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. Goodness gracious. Good morning, everybody. Hi. Hi. Welcome to a Wednesday. Oh, yeah. It's a white hat Wednesday. Are you fixing my camera? Yeah, I am. Okay, now that's better. I was counting on you starting the show. I fuss, don't I? So happy Wednesday. That is kind of the thing that I do, isn't it? I start talking. It's like, you know, women are allowed... Well, not allowed. We were talking with some colleagues of ours a while ago, and they were like, okay, so women use words a lot more than men do. And I get this, and it's just because... I'm going to keep my comment to myself on that one. But we use words, and we use a lot of words. And this colleague friend of ours was like, at the end of the day, that they would kind of come together and talk about their work day. And she, in this couple, is like, and he's just, stop. My capacity for accepting words is at its limit today. I think I said this on the podcast before, too. In that same context, the way I think about that is the problem is it doesn't always coincide. Whenever you're talkative, it's not always the same time that I'm listenative. That's not a real word, but it is in our household. Hashtag listenative. Let's put it on the thing. So yeah, so in the morning, I'm usually the one that's most talkative. So yeah, great weather. Our prayers are with all of our friends and colleagues that are in the path of Milton. We lived in the Tampa Bay area for a while. And so there's, you know, that's... It's coming in. From living there, I subscribe to a weather forecaster that's just very well known in the area. And he's usually the most accurate of anybody. And so I've been watching and he's like, it's weakening. It's still fast, but it's weakening. Did you see... Did you see the little video where the one weather guy got emotional? I forget which broadcast track or whatever, but there was a guy who got emotional describing how intense this thing was. He just knew how. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, and that's the thing that this weather forecaster is like, it's weakening, it's weakening. So, which it kind of does and the wobble and all of that kind of stuff. But I did see a video yesterday of, you know, they have like these government, planes that go into the thing to track the speed. That's how they know. That's how we know the speed. It's not because we send a bird or something. We're sending a big bird. We're sending a steel bird to gather all this information. So it was video from inside and you're watching these guys. It's just like You can see all the stuff on their, on their tables just flying everywhere. Cause they're just hitting such pockets of, of craziness. So another video I saw, okay. This guy had an idea. They were, he's been interviewed on like a news station and he's like, you know, they could solve this, like this whole weather thing. He was suggesting that they should send the coast guard out to dump ice in the ocean because that would cool the waters, which would reduce the, My brain is on overload and I'm frying. I'm like, okay, so yes, but that's not practical. That's like an iceberg kind of ice to cool down the water in the Gulf. That's like an ocean worth of iceberg. But I mean, the math... you cool the, you cool it down and you don't have that problem. So I get it, but it's like, there is, it's scale here, baby. It's not like you're going to take some big gulps out there and dump them in the water. Everybody along the coast, go grab a big gulp, just full of ice and just dump it into Tampa Bay. We probably shouldn't be making light of this. This is obviously very serious. I know. I'm sorry. Oh, it absolutely is. I'm so, yes, I'm sorry. And I know, like, our friend George Spatt, who lives in Florida, just finished the Florida conference. And, you know, I was watching some of our colleagues and dealers talking about whether or not they can or cannot get out. Sure. And that George was driving back to Tampa Bay, where he lives. Yep. and was getting things prepared um and that was yes the day before yesterday yeah yeah and we know lots of folks I mean I was in sarasota bradenton twenty years ago know a lot of people across there we know through our industry a lot of people in sarasota bradenton area and uh so yeah it's uh it's gonna be really are even though we're making jokes about ice um it's I I uh Jim was around a couple years ago when there was a pretty decent hurricane that was coming in. I forget the name of those storms. I do, too. And they do them alphabetical and keep rotating through. But it was supposed to hit. It was the one that was so devastating down in the Naples area. Right. And I was like, get the heck out of Tampa Bay because it was supposed to come up through there. And then it just didn't. And so Jim sat in a hotel because the, the flight that I booked for him out of Orlando had been canceled. Yeah. So, yeah, just, our, our thoughts and, and prayers go out to everybody out there that's in the path of, or that lives South of this band, because they're probably going to be cut off of a lot of supplies and things, um, for a minute. Okay. That was enough. That's yeah. Um, yeah. A couple of quick updates to, uh, Friday, Jeff Martin will be with us. Yes. And I, yeah, they've got some stuff coming up. Yeah. And everybody knows Jeff as the CEO of NIADA and he will be here to, uh, I asked him to come and talk about, kind of recap the policy conference. It's just wrapped up. And then to kind of give us some updates on the upcoming dealer forum, which is in New Orleans, I believe. So we'll get that information. That's coming up in November. So we'll have a chance to talk to Jeff on Friday. And then I've decided for the following Friday, the topic's going to be how to turn outsourced repairs faster. So I've got some pretty useful tips on that. Sorry about that. We'll cover that the following Friday. Yeah, right on. Wednesday of next week. That was my mom, just in case you were wondering. Oh yeah, let's talk to her. Get her on the call. Today's Wednesday. White Hat Wednesday is the day that I pick up my mom and we spend half a day doing errands and stuff like that. So back to Jeff, that squirrel. Jeff Martin coming in. Really great that you've got the new topic for Friday. Remind me what it was because I heard the ring and it just completely threw me. It's turning outsource repairs faster. That's right. That's right. So some tips on how to make that stuff move faster. Yeah. So dealers are struggling with recon still. A lot of them still say that the only thing keeping them from selling more is being able to recondition more. So I'm going to offer some pretty concrete tips a week from Friday. Yeah. Right. Sounds great. Okay. So today's topic is how to proactively approach the holidays. Okay. So can I, can I start this conversation? No, please don't. No, this is not a good time. Too bad. I have a lot of words in the morning. You know, for me to start talking about holiday stuff now is almost just, it's, it's just wrong. I mean, you know, you go to the, you go to the stores and all of that and there's Christmas decorations everywhere and we haven't even flipping had Christmas um halloween so and and I'm I am like one of those weird people that I don't start shopping until just weeks away my mom has probably got her christmas shopping done but so to talk about the holidays there's a part of me that is like Yeah. Because it's still so far away. But then Jim told me the numbers. How many days until Thanksgiving? Fifty days to Thanksgiving. Fifty days to Thanksgiving. Five zero. Fifty. And, you know, when you can put it on the scale of that's a month and a half. So and how many payments is that? Yeah. Yeah. That's like two to three payments. Well, a lot of your customers are biweekly. Most dealers have the biggest part of their portfolio biweekly. So like two to three payments from Thanksgiving. And then how many days from Christmas? It would be more than two or three, I think. I guess six weeks or so. Yeah, I guess. So how many until Christmas? I didn't do that math. You said it was seventy-something. So you're talking about five... another two so you've got two to three yeah to thanksgiving and four to five to christmas yeah so that's not very many payments we know that for our monthly customers you know you just have two you got early november and early december that are going to be impacting christmas now yeah what we're talking about here. And I really want to kind of keep this in a white hat context because it's about how do we do this in a way? How do you, and I've done it like as a former dealer, we were pretty careful to make sure. And we actually purposefully gifted a lot of our customers with certain rewards and incentives and benefits at the holidays. So you've heard us talk about Christmas parties. We've done Christmas parties and giving away stuff. And some of that ties into what we'll talk about here. But again, What I'm really suggesting is in a pure collections context, if I can be proactive, then the other thing we always talk about with White Hat Way is why do we wait until our customers are past due to talk to them? Why don't we find reasons to talk to them, you know, before and, you know, thank them for their business and recognize their worth? on time payment history and, and the fact that they're halfway through their account and all these reasons that we have to talk to them and thank them. And so this is an opportunity for us going into the holiday period to be able to get with our collections team, develop a strategy and, develop a budget I would suggest that we build a budget in there that would allow us to decide so that we can manage our way through christmas and not have it be so disruptive you know um I you know having been a dealer I've seen it and been a member of twenty group a lot of times what happens is after christmas delinquency really spikes and it takes some weeks to get it back in line and I think the piece that troubles me the most about that is the stress factor so for everybody for thinking about let's talk about the customer first the stress of being behind the holidays and and if they're hiding they don't they're they spent their money on their kids and christmas and they didn't make their car payment and and they made that choice and it was the wrong choice but now that they're in that place they're scared they don't know what to do and so they're they're nervous throughout the holidays about what's going to happen with their car if they're not in communication with the dealer right and some some customers will hide what would be a reason to hide? Well, for a customer to choose to do Christmas for their kids instead of a car payment, I think most of us can see where that comes from, you know? Well, and to you ask the dealers out there, I mean, how many of you are going to skip Christmas? Right. You'll find a way to be able to do something. The unfortunate reality is you do have customers who skip Christmas. They don't, they don't have the means to buy. Oh, that. Yeah. Yeah. There is a difference. And I actually was told a very, very emotional story by my aunt a couple weeks ago about, you know, she had friends that had my mom grew up very poor. very poor. Grandpa worked really, really hard. Grandma also worked in cafeterias at the schools. She was a lunch lady. I can even see her in her rubber gloves. And they just they had nine children I mean back you know you're kind of going back in the day but but that she had friends that were really uh comfortable and christmas day she went over to her friends and you know and they got all this stuff and then she came back and in tears was like She got a coloring book and tears. It's like, why, why didn't we get, you know, whatever. And that, that was, she was sternly scolded and told to go apologize to grandma. And but she was just a kid, a kid that that's any, that's a question any kid would have. And it's tragic that, when, you know, that's, it's tragic. And I know it's really commercialized and all of that, but to be able to allow the bandwidth, and this is a question I was like, why is this topic a white hat way topic? Because it could be a straight line topic. It's just, this is straight line collections. Figure out, you know, how do you navigate this so that you're still able to put money in the bank or da, da, da, da, da, da, da. But this really is a white hat topic because this is a matter of the heart and not that we want everyone to be like bleeding hearts, right? But, and, sorry, and, go ahead. I would say it is a matter of the heart. And it's an opportunity for us to show that we operate our business from a place of compassion and understanding and all these kind of things and empathy. So I'm not suggesting that we... Give all the customers a free pass. Let's just jump to that right away. I'm not suggesting we can't afford that. We have utilities to pay in Christmas and payroll to meet in Christmas, just like every other time of year. What I am suggesting, though, is that for most of the dealers that we work with and most of the dealers who will hear this podcast, the reality is the difference between the customer banking their payment in December versus January is not the difference between staying in business and not being in business, right? So it's a financial matter that we have to navigate. And with good planning, we can be prepared. We can budget for it. We can incentivize customers who do what is asked of them. And we can reward them for performing through certain periods or whatever. And so this is really where I was going today is like, This is something I used to do as a dealer, and I would have learned it from other dealers who did it before me, I'm sure. But certainly, I try to operate my business with heart. We genuinely did care about the customers that we served. And so I know that's true for many of our dealers out there as well. So what I'm really asking us to think about is, where's the stress? So you asked, who's stressed? Customer is stressed because they can't make it all work. They can't do the car payment and the Christmas and all the stuff. The collections team is stressed. Their delinquency is, you know, spiking and the customer doesn't want to talk to them. And so that puts pressure on them. They may have their own bonuses on the line, right? And they're counting on their bonus, you know, leading into the holidays or what have you. And then there's the stress of the dealer who's seeing their bank deposits run shorter than normal and seeing their delinquency list get really long. So this is part of the thing with good strategy. We could lessen the impact of that. So Fahad, he says, we do a giveaway for on-time payments in December. And that's kind of what I was thinking. It's like even getting on the horn now and through November, it's like if you are current by the first of December, then we're going to give you like the second payment in December off so you can buy Christmas for your family. Sure. And so that's kind of what I was thinking. It sounds like Fahad does something kind of like that. And then sometimes we have a raffle for a TV or gift cards. And so that's Fahad. That's very similar to what Jim used to do with his dealership and with dealerships that he's managed. And I would say for today, that stuff in kind of in a goodwill context, Christmas parties and giveaways, that's one thing. I'm really talking about the actual payment. So for today, I really want to kind of keep it on how do we manage the customer's payments that are coming due? So I'm going to offer some suggestions. I've got them on the screen here. I'll put them up in a minute. But the idea is, how do we do this in a way that we can have conversations with the customers leading into the holidays. So Michelle, you've got a, you've got a payment coming due two days after Christmas. So that means that you must have a payment due about. Twelve days before Christmas. So I'm going to meet with you and we're going to talk about so, so whether it's on the phone or in person or zoom call or however we connect with our customers now, it's like we talk to them and say, Hey, you've got a payment coming due. Like what's the outlook? Where are you at with hours? Do you expect to be able to make that payment on time? Do we need some relief? Like where are you at? And we don't have to offer relief right away, but we just, we just are proactively asking. So who are you making these phone calls to? Every customer that is scheduled right around Christmas. Okay. So, so not only those that are X and not, but it's, it's like every single customer's getting a phone call. It's a beautiful goodwill campaign. Okay. And so I'm just really reaching out to the customer and talking to them, especially those customers who are coming due the week before Christmas or even the ones who are coming due in the days after Christmas. Because we know financially those paychecks are going to be stretched. You're right. They're going to be stressed. And so what I'm trying to really do is talk to the customer in advance. Make them aware. They're going to hear in my tone of voice. We know Christmas can be a strain. Let's talk about what does it look like for you? Are you going to have full-time hours? So what I'm kind of hearing, and maybe it's just in the background, is it's not about payment forgiveness, but maybe payment restructuring for the next two or three payments. It's whatever dealers choose. Some balance of all the stuff. So what I want to offer, let me just put the first one on the screen. So Fahad mentioned one here. The first incentive that I would put up there would be drawings for eligible customers. So how's that going to affect the customer? If you have a drawing and give them a turkey, how does that affect their car payment? They could still be on your past due list. So when I talk about a drawing, what I'm really saying, and when I say eligible customers, I mean customers who are current. That's kind of what you heard Fahad refer to, but If you incentivize that and you do drawings, among the things that you could draw for would be payment vouchers. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. But for example, things that... So if we talk about the payment relief element to this, we could incentivize customers. And so for example... How, how would, who would we reward? Well, you could make it such that every customer who's made three on-time payments leading into Christmas is eligible for a drawing. And that all it does is give them maybe a payment relief, right? Of up to two hundred dollars or whatever the number needs to look like for you. But imagine how that looks for the customers going in whenever they can. Maybe it's a drawing for a deferral. You know, make your payments on time. Only customers who are current are eligible for that. And by the way, I would ask you to contemplate why, why do we make it only for the customers who are eligible? Ask, discuss that with your team and ask them, shouldn't we also consider extending, you know, maybe there's some thing that customer can do based on recency or if you paid at least X, you know, can we get you eligible for these drawings? Because it's just meant to provide relief and it's not like that customer needs some relief, right? So, so look at that as well. and we, you know, we've talked about that many times with, in regards to just collections overall is, is that if you have some kind of a program in your dealership, that is a month to month kind of thing too, that rewards good payments, then, you know, it's, it's, uh, So you can decide internally, like for each dealer, for some it may... What is the eligible... I just put eligible customers. So you would decide what is your definition of an eligible customer and make drawings available. But I would say as we do those drawings, let's consider not just gifts, which could certainly be nice. I would say... let's think about things like these gift, these, um, either could be gift cards for, for Christmas and, you know, Christmas dinner or whatever. It could be payment relief, which could come in the form of a voucher that they redeem. Almost like in some software system, it would be called like a no pay. We basically, we, we basically forgive that payment or we give you a credit against that payment. It's not that it gets deferred. It's actually gone. Okay. Um, And then there's deferrals. So the next one would be earned deferrals. So now with deferrals, I'm really protective of deferrals. I think everybody should be super protective of deferrals and they should be limited. It's a big... It's a big area of vulnerability for dealers. So from a pure security limit standpoint inside a DMS system and internal controls, that should be very limited. But if you think about the, for the dealer, they can, if you have a hundred dollar payment that's coming due, I can either say, here's a voucher. I'm taking care of your a hundred dollar payment this month. Okay. Or I could say, you've earned a deferral. You've made X number of on-time payments. You're eligible for deferral. Now you have the option. Would you like to take advantage of your deferral? I could give you a deferral coupon and you can use it at some point in the future. If you're good for the Christmas and you want to keep your payments caught up and save that for a rainy day deferral, you could do that. But I'm just, here it is. You've earned it with some on-time payments leading up to Christmas as an example. So that's, you know, another way you could get there. So, It depends on the software. Different systems have different ways to do that. And I certainly think from a security standpoint, we have to know how many of those happened. Why? Because if I defer as a dealer, you know, fifty customers at two hundred dollars, then that's money that I thought was going to be in our bank account this month. And that's why I say budget. We've got a budget because we're still collecting the money and we're still earning interest on the balances out there. But it's kicking it down the road. And so I think we got to be ready. Which is kind of like why we're talking about this in the beginning of October. And we're probably a little late for September. Yeah. So, yeah. But, you know, that's we felt like it was a really good time to talk about this because we've talked about it in the past, but not in this in this context. So I think, you know, the earlier, the better, especially if you're going to try to incentivize and I can share what I even did a program. We, I remember in our own dealership one year, we did a little deal. We thought about early enough to actually offer customers the option to pay an extra ten dollars with their payment to sort of buy, you know, relief. Well, talking about buying relief, I was, as you were talking, you hate it when my mind goes somewhere. So I'm just trying to jot something down really, really quick so that I stay engaged. But it was, you know, you could, as during the purchase part of, you know, when someone comes in to purchase a vehicle, is have relief. you know, for every X amount of dollars over this threshold of down payment, we'll give you one payment voucher so that you can use it however you want to. And it's like, if you get three of them, you only get to use them annually and you can choose Christmas or school clothes or whatever. And it's just like, thank you for the extra big down payment. Here is our thank you to you. You can use, you get one of these vouchers. Every year, this first one you can't use for six months or whatever, but then on every anniversary you get, I know you want to keep the rules as little as possible. Well, I want a clear set of rules and it can be simple, but they need to be clear because Anytime you do this kind of thing, and I'm thinking more about drawings right now. Anytime you do drawings, I always tell our clients, I'm always super protective of the idea that the worst case scenario is that you do a drawing and then you have a bunch of people upset because your rules weren't clear. And you're trying to do a goodwill thing and trying to do a nice thing. And because you didn't have the rules real clear, people end up upset. And then it was not fair and blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, you obviously just need to go to great lengths to make sure you avoid that situation. Try to think of everything. every scenario. But back to the thing about deferrals, I think I love where you're going with the ability to offer those to a customer and they can just earn them through on-time payments or whatever. So you just have a method for them to be redeemed in the, in the deal. And so it's any, it's back to what you and I talked about, and this comes up as part of what White Hat Way is looking to do. create more education and solutions around in our industry of subprime automotive finance, where the customer has not, you know, often hasn't shown much financial responsibility in the past. And they step into a business relationship, you know, where we need to have a high degree of accountability. I think, Joe, in the philosophy or psychology one-on-one, The first thing a freshman college kid would learn in a psychology class is the thing about reward and punishment. It's like human behavior is typically influenced by either reward or punishment. And in our industry, we use a lot of punishment. It's punitive. It is very, very punitive. And it can affect behavior just as much. Well, it's... From my perspective, is if you're using reward as the motivator, that you have a greater opportunity of retaining a customer. And collecting. and the collectors and all of that. Because it just on its ear, it's just a pivot in what it is that our main focus is. Is it punitive or is it reward? Is it punitive or is it reward? Let me just say, I think you'll always have to have some punitive element. We've got contracts that have clauses and we have to be ready to act. I'm just saying when you do only punishment and you don't do the reward side of it, then it creates an environment that's pretty ugly. And it goes, you know, like you said, and collectors. You keep collectors because, you know, we talked about it just a second ago is that when you can give a collector extra... ways of solving or incentivizing, um, uh, a customer, uh, one of our customers to make their payment and be on time. It's like, it just completely shifts the way the conversation is. It's like, you know, to, to say you're late with your payment, when are you going to get it in is a You know, you're late or yeah, it's like, let's not be late because we want to be able to create an environment that they call ahead if there's going to be a problem they're calling. Let's not be late because you're like right there for getting your next payment voucher. So how and being solution oriented then as a as a as a collector, it's like. Is there anyone that owes you money? Is there, you know, and, and let's, let's keep you on this. Cause then they're both on the same side of the table and they're excited. You know, it's like, we're, we're a team. Let's figure, let's, let's solve this problem. Cause you can turn your collectors into collective problem solvers with the customer. Oh my gosh. That's, that's where you've got, people love the collector and they're like, they're my best friend. And I love this, that kind of thing. I mean, I think there's a, Interesting thing. That'd be a future topic. You might want to jot this down. The thing about, cause I've confirmed this with dealers in the past, like they're being their best friend is good, but there's always a line that you cross is when you become too friendly with the customers, they tend to take advantage. So there's a, there's a whole conversation there that we can save for another day. You know, yes. And OK, you're going on tangent. Well, I'm not so much going to tangent, but it's based on a conversation I had last night with a bunch of my friends that how do you it's it's it's you can still be their friend and have difficult conversations. It just requires more training. And relationship equity helps, which is where I was kind of working toward. It really, really does. Because when you said become friendly, here's what I can tell you. In the times that we've spent thousands of dollars on Christmas parties, like I've managed a dealership in Tennessee that was doing about forty a month. And I want to say we had three hundred fifty four hundred customers in the portfolio the time I was working with them. And so when we would do a Christmas party, it got to be such a big deal because we, you know, I showed them how to do it and they did it themselves or what have you. it would be hundreds of customers at these events with their kids, with their kids. We would run a banquet hall and it'd be full of people and we'd be doing a, let's make a deal and giving stuff away. And it was just a lot of fun. So relationship equity. So now, now when that customer associates my name and face or my, you know, manager's name and face with something that is goodwill and that shows that we really care. Yeah. But it also shows that the customer, that we really care. It does. And, you know, you talk about equity with our consumers. When you think about, and it's another kind of tangent, but not really a tangent, is I have this group of friends that are, some of them I know really well and others I don't. And so the ones that I know really well, I can get into a deep conversation and all of that. I love being able to, to, to get to know someone because then it just, it creates that and having experiences with someone is, You know, where it's like an experience of fun, of all of that. There's something psychological about, you know, having that commonality that you now have a connection with your customer or with, you know, someone that you've just met or whatever. And so I love the idea of doing that. an event where and christmas is a great time to do that because most people are looking for things to take their families to more than any any other time of the year it's like what can we do but doing an event where it's like we're gonna have santa and it's gonna be during these hours and it's gonna you know we're gonna have this kind of thing you just do you could do more of this stuff through social media now but I'm gonna do my own tangent and I got a third point okay so um One of the things you can do, whether it's social media or in the building or both, is leading up to the Christmas party, you can buy, I would recommend like three large gifts. So it might be a big TV in a box. Holy heck, a big TV. We just bought a big, massive for Christmas. Two hundred and ninety nine dollars at Costco. Yeah. Yeah. So a big TV, a bicycle. You could set up a tent. The reason it's it's the point is it's a conversation piece. It's obviously to get attention if you've got the space and you can do large items, do large items. These are among the things that will be given away at our Christmas party. Oh, and so they're in the dealership somewhere. And so, oh, that's such a great idea. Yeah. It's just fun. It's like, this is among the stuff we're going to give away. And it could even be something like a season's pass for one child to the water park or something like that for next year. Right. You know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. All sorts of stuff. You know, you just invite them. And you have to kind of set some rules around that too. It's like how many, how many, just there's tangents. Like there's stuff to think about in doing that. But the idea is it's a huge amount of goodwill. Mm-hmm. It's a huge amount of relationship equity. So mostly what we're talking about here is an opportunity for engagement that is led from the heart. If it's just showy and it's just about money and gift cards and looking to put on social media. It can do that. It's better than nothing. But I'm saying I want to do something that's genuine that the customer will see. Yes, and the differentiator for us is, is it a sales opportunity? This is nothing about sales. Because it has nothing to do with sales or getting someone to do a test drive. This is about customer retention and customer success. Or even getting them to trade in their car. It has nothing to do with the note that they currently have with you or about getting them to buy more notes. It's about humaning. It's like these are your customers, and we recognize them as human beings. We respect and appreciate them, right? And so this is our opportunity to show that. And the minute that you add sales to it, it really diminishes its genuineness. It dilutes the whole thing. kills the authenticity of the whole thing yeah it's like you're you're just here you just brought me here to try to sell me something yeah so it just waters down the whole thing so I think it's funny how dealers and look at this nature of a lot of dealers that they're they're kind of be sales minded yep and they're always looking to try to you know sell more and I'm just saying this at the holidays what we're suggesting is go go the goodwill route Forget sales. Think about earning the connection with your customers that you have and think about how that's going to pay dividends in the next twelve months. And then what's going to happen is next August, September, you're going to have your customers say, hey, has the Christmas party date been set yet? And you used to get those kind of questions. And in no way am I saying that you shouldn't do like enter a raffle to win something by doing a test drive. That's not at all. But that that's a different that's a sales engagement. That's a sales event. That's a sales event. And so we're talking about customer engagement that has nothing to do with sales. And Goodwill is part of our Appendix W. Goodwill is part of what we think you want to do. If you're a white hat dealer, this is about... Taking your sales hat off for the day or for the week or whatever it looks like and just say, I'm just going to focus on my customers. And think about, we're asking, if we're thinking about a Christmas party, it's one day a year out of three hundred fifty, wait, three hundred sixty five. Did you forget how many days? I did. I did too much math. I need spreadsheets. Except for leap year. Right. Yeah. So anyway, you've got all this time. And so we're just going to give one day to, so, so I'm basically saying leading up to it, it's an opportunity for us to reach out to customers when they're not past due. Yeah. We're just talking to them and saying, hey, we just wanted to have a chance to talk to you as we lead up the holidays. Do you have another option? Then I can add my question later. My third payment option was payment vouchers, which we touched on here. Let me just explain what a payment voucher is. It's essentially a... coupon and whatever amount that I would choose and by the way if you're listening to this and you need some sort of payment voucher we've got a little template we can provide you as kind of a starting place but you could hop online just use a certificate well and a payment or a deferral voucher actually if you give a customer a paper something and just added a note somewhere then they're the ones that are holding it right they're the ones that have to be responsible for it so as they can like mail it in this is for my payment or bring it in or whatever but I would suggest that these vouchers be something that they have to physically collect yeah and I remember having issues where are we responsible for keeping up with the customer loses it are we responsible for replacing it you can add a note in in their in their account I'm just saying you need to think about it yeah be prepared for that scenario and decide what your practice or your policy is going to be about that so that um you know you can have that but let me just try to clarify because we've kind of touched on two different things okay payment deferral again would be putting it pushing the well or to where yeah typically to the end but you're going to defer the payment um that's typically the way that or you could do like a we're going to defer and do a third a third a third for That would be more like what I would call a payment arrangement. And that could also be done. Whatever makes sense for the customer. But you just need to be clear about what is allowed on that payment deferral. You can even do that around your taxes too and say, we'll defer this payment until tax time. If the software will allow you to keep up with that. Sure. But the, the, the payment voucher is a coupon that you redeem in. It's like cash. That's only good on the, the account. So they can redeem it under certain conditions. Right. And so it's like, it's, it's effectively cash. And it also helps with the Christmas party. Cause now I don't have to bring a lot of cash to give. So I draw for a hundred dollar payment voucher. Our next drawing is for a hundred dollar payment voucher. And I don't have to take cash from the drawer, but I'd have to budget for it because it's coming out of my cash accounts when that customer redeems that. It's coming out of my anticipated cash flows, right? So these are all just things that we can do. We can do any combination of those. But I think it really for today is like, When we're proactive leading into the holidays and now, will we still have a little bit of a delinquency spike? Perhaps. But imagine how great it feels for a collections team and a dealer to be able to look at their past due lists and say, oh, yeah, we've already got an arrangement with eighty percent of these customers who are past due on December twenty six. yeah okay yeah so this is all I'm trying to do so the question I just had is like how how would you suggest a dealer find the man hours the bandwidth to be able to go through and call all of their It's with a collector who's doing whatever number of calls we're talking about. When we plan it well enough, here we are mid-October. If we plan it well enough. So you've got to make twenty calls this week. Twenty or whatever it is. Yeah. Whatever it breaks out to be. But we just want to make sure we set aside a little bit of time. And by the way, these calls don't have to be done by a collector. It's really... Oh, yeah. Right? I mean, you've got other people on a team who've got some spare time and whether it's a, you know, reception desk or whatever. It's usually pretty slow on sales, too. So, you know, that could be... So you're just calling them and maybe you're making sure that you just... It's a courtesy call and you're saying, hey, we emailed you some stuff. We want to make sure you find it. There's some options as we go into the holidays. We want to make sure you're aware of our Christmas party. Oh, yeah. I like that idea. So it's like, I'm not here to talk about the specifics, but we sent you an email. Did you get it? Or a text message. Did you get it? What's the likelihood that the customer's going to take my call when they know they just made their payment on Friday and they see that the dealership is calling? I like that idea an awful lot. Your first people to call is everyone that made their payment on time. And then you start working some of the others and start getting the arrangements so that you're ahead of it. Because it's engagement, I ultimately want to talk to every customer. It's just that I'm not going to be surprised if the ones who are past due don't take my call. and so I want to start yeah you know yeah I want to start working with this now all the people that are current and it's a it's a reward thing like this is dealers talk about this too it's like the customer the the team tends to know the name of about twenty to thirty percent of the customers why because they're the ones that are on the past two lists and that they're dealing with all the time those other seventy or eighty percent they never hear from them the payment goes in and we're always hearing from dealers how do we keep that connection we use these to come in and bring cash every this is one way call them on the phone have a And if they're not answering the phone call or whatever, then you can send them a text, send them an email. Hey, I tried to call. Whatever it is. But I do like the idea an awful lot of an email blast to all of your customers saying, hey, we've got this thing or something. Let us know. And you should be getting a phone call in the next couple of weeks. I'm going to throw something, one more thing on the screen for those who aren't seeing the screen. I'm going to recommend that dealers check out something called Vimeo, if they're not familiar. We've been using it to record videos. Oh, I love it. Yeah. So I think the personalization element of that is so good. And so I think what I would recommend for dealers is if I'm putting my receptionist in charge of following up, it would just be – hey we're just following up to make sure you saw the email there's a little short video that kind of explains what we're doing for christmas and so but it's a more personalized now when you get and vimeo is easy I should be getting a commission for this referral but not for this mention but no it's a really slick system and um it's been around for a long time and it's kind of a it's kind of a youtube alternative if you will but they've got a really slick and easy way to build and our v-eight dealers know because I use it all the time I'm all the time oh yeah that's and yeah some yeah Little short videos and occasionally a long video. Sometimes not a short video. And kind of squirrel, but not really a squirrel. It's in the same thing. A lot of dealers are going to say, I don't want to get in front of a camera. I don't want to do the thing. Well, And it's funny because we've talked to some that they are known for getting in front of a camera, getting in front of people, getting in front and all of that. And through conversation, just because they're colleagues or whatever, and they're like, oh, you're never going to be able to get a dealer to do that. I challenge that a hundred percent. And, um, one of the dealers that we've been working with for, uh, you know, he's, he's been someone that Jim's been, uh, kind of a coach, uh, well, we worked with him really, really closely, uh, a couple years ago and then he's we've just kept in contact and and he's kind of jim's kind of come in and out of of working with him um is a dealer named nick duman and uh nick when we first started with him he wanted to learn how to uh brand himself. And so we were like, get videos of yourself talking about things. So people get familiar with your face and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And he was just like, cannot do it. And it was like pulling teeth. And so we're sending examples back and forth. And it's like, you know, just something you're going around and you're showing a, uh, uh, how to do a thing, or you're, you're interviewing one of your team members or whatever, and just kind of getting used to that. He put out this video. He's been trying. He's putting himself in a place where he's uncomfortable. He did this video recently where it was the birthday for the oldest car on the lot. Loves it. And I loved it. And he and his sales manager out there and he's got this pie of, and he's like, we're going to be putting whipped cream in his face for every day that goes by that this car is not sold or whatever it was. And so it was just, and he had fun and he was looked natural on the camera. And I was like that. that it just takes practice and so for all of the dealers that are out there it's like I could not do it it's like get yourself out of your comfort zone yeah and just do little things and you get you get to the point where it's comfortable I would add to that it's it might not be as much practice as it is a decision true Sometimes you just have to make a decision because all you're really deciding to do is let the customers get to know you. Just be real on camera. You don't need to be an actor. You don't need to become a polished actor. You just need to be you and let somebody run the camera. And so this is what we encourage Nick to do. And it's worked out beautifully. He's done a really great job with that. And he definitely is building his business and his customers love him. And what's not to love? He's a great guy. Oh yeah, well, and so it goes more to, if someone says, I don't wanna do a video that we're sending out via email, It might take a couple of takes. You might have to have someone there to kind of, you know, help you record it or whatever. But start doing stuff like that. Because when we talk about we don't have connection with our customers, when they came into the dealership and you were the dealer principal, frequently you would have, you know, it's a little conversation. And so there was conversation there. You don't get that opportunity anymore. And so bring the conversation. Sure. to them and, and of just like, this is FaceTime. This is your dealer. And you know, we're doing this thing. We get it. There are some dealers who choose not to be known to their customers. They don't, they aren't the face of their business. And so that's, if that's you, then that's fine. If I am the face of the business, then I would recommend if the dealer does only a little short selfie video that just says, Hey, I'm Jim. We appreciate your business at Joe's used cars or whatever. And be sure and come to our Christmas party on December eighteenth. That's it. End of video. But it's real. It's genuine. It's just like... And most DMSs have the ability to send an email, don't they? With like a link for Vimeo or something. Probably. Yeah, probably. I mean, all DMSs are different. So, or CRMs. So, love the idea of sending them via text because people actually read the via texts. And then... I wonder if it's on your Facebook page. You can send it through Messenger or whatever. Technology will get... It'll get it in front of a customer. Yeah. So I would just say this is part of it. And let me just say, folks, we got a big landscape project going on in our yard. And I think today we've run especially long. I think Michelle is just dawdling because she's dreading going to work on the landscape project. I enjoy those projects. They make me happy. And I get to work muscles that I... Well, we've been talking about getting back in the gym. And yeah. Well, and it just... There is something about... looking back on a project and going like, I did that. I did that. And it's super proud of like, even though I am a perfectionist, so I will always notice the little things that are not right. Yeah. Like I did that. And I can look over and say, see that project over there, this two thirds finish. Hey, I did that. I'm not calling you two. That wasn't me. Okay. All right, everybody. Thanks so much for joining us on a Wednesday. Hope you guys have a great rest of your week. And I look forward to seeing you all on Friday with Mr. Jeff Martin from the executive director of NIADA. He's the CEO. He's the CEO. He's going to be here. Okay, CEO. All right. Well, have a great day, everybody. Thanks again for joining us.
