Horner on Used Strategy, Riley on Loyalty | Daily Dealer Live

Hey

everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Daily Dealer Live. I'm your host,

Sam Dark, and welcome to this space where automotive comes together to learn, to share,

and most importantly, to execute. Thanks for choosing to be here on this Wednesday, January 14th.

Coming up today on Daily Dealer Live, we're going deep with two operators who are actually

moving the needle. First up, Mercedes-Benz social media standout, Benz and Bowtie's GSM,

by the way, he's also in our intro of every single episode. Doug Horner, who's breaks down

exactly how he's buying used cars aggressively without blowing up margin. Plus, we've got a Volvo

GM revealing how a paid membership model and ruthless speed to lead are driving loyalty and

volume. Today, no fluff, no theory, real playbooks you can steal today. If you run a store, do not

miss this. We're live, but first today's industry headlines.

First up today, average new vehicle prices finished 2025 at a record high of $50,236 in December,

and the average manufacturer suggested a retail price reached $52,627. That marks eight straight

months above $50,000. Full-size pickups were the main driver. More than $233,000 were sold in

December. That's the best month for the segment in five years with the average truck selling for

about $66,400. I want to make a 6-7 joke here, but I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't bring

the news down. Meanwhile, incentives increased to keep things moving. They rose to 7.5% of the

ATP in December, the highest level of the year, though still below where incentives were a year

earlier. What's the bottom line here? Well, December capped off a year where gas, where

higher prices stuck, trucks carried the market, and volume held together only with a careful mix

of incentives and supply. Next up, the good news is more inexpensive new vehicles are starting to

up on dealer lots. Jeep is back in the compact crossover fight with the redesigned 26 Cherokee.

Returning after a two-year gap with a $35,000 starting price and a turbocharged hybrid setup,

Jeep says can reach roughly 500 miles of range. The new Cherokee leans into a boxier,

more utilitarian look. It's clearly aimed at the same buyer, considering a RAV4,

4-store Bronco Sport, while dropping the 4XE plug-in as Stellanus pivots away from the PHEVs

towards simpler hybrids. On the EV side, Chevy has revived the Bolt for 2027 at $28,595,

making it the cheapest electric vehicle in the United States, this time with faster charging

and an NACS port after GM pulled the plug on the original in 2023. Together,

the Bolt and Cherokee give dealers new car options to reopen conversations with shoppers

priced out over the last few years. Next up today, auto loan credit access finished 2025 at its

strongest point of the year with December marking the easiest financing environment dealers and

consumers have seen to date since late 2022. This according to Cox Automotive's Dealer Track

Credit Availability Index, which climbed to 99.6, driven by higher approval rates

and more aggressive pricing, especially from used independent dealers.

Approval rates moved up again in December, hitting 73.7% with gains across most lender

types led by captive arms. The primary reason lenders leaned further into the subprime space,

subprime approvals rose to 14.3% of loans, accounting for more than half of the year's

overall credit loosening. At the same time, longer loan terms crept back up and lenders

accepted thinner margins, making credit cheaper and more available. But that also pushes the

market closer to the point where volume and risk start competing with each other.

Finally up today, yesterday, you may have seen in the news, President Trump spoke at the

Detroit Economic Club delivering remarks from Motor City Casino that focused heavily on

trade tariffs and prices. And he reiterated his longstanding message that automakers should

build vehicles in the U.S. even if the companies themselves are Chinese or Japanese.

Quote, Let China come in. Let Japan come in, Trump said at one point according to Barron's.

What he did not offer was tariff relief. Chinese built vehicles still face a 100% tariff,

meaning any Chinese automakers would have to build U.S. plants, established dealer networks,

and local supply chains to circumvent those high costs. The reality is, that would take years for

Chinese automakers to pull off. Still, the threat of new competition is surely making domestic

manufacturers a bit uneasy. And that wraps up today's industry headlines.

Fascinating news from Detroit, Julie. What do you think about that? Trump's saying,

hey, he is open to the possibility of Chinese vehicles coming into the U.S. market.

I saw in CDG circles conversations all over the place about what that potentially could mean.

A range of who cares it's not a big deal to one particular dealer who I'm going to invite on the

show, a Michigan based dealer. I'll talk about that in the future, who actually went over to

Michigan and toured their, went over to China rather and toured their facilities. And he in the

comments that I saw in circles said, wait, we need to actually get serious about this because

the quality and the type of vehicles that they're building would compete significantly with us here

in the U.S. Julie. Yeah, you're talking about an industry that's completely subsidized by the

Chinese government with seemingly endless or deep pockets, right? So it's, it's scary. I'm

sure Trump is thinking like, you know, Jerry Maguire, show me the money, right? Come in here

and pay 100% tariffs, but there are implications. So yeah, we'll follow up. We'll ask a couple of

our guests for their perspectives on this. Thanks to Taisha King in the comments. By the way,

please join the conversation, all social media comments across the CDG network.

We'll bring your comments into today's show, including both of our guests. It'll help make

every, that conversation deeper and more relevant to today. Love Taisha King and her comment. The

Six Seven joke was appreciated in thought. So I did not know what on earth was Six Seven until

my 16 year old son explained it to me. Now I think it's pretty funny and you do see it everywhere.

We also have another comment or I would buy a Maestro X, S600 real quick. I assume that's a

Chinese brand. I was in Mexico for a speaking gig part of the show here and saw some Chinese models

there and it's interesting. They catch your eye and in a free market, it would be a compelling

offering. So it'll be fascinating to see how that goes. All right, Yuli, today is the last day. Do

you know what today is the last day of? No. Today is the final day for salespeople, service technicians,

service riders across the United States and Canada because we've included Canada and Mexico,

our friends north and south to send your video in as part of our dealer video championship that's

going on. We're going to pick the top four. I'm a judge. You're a judge. Yossi, the cart dealership

guy is a judge and then we've got an executive from CoVideo who will also be judging. We'll bring

the top four videos in and they will compete in a final round for the title and the trophy of

cart dealership guy dealer video champion 2026. So it can be a walk around, a service MPI, some sort

of a follow up message, any way of communicating directly with the customer in an interesting

and a creative way. We want to bring it into the show. You can sign up on the QR code to the left

there. You can email the video to Hannah direct for consideration or you can post it to social media

across your social platform and just tag at cart dealership guy and at CoVideo in the post and we

will bring those all into the competition. We have got a ton of videos. In fact, we have so many.

We tried to load some for today so we could share just a couple of teases. I don't think we were able

to get it up, get them in because we had so many from a volume standpoint. But if at some point

today that becomes available, we'll let you know. But some very creative videos if you are able to

search out that cart dealership guy and at CoVideo tag. We're excited on Friday's show to bring those

videos in and you and I both did a video as well, which we're going to share as well, right? So for

sure, which will be fun. So I'm excited to see all the videos that come about as a result.

All right. Should we launch into our first guest today?

Let's do it.

All right. Welcome to the show. Doug Horner, GSM, Mercedes-Benz, North Olmsted also host of

Benz and Bowtie's, the Orange Bowtie, who also is part of every single show here at Daily

Deal Alive as part of our intro. Doug, welcome to the show.

Yeah. It's always fun listening to myself every time the show starts, but thanks for having me back.

We love it. You're in the intro. Jay Terbury from Cox's in the intro and then I think Vinay,

who now works for AT&T, he's not even in the automotive industry, but props to Vinay. So

thanks for allowing us to be in there. All right. Let's start with our first question.

We ask everybody, how's biz, Doug, in your world? Yeah, biz is great. We had a really strong finish

to the year. Specifically the last two weeks of the year were very strong. And now I'm sure you've

all heard that Adam Chamberlain and his team are in at Mercedes-Benz and they got there about halfway

through the year, but they really couldn't make major changes until the start of 2026. And they

were telling dealers, hey, good things are coming. Good things are coming. We're going to really

shake it up. And sure enough, the calendar turned over and we got kind of our new programs, new

direction. And it's fantastic. Mercedes-Benz wants to go after market share again in a big way.

And so that has been, I mean, a lot of easy phone calls to make to people with great news.

So what are the top changes that have been made here January 2026 on Mercedes-Benz side to go

after additional market share? Well, they're going after a lot of, they're doing a lot of

conquesting. So they want to get people that are in other luxury brands. I think that what we saw

during COVID, and this is really for everybody, is that brand loyalty just kind of went away as

people were finding whatever the best option was for them at the time. And so there was defection

between brands like never seen before. And now everybody's trying to figure out, okay, how do

we get people back? So there's a lot of great conquesting programs. And then they also are

incentivizing people to stay with the captive lender to go with Mercedes-Benz financial,

which I love because that increases loyalty opportunities. And it's just easier if somebody

is already either leasing or financing with the captive to be able to kind of have a relationship

with them. Yeah. All right, you are host of Ben's and Bowtie's. You're all across social media.

You've created a name for yourself and for your store with your constant social media presence.

Before we go into our use car topic today, which we want to delve into,

give us a behind the scenes of your behind the scenes, right? So how is your channel going?

How do you measure success? And how do you continue to grow and innovate in your social

media activities, Doug? Yeah. So the way that I measure the success is are people reaching out to

the store, right? Are people calling Mercedes-Benz of North Olmsted? Are they sending in internet

leads? Are they just walking through and telling us, hey, we watched the videos and we want to do

business with you. And of course we keep track of how many leads are coming in, how many sales can

we attribute to the social media. Just looking at the new car sold log from last month,

I would say close to 25% of all of our deals last month were social media related, which is pretty

amazing. So it's really expanded our reach. Obviously we care deeply about our local community here

in the Cleveland, Ohio area, but hey, if somebody in Florida wants to buy a car from me, not going

to stand in their way of that, right? Yeah. So do you literally get people walking through the door

saying, hey, can I meet Doug? Can I see where he does his posts? Is that how you determine lead

source? How do you determine lead source? Well, so of course, when a lead comes in or a call comes

in, we want to know how did you find us, right? That's important for many reasons, right? We want

to know the journey that brought you here. So the sales team is asking, did you find us on a particular

website or what brought you here? And if people, it's at the point now where if they've been

watching me for a while, they will very quickly volunteer that sometimes we don't even get to

ask before they've told us, hey, I watched Doug, right? And that's great. I mean, it's surreal,

really. But sometimes people will just show up or what's funny to me actually is sometimes people

will be in for service and my office is very near like our coffee bar and service lounge.

People will be kind of wandering the showroom and then they'll look over,

kind of notice me do a double take and they'll be like, Oh my God, I didn't realize that you were

here. You're the guy and then starting conversation that way. So it's been a lot of fun and it's

brought a ton of awareness. How do you deal in a large dealership with a lot of different

employees, a lot of different leaders? We're all A type, very competitive personalities.

You've created a persona for yourself. You've achieved a certain amount of notoriety, fame

as a result of your presence on social media. Is there a jealousy factor that ever creeps in where

people are like, Oh, that's Doug, you know, I mean, or do people respect it? Like, how do you deal

with that jealousy factor if there is one? I think it's become pretty normalized now. Okay.

And I think, you know, the sales team loves it, right? Why wouldn't they? Right? If the phone is

ringing twice as much as it used to. And really, it's not just about me like I might be the one

on camera a lot. But what I'm doing is I'm showing you what it's like to do business with Mercedes

Benz of North Olmsted because unlike a lot of social media, which might be very curated or

let's sit down and come up with a funny skit that we can do, you know, me, it's salesperson walks

in my office, I turn the camera on and we record whatever that conversation is. So people who are

watching, they feel like they know me, they feel like they know my sales team because they're

either on camera or they're having a conversation with me. So it's, I think that everybody just

is totally used to it at this point. How many hours of content are you creating every single day?

And then I suppose you have somebody that combs through it for the best of the best that you

ultimately end up posting. Yeah. So the way that my process works is that again, and I like to refer

to my office as just a revolving door, right? It's people in and out all the way long that have

questions or want to talk about a deal. I would say at the end of the average day, there's probably

two to three hours of content, right? And it's, I've got the camera as it is right now is just

on my desk pointing at me, somebody walks in, turn it on, hit record. And then at the end of a week,

right, upload it to the editor who will go through and like you said, figure out what was interesting,

what wasn't. Doug, I have a question for you. I mean, you're an outlier in the social media

industry and automotive, but what you are doing is not, it's not unique in the sense that someone

else can't come and do it. And last summer, there was a report that was released that almost 50%

of dealers are still not even looking at social media as important. It was a blend of I don't

believe in it or there's no value. You've just said you're quantifying 25% sales attribution to

social media. What do you have to say? It's huge. What do you have to say to the naysayers now,

you know, to recreate something like you? And again, I'm not taking away from what you do,

what you do is great. But no, I mean, someone else can do it, they can achieve this, you know,

give it 100% percent. There had to be people before me that proved to me that it was worthwhile

doing, right? I think most of us are, Hey, show me, don't tell me type of people, right? And so

when I started seeing success that people like Russ flips whips was having or George Salih,

but it's like, okay, I can see this works, right? So I tried it for myself and now I'm

living it. And for anybody that says, Oh, it's not important. I mean, I don't know how to tell

you this, but trust me when I tell you the leads that cause it are coming in, it's insane, right?

So if yes, it's, it's got to be a big focus. I mean, if you do it every now and then,

it's not going to work, right? If I go to the gym once a year, I'm not going to be right.

But it really makes a difference. And what it's all about to me and is, is

show people what it would be like to do business with you. They may or may not like you, but if

they feel comfortable, especially in an industry where people have their guard up against us already,

because we're in the car business, if you can show in my case that, Hey, we make it super easy,

why wouldn't they call? Yeah, right? Easy and credibility too, right? They see your thinking

and your thought process and they see you continually doing the right thing over and over

and over again. And it just, they know you even if you don't know them. In fact, it's probably

awkward. Sometimes people come in talking about you and to you as if you're best friends because

they watch you all the time and you don't know who they are, right? So it's wild. It's, but it's cool.

Yeah. All right. So you also have just talked to us a little bit about the podcast. You've got

a podcast that you're working on right now. Tell us a little bit about that and we'll delve into

use cars. Yeah, it's called the Doug Horner show, right? So it's, I just couldn't think of a funny

name or a clever name. I named it after myself, I suppose, but really all it is is just me on my

day off. I like to sit down with somebody else who is in the industry and is making content on a

regular basis and picking their brains and just figuring out why they decided to do what they're

doing. And really, it's meant to be kind of more evidence for people out there that might be on the

fence about whether they ever want to try social media to show here's other people that are doing

it and incorporating it into their daily life in automotive and their success stories. So

it's just been fun for me to get connected with more people that are kind of in this automotive

space and also this content space. Yeah, that's awesome. So a great question from Dan C online,

one of our loyal listeners, which social media source brings in the most viewers and the most

leads from an attribution standpoint? Yeah, so I would say that Instagram and Facebook will,

and they're sort of combined, sort of not, right? But they probably are most of the views and most

of the leads. I mean, it all started with TikTok and I would tell anybody that if you are going to

start with this, that's the easiest platform to get started on. But a lot of people that are

actively in the market for a luxury car like Mercedes Benz, they tend to find themselves

living more on Instagram and Facebook, it seems. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's transition to use cars.

Doug, how's business right now and what's material, materially different about use cars today versus

this time last year? Well, I think, I don't know that I would say that anything is necessarily

materially different. I just think that all throughout 2025 and your podcast here, Car

Dealership Guy, has proven that most of the industry is intensely focused on how do I get

more used cars? Yeah, right. Because everybody in the industry has to come to terms with the fact that

we don't control what the manufacturers do. Of course, we can lend our voice and our opinion

and they, I think, are getting much better at listening to dealers and consumers alike.

But ultimately, we don't choose how many cars they're going to make or what cars they're going

to make or what incentives they have, but we can decide how many used cars we want,

which ones we want, right? How we want to market and merchandise and sell them. It's much more

controllable. So everybody's trying to figure out, okay, what do I do to get used cars? And I

don't pay too much attention to whether values are rising or falling. I just, I play the hand

that I'm dealt every day and it's just how do we get more good used cars that we know we can sell

quickly. So you talked in your preform with us about one of the big wins Q4 2025 being an aggressive

used car acquisition strategy. So as we go into Q1 2026, what are you doing differently to win

in 2026 and what caused the big increase last year for you in used car acquisitions?

Yeah, well, it actually, so the strategy kind of came together at the end of Q4, which was,

as we're forecasting and, you know, the Rafi organization, they do a really great job of having

us sit down and figure out what are the things that we are going to tackle and what's the game

plan for the next year. And so as we sat down to do that, it was used car acquisition that was,

it's like, not let's just like, you know, have it, okay, yeah, of course use cars. It's like,

no, no, no, let's really figure this out. How are we going to do it? And it was kind of a couple

things. One, we kind of made a few changes here in the store, right? We've got some new leadership

in our used car department. And, you know, so that's always nice because you have a change to,

or the chance to sort of maybe change mentality a little bit. And we decided, let's start

approaching every car that we look at, whether it's a trade or a purchase off the street or an

auction, let's approach it with that urgency, like you're trying to buy a car at the auction,

right? Because I think where most dealers fall flat is that they, they're like, they're going to pay

ridiculous money for cars at the auction because they feel like they've got no other choice.

And then everything else they're trying to steal. And so they don't, they don't get it.

Which is crazy, right? Exactly. The real live customer you want to own for a long time sitting

in front of you, you're going to try to undercut and then you'll pay all the money at auction.

That's insane. Exactly. So it's like, we've decided, okay, you know what, we've got to detach

ourselves from this whole mentality of counting money before you've even acquired a car. Like,

it's like, why am I going to talk about how much money I could make selling a used car if I haven't

even gotten it yet, right? Yeah. All I care about is getting it. And if I want to get it,

I got to think like CarMax. I got to think like Carvana. I got to think about, like,

I'm the person at the auction trying to buy this car that a hundred other people are bidding on

all at the same time. And if I do that, I get myself more inventory, more chances. And then

it's how fast can I sell them to have a nice profit margin? So you say thinking like Carvana,

CarMax, thinking like some of these other organizations, what's their thought process

that separates them from a lot of dealerships in today's marketplace that causes them to win

if they're winning? Get the car and do it fast. Right? That's, they, you know, think of it like

this. People go to Carvana and CarMax because they know it'll be a good number. It'll be really

easy. It'll be really fast, right? They're very familiar with what that process looks like because

that's all they do and they market it like crazy. So now we're looking at it in the same way where

it's like, okay, I'm on social media. Joe W. Otto who I work with and he also does social media. So

it's kind of, we got this little social media powerhouse now. He's running our used car operation

between the two of us. If we can go out there and tell people, hey, sell your car to us, it'll be

just like selling it to Carvana. Now people know, okay, we can call Mercedes-Benz in North Olmsted.

They will buy my car quickly for a really good number and then I can move on with my life. So

creating that awareness, telling people what the process is going to look like,

and now they're starting to call. So the biggest mistake most car dealers have made in the past

has been to make the process too complicated and or is it devaluing in the process that's been a

challenge, Doug, that takes away some of that credibility, transparency?

Well, I think that every, you know, not everyone, a lot of people make it too complicated. Like you

said, a lot of people put up roadblocks like, hey, you got to bring the car to the store or I can't

give you a number on it. Yeah. Why? Carvana doesn't do that. Right. Right. They don't, in fact,

they're mostly taking your word for it, right? They don't really check much of anything. They're

just kind of like, all right, well, you know, it's cost of doing business. If it was a little bit

misrepresented, we'll figure it out, right? But they're acquiring so many cars that it ultimately

doesn't matter. But if you're making it difficult for people, then they're just going to move on,

right? Yeah. Path of least resistance. So since you've implemented this, what has been the actual

result of this? And then was their pushback internally, as you said, hey, we want to do this,

we want to become more aggressive, we want to kind of simplify the process and how did you

deal with that pushback? First, what was the metric of success? Yeah, well, you know, so we're

about a full two weeks in of just absolute gangbusters, putting the word out there that, hey,

we're acquiring cars and we're paying big money for them. And, you know, I don't have the exact

numbers in front of me, but we have already acquired double digit cars in the period of just,

really, we're getting like one to two a day. Whereas in the past, maybe we got one every

other day. And it's also created, yeah, it's also led to at least, you know, five, seven, eight,

and the actual deals, like it's a trade and somebody's buying a car, which is even better,

right? That's what we'd rather have. So, you know, I check in with me in a couple months and I can

give you some real numbers because we're really only two weeks in. But the way we kind of pitch it

is, look, I've been here for 10 years now, right? Joe's been here for, I think, almost seven years.

The leadership team here has been here a long time. We're not like most dealerships where you

show up after, and six months later, you don't recognize anybody. So when we want to do something,

the way we pitch it to the Raffies is, hey, we want to try this, here's why, here's what we're

going to do. Obviously, if 90 days from now, it's totally blown up in our face, let's, we'll change

direction, right? But let give us a little time to prove the concept, and we're confident it's

going to work. And if it doesn't, we're adaptable, right? We'll change. So, so far, so good.

All right. I want to pivot to just a few other topics before we, before we jump here.

You saw Trump's comments as it relates to the possibility of allowing Chinese vehicles to

come into the US marketplace. We've had a lot of discussion on this show, including with a US

Senator Bernie Moreno and others saying, hey, US will never allow Chinese vehicles onto US soil.

I've often thought that's an interesting strategy because, you know, if they become that much better

at the point they come in, it's going to be tough for us all to compete. What's your take on

this announcement by Trump that he's at least open to Chinese vehicles coming on? That's an

astonishing claim by a US president in Detroit of all places. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, look,

I've seen a lot of the cars that you all have seen. It's impressive what they are creating right

now. And I think that there's a lot of reasons for people to be nervous about that competition

being here. But I, I'm also very free market. Let the market decide, right? If they're going to

be tariffed at 100%, like is in place now, and they can still make it work. I mean, look, if we

can get that kind of revenue from the tariffs and have a new competitive player in the market that

would, I think, force everybody to up their game, then I'm for it. But I was surprised. I mean, look,

it's not going to, I don't think change my life one way or another, but I was a little surprised

to see him say that. Yeah. We've also talked on this show the past few weeks about the announcement

by Volkswagen and Scout that they have approval in the state of Colorado to go direct to consumer.

Many other OEMs, Honda and some others have tried that strategy. We had the head of the Virginia

Auto Dealers Association saying, hey, dealers everywhere need to defend the franchise agreement

and not allow that direct distribution model. You know, you're a social media influencer.

You create value by your presence. What's your take on that? Should OEMs be allowed to go direct

to consumer in the United States? Or does our franchise model work as it sits, Doug?

I think the franchise model absolutely works. It most definitely does. And it's a very layered

conversation. I will say this, if somebody is clever enough to find a way around those franchise

laws like Scout apparently has, I say, let them try it and let them see how it works out, right?

Because I see a lot of people in just in general that sit around and businesses that feel like

they've got the perfect solution figured out. And it all sounds great on paper, right? You know,

the kind of the arm-share quarterback that it's life is much easier played in our chairs,

thinking about things and actually going out and playing the game, right? So let them try it and

see how it goes because I don't think it's going to go the way they think it will. And then they're

going to have to pivot. Yeah. All right. Last question. Market-related, Carvana has acquired

multiple Stellantis stores. And we've seen that. Your new use car acquisition policy seeks to

replicate what they're doing, kind of simplify the process, get aggressive. And you've had success

with that already. What's your take on Stellantis continuing to buy stores? Do you think they'll

expand to other OEMs and potentially could Carvana be in the Mercedes-Benz business one day, Doug?

I mean, look, I think that what Carvana is doing should, again, put every dealer on notice, right?

I mean, I think that when they came into the market and they really have this amazing use car

acquisition strategy, that it has forced a lot of dealers to step up their game and be better.

And I think the same thing is going to happen again. I love this sort of thing because in my

life, when I want to do something better or I want to provide a better experience, I look at what

others are doing already, that are doing it better than me currently. And I try to emulate that and

even improve upon it. So if Carvana is proving that their model works, why wouldn't I want to learn

from that? Exactly.

Well, we're excited to have you back on the show because we do want to hear how this

use car acquisition strategy is paying out, including you say management shift. It looks

like you're seeking a new or a use car GSM in the marketplace right now. I think you've got one

of those listings out there. So obviously you're pursuing that strategy. Who did you bring? Is

it public? Can you say it? Well, yeah, so that was so Joe W. Otto. If anybody here follows, he's the

kind of short form car reviewer extraordinaire. So all of the, imagine the garage of the lifestyles

of the rich and famous. Those are the cars that he shows you. I saw some of his content. Yeah,

crazy. What was it? A green S class that was like out of the store. So you guys do cameos together

or how do you, how does your social media collide with his? Does it? So they're two very, his is

much more curated, right? You know, they, these beautiful cars and kind of tell you a little

bit about them and what makes them unique. And mine's very just like, Hey, what's happening in

the dealership, right? Yeah. So, but yes, every now and then we'll sit down and do things together.

We work directly with each other every day. And, you know, so now that he's in that seat,

it's fun for me because I get to go over there to the use car department and put that hat on again

and really get my hands dirty with these cars. So it's been fun. So Doug, one of the things that

you stand out, eager K longtime listener and longtime commenter in the comments says,

I love your store's policy on G wagons. He says Doug has excellent policy on G wagon sales and

trades that customers bought from them and traded in for a new model. Share with our audience what

your policy is, how it stands out and what's the net impact to profitability and sales been to you

and your organization that policy. Yeah. So our G wagon policy is that we want people, you know,

we kind of have two priorities. One first priority would be current clients of the store, right?

We want to maintain relationships. We're a relationship focused store. And if we can't,

if we have one and we can't satisfy that requirement, then what we're looking for next

is somebody that already is a G wagon driver that will trade their G wagon back to us.

In exchange, we sell you these at MSRP. And anybody who's been paying attention knows that the

market value of G 63 especially continues to be well over MSRP. Essentially, what we're trying to

avoid is selling to random people that we'll never talk to again for 20 or $30,000 over MSRP.

It feels like a win in the moment, but they're never going to service with you. They're probably

never going to call you again. There's no long term benefit to that, right? Whereas if I can start

a relationship with somebody that will continue buying cars from me over the years, trade them back

to us, allow us to then make a profit selling it used, that's what we want, right? And when you have

a Mercedes store here and a Porsche store right next to us and you've got all these cars that

have massive supply demand imbalances, you've got to pick your strategy. You're either going to sell

for all the money or focus on relationships. Are you able to quantify the impact? Has the policy

been in place long enough? You're able to say, here's what the result has been.

Well, I can tell you this. Some of what I would consider to be our very best VIPs of the store

for many, many years now have bought one or many G wagons and have continued to buy all of the coolest

stuff and then trade it back at some point in the future. So you're talking about some people that

maybe over the course of 10 years, they could be responsible for 20 to 30 transactions just

themselves, which really, you then double that because if they buy 20 cars from you and then

trade 20 back, that's 40 deals over the period of time as opposed to I could sell to one random

person in California, I'll never hear from them again, right? All right, as we wrap up a couple

CDG related questions, you're part of CDG circles. How's that going? What benefit is it, you know,

what do you get out of the CDG circle conversation that you're involved in, Doug?

Yeah, I mean, it's been really cool. I guess I'm not surprised, but I was a little surprised at

first at just how active the conversations are in there. Yeah, me too, actually. Yeah. There are

times where I'm like ready to jump in and then maybe if I'm 30 minutes late to the conversation,

it's like already gone down. It's over. Yeah. Yeah, I'm like, oh man, I can't contribute at this point.

But it's been really cool to see, you know, from a vendor side, a tech side, a strategy side,

you know, these people that are contributing in there, they are, you know, they're probably

really high on the net promoter score for most businesses, right? They tell, they believe in

what they're doing. They tell people what they believe in. You can learn a lot from people like

that. It's interesting because an automotive speed to execution has always been a difference maker

and it's been the difference maker in today's world more than ever. And it is interesting,

some of the old ideas about going to a place, sitting in a class, having a conversation,

the speed to execution gets slowed down in that older model and that might be a difference maker

with this. Like I'm with you. I'll get, I'll get, I'll start reading something that maybe like Brian

Benstock or some others comment into circles over the weekend. By the time I'm picking up my phone

on Sunday afternoon, a conversation that started Saturday night is over and I benefit from all

that data and information. One of the challenges is like by club, you can't talk about it outside

the circle. So I don't bring a lot of it into the show, but it's interesting. Is there one takeaway

that you could share from the circle you're involved in that has been high value to you in

your business as far as executing in your world? I mean, I would say that in my particular circle,

there is been a lot of focus on training and retention of people, right? So it's nice for me

to see that dealers are realizing that this is a people business more than anything else, right?

I think that sometimes we get too caught up in how many cars have you sold and what technology

are you using? It's really, if you've got the right people, then you can put any process in

place and you can really be dialed in. But no matter how good your process is, if you've got the

wrong people, you're, you're going nowhere. And so to see dealers that are saying, we're doubling

down on training our team, giving them the resources they need to feel supported so that

they don't leave, I think the whole industry benefits as a result of that. Yeah. Awesome.

Well, we appreciate your perspective on that. Finally, the Co-Video Contest. We'd love to

have one of your sales guys or your service folks submit a video for consideration. Will you do it?

Will you send one in? Sure. I will get my team. So we're, we are big video people here. You know,

we've been, we've been making videos for probably 10 years now, right? We believe in that. Yeah,

we work with a, what platform you use? We use CarFilm, which is, they're smaller than Co-Video,

but they, they do a similar thing. And they, you know, it's what I've learned, and this was well

before social media, that when you put yourself on camera, right? And you put the car on camera

and you can humanize the experience for somebody. It's a game changer, right?

Why don't people, why don't more people do it? I, every store I'm in, and listen, our auto group,

I love everybody across the group. And we've got some of the biggest, best professionals anywhere.

They lean into this. But the fact that any auto group isn't at 100% is crazy. And there are

salespeople everywhere and service folks everywhere that it's kind of like, I don't want to go on

video, right? What's the, what's the reticence, Doug? You know, Sam, if I had the answer to that,

we'd probably all be going in there, right? But there you go. Yeah. It's, I don't know. It's,

it's laziness is probably the root of it, right? Or just any number of excuses to come up with,

with why it's not going to benefit. But yeah, does it require a little extra work than just

yeah, sitting and making a call or sending a text to someone? It does. But the benefit is immense.

And I just remind everybody who's in car sales, like you, we have one of the most interesting

jobs in the world, where we sell things that people love and desperately want, but they like

really don't want to talk to us at all. You know what I mean? They'd rather go to the dentist

and get a root canal. So you have an opportunity to change their minds, but it's not going to be

with 20 emails and text messages, right? Show them who you are, right? Put yourself on camera,

be like, hi, I'm Doug. I'm a human being. I want to take care of you. And here, by the way,

is the car that you reached out on. I mean, the feedback that we get when we send car films to

people is they're like, nobody's ever done this for me before. That's amazing. Right? And at that

point, it's like hook, line and sinker. They're like, I want to buy from this dealership because

they're doing things that other dealers aren't doing. I love it. Well, I'm talking to team Ziggler

right now, all of our sales folks, service folks, send that video in, you know how to submit it in.

I can't wait to see a winner. We've got Dan Sear. I'm sorry, Paul Salisman that says,

I'll put my money on the North Olmsted team submitting a great video. We'd love to have

you guys be one of the top four. Benzin Bowties, Doug Horner, GSM Mercedes Benz, North Olmsted.

Thank you so much for being on today's show. Look forward to having you back in a few months to

learn more about the success of your used car acquisition strategy. And good luck with your

podcast, Doug Horner podcast. Thanks for being on the show today, Doug. Thanks, guys. Talk to you

soon. You know, the producers are losing their minds because we went way over on talk. And to

those guys, I apologize, but you know what? It's a good conversation. You got to somebody, you know,

like, I know we're behind, but we're way ahead because that conversation was great.

All I was thinking about when he was talking about sitting in the chair dictating when we're

talking about Scout, you know, the Mike Tyson, everyone's got a plan until they got punched in

the face. And it's like, that's what I think about the Scout thing. Yeah. Yeah. So many topics to

cover an automotive that are relevant to every single one. Yoga car says, I feel like Doug was

just on CDG and it was six to seven months ago. Yoga cars, you are correct. We love having him on

and we love having him on so much. He's part of our, our intro. So all right, let's talk experience.

Let's keep it moving. Nearly 90% of dealers say fraud is rising and 75% say it's already

impacting operations. Stop it fast with experience automotive fraud, protect, quickly validate

customer identities and documents with zero disruption to your sales flow or the customer

journey. Learn more by clicking the link in the show notes below, or you can click the QR code to

find out more information. If you're watching the podcast after our live today, this Wednesday,

January 14th, you can go to the show notes and learn more, but we appreciate experience for

supporting today's content, including that fascinating conversation with Doug Horner. It's

just great to see everything that they're doing. And I like the whole battle of two social media

people, you know, how they collaborate, how they work together and how they win ultimately for

that customer. And then his passionately about videos and connecting with the, with, with the

customer through video because every data point I've seen as I talk to our teams across the

Ziggler Auto Group is that video wins when we want to connect with our customers.

Let's quickly transition to our next guest, Jameson Riley, general manager of Riley Volvo.

Welcome to the show, Jameson. Hey guys, how's it going? Thanks for having me on. Thanks for being

up. Thanks. Thanks for being on Jameson. We want to talk, obviously Doug had brought up a couple

points on, you know, maintaining and creating relationships. But before we start tugging on

that, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do and how's biz in your

neck of the woods? Sure. I guess I'm big shoes to fill after Doug's, Doug's time on the show,

which is, which was actually very insightful to listen to as well. So this is my family's business.

My grandfather founded it in 1959. My, my grandmother is still live extra. She's 95

years old and still running around here the other day. But my father and uncle own and run

everything here. I am the GM sales manager, service manager, IT guy, marketing guy here at

the Volvo store. My cousin runs our Mazda store. My brother's our finance manager.

My cousin's other brother is, or his brother is our prep shop and body shop manager and my

brother-in-law is our price manager. So very much family run store, third generation,

all about community, all about family, you know, our employees here are family just as much as

the Riley's that work here. I love that. And how's biz? Business is good. It was a,

it was a tougher year for Volvo for, for some of, some of the year. We finished strong at the end

of the year though. Inventory is a struggle. I think having a little too much inventory is a struggle

for a lot of stores right now, but there's a lot of management changes. I'm sure as you guys are

aware, global CEO, US CEO, Tomas Ingenlath, the, the head designer just came back to the company

after running Polestar and then leaving Polestar. So a lot of good things on the horizon. Hopefully

some bigger SUVs, some different SUVs, sad that the wagons are gone. But otherwise it was, it was good.

I love the wagons. I'm a big wagon fan. So we had talked before the show started about something

interesting you're doing to, to create and maintain relationships in your store. I believe you said

it's a membership program. Why don't you pull the curtain back on that and, and let our viewership

understand what it is you're doing. Sure. So we, we try to pride, or we pride ourselves and try and

do things differently. You know, we, we're all selling the same products as far as other Volvo

dealers go and same for Mazda. And so the difference is like, like Doug mentioned, the people. I mean,

any business is certainly is, and, and most certainly in a, in a car dealership.

So, you know, we're 100% online sales in the sense that every customer walks through the door,

anybody that is an internet lead, phone lead, they all go through our online platform. That's

how we reserve cars for customers, fair game for anybody gives a level playing field for every

customer. And so we were trying to think of like, what is, what's the next step to add on to that

that would make us different than anybody else. And so, you know, thinking about like having an

Amazon Prime membership or having a Costco membership, the, the dollar fee that you pay

per year gets you exclusive benefits or access to certain things at those, at those types of

companies. So we started Riley premium plus, we started this back in June of last year,

took a few months to figure out pricing to figure out which customers we're targeting,

which customers are it's most appealing to. And ultimately we'll end it on 199 a year.

And the whole concept is that it's an auto renewal. Unfortunately,

I know the DMS is or any of these companies have any of the vendors currently have any

way to integrate any of this, which not the end of the world, but the way it works is you get

to get any discounts at the store, you have to be a member. So similar to Amazon Prime or

if you're signed up a Costco, you get free set of front wipers every year. So instantly,

you're essentially pre-paying for a set of wipers. As far as us as a dealer, the, the cost,

the cost equation is, is it makes sense for us to do that. You get priority scheduling. If you

didn't buy the car here, you'd now get loaner and you have direct access to me. So the way it works

is you get a custom number that you can text or call me at any time. And obviously I give you

time if I give all my customers time, but you get priority with me if you're a member. So

a couple of things. One, it gets everybody a discount that signs up for it. And the second

part is retention. So if you want to get the free set of wipers, you've got to come back to our

store, obviously. And so we just want to take care of everybody that way. How long have you had this

in place for? So started piloting it in like June, but figured out the right formula and the right

marketing strategy probably in like October. And so since then we've got about 130 members.

And most of them coming through the service drive, they get a bill for one of their older

follows. And they realized that, you know, if I want to get a discount, this is how I get the

discount. And then how are you deploying this? Like, how are you collecting the memberships?

Who is in charge of selling this? So all the staff, everybody here, service, sales, everybody's

aware of how the program works on the backs of all the computers for the service team. So that's

facing the customer. And then on the sales people's desks is a QR code explains what the program is.

Customer simply, they scan the QR code with your camera, sign up. It's been specific. We help them

with any of the information filling that out. They had their credit card. It's all done right

there on the spot. So everybody here knows to offer it to the customer. This is not some hidden

game to get a discount. This is supposed to be an inclusive, attractive option. And then on the

back end, we update, we use X time, the whole suite for X time. So we update X time the priority

notes and that way all the employees here know that somebody's a premium plus member. Gotcha.

So I have two questions on technology. Earlier you mentioned you're 100% digital. So you're

using some type of online digital. But also in this, what's the technology that you're using

to capture these memberships? And you said it's on auto written also, I assume it's built into that.

Yeah. So we're using wix.com. So just one of the more generic web providers or website providers.

I've looked at Shopify. I've looked at Square. I would love to be using Shopify because I think

they have a pretty robust system. And we have an online part store where the third largest online

parts retailer for Volvo dealers in the country, but the most profitable. And so we do about 650,000

dollars of online part sales every year. And so I would love to be able to integrate this membership

into that ecosystem. But again, I'm sure you guys know a lot of dealers that are listening to us

probably know that there's so many different vendors and so many different pieces that they

don't all necessarily talk to each other. So talk about that consolidation all the time. And what

was the online digital platform that you're using on your sales side? So we use CDK modern retail.

So we were a pilot dealer with Volvo for motor commerce a little while ago. That's where we

really figured out how to use a digital system to make the experience more premium and simpler for

the customer and more similar to every other shopping experience that they have in any other

industry. And then we switched over to CDK modern retail, which used to be called Roadster.

Just because they were more robust, they offered more options. But yeah, we're all the way from

every customer that comes in to signing the digital purchase order, deposit, credit app,

uploading all the customer information, everything's going through that. It just keeps it simple and

clean for most customers. And we've gotten a lot positive feedback on it. That's great. We're always

talking about how we can remove friction points for customers, right? Get them to the finish line as

fast as possible. I know that you're currently focusing your leadership in an obvious area that

always needs help answering the phones and the text as quickly as possible. What are you doing

to set yourself apart? And why have you decided to focus on this area so much?

It's interesting because I think everybody experiences ebb and flow, COVID to non-COVID.

During COVID, everything was remote. Everybody was texting. Everybody was messaging on the

website. A lot of email, virtual calls. And then as we came out of COVID time, everybody came back

to coming to the store. So still the phone wasn't... I had found that the phone wasn't as caught up

yet. People weren't relying on phone calls as much because they wanted to get back out of their

house and actually go somewhere. But then in the last year, it seems to have changed. And

I've seen a lot of reports. CDG is reported about this. I see people talking about CDG circles,

which I'm a member of as well. And the problem became that we weren't... And I think a lot of

stores weren't necessarily equipped for all this return to phone calls and customers requiring

us to be answering phones. So quickly, based on some feedback I saw, I think in CDG circles and

some other places, we switched over to Car Wars. So Car Wars has significantly changed

the way that we're monitoring our calls, making sure we don't miss voicemails, making sure everybody's

getting their calls answered. And some transitions to AI. I know the AI stuff is a bit of a marketing

thing right now, but everybody's got some form of AI. But I think there's still

some good utility from that, especially as we're trying to help to free up a little more time

for the actual people here to speak to the customers on the phone. So when you said you made

the switch to Car Wars, what was it specifically that Car Wars offered in the call handling

and call answering and responding that caused you to lean into that as a solution?

So obviously in the sales side, we have CRM. We use Dealer Socket at this store, but we have a way

to make sure there's accountability for all the staff here. The service side, not that they're

not doing their job, but everybody can only watch so many things at a time. And so Car Wars allowed

us to have that extra set of eyes that was giving us some sort of visibility into... If a customer

was leaving a voicemail on any of the service lines, I get an email alert. My service concierge

gets an email alert. There's a way for him to go in and note that he took care of it. So it's

kind of like a mini CRM without having to follow up. It's like an internal CRM, I guess, to make sure

that we're not missing calls and that we're getting voicemails answered. So I did as part of

Industry Spotlight. We did a separate show with the Car Wars CEO, and I was fascinated by the

technology. One of the things he talked about, and I don't even think it's released yet. It'll

be released here coming up, but he talked about you get to select the number of rings before

the phone call gets answered, right? One, two, three, four. What is the number of rings you've

set? And then what's the most shocking revelation you discovered about how service was or wasn't

responding to calls once you put that tech into place? So ours is set to four rings before it

goes to voicemail. Personally, I've thought, and I think that was their guidance as well, is that

the less there is, the better. And if somebody answers, even if it's the voicemail, the better.

Biggest revelation was the amount of times that the service advisors were not providing

updates to the customers. So I think we obviously take it for granted here at the store and maybe

some other places do as well that we're all in the business trying to make things get completed.

We're paying attention to the work that needs to be done, but not also thinking about the

customer sitting there waiting just for their car. We're paying attention to 20, 30 cars at

the time. All they care about is their car. So how do we make sure that we're providing enough

feedback and updates to the customer on their expectations, not necessarily just ours. And

so it has provided us some insight into that and allowed us to follow up better.

Jameson, CDK was on the show a while back on the industry spotlight show. They shared the

stat for service that customers average weight, I think it was like seven, eight, nine minutes,

something like that. It was way over five minutes. I wouldn't wait on hold for anybody for that long.

The response on work, a lot of these service riders are just overwhelmed as the average age

of vehicles gets older. And so very cool that you put a tech in place. Does that greater

transparency help your team surround the customer better because they know there's competition

with AI or do they collaborate with it a little bit better? What's been the net effect? Has there

been a benefit to gross profit in service or has there been a benefit to CSI? What's been the big

benefit there? Well, I think the one goes hand in hand with the other, but greater effect on CSI,

more positive effect on CSI is going to lead to greater profits. You're going to have return

customers. You're going to have customers that are happy. You're going to have customers that

are willing to spend money and invest in your business. I mean, I know as a consumer myself,

if I'm being treated well, I'm willing to spend more money at that business place.

So it has, I think, opened some eyes for the advisors to allow them to see maybe what they

were missing that they maybe didn't even have visibility on or recognize was a problem. So

we've had car wars probably for like two months and December was the best December that we've

ever had as far as total labor and service. So I think that's a combination of some of the slowdown

in car sales a little bit. People are keeping the cars a little longer, obviously, because we're a

high leasing dealer here. But yeah, it was good for them. It was good for the department. It was

good for the customer, which was the most important thing. Now, I'm getting notes from the producer.

So we got a wrap here in just a couple minutes, but I got two quick questions for you. As you

implemented that, did service riders fight it or did they embrace it with open arms? And if fight

in 20 seconds or less, how did you overcome that challenge?

Sure. So typically, the pushback is like, what benefit does this provide me as an employee? Because

I've got to sell things to the customer. What is this going to do? And so I always ask everybody,

like, let's give this a shot. If it doesn't work, then we won't continue with it. I'm not just doing

this for the sake of checking the box. There's got to be some real validity to this move.

Yeah. All right. We've only got another couple minutes left, but you're a race car driver.

You represent Volvo and Mazda. You're on track in Mazda. I would assume you are. Is that what you

race? So tell us about racing, how you got into it, and how it benefits you in the business world.

Sure. So obviously, I've grown up, grown cars. My father started racing amateur club racing in

Mini Cooper back in, like, 1993. Very cool. And so as a younger brother, my mom, him, and my brother

and I would be at the racetrack with him every single weekend as I grew up. So I started racing

go-karts when I was 10, went pro when I was 18 in 2004. Volvo had a racing team back then. Derek Bell

and I were teammates. Derek Bell is one of them all five times. Legendary British guy, really,

really cool guy. So I raced with him for two years with Volvo. Have raced with Mazda. We

required Mazda in 07. Have driven Pinex, GXPR, Rolex, GT series, raced in Mexico City. I raced

at the 25-hour race at Spa in Belgium. So all over the place. But yeah, we have the MX-5 now

that we raced in the MX-5 Cup, which is a pro series that runs with IMSA. So we'll be down

at Daytona next week with the 25-hour Daytona event. I love it. Automotive is so tied to racing

at the Ziggler Auto Group. We're in the NASCAR. We're in the F1. We love Ferrari and all things

Mercedes-Benz, all the different franchises. We appreciate you being on the show today,

Jameson Riley, General Manager Riley Volvo and Riley Mazda. And for sharing your perspectives

on all things, including your new entrant in the car wars and the service department to help

better take care of customers. So thanks for being on the show. Thanks, Jameson. See you guys.

What a action-packed show today. And by the way, Yuli, it's not over. It's over today. But we're

back Friday, 1 p.m. We'll have our top four winners for the Co-Video competition. It's not too late.

You've got till midnight tonight if the producers can put up their killin' me, right? Because they're

like, time, time, time. Can put up the QR code for the competition one more time. You can tag us

on social media. You can click here to get access and upload the video. We're going to have a ton

of cool content. But we would really love to see as many sales, as many service riders. How do you

connect using video with your customers? I can't imagine a better endorsement of that as a process

than we saw today from Ben's and Bowtie's Doug Horner. And to our Daily Deal Alive audience,

including everybody that commented into the show links, including Igor Kay for saying great show,

guys, thank you. Thank you, our audience, for watching Daily Deal Alive where you break down

the biggest moves in the car business as they happen. Don't forget, we are here live every Monday,

Wednesday, Friday, 1 p.m. Eastern. So if this is your world, hit like, hit subscribe, turn on

those notifications so you never ever miss a beat. Thanks for joining this episode. We'll see you

Friday. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, guys.

Horner on Used Strategy, Riley on Loyalty | Daily Dealer Live

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