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. Well, happy Monday. Hey, we're back. We survived the weekend. Oh my gosh. Michelle is finally back to some kind of... Some kind of... Some version of normal. Some version. Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty rough. But yeah, we missed going to Hill Air Force Base because the Blue Angels were there. Right. We kind of got to watch from a distance like all of the... pyro I don't know if they were dropping bombs or what but we would we would see these big plumes of dark smoke um across the valley and then I don't know a minute or two later or whatever it was like yeah we're we're 10 to 15 miles probably right from the base itself and we can see it because it's up on a little bit of a ridge and so you can see it well from our place but yeah it was uh I think they were simulating bombing probably had the b2 bomber you know yeah like and probably feel the yeah stuff but yeah we missed that but that's okay because we stayed home and and I i uh I got caught up on all of my netflix good for you I i know that you really love that jim jim's rather be on tiktok than watching watching the show so I bet you know it's so funny because because you'll say things like I learned so much today yeah Well, it's like one thing too with TikTok is when I start a TikTok video, I don't know how it's going to turn out. When I sit with you and you're watching a rom-com, I know how that's going to turn out. I know, but it's still fun. Is it? It's still fun. We watched that new one with Zach or Zach something, the guy from. Zach Efron. Zach Efron. How come I know that? Really, that's a great question. He's like middle-aged now and so looks older. Looks great. And oh my goodness, why can't I? Still got a little brain fog, don't you? I really do. I really do. What's her name? Oh, Nicole Kidman. Nicole Kidman was in it. And it was cute. Okay. Okay. I'm happy for you none of you care right none of you care well um yeah but it was it was lots of resting lots of lots of fluids lots of tissue yeah um which I gotta be careful I'm over here wiping my eyes with a tissue that I think I just wiped the tiger balm but tiger balm you guys ever use tiger balm if you haven't tried tiger ball oh my it's let me just say this is not your mother's mentholatum no it's it's it's really really awesome if you if you've high potency it's high potency but um it's yeah it's pretty great it works yes and I i think I got that at the uh at the at the something market the asian asian market yeah um OK, so one other thing. We got a book today, or this weekend. So we were having a conversation with Eric Johnson at the convention. And he said, hey, how would you like to get a copy of this? And I was like, sure. And so we got it over the weekend. And oh, my gosh, I don't know if all of you are familiar with this. It's called Car Law F&L or F&I Legal Deskbook. It is the ninth edition. So they've done quite a few of these. But it's just a reference book. And I was really enjoying going through and like looking at some of the questions. We say frequently that we are not attorneys because we're not. Sometimes we play one when we're doing our play acting thing. But what a great thing. What a great reference. So if you all, I don't know if it's available on Amazon or whatever, but it's Eric Johnson is from Hudson cook. Right. And Hudson cook, just for your information, Hudson cook's been around as a law firm since I've been in the business. There are car decades. Tom Hudson is amongst the original principals. And then Eric is in Oklahoma city. I think Tom Hudson is mostly retired in Virginia or Maryland and Uh, but yeah, they're a well-established firm and they have, uh, so the book we're interested to see, cause I think you liked the method that they use. They basically just answer questions. They just answer questions. Um, uh, yeah, I can't read cause I don't have my glasses on. Yeah. I mean, that is not one thing that healed over the weekend. My eyesight did not. Eye open. I was disappointed. It's not a picture book. It's heavy. It's thick. And there are a lot of words. Not for me. Michelle will give me the Michelle notes. Jim's not a reader. I am a reader. Jim's not a reader. He likes to get Reader's Digest versions from me or the Cliff Notes. And it's all about the ADD thing, which Tommy can relate to. Our friend Tommy Brandes. Which just amazes me. You can get lost in a spreadsheet. True. For everything. days. With a little help from Adderall. With a little help from Adderall, yes. But yeah, you can get lost in a spreadsheet, but just have a real hard time focusing in on reading well yeah reading is different because you know you read a paragraph and you realize what did I just read why am I daydreaming about um you know the roman empire whatever do you guys remember when that was the thing most men think about it's like I do all the time because that's always on my feed I like I like ancient civilizations and history stuff and so that's you know I algorithms for the things that are out there Again, it's called Car Law, F&I Legal Deskbook. It's the ninth edition. I think that this most recent edition was from 21. Yeah, good stuff. It's definitely a good reference to have around. When we have a question about that, I will keep this next to this podcast equipment and say, well, based on this, and I'm not an attorney, but attorneys say, Okay. Look forward to having Eric on the show one day. Oh, absolutely. We'll figure that out. We've got some other invitations to go out. I can say here that I'm going to send a note to Tracy Myers. I'm hoping Tracy Myers will be available to join us on the podcast soon. We've got a big event coming up. Yeah, I think it's August 1st, so a month away. So I'd like to get him on the podcast in the month of July to talk about that. It looks like a great event. And I know we've talked to dealers that have talked about it. Really great things to say. dissect topics and they just follow them up I mean they just go around and write down the hot topics and then they pick one and it bounces around it tends to get pretty yeah so the format sounds like it's fantastic yeah I love it so I'm interested in hearing more about that soon yeah yep um uh anything else before we get going um Only just a reminder that we are forming that V8 group five, which will be dealers from 500 to 2000. So we have some commitment and we need to get, we've tried to change the practice on that. We get a commitment from at least four dealers before we actually officially form the group and start billing. So, uh, That's where we're at. We just need to get at least four dealers in that group to fill that second one because we did fill group two, which is the other group of that size. And having a second group that size is nice just because like we saw it in group one and group four that are the same size. Dealers can float. If they miss their own meeting because of a conflict, they can sit in the other one. So that's a nice bonus that we have with the virtual format. Absolutely. Awesome. All right. So today's topic is, Today's topic is survey of the sales department. And this is like a self-assessment. This is a dealer survey, not a sales department survey. Well, it's a survey about the sales department. So it's about, yeah, it's for dealers. General managers could certainly take it. Sales managers. This is like just a self-assessment. So it's not, it's not meant to give you, by the time we're done collecting responses, we'll have some comparison. But I think really for this is about how do you view your own um, like if I, we identified 10 areas or elements of the sales process and we just asked dealers to take that and just, yeah, just kind of grade themselves in those areas so that they can see for themselves. Cause sometimes we just don't sit down and really do that well. And, uh, it's always a great idea to on some kind of a cadence rhythm to just do an assessment of the things how effective am I how you know how does anything need to be updated sure you know all of those kind of things and this came about because oh with our newcomer group last week I kind of did this you know in a less formal way I went through the This process with our, that group is newcomers, newer to the business and some of them are struggling. Most of them are struggling to get any real volume going. And so we're just kind of talking through the different pieces and having them think about which pieces really tend to affect sales in our experience. So you want to just go to the, let's go to the quiz and let people see what questions are in there. I'm going to change the format here. And I emailed that, by the way, this morning out to maybe 100 or so dealers. Well, Jim, tell them what they get. Well, you're the lovely assistant. I thought that was your thing. Well, no, you're supposed to tell them and then I will do the thing. Oh, the presentation. No, I just, as a little reward for those who, especially newer dealers who could use a little coaching, we just offer to one in 10 of the people who respond, we'll do a drawing on two weeks from today. We'll just do it on the morning show two weeks from today and draw the name of who. And then get an hour of coaching. Just to be able to kind of talk about some of the things that you might be struggling with and give you some insight. Be able to go inside there and look at the things and give some tips based on that. But yeah, that's the idea. Mostly, as I said, it's a self-assessment, but it's meant to give that perspective. So you want to read through that? You know, I should have worn my glasses, but I think I can do this. Sales volume off. Sales department underperforming overall. Here's a chance for buy here, pay here, and lease here, pay here dealers and sales managers to do a self-assessment in just 10 questions. All respondents receive results to see how their own assessment compares to others. Plus, one in 10 will receive a free coaching session. Remember that all questions are meant to gauge your own view of your own department process. Meaning how well do you do compared to how well you want to perform? Drawing will be held. So first question, how well do you do the vehicle pricing? Comparative selling prices. So how well would you say that you do your pricing? Is that about I know how to price well? No, it's about competitive. It's competitive selling prices. Like how well do you do in the marketplace compared to others? Okay, so one thing that that implies is that you are looking at what your competitors are doing. And you're familiar, which is important. And you have to have a read. I mean, I've been polling dealers informally, again, around this idea of do your customers... hit you on price do they do they do they seem to choose to do business with you or not based on price is price a driver most say no yeah it's not about the selling price but we hear from a lot of dealers who do talk about selling price and so I just this is a chance to find out yeah are you competitive is that could that be amongst the things that's stunting sales Yeah. All right. How well do you do with flexible financing, competitive down payments, that kind of thing? So flexible financing, is that like... Yeah. It's down payments. It's basically, that's what it says in the parentheses. There's competitive down payments. It's really what we're, it's really the primary driver of financing. So, so it's the next question is okay. If it's not about price, then it's about financing. How well do you feel like you compete from a competitive financing standpoint? I think with established dealers, this will be less valuable, but I think the newer dealers, I think this will be something they need to figure out. I don't, Everyone's got an opinion, that's for sure. Yeah, and this is meant to be a self-opinion. This is a self-look at, I think we could do better in this area, for example. The next one, to the extent it has a potential impact on sales, how would you rate your inventory mix and selection? Right. So, you know, what does what is it that people are seeing? Because, you know, it's interesting that I and I would love to hear your opinion about this. But, you know, I've I've seen dealers that have just a very set type of inventory. You know, we see some that have just only EVs. We've seen some that just do Toyotas. we've seen some that just do cars that are under $4,000. We see sales that are, uh, people that do all sorts of things like that. And then we see ones that it's like, you got to get eye candy. Cause if you don't have eye candy, you're not going to get people on the lot. Yeah. Um, so that's, yeah, it's an interesting thing. Um, you wanted my thoughts. I wanted your thoughts on, on, um, you know, cause mix and selection, um, I have thoughts, but I'm just from ancillary listening to others and things like that. But I just kind of wanted to get your thoughts on mix and selection. Because I know that you have encouraged people that when they're new, it's a good idea to have so many of X, so many of X, so many of X, so many of X. And then whatever your price range is, that's where you're plugging it in kind of thing. Yeah, I think a mix is a good idea. Certainly, if you're asking me what we see, I see most dealers are saying they wish they could get more inventory. They wish they could buy more, recondition more, and have more cars on the lot. We also see, and this is partly through VA, we see that the dealers with the highest rate of sales... aren't always the same ones that have the higher inventory levels so we see dealers selling quite well through and they're struggling to fill the front line but they they sell them quickly and so this stays fresh so I'm not sure that selection is but the question really asks how do you feel about your selection mix that's what it's really asking here but And then the next one is, to the extent it has a potential impact on sales, how would you rate your reconditioning process time to line? And this is something that actually I've just, because I watch, I troll Facebook for questions, things that are happening. And this seems to be something that a lot of dealers do. That it is, it's, it's a piece of stress is just how, how their costs and reconditioning and how quickly can get it front line. Yeah, there's a lot of elements there. And I think, you know, a lot of dealers will say that reconditioning is a bottleneck, right? That they can't turn the cars around fast enough, that that's the primary thing that's limiting their sales. So we want to find out. That won't be true of everyone, but we just want to hear from dealers, like, how do you rate your own reconditioning process right now? Yeah. yeah okay um next one is overall how would you rate your effectiveness with advertising advertising is a big there's a lot of um great vendors out there there's a lot of people you know pitching hey use us and and a lot of competitive pricing a lot of just different bells and whistles there's a lot of different stuff that's out there so with what it is that you're currently doing how well would you rate its effectiveness Yeah. Advertising. So what is what is that they are measuring as far as effectiveness? Well, that's up to them. But I just kind of made the question as broad as I could. Overall, I just said overall, how would you rate? So just advertising, not marketing, just the ads that you produce and put out there with the expectation of creating a lead or an inquiry. What is your, how would you rate your effectiveness in that area? So just get a feel for how people think about their own status in terms of, you know, advertising in this example. But yeah, just trying to figure out how do you feel like you do? Like, do you feel like that's something you could improve on? Yes or no? um so the next one is in lead handling and this is a big this has been a big topic with a lot of people just then in terms of handling incoming sales inquiries how would you rate your company's effectiveness at handling near-term leads which is One or zero to seven days. And when I saw this, I was like, there needs that needs. I would strongly advise Jim that there be two or three more pieces in that because, you know, you can talk to people like Maggie and she's like, are you calling or are you reaching out to them within 30 minutes within, you know, whatever, because they're what she's seeing it. So it's like he says one zero to seven days. So that's within the week. What we see frequently is that if a lead is more than three days old, it's written off. Yeah, for sure. I mean, part of it has to do with people, whether they are using a BDC or they're having their own sales team, you know, work the leads, it varies. But really the question I try to, and by the way, I hear your strong advice. I only had 10 questions. I was going to keep it to 10 questions because these car dealers are busy. Yeah. So, um, so I kept it to kind of divide it into what I would call near term, you know, the warm leads, the hot leads would be in that bucket. Um, and then I made it eight plus. There's the cold leads, which are eight plus or the warm. Yeah. I don't know if they're cold. I mean, I think what we're seeing is that the, really the question is how well do we do with continuing to work on when they're more than a week old? You know, it's just, that's really the question. Some people just may have a, you know, we get new leads in every week and, And so we're just going to work the fresh ones. I mean, that may be what your procedure is. And so the question is, how do you do, how do you perceive that you do with the ones that are over eight? And if, you know, just kind of, we know there's a tremendous opportunity in those weeks, right, in that bucket. So people, how would you rate the skill level, effort, et cetera, of your entire sales team? Yeah. It's not about any one person. It's just the overall sales team. As a team. And notice that the next question is about training. So training aside, we're just saying skill level and effort. The people that you have in those roles, how would you rate that? Is it a weakness? Is it a strong point? Just give yourself a number in terms of the people that you have. Okay. And then the next one would be effectiveness with sales training. So try to separate that to say, you know, how well do you do? Even if you got good people, right? Then how well do you do at keeping fresh with training and keeping them up to date? And, you know, I, from my perspective, do you do training? Yeah. Yeah. I think there's, there's a ton of dealers out there that don't. Oh, for sure. So, yeah. All right, and then the next one is people. Again, how would you rate your company's sales process at the building? Not pre-visit CRM lead handling, but once they get on the lot or in the building, how would you rate your sales process? Right. So if we're missing people at that stage, how much of it is... let's just kind of try to break it down. If we're missing people who make it to the building, let's rate each of those things, you know, people process. Right. And yeah. And, and it's just from my experience, there's a lot of dealers out there. It's like, once they're in the building done, what, you know, we, we, that it's, you just got to get them in the building and then we're done. And then there's, you know, others that, so what is what does that say if if that's true I mean I was saying if the dealer says that to us um you know obviously you'd want to have some comparative results to be able to say anything very definitive but if that's true if we really close the customers well once they're at the building then what does that really say it says a couple things to me it says one are we only inviting in the customers who are well qualified that could be one thing Two, it may say that our inventory is fine. I mean, if you close most of the people who come, it's not like they get there and they're dissatisfied with your inventory and go somewhere else, right? Must be satisfied with pricing and some of those other things. But I think we first have to ask ourselves, this is a self-assessment. And it's like, is it true? Are you really that good with the people who come to the lot? Are we really measuring all the people that come to the lot? I mean, those are the kind of things that I think we have to first assess. examine in order to really make a good determination self-assessment but it's it's you know we're always talking about measure measure measure measure figure out ways to measure um all of these things as well whether or not that you're surveying your team you know whatever it is and get some level of measurement and then there's a bonus question bonus question bonus questions which of the following do you advertise most vehicles with price vehicles with no price down payments the finance program or the way you do business, NA, we don't advertise, and other. I actually gave you one and you didn't put it on here. What? I'm offended. When will you be over it? Now. Okay. And it was problem-solving. It's like you're advertising a problem and a solution to a problem. I actually did not hear you say that, but yeah, I like that. I think, but so it's your solution oriented. Oh, that's what you meant. You, I think you did say something about solutions and I just failed to get it on there. So it's like, yeah, I can fix it. It's editable. It's editable, honey. I can fix it. So the, the, this is how we fight. Yeah. We don't find a lot of dealers doing the solution side. But again, this is just for dealers. This is a bonus question. What do you find that you advertise most? We see a lot of dealers advertise cars, right? Oh, yeah. And so we'll find out if that is the answer that comes back here, you know, as the primary response. But yeah, it's really just meant to give a self-assessment. And I think as much as anything, it was our attempt to identify if sales are slow. Uh-huh. it was our attempt to identify how about we look at these 10 areas. Let's make sure we kind of dig in and sort of self-assess in these areas, which, which of these areas really needs the most attention. Yeah. Right. And you know, I, I, again, trolling Facebook, um, but there's, we always, it seems like there's always someone that's posting something that says not selling anything. Where are the people? This, you know, the market is so bad, whatever. Um, and so, you know, I, uh, I don't know that I could give you an answer about why you're not getting as many people in. But I can say, and we were talking about this last night, is that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. And so mix it up. Do something different. And test it when you mix it. The A-B testing thing is like, you know, try a couple different ways and make sure you can measure both ways to see what's really working. And, you know, some kind of, obviously a Christmas promotion is not going to work in July unless you want to do Christmas in July. Um, but you know, mix it up, mix it up, mix it up, mix it up, do something different. Um, because if, if you feel like you're struggling, um, on something, uh, getting people in the door, whatever is, is try something different, try something new. Yeah. So that's part of where you've offered one in 10, we're going to draw someone to be able to get a free hour. And that's kind of one of those things is like, let's give it an hour and see what we can come up with and solve some problems. Sure. Yeah, for us, it's just offer perspective, right? And just offer some suggestions based on what they hear. We're getting a few responses in already. Nothing real telling. I mean, most dealers are scoring themselves fairly high. We got one that scored themselves low in terms of recon process and one that scored very low. Like I said, that seems to be something that a lot of dealers talk about. It's like a struggle, struggle, struggle. So the lowest self-scores so far have been advertising and marketing. uh, training. So again, we'll, we'll bring those in and we'll share the results. And those who watch the, who complete the thing should be able to see the results as they, and we'll talk about it. Um, and it'll be, you said it's closing in two weeks, right? Okay. Um, one of the quick update on, um, Wednesday, we're going to bring the Tim Lawrence interview from NIADA. So we'll have, uh, Tim Lawrence is the CEO of LHPH capital and one of our founding sponsors. So on this Wednesday, we will, uh, bring that interview that we did with him and share it with our listeners. fantastic team yeah they're great people great people and everybody says that everybody everyone that meets that team just like gosh they're just quality people good quality people yeah yeah and providing a good service for the industry right so it's an interesting um interesting business model they have very niche because not everybody does lhph yeah it's like they're they're a solution yeah for sure yeah we definitely enjoy working with them I look forward to uh having more of our listeners get to know mr tim lawrence yeah yep great guy Yep. What else? I think that's it for me. Yeah. Okay. I feel like I'm going to, I've got a sneeze just, Oh yeah. I'm not a hundred percent, but I'm like, I know I'll, I'm, I'm going to make it through. All right, everybody. Hey, thank you. Uh, we just really appreciate your support and listening and, uh, we're great. Make us part of your Monday. Right. Um, thank you so much. And, and for listening on, uh, on, uh, one of our syndicated podcast stations. If you are and you want to be able to see the questionnaire or if we're talking about something that is from a spreadsheet or whatever, please go and find us on YouTube. Right. And like and subscribe. And I will share. Yeah, I will share the actual survey in the Facebook or in the threads from this morning's podcast right now while I'm thinking about it. It's a quick survey. Yep. Just do it. You might win an hour and do it all night. Yep. All right. Thanks so much again, everyone, for joining and have a great rest of your week. Thank you.
