brent about that after we're done yeah so yeah so anyway yeah brent is widely respected as is ncm and so we're always thrilled to have time with them and then have a chance to learn from his wide experience yeah Well, thanks everybody for joining us on this Wednesday. And thank you for those that join us on again on the syndicated podcast stations. We appreciate your support. Those are usually available late the same evening or the next morning. Within about 24 hours. Yeah. So I hope you all have a great rest of your week and we will see you on Friday. Thanks for tuning in folks. Thanks so much. Talk to y'all later.
