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Car Guy Coffee Podcast: Upshift to Uplift feat. Dusty Sutherland
Car Guy Coffee Podcast: Upshift to Uplift feat. Dusty Sutherland
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About this episode
Dusty Sutherland joins the Car Guy Coffee Podcast to share his journey in the automotive industry, emphasizing the importance of personal connections and effective communication in sales. He recounts a memorable experience from his early days in a dealership, highlighting how understanding customers' needs can lead to successful transactions. The conversation delves into modern marketing strategies, the significance of targeted advertising, and the value of building relationships in the car business. Dusty's passion for uplifting others and his commitment to community shine throughout the episode.
Topics:
customer relationships
sales techniques
automotive marketing
targeted advertising
community engagement
personal growth
leadership
storytelling in sales
overcoming challenges
Car Guy Coffee Podcast: Upshift to Uplift feat. Dusty Sutherland
Welcome to the Car Guy Coffee Podcast. Kickstart your day the right way and join us as we tap into the brightest minds and most passionate voices across the automotive world to bring you the education, motivation, and inspiration you need to thrive. From the showroom floor to the service lane, prepare to Upshift and Uplift your perspective.
In this episode we are joined by Dusty Sutherland, a veteran, leader, car guy, and marketing expert. We dive into ways to grow, lead, and help others do the same, as Dusty shares his inspiring journey from serving in the U.S. Navy to excelling in automotive sales, service, and advertising. He brings a unique blend of discipline, faith, leadership, and storytelling to the conversation. This is a must-listen for anyone in the automotive industry or anyone simply looking for motivation to grow and help others.
📲Stream it. Share it. Let's Brew.
Don’t forget to share and subscribe!
carguycoffee.com
certifiedsolutionaries.com
Welcome to the Car Guy Coffee Podcast. Kickstart your day the right way and join us as we tap into the brightest minds and most passionate voices across the automotive world to bring you the education, motivation, and inspiration you need to thrive. From the showroom floor to the service lane, prepare to Upshift and Uplift your perspective.
In this episode we are joined by Dusty Sutherland, a veteran, leader, car guy, and marketing expert. We dive into ways to grow, lead, and help others do the same, as Dusty shares his inspiring journey from serving in the U.S. Navy to excelling in automotive sales, service, and advertising. He brings a unique blend of discipline, faith, leadership, and storytelling to the conversation. This is a must-listen for anyone in the automotive industry or anyone simply looking for motivation to grow and help others.
📲Stream it. Share it. Let's Brew.
Don’t forget to share and subscribe!
carguycoffee.com
certifiedsolutionaries.com
Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Ford F150
"he gets a call from a customer and said, hey, Jim, I need like a blue F-150 4x4 with 50,000 or less miles on it."
Car
Toyota Tundra
"... we've got a bunch of trucks. We can't move these tundras. What do we need to do?"
Select text to request an explanation
Hello and welcome to the CarGuy Coffee Podcast.
This brew has been brought to you by Certified Solutionaries.
And if you want to consume more brews or want more information
about how to build your brand on our podcast
and want to see how you can sponsor the brew,
go to CarGuyCoffee.com.
Let's brew!
What's going on, car guys and car gals?
It's Lou Ramirez, the CarGuy.
Thanks for having our subprime hero.
And we are excited to be brewing solutions with you.
And we're pumped up to enrich with a little bit of upshift
to uplift.
It is time for us to go ahead and get a couple smiles going.
A couple of brews brewing and some brews from the bluegrass
just having a cup of coffee and a conversation.
We're excited to do this, right, Fred?
Oh man, beyond excited, man.
I was gonna ready to take a sip, but you know what?
Before I do, I definitely am excited to talk about this
guest that we're getting ready to have on the show.
This person's been, I've known him for a while now.
Honestly, we've connected on social.
We've been able to meet in person.
We've been able to reconnect over and over.
And we always tend to be, like, I don't know.
It's not just a Kentucky thing, man.
There's something special about who this person is
that really connects with me.
He's a veteran, you know, he's honored his country.
He has children that's done that.
He has young children that are coming up
that are amazing.
They do things like skateboard.
I got skateboards behind me, right?
Because everybody knows if you know me,
I like to skateboard, right?
And I always, I love it.
It's one of my favorite things in the world.
But I love what he's doing.
I love what he does inside the industry.
A lot of people don't even really know.
If you haven't heard, I'm just saying,
this guy's doing big things.
And he's doing it in a really unique way, folks.
And he's getting it out there for you all
to be able to get your advertising in a way that's hot.
Right, Lou?
And I'm excited to be able to get him on the show
because, again, he's a friend of ours.
He's hilarious.
He's a father.
He's a husband.
He's all the good things
that you want to talk about in a person.
He is that person.
And I'm excited to talk about him today
and have him come on and have a cup of coffee
and a conversation, Lou.
That's right.
So since we are here to pump a whole lot of positivity
into your planner for the day,
make sure that you do tag a car guy.
Tag a car, gal.
And share, share, share, share, share.
Get this message out there, everybody,
because we are excited to be brewing solutions
and just having a good cup of coffee conversation.
Positivity.
If you're hearing this on the podcast,
make sure that you do continue to pay attention
to the awesome people that we do put onto the podcast.
Go to CarGuyCoffee.com.
If you want some more of this good stuff,
now this brew has been brought to you fresh
by our friends over at Auto Hauler Exchange,
and we are pumped up to keep brewing with them.
Check this out.
They are excited to bring you this brew.
If you don't know the logo,
if you don't know the people over there,
they are making some big solutions happen
and making sure that your transportation
goes to the next level.
So make sure that you do reach out to our friends
over at Auto Hauler Exchange.
Without any more ado, Fred and Lou are excited
to bring to you the one.
The only.
Dusty Sutherland.
Brother excited that you're here.
Time for a cup of coffee in the big time.
Oh, yeah.
Dig it.
He came in with it.
He came in with it.
I love it.
Heck yeah.
I'm just talking about,
I wish you would have put on the outfit.
Heck yeah.
What's going on?
What's going on, Mr. Lysander?
Nice to meet you.
Love it.
Great energy.
We appreciate you jumping in here.
And this is your place to come
if you want some good energy in your midday
to be able to make sure that you do keep brewing solutions.
And you're so thankful to be in the car business,
but being in this car business
has taken many hats for you.
Hasn't it, Dusty?
Oh yeah.
My goodness gracious, yeah.
So I grew up in a very small town in northern Kentucky
and my godfather had a Ford store.
So I used to be a sales assistant
for this dude that used to,
you guys remember Stuker Boxes?
You know what I'm talking about?
Yeah.
Oh yeah dude, come on.
Stuker right on the angle.
That's right.
Stuker style, I'm telling you.
You know, the first CRM, right?
So this dude, Jim Herrod,
I'll never forget his name.
He's the coolest dude,
just a tall skinny Kentucky dude.
He needed a sales assistant
because this guy was selling like 35, 40 cars a month
in this real small town up there on the river.
And my godfather asked me,
said, hey, you wanna come make a few bucks?
And I said, yeah, sure.
So I would help him do paperwork,
run errands for him, do all that kind of stuff.
And I watched that guy get a call,
the coolest thing I've ever seen.
And I wish I could replicate this in the car business,
but the coolest thing I've ever seen,
he gets a call from a customer and said,
hey, Jim, I need like a blue F-150 4x4
with 50,000 or less miles on it.
He goes, oh okay, no problem.
I'll call you back, hangs up the phone.
Dude doesn't go out to the lot.
He opens up that big sticker box.
It's like this thing, bang, bang in it,
bangs against the side of the glass.
And he goes, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip.
Pulls out a card, picks up the phone, calls one person
and says, hey, how's that truck doing?
Oh, good, okay.
I'll tell you what I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna bring a new one over, same color.
We'll work out all the payments and figure it out.
But if you like the color, you like the truck.
We'll bring you the paperwork on Saturday.
I just need to get yours.
Okay, I'll see you in about an hour.
So we rode over there, get this guy's truck,
take it over to his house,
showing the male still in the desk.
Y'all know from Kentucky how it used to be
when we were kids, male on the desk.
You know what I'm talking about?
Spit out this, put you in the back of all that stuff.
Didn't clean out none of it.
Everything the same.
Guys, oh, is that such and such?
It's over from Eastern East.
Yeah, it is.
And he takes good care of his stuff.
He goes, yeah, he does.
He goes, here, go take it for a ride.
He goes, you wanna trade anything?
Get rid of anything?
Yeah, my wife doesn't want the Crown Vic anymore.
So we pick up the keys to this Crown Vic.
We take the Crown Vic to lunch
at a very specific restaurant, by the way.
So we go to this restaurant, he walks in, he sits down,
he's eating.
A guy walks past him and he was like, hey, guess what I got?
He dangles the keys and he goes,
is this such and such from over at the church's Crown Vic?
He's, yeah.
And he goes, it's available.
And so we jump in the car and drive back
to the dealership in that car with that guy driving.
And he never took a single car off the lot.
That's awesome.
So one new car to another guy,
sold that used car, sold this used car,
had three cars sold before we ever got out of lunch.
And it was like two o'clock and he was like, ow, it's time to go home.
That's how you do that though.
Come on, that's what I'm talking about.
And I remember thinking, that's amazing.
I wanna be a car guy.
And so I think those conversations, how we,
I wanna tie all this back because those conversations
and how well we know our friends and the families
and the community and the people we interact with,
it makes business easier, right?
And so I think, I used to have this saying,
and I still say it, if you make it easy on the customer
to make a decision, it's easy for the customer
to make a decision.
That sounds easy.
That sounds pretty easy, buddy.
I love it.
But it is, it's so simple.
We get so caught up in knowing the process
or doing it exactly the verbatim on whatever is this and that.
And none of us, we become too robotic
and we don't realize that it's not that.
Life is not about being robotic.
Life is the adjustments.
Life is being adaptable, you know?
And seeing somebody be able to go into a stucco box,
pull out a lead, somebody, not a lead,
pull out a client, a current person
that is one of their accounts at the end of the day.
You pull out your account and you call them and say,
hey, how's that truck running?
You know what?
They trust you so much for one because you use that box.
When you were using that stucco box, like he said,
that was the old school CRM before
there was a computer to use.
You had to do it all by hand, but man, it was dope.
It worked.
If you actually sat there every day and went through it,
you had to do it.
If you did it, you were always on top of your game.
You took care of your clients,
your clients to who you were,
all the above, right?
And your future clients too.
So that being said, going back to that's big
and being able to see a guy do that
and then go out into the field
and then just knock out one after another.
Like it's no big deal.
But you know what?
Because he acted like he's been in the end zone before
because he acted like it was no big deal.
People just trusted him.
Yeah.
Hey, look, we'll just do this.
Bada bing, bada boom.
Come back Saturday.
We'll wrap it up.
Hey, no pressure, but you should do this.
You deserve it.
Let's go and done.
It's, that's to me exactly the reason
why I got in the car
because meeting people just like that got you excited
is the way they could just not manipulate
but the way that they can make people just trust
and just go, you're right.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
I think about that a lot
because that man never forgot the conversation.
Like he, the reason we went to that restaurant
is he knew somebody,
the guy that ended up driving that Crown Vic
back to the store with us.
He had a conversation with that guy months earlier
when he was like, man,
I like such and such as wife's Crown Vic
in that car.
And it was like the old,
it was like an 87 Crown Vic,
the real boxy ones that looked like the cop cars
off of Hill Street Blues.
You know which ones I'm talking about.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
And it was just a real clean car.
It was beautiful.
And he remembered that,
knew where the guy ate,
knew what time he ate there
and had everything wrapped up
and was just in the perfect place
at the perfect time
to provide the perfect message
to like the person that was ready to hear it.
Wow.
That's still, that's a professional at work, right?
And that no wonder you were inspired.
No wonder you were taken aback a little bit
by that's how this is done, right?
And when the truth is
that's not how it's done by everybody, right?
That stood out pretty big
because somebody was special
and took their business very seriously.
And car guys, car guys that are out there,
these types of skills do reside
with those that really take their industry serious.
When they know how important what they do
is for the community,
they're always trying to solve
that transportation problem.
I remember any Crown Vic you get your hands on,
it's still a good merch, right?
It's still a car that somebody's looking for that.
I don't care what it looks like, right?
We would never wholesale those guys.
We would hold on to them
because somebody's willing to come,
spend and stroke a check
or do whatever they gotta do
to get something like that.
But knowing your customers, remembering what they purchase,
all of this is some fundamental stuff
that you tend to lose
when it comes to leaning a little bit too much
on our technology.
With all of the technology that we have,
we have a hard time still remembering names.
I know I do.
We have a hard time remembering
what did that customer even buy from us?
We have a hard time remembering
what the customer said that they were interested in
to even call them back
when four of them show up on the lot.
The conversations that lead to car deals
are always what a professional definitely takes seriously.
And we do, we take those mental notes
and it's awesome when somebody is basically primed
to be ready for that car deal.
They're looking for it
but they're also looking for a solution.
And it looks like they didn't stress just from the story.
It sounds like you didn't stress even a little bit.
I got this, we're gonna go here to here,
boom, boom, boom, and we're done for the day.
We've been preaching this for a while.
The best way for you to have a good amount of time off
is you get great with the time that you use at work
to make it effective.
In this industry, especially on the sales side,
you're not paid for the time that you're there.
Now, some people are, right?
But you're not really paid for that,
especially if what you're doing
is solving a transportation problem for a customer.
But you know this from different vantage points.
So that was the avenue that you came in,
how you got inspired from there.
And now you're doing some big things with Loon
and you're making some awesome stuff happen.
But you also served on all different sides of the industry.
And this is why we love the car guy that you are Dusty
is because you heard from all avenues.
And I'm sure that this is what also helps
literally connect you to other people in the industry
when you are talking to them.
But one thing that we do wanna put out there a little bit
because we do know that the change up
of general managers, right?
We're coming into the last month
of the first quarter of the year.
And it's amazing that it's moving this fast.
Around this time is when GM start to get de-ext.
The shakeup starts to happen inside of the store
depending on where everything's trending right now.
And a general manager usually comes in there
in a multiple different facets.
But one thing that we do know is quite often a,
I don't know, I would say a symptom
of a not so confident general manager
is that they come in and they start flexing
their muscles everywhere, right?
It looks like confidence, but that's pseudo confidence
to me, right?
Anytime you got to start flexing your muscles,
I think you don't know how to fight, right?
With that, what is it that you have seen
as being some of the effective ways
for a general manager to jump in there
and not just fuse together all of now
the loose ends of a team
when such a big part has been exchanged
but also start to fuse together
how they start to look at new technologies moving forward?
Yeah, that's a dope question.
And I have been a part of that.
I have been at home on the weekend
as a sales manager or like a director of some sort
and get a call that the GM got fired.
I've worked at some dealerships
we're all pretty familiar with
where that kind of stuff happens even on Sundays.
So how do you get that going?
How do you have those conversations?
I'll tell you the first thing, first and foremost,
it is hard to get down
with somebody that hasn't gotten down.
And so when you bring somebody in,
that's what we used to say in the Marine Corps, right?
I was a Navy Corpsman, so when you were in infantry,
people, it was hard to take leadership
or leader directions from somebody that hadn't been there.
They didn't know what was going on.
They only learned something from school
or what somebody told them or what they read in the book.
And it's really hard to trust that person's guidance
that is gonna get you to the promised land, right?
Or get you home, making what it is.
So I think when it comes to a GM,
I think the first thing you really need to do
or in any position of leadership
is show the salespeople that your job
is to make their job easier and make them more money.
If they believe that and they know it in their hearts,
they'll, to quote Pete Rose, who's on the back
of the wall here, they'll go through hell
in a gasoline suit to help you guys meet your goals.
So be on the floor, show them how to have those conversations.
There's a lot of salespeople out there that's brand new
that have no idea how to carry a conversation, none, zero.
Nobody's ever showed them how to do it.
They know all the technology,
they know everything about the vehicle,
but can they put that customer in that vehicle mentally
and show them how it's gonna benefit them
and where it's gonna take them
and what it's gonna do for them?
If they can't do that, what are you gonna do?
Just gonna go out there and yell at people to go,
get on the phone and start digging this, start doing that.
Why don't you get on the phones with them?
Show them how to do it.
Cause a lot of times there has never been anybody
that's sitting down and showed somebody how to do it.
So never take for granted how much training
somebody has that's underneath you.
You never know where you're gonna end up.
So there's that.
You know, that was a great answer
and I love what you said there.
And that goes back to our military roots, I believe.
One thing I know is that they taught us
to how to fold underwear.
And that's how serious it was.
Wash yourself, how to take a shower.
Really, they wanted to make sure
because why assume that you know how to do those things
when they came there?
We hire people hoping they have these skills.
They definitely have the mentality
cause we've spoke with them, we've interviewed them.
So we know that they want what we want them to want.
It's our job to make sure that we inspire
the way they need to be inspired
but also don't assume that they know how to even use a phone.
Cause they don't know how to use a phone
the way we were taught how to use phones.
Folks, we used to have to answer the phone and say,
thank you for calling the Lenard's residence, sir.
I remember that's the way my household,
my dad made us answer that way.
She had to learn how to speak that way earlier.
Cause we had house phones.
How many people have house phones these days?
And so I love that you're talking about that, man.
And that is big.
It is big how we communicate
and how the future of everything we do
is the way we communicate with people
and understand that they need to be
educated differently than we were educated.
It's a different world.
And I love that you said that.
Speaking of house phones.
I was gonna say, speaking of house phones,
if you have tripped over a telephone cord,
it's time to go get your annual physical.
There it is.
I love that.
But that's what it was, folks.
And it is, it still is.
The phone is still mighty.
Being able to get people and communicate
and get them excited about working with you.
Whether you use technology or not.
The key is just trying to figure out
how to get them to see you.
And that's something I love.
You were in dealerships, you've done a lot of things.
Right now, brother, I love what you're doing
when it comes to the automotive marketing space right now.
The way that you guys are getting out there
with advertising, doing all these really cool
technology-based ones, but using data to do that
and getting data and making sure that the data is good
and putting it out there so that your clients
have clients that see what they're trying to do.
I love that.
As you guys can see by the size of the head,
he's got a big brain in there.
And I love that.
Not only, dude, I meant that in the best way, bro.
I love you.
Thanks, dude.
You know how hard it is for me to buy a hat on fanatics?
That's what I'm saying.
You gotta try them on, buddy, you never know.
Yeah, no.
They don't just have to be a certain size.
They have to fit a certain way.
Oh, it's gotta be a certain size.
And for those of you who don't know,
if you can pan across here,
I have somewhere probably in the neighborhood
of about at least 1,000 ball caps, at least.
Not up here, but quite a bit.
And I could literally change one about every 30 seconds
and take up the entirety of this conversation here.
But I'm a big ball cap thing.
But no, to go back on that,
I wanted to tie that together.
That conversation that we had at the beginning
when we talked about the guy with the sticker box,
that data exists, that information exists, right?
It's there.
How do you have the right conversation
with the right person at the right time?
A lot of times people start,
and this may ruffle some feathers,
but a lot of people wanna put themselves on TV
and just scream and say, we got great deals, come see us.
And that's it.
Does that show a customer that you understand them?
Does that show a customer that you get them?
Does that show a customer
that you're ready to have a conversation?
Or quote our friend, Bob Lanham, yelling ain't selling.
So here's, you can't shout at Bob.
Here's my mindset, and I think Lou's mindset
and the mindset that I like to go into conversations
with our clients is instead of coming up
with this idea for a commercial
and then going and putting it out there
and hoping that it lands with somebody,
or it's funny enough that it lands with somebody,
why don't we start with the problem?
Every customer comes into your dealership
trying to either move away from pain
or move towards something fun, right?
They're trying to either solve something fun
or solve something that's wrong, right?
And so if you show a customer that you understand them,
you have to start first with your problem,
the dealerships problem, the business objective.
What's our business objective?
Our business objective is if you're a new car manager,
you're either trying to increase turn
or you're trying to sales efficiency or market share.
It's pretty easy.
It's really those two things.
That's about it.
So we've got a bunch of trucks.
We can't move these tundras.
What do we need to do?
First off, you've identified the problem.
We've got to move tundras.
Okay, who buys tundras?
All right, so now you've identified the problem.
Now you got to identify who's gonna solve it.
Now we need to have the conversation
with the person that's gonna solve it.
That's where you build the message
around that person that solves your problem.
And then what you do is you go into the data
and you say, find me these people
that solves this problem and serve them this message.
So instead of going to the 630 news hour
during the evening news, making an ad
that gets in front of 60,000 people
that you hope two people's gonna see,
why don't we get it in front of 60,000 people
that we know is in market,
that we know wants a truck, owns a truck,
would consider a truck?
Why don't you put that message in front of them
and then talk to them in a way that they feel understood
because customers wanna buy from somebody
that understands them, that hears them out,
that feels them, that knows what they're coming from.
That's what we do.
And it's the same thing that you highlighted on
when you jump into a dealership
and you help the employees,
you make it easy for them.
Making the conversation easy,
making the decision come easy
is really what people seek out professionals to do for them,
right, is that professional to simplify
the process of whatever it is that we're doing.
And when communicating and getting messages,
yes, it's very critical that we talk to the people
that even wanna hear what we're saying.
And that's a critical part of advertising
that is also the way of the future.
More and more, we're having the opportunity
to talk to people that want to be talked to.
And the way that you described it is so true.
We would do so much traditional marketing,
blanketing out a message,
hoping that the one problem that we're highlighting
in the message does affect many of the people
that are hearing it,
but the truth is that's not always the case.
And to your point, yes, we did also create,
we would make commercials,
we would make whether it was a television commercial
or a radio commercial,
our approach was initially to the person with the problem.
Do you hate your car or you're getting turned down
or you're needing something dependable?
Do you need to not put so much money down?
All of these different problems
that maybe some people might have,
we would hit that,
but knowing that we're on the radio.
So there's a far greater audience that's shut up
and shut off.
I don't want to hear it, that doesn't apply to me.
And you guys have found a way to now start saying,
no, we're talking to you about what you said
you want to talk about.
We're putting in front of you the message
that you're actually wanting to know more information of.
And that does streamline things
and it does actually get some results
not just for the dealership,
but for the customer when they go on this hunt
because nobody likes hunting and not catching their deer
that I'm talking to two hunters over here.
That's right.
If you think about this,
like honestly, wrap your brain around,
you were talking about salespeople
and you can't take anything for granted
with the salespeople and what level of training
that they have or what level of knowledge that they have.
Also think about who is educating your customers
in that area.
One thing that we found is we're able to take quick
to go off on a side change in here really quick
not to get too far into the weeds,
but we can take a look at an area
and I can tell you customers that we're targeting
are buying from other dealerships
if they saw your ads or not.
So they saw your ad, they were in your target audience
they saw through this targeted problem that you have
but they bought from somebody else.
Now, why does somebody not buy from a dealership?
They either buy because of availability, pricing
or some kind of brand.
Like it's something they understand about the brand.
If it's the brand, how do you fix it?
How do we educate the customer about what we do
for the customer to make it either easier, better,
stand out, we know you, we understand you,
what do you do there?
If it's availability,
I don't just get better about ordering.
I don't know, there's really not a whole lot
you can do there, but when it comes to pricing,
we can also take a look at what we call insights.
It's a program that we have that will tell you cars
that are being pumped into your market.
So if you're trying to move, let's say mid-sized SUVs
and you say, Dusty, we cannot move mid-sized SUVs.
I can take a look at your market and tell you
that dealers are pumping mid-sized SUVs into your DMA
and the numbers that they're doing it.
So it's either a pricing problem or a branding problem.
How do we solve for that?
It has to be like, I have to work so close.
I know what I'm doing in the Louisville market.
If I was in the Louisville market or here in Ohio now,
I live in Ohio now, if I was in the Ohio market,
I would know exactly who to talk to and how to talk to.
But if I'm working with a dealer in Denver or New York
or Florida or Texas or California,
they know their market and their customers better than I do.
So what I wanna do is I wanna know in your market,
who's your competitors?
In your market, how are they speaking to them?
How do your customers like to get talked to?
What do they understand about you?
What would you like them to understand about you?
What PMAs, what areas, what zip codes
down to the nitty gritty?
Because if we're not collaborative about this,
we're not working together.
I'm just gonna make an ad.
I'm gonna throw it out there.
We're gonna get in front of people
and we're just gonna spray and pray
that we hope we get there.
But if you work together with me, boy, oh boy,
can we make diversified ad content
that talks to everybody in your market,
wherever they're at, no matter in the life cycle
of car ownership service.
Do they know you?
Do they already own your car?
Do they not own your car?
Would they be in market?
There's so many people to talk to
in so many different ways to talk to it.
It can be mind-bottling, puts the mind in a bottle.
I love that, man.
You know about Bobblehead,
if you go to that Cincinnati Red Stadium all the time,
they give those out all the time.
Anyway, I love those baseball ones.
That being said, man,
no, I love what you're talking about here, man.
You're really talking about some really great ideas,
things that are happening.
And we're just talking about something
that's really possible.
But let me ask you this,
you don't have to even give me a name of a store,
but tell us a success story.
Tell me something that's happened
that's really helped the dealership
really take it to the next level
or something like that.
Something that uplifted them.
I'm gonna ask you a question really quick.
If you were to take a look at,
let's say a zip code that had 100,000 people in it,
how many people are in market at one time?
Do you know?
100,000 people.
On average, maybe 3,000.
Maybe 3,000 out of 100, it wasn't like 30%.
So very few people are in market for anything, right?
So let's say we're gonna talk to that 3,000 people.
How do we know what they're in market for?
If you're gonna go down,
if you're a Toyota store
and you're gonna go straight down and just say,
I wanna target people that are in market for a Tundra.
How many people out of 100,000,
out of that 3,000 might be in market for a Tundra?
25?
Maybe?
But how many would be in the market for a pickup truck?
That's a lot.
Let's get there.
Okay.
So now we're starting to work there a little bit.
Right now we're starting to talk to a lot more people.
But now let's say we talk to 500 people.
What do we do about everybody else?
Does your customer base know you?
Does your customer base know you can service them?
Do they know, what do they not know about you?
When I go into a dealer and I ask him, I say,
hey, number one, why do you wanna work with me?
Like, why do you wanna do this?
I wanna know.
Because there's a problem.
And to quote a poet, yo, I'll solve it.
Check out the hook.
Yeah, while the DJ performs it.
Hold on, let me get us a coffee there
while we let that marinate.
But no, I usually say, what's the one problem?
And I get two answers.
I either get what the one problem is
or they'll say, that's the, it's a couple of things.
And you go, oh, I like the couple of things
because we've got some work to do.
We got some messaging.
We got some stuff here.
So let's talk about that.
Let's say you do get a chance to talk
to all 3,000 people that are in market.
What about the other 97,000?
What about them?
Do they know you?
Do they know you service?
So instead of taking, I had a dealer that came and said,
Dusty, we wanna spend a sizable amount of money.
And so let's just, I'm gonna make up a number here
just for easy and say, we wanna spend $10,000.
I said, okay, that's fine.
And they say, we wanna hit in market cut.
I said, whoa, slow down a second.
There's not that many in market customers in your area.
It's gonna be hard to spend that much money
on in market customers, but I will tell you this.
If we talk to everybody where they're at,
no matter if they're in market for sales, service,
or just to understand your brand,
let's get in front of everybody.
So what we did is we created a branding ad.
Hey, we're not jerks.
We sell cars.
We service cars.
Come see us if you need us.
Got that one out there, right?
We just target the entire PMA.
Just stay in front of everybody.
Now we wanna take a service ad.
Okay, one of my favorite service ads
that we ever created was for a customer.
And we said, we wanted to target customers.
It was in this area where they were getting influx of people
moving into the area.
And so we had this little button we could switch
that we only targeted customers
that changed their address in the last 90 days.
Check this out.
Instead of saying, come buy a car from us,
we said, hey, moving is stressful.
We know the last thing on your mind is buying a new car.
Why don't you let us service
the one that brought you home?
Come see us.
So now that's out there.
Now we got a service message in front of people.
So branding and service.
Now we can go buy those two or three things
that are in market.
So what we were able to do is take a dealership
that was matching 5, 10% of their sales
back to their ad spends,
who now we've got a couple of dealers
that match 50, 60, 70% of their sales
and leads to their ad exposures.
Like basically saying people that are buying cars
in your market are being exposed to your ads.
That's our goal standard of measurement.
And these dealers are seeing just an incredible amount
of lift and traffic on the website
and on the showroom floor.
And we can take all of that data and go,
did they see your ad?
Yes or no.
And if they did see the ad, congratulations,
we were targeting the right people.
If they weren't seeing the ad
and we see lower numbers on that side,
then we know we've got to change,
flip some switches in the back end
to make things work a little better.
And we have some dealers that are getting in the excess
of if they spend that $10,000
instead of spending it just all on in market,
if we diversify those ad spends
and speak to everybody in their market,
even customers that are not in market
when they become in market,
the way the algorithm works,
spooky, is it will start to show the customers
that were not in market and in market ad
as soon as they take in market actions.
So you could run the same ads, change the offers
and the customer that was not in market last week
that saw your branding ad
took an in market action on your website,
looked at SRPs, VDPs, whatever.
And now they see a completely different ad.
Last week they're watching the Reds play,
this week they're watching the Reds play,
last week they saw your branding ad,
this week they see an offer for a truck
because you went on the website and looked at trucks.
So those diversified ad spends
are really helping our customers
put the money in the right place at the right time,
automatically.
That's awesome, that's awesome
because you're hearing and that's just smart
in being able to take your dollars
and make sure that you're stretching it
to the people that do fall into the two categories
of intenders and non-entenders.
And we do understand that there is only so much
that a customer is in separation
from all of a sudden, I'm in the market.
All of a sudden, now I do want a car deal
and sometimes it's just a little trigger of what if
or just a little trigger of I don't know them
and I am new to the area
or I do have a service that's coming up.
So many different things tip the scale.
We often teach everybody one of the things
that you have to know about a customer
after you find out what they want
and when they want it is what is the holdup.
And a lot of times if you can find out
what that holdup is or present something that says
that may not be a holdup with us, right?
You then open up that opportunity
to have a conversation with an intendor
that all of a sudden has them
inside of the finance office,
inking up on a deal, right?
And they didn't even know what happened
just like the very first example you brought up.
None of those people were intending to purchase a car
except the initial one that kicked it off.
And he said, I'm gonna go ahead
and pluck this from these people.
I'm gonna go ahead and present this to them
and then I'm gonna land where this person was
who wasn't looking but put it out there
and now, boom, it's in front of you.
The Crown Vic person couldn't find one
and that is a hard vehicle to find at that time.
But being a non-intender in the,
I'm not hunting for a vehicle
but somebody presented me an opportunity, bam.
This other one got upgraded to their newer F-150
and the solving of the problem
for the other person got handled, all non-intenders
but it's just the tiny little conversations
that can nudge us to purchase,
especially for people like us that are lay-downs.
What's the opportunity?
Maybe I need to call.
Maybe I need to check in on this, right?
I'm always down to save a little something.
I'm gonna lay down for a baseball cap.
You put a baseball cap in front of me
and I'm like, ooh, hey, check that out.
We've got a man of many hats, everybody.
And he got me.
I'll tell you what hat I wanna get
is a Loon baseball cap.
Yeah.
It goes hot and I can't wait to see one of those.
Listen, we're working on that right now.
I can't wait to show you guys some of the logo work
and that stuff that James has always got great ideas
for that stuff and I liked it.
I tried to tell him at first,
I said, why don't we call ourselves a Loon and Cardinal?
He's like, no, it's Loon.
I would have tried to slide that in there too.
Why not?
I do like the idea.
I love that you guys dive deep
with everybody that you work with
but it's important to do.
And your passion behind everything you do
and it is self-evident, man.
And we always love what you do.
You rock, bro.
In your products, teaming up with people
like you have is strategic too.
Why did you choose to work with Loon?
What was the reason why you're like,
what Loon's the place for me to be?
Other than James, we know he's amazing
and he's hilarious.
Yeah, so I will tell you this.
When I first got out of retail,
it was for very selfish reasons.
I wanted to be a baseball coach.
My son, as you've already, I've got six kids,
five of the girls are often gone
and excuse me, four of the girls are often gone
and one's in the Marines
and got one that's a pharmacist
and one that's a teacher.
And they're all great kids
and I've got two at home now
and one of them's in there probably playing Fortnite.
She just got off the bus a little bit ago
and her brother will be home here a little bit
and I'll get him off to soccer practice soon.
But I never ever have to be a different human being
in front of my customers
than I am with everybody in the office.
I will tell you this right now.
The way that I carry myself
or the way that I feel goes all by my,
I'm a Christian, 100% through and through,
I love everybody as much as I possibly can.
I want everyone to succeed.
I love seeing other people succeed.
I just absolutely love it.
I think that's one of the best things
about being a coach.
I asked a question a long time ago on LinkedIn,
would you rather win a championship as a player
or as a coach?
And I would much rather win as a coach.
I just really would
because I just want to see somebody that I've talked to
just hit a home run, sink a three pointer at the buzzer,
that type of thing, right?
And so Loon gave me the ability
to stay in the car business,
become a coach, get active in what I believe
the Lord is pushing me to do
to become more active in my faith
and eventually becoming a, at some point in the future
somewhere down the line and becoming a pastor
and just being a better human being,
like just being a better person, a better dad,
a better husband, a better community member,
a better neighbor.
It's not that I couldn't do that with the car business.
It's just that I felt that God's got a preparation.
You look at David in the Old Testament,
he started off playing the lyre and writing poetry
and slinging rocks and fighting off lions.
The next thing he's the king
and every little bit of preparation that he had in between
everything that came that the Lord put in front of him
was leading him towards leading his nation.
And I feel like God has put a lot of things in front of me
preparing me for more indifferent and harder things
and more difficult things.
And I feel like I'm ready to do those things.
And I think working with James and working with Loon
gives me the ability to be who I am,
love on people, help people, do the right things by people.
And yeah, that's it.
That's awesome, brother.
And I love the reference to David, the beloved,
because it is, it's so important to recognize
and we usually only recognize it after it happens
that the trial we went through,
the challenge we endured
or even the pain that we came out of
was designed to shape us and prepare us for now.
And I love that you did highlight that
because some of you that are watching,
some of you that are listening, whether on the live
or on the replay or on the podcast,
you know that all of the things that have added up
to this very moment right now
is still all working for your good
and absolutely recognize that you are postured
and you are positioned around the people professionally
and communally in order to be able to make
some sort of an impact and because you have value,
recognizing that you have value to the people
that you're in contact with and to use it
and recognize that it does make a difference.
And it is so very important that you can find a home
where you can be fully who it is that you are.
And this auto industry has so many different avenues
because you even mentioned coming out of auto
and you're in marketing, but brother, you're in auto.
You're on the CarGuy Coffee Podcast, right?
You're still in auto, finding an avenue to do what it is
that you wanna do in your community
and your church and with your family.
And those of you that are listening,
recognize that all of these different steps
that you're taking are designed to get you someplace
that you don't even know
and you don't know how good it's gonna be.
Never plan it completely out
because sometimes it's gonna change.
But when you referenced David
and understanding that yes, he threw the rocks
and he casted the stones
and yes, he also made sure to have himself,
you said the leader or the liar or the harp.
And the harp would never be something
that anybody would look at as the most masculine
of instruments, right?
We wouldn't be like, oh, man,
I wanna play something with some strings.
I wanna play guitar.
You know what I'm saying?
I'm gonna play something strong,
but the harp, the, right?
That never is the-
He had gotten close enough to leadership
to understand what it was like to be a king
if it wasn't for sitting out there in the wilderness,
minding his shepherd in the boredom
and in the quiet, writing his own music
so that when Saul was going crazy
and he needed somebody to call him
and they brought David in,
he got to sit not only and play music for him
but watch how things operated.
And he was picking up on everything.
No matter what position you're in
a dealership right now,
you have a chance to learn the right way
and the wrong way to do things.
If you're listening and you're like,
all I do is wash cars,
you have the right way to take a TO of,
hey, sold a car, pitched a keystone,
how'd that make you feel?
That sucks.
Why would you, if I ever got in that position,
I wouldn't treat my car wash guy like that.
I would do something,
I would be nicer to that person.
If you're a sales assistant
and you're just doing paperwork
for a finance manager,
you serious?
That's a wonderful place.
How to make sure you're bulletproof by noon,
understanding how the paperwork goes,
who you need to talk to,
all the eyes are dotted and the T's are crossed.
Each one of those positions that you're in,
no matter how minor,
think about in the Bronze Age Israel,
being a shepherd was like a lowly place.
Like it was one of the worst jobs
you could possibly have.
But he was put in that position
so he had time to perfect things
that would carry him on
and continue to earn favor with man
while he was still going after God's own heart, right?
That's a beautiful message to anybody
in any position, in any part of the dealership.
Don't shut your brain off
just because of what you're doing.
Watch others, learn from others,
ask questions, get engaged.
If one person won't answer your question,
go ask another.
Come on, it's all there for you.
That's right.
I love again, the whole David,
just bringing up David,
making sure that we do highlight David
because there's something else
that is sticking out to me about him
is that when taking on giants
and we take on giants in this industry, right?
There's giants that our dealers come in contact with.
There's so many challenges
that we see inside of an industry
but what I love about David's particular approach
is that he was given the armor of the warriors
that could have went and take them on.
Saul tried to offer up his armor
and the conventional stuff
that we would use to go fight with,
David was like, I don't need that.
And I have an unconventional way to approach this.
And I say that to say,
car guys, car gals,
there's so many giants that we are facing
inside of this industry
and we need to get away from some of the tradition,
some of the combative forms
of doing what it is that we do
in order to be more available,
to do things in a way
that's more strategic,
more on point targeted
and more effective for what it is
that we wanna do inside of the industry.
Dusty, I absolutely love that you brought that up
and we're so thankful that you are here on the show.
Dusty, we gotta jump up off of here
because this coffee is getting cold brother
but we wanna make sure that we do get out of here
highlighting all of the heat that it is
that you're bringing.
How do people get ahold of you, Dusty?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So you can call me,
I can put my phone number in
or wherever you want to
but follow me on LinkedIn
just go message me on LinkedIn,
follow me on Facebook, Dusty Sutherland.
If you search me,
I'm probably the only Dusty Sutherland that's out there
but if you wanna email me
it's Dusty at loonadvertising.com
but then if you wanna follow me on Facebook,
Dusty Sutherland,
you get to see all the videos of my kids
playing their various sports
and me telling dad jokes
and occasionally doing Macho Man impression
or maybe Kermit the Frog or something like that.
Oh yeah.
Dig it.
I love it.
That's right.
We man, we love you.
We appreciate you so much.
Thank you for coming on the show today, man.
Just having you on is a pleasure.
But being friends with you matters to Lou and I
and we're honored, man,
to find somebody who's cut from the same cloth as us
trying to go in the same direction.
We're imperfect men
but we're trying to be as perfect as possible
because Lou has right there, God is good.
And because of him,
we are able to make the mistakes
and keep growing every single day.
So I love it.
We are blessed to be around you.
We are blessed to have this show.
That's what it's all about to upshift and uplift.
It's to share the spirit, my friends.
At the end of the day, love with the capital L
is him with the capital H.
Amen to that.
Love you guys.
Love you.
So you know what to do as we wrap this up, everybody.
You've been forgiven much.
So make sure that you do forgive.
Let's forgive, focus, fly
and carry on with our day.
Happy Monday, everybody.
Happy March.
Remember, it's a command of execution.
March, get those feet moving, everybody.
On three, one, two, three.
Forget.
Focus.
Fly.
And keep growing.
Keep growing.
That's right.
Thank you so much, everybody.
I am Lou Ramirez, the car guy.
I'm a Frelin Arts subprime hero.
And you've been brewing solutions
on the Car Guy Copy Podcast.
This brew has been brought to you
fresh by our friends over at Auto Hauler Exchange.
And you've been brewing with this upshift
to uplift episode with the one
the only.
Dusty.
Dusty Sutherland.
There he goes.
There he goes.
We'll see you soon, everybody.
We're out.
Peace.
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