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Kilway on Power Dealer AI Prompts, AutoGenius on Untapped Markets | Daily Dealer Live
Kilway on Power Dealer AI Prompts, AutoGenius on Untapped Markets | Daily Dealer Live
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About this episode
A lively discussion on the integration of AI in automotive operations unfolds as Jared Killaway from Casa Auto Group shares insights on utilizing ChatGPT for data management and decision-making. The episode highlights the importance of creating a secure environment for data while maximizing efficiency in dealership operations. Additionally, Ben Haddon from Auto Genius explores the evolving landscape of customer expectations and the need for dealerships to innovate beyond traditional sales tactics. The conversation emphasizes the significance of understanding market dynamics and leveraging technology to enhance customer experience.
Topics:
ai integration
chatgpt applications
data management
customer experience
market dynamics
dealership innovation
ev sales trends
digital marketing strategies
Today's show features:
Jarrod Kilway, VP of Digital Ops at Casa Auto Group
Ben Hadley, Founder of AutoGenius
This episode is brought to you by:
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Honda Prologue
"...ing the pack at 55,000 units. Honda with only the prologue on the lot surged nearly 48% month over month to..."
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Hyundai Palisade
"...ulators. The biggest recall is more than 568,000 Palisade SUVs from 2020 to 2025 for faulty seatbelt buckle..."
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Tesla Model S
"..., how does it relate? So I have a Rivian, I had a Model S, right? My family actually, see my uncle has fou..."
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Dodge Charger
"...igations and an EV is obligating me to also get a charger and it's obligating me to stop at a place for 25..."
Select text to request an explanation
Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of The Daily Dealer Live!
I'm your host Sam Delerkin. Back with me co-hosting today is the Uli Di Martino. Uli, welcome back.
Thank you. Uli, guess where I am today? I'm in a secret location, but I'm gonna tell you exactly where I am.
Fort Wayne, Indiana. Tonight we've got the open house and the new facility celebration for our
Ziggler Subaru Fort Wayne facility. So as I said on Friday, if you're in the Fort Wayne market,
if you're around, come by, say hi. We've got a big party here between 5 and 7 p.m. Everybody's welcome.
Dealers, vendors, everybody across the Fort Wayne market. This is such a cool city and such a great
town for automotive. It's our second store here. We have a JD byrider store and the Subaru store is
second. We've had it what year and a half, almost two years I guess, but ground up Renault. That was
painful. It's painful to build stuff, Uli. I bet. No, it absolutely is. Well, congratulations to
getting it done and the grand reopening. Yeah, congrats to the teams for bringing it back. So
and for everybody joining our live stream today as a reminder, we're live across all CDG social
media platforms. Post those comments. We'll bring them into today's show and Uli, I feel like I say
this every time, but what a show we've got today. We've got a huge show coming up and first off,
just to tease a little bit about what we have coming up. Make sure you have your comments in
there because they help us with the show. Many have asked chat GPT, what do I do with it? What
do I do with AI? How do I engage and interact with it? And in fact, here at Ziggler, today we had a
team training call with, have you heard the name Jim Craig? Do you remember who Jim Craig is?
He was, he's an Olympic hockey gold medalist. He was the goalie on the famed Olympic team that
beat the Russians back in the 1980s. The Disney film Miracle on Ice is based on it. He does some
consulting with us. He comes in once a month and gets our team that wants to be leaders onto a call
and he asked today, he said, look, I'm old. Most of you are young. He said, one of the things with AI,
chat GPT and others, is he's like, who's going to explain it? Who's going to own it? And who's
going to explain it to somebody like me? And it really got me thinking, you know, one of the biggest
obstacles to the newest, greatest tech is figuring out how to connect it to other generations so
that it makes sense and so that it actually works. And today, for all the chat GPT talk we've had,
Yossi and the team at CDG put out an email, five hacks. Well, we've got an individual on today's
show, Killway, and his whole purpose in talking with us today is to explain some of the hacks he's
created in chat GPT to help run automotive better. So I'm excited to get to that. Plus,
we've got Auto Genius on Untapped Markets. But first, let's dive into today's headlines.
So first up today, August was a blockbuster month for new EVs. It's no shocker as the,
as the incentives tick down to zero. Sales hit a record 146,000 units up 14% from July
and nearly 18% higher than last year, lifting market share to an all-time high of 9.9% per
Cox Automotive. A whopping 13 brands notched their best EV sales this year with Tesla still
leading the pack at 55,000 units. Honda with only the prologue on the lot surged nearly
48% month over month to grab 6.4% market share. And Audi was the standout luxury brand up 65%
more than 7,300 units. However, that demand chewed through inventory. EV days supply fell
to just 62 days in August. By the way, that is intentional. Speaking as a retailer, looking
to your EVs before the incentives go away, it's the lowest level today on lots of 2025 down from
a June peak of 133. Toyota had the leanest supply of just 14 days while GMC sat on the highest at
139. What's the bottom line here? Well, buyers are clearly pulling ahead of the September 30
tax credit cutoff. Demand is strong now, but the real test comes in Q4. And you are seeing some
really interesting, like promotional stuff going on out there in retail right now. Tesla,
you pointed out in our prep call today, is advertising all over. Hey, just order that EV
by September 30 and you're okay. We all know or at least have been explained. You got to validate
this on your own that as long as the paperwork is signed, those EV sales are good, even if the
delivery ends up happening after the 30th, you got to test that. Don't take our word for it,
because I'm not legal advice, but that's what I've heard what I understand. So it's going to be a
fascinating race to the end. It's our last full week in retail sales, selling EVs under these
rebates. Next week, we've got a couple days left and then it's over. It's over and then we'll see
what the real demand is. So, all right, time for an M&A tracker, cdgbicell.com tracker, QR. There
we go. Doesn't that just make you happy? Every time, every time, what was the movie that says
something about angels wings and like on a Christmas tree and all that? Anytime a
car dealership is sold in the US, cdgbicell.com will report on it. That's right and we'll be there.
The highly automotive group is expanding its footprint again this time by picking up its
first Chevrolet store, the family owned group acquired Lakeside Chevrolet in Rockwell, Texas
from the Grady family and will rename the store Hilly Chevrolet according to the
deal advisor performance brokerage services. The move gives Hilly 11 dealerships across the
Dallas Fort Worth area, a great marketplace by the way, plus three more in Huntsville, Alabama.
I wanted to go to Huntsville, Alabama as a kid because I wanted to go to space camp. You probably
don't remember this. You're too young for it, but I remember space camp. The movie was in Huntsville.
I had the brochures I put down. I wanted to put a deposit. I wanted to be a space. I wanted to go
to space. So what's the big picture with these acquisitions? Props to them for picking up three
more in Alabama, Huntsville. With the addition of a domestic brand, Hilly could be opening the door
to a whole new customer base. And that is correct. And if you want to learn more about
acquisitions right now, go to cdgbicell.com. Next up today, Hyundai is recalling nearly
600,000 vehicles across three separate issues according to federal regulators. The biggest
recall is more than 568,000 Palisade SUVs from 2020 to 2025 for faulty seatbelt buckles
that may or may not latch. The company is also on notice for 31,000 Ionic 6 EVs because the
charging port doors could detach as well as a small batch of eight Ionic 5s over loose wheelbolts.
Hyundai says the Palisade defect likely affects only about 1% of vehicles, but owners will be
notified by November 10th and can get all repairs done free at dealerships, of course.
And for dealers, these recalls are of course golden opportunities in the service center,
potentially bringing thousands of vehicles back into service bays and giving stores
fresh customer touch points if those are handled correctly. And hopefully they are
at all dealerships everywhere across these United States. And finally up today,
last on the docket is Porsche, which just took a massive 1.8 billion euro hit after delays in its
EV rollout forced the automaker to slash its 25 outlook. The company now expects an operating
return on sales of just 2% down from its earlier forecast of 5 to 7. Parent company Volkswagen
is also lowering its guidance and recording a 3 billion euro impairment tied to Porsche.
Zooming out, this is Porsche's fourth guidance cut this year as cooling EV demand,
tariffs and high cost continue to drag on profitability. And as a result, the flagship SUV
that was supposed to launch as fully electric will now come in combustion and hybrid versions.
Good play, Porsche. I think hybrid is what customers want anyway. Take away here, Porsche's
retrenchment is the clearest signal yet of a major reset in electrification strategy
among European lawmakers. And with that, that's a wrap on today's news this Monday,
September 22nd. Excited for the show, man. I am too. All right, Uli. But before we get there,
let's talk guests. So if you're a dealer, if you have an opinion, if you want to be part of
this voice that is daily dealer live, part of this show, this is the voice of automotive.
There's nothing else like it Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 1pm Eastern. We're live here every week.
Dealers, if you want to join the show, go to cdgguest.com. Fill out our intake form to be
considered for a future guest spot. We'd love to have you on the show. And then we can't go into
today's show without talking about our NADA party. The car dealership guy is back with our
second NADA party happening in Las Vegas on Thursday, February 5th. It's the hottest ticket
at NADA 2026 with special guests and top automotive personalities will be there as well.
We're not top automotive personalities, but we will be there. We refuse to not be there.
To be considered for a formal invite, just hit the link in the show notes,
request to join and fill out the questionnaire. So if you're listening to this not live,
go to the show notes. If you are live, you can follow the link in the comments down below. We
hope to see you all there. All right. Without further ado, let's turn to VP of Digital Ops at
Casa Auto Group, Jared Killaway. Jared, welcome to the show. Hey, good morning. Good morning,
Casa, everybody. It's great to have you, Jared. Welcome to the show. All right. Before we go in
and ask you how's biz, because we're going to ask that along with that, just tell us a little bit
about yourself and what you do at Casa Auto Group. Yeah. So I am the vice president of digital
operations over here at Casa. So I'm tasked with really working with the team on process,
management, execution of anything and all things digital. So been in the industry 22 years,
worked with a couple of notable people who have been on your show before.
But it's a lot of fun and I'm excited with the change in landscape and what we deal with day
in and day out. All right. Which notable people have you worked with? Let's name drop. The one
and only Mr. Brian Kramer. Oh, okay. Very good. You know what? Isn't he insightful? You get him
in front of you and just ask him all about all things used cars and he always has incredible
insights. I can tell you quite a bit of stories on that one, but yes, working together down at
Maine and putting together the Metaverse project and many of other tasks that he was pushing my way.
So it's a lot of fun to work with people like him and the team over at Casa that are really trying
to test the limitations of what we do with day in and day out. Yeah. So speaking of testing
limitations. So how's Biz? What's business look like today at Casa Auto Group? Biz is growing.
Yeah, we grew. We actually entered the Arizona market here earlier this year. So
dealing with some new stores, some new OEMs and continuing learning, but also taking in a new
demographic and new geolocation. It's really exciting for me to be able to have Arizona now on
the map and be able to test some of these things we're talking about today to really assess the
market of what it is there at that store. So speaking of that, that's a great segue. AI,
ChatGPT, it's just all the rage. It's a buzzword almost right now. And I'll be in rooms with
general managers, dealers and other people and everyone knows it's here. Everyone has had that
moment of aha when you see ChatGPT do something astounding. But what's tough is to connect that
aha of, I can't believe it can do that to execution. And as you know, Jared, we're all in
automotive 100% about execution. So tell us a little bit about, you created some custom GPTs.
Hey, at first, tell us what the heck that is. And then what led you to develop this?
Yeah. So in essence, what I did, I was able to aggregate all of our DMS data, CRM data,
inventory data, match that to our operational data of Google AdWords, Google Analytics,
website experience, social media channels, paid social results through Meta Business Manager.
In essence, was able to connect everything into one instance. So it is completely secure in private,
which I think we need to kind of start there. Is that privacy element of the data?
Everybody on the call, don't go take your financial statement or extract all your
customers and go and run it into ChatGPT. Why? Tell us why, Jared. Why is that a bad idea?
Because there's smart people like myself and Brian Craver and Ben Hadley that could go and extract
that through queries because that is open and public at that point.
So how did you isolate it? You used a word. You said it's in a separate environment. It's in a
protected environment. How do you do that? What does that mean?
So in essence, connecting through API integrations, everybody in the space has heard of API,
whether it's one of your CRM vendors, but ChatGPT has an API element which you can tie into.
So I have created a safe space that houses all of this data as one big pile
and then using that through the API with GPT to query that information that already exists.
So that is not public. And for these ChatGPT solutions that you've created,
you're about to share with us. What is the API that you use to create that safe,
protected space to upload this to? So that is, I built a data clean room,
so it's extracting everything and it's on AWS. That is something I can query at any time.
So it's not out of the box. It's not something I just went and bought off the shelf. It did take
some time to build it. So we had Steve, I think it was Steve Greenfield came on the show a few
weeks ago and he said, hey, in our world today, it's not the tool or the solution because the
bar to creating new AI solutions is low. It's inexpensive and he kept saying, hey, it's easy
to create the solution. He said it's the problem and he said dealers who are super sharp will
identify the problem and then they can actually quickly go to executing and creating a solution.
How did you get the skill set to be able to say, hey, I'm going to create an API. I'm going to
create this protected area. What's your background that helped you to get to that point?
So my background, I've been 22 years in automotive, both retail, OEM, vendor space.
My previous regime too, coming to CASA, I was actually with an AI company in automotive space
in the very early ages that has now executed. But I've learned a lot through the years and
it's one of the things of finding solution for things that you don't know are broken yet.
So it's trying to think five years in advance beforehand. So the one thing I used to get,
and I still get, it's the, hey, I'm going to an NADA 20 group. What's my average RY per
marketing dollar spend? Or, hey, I need to go sell 15 more centuries between now and the end of the
month. What do we do? And it gives the ability, okay, go look at all of our specials off our
website. Go to look at all of our historical sold data based upon zip code of, hey, historically,
this is where we sell into. This is the market that created that sale. This is their APR average.
This is the income level. This is all of these dynamics and then stack all of that together
to launch and deploy a specific target on that one model to that audience that we know has the
highest propensity to purchase. So it's just trying to think more quickly. I used to do it with
Excel spreadsheets, which used to take me an hour or two hours to do to be able to really configure
everything dialed in. It's now, I can get results in a matter of a minute. So the time savings.
So Yoga Cars had a great comment. Yoga Cars says, unless you anonymize your data off AI,
you're at the mercy of AI until the next data leak. Agreed?
Absolutely. Yeah, privacy. All right. So let's back up a little bit. You gave us a little bit
of a tease just a minute ago on this. What is the, so when you think about the different tools
you've created, when you think about the most successful tool, what is the problem that you
are looking to solve with this tool? The main problem really looking to solve is the ability
for the general managers to take action and take action quickly without having to necessarily call
me or send me an email or jump on a zoom call. It's the ability to give them, in essence,
jittered in a box that can answer a question if they're at a 20 group or NADA Academy that
need to get specific information. They can have it very, very quickly. And so, and so what,
give us an example of a question that they would come up with at a 20 group or in making
an ad buying decision. What, you know, what's our website bounce rate? What's our unique visitors
based upon sessions? What is our auto, what is our referral traffic coming from our auto genius
auto group site, etc. They may not have that knowledge right away, but they can pull it
and it'll give them everything in a digestible format. So before you talk about the tool you
implemented to give them to that point, I'm a GM at your auto group. I have this question about
bounce rate. I'm at a 20 group. Where do I go to get that? Do I log into a chat GPT? Do I log
into a tool? Where do I go? No, so you as GM have a secure link to your store and your store's GPT
data that you'll be able to query. Okay. And it looks like the chat GPT interface, right? But it's
secure and I have my own login. Okay. Yeah, it's similar to it. And then what I've done is built the
most frequent prompts. So kind of like the most frequent questions that we're getting asked to
it so they can go, you could literally say, okay, is it in this list of five or six things?
And you'd be able to click a button and it'll give you results right there. And is this a real
time integration like back and forth? Yeah, it'll call the safe space API cloud where the data is
housed. And then we're getting the information from Techion or DMS or whoever, whoever the provider is,
we're getting that information in real time to that safe space. All right, let's test this.
Do you also have an enterprise version that allows it to all flow up to multiple rooftops?
Are you able to like say, hey, for all of CAS Auto Group, here is the metric of the result? Yes?
So that is something that I'm actually working on right now. I had to get it on the store level,
child level first, and now it's going to roll up reports, correct?
Okay. All right. So let's test this live. You don't have to tell us which store, pick a store,
any store. Who's your number one most effective digital lead provider, aside from the dealership
website? Now, by the way, yeah, except for that, by the way, if you can do this, how cool is that
to actually be able to make decisions and advertising digital dollar spend that are effective
rather than having to scramble around and prep for a meeting beforehand. So let's
car now, car now. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. So it's not website, but it sits on site,
but that's the one by how much?
And, and Jared, does it ever make mistakes? Like, do you have to go back and say, hey,
wait, that's not right? Or is it pretty accurate?
In the beginning when it was training, it was, okay, I have to inspect the expect every single
time. And then I got into, okay, I can do five queries, six queries, and then I can go back,
something looked off, go and retrain. But now it's been, it's been running about 30, 45 days
consistently. Now, so what were I expected every day just to kind of recap, but you'll know if it
kind of short circuits, and yeah, just spazes out on you, and you can get a good sense of, oh,
yeah, your, your bounce rate is 90%. Okay, something's not working correctly. So you'll be able to
pick up on instances very quickly. So you're 30, your percentage that you're looking for is 4%.
Wow, that's good. That's good. And at the point you could get that for the entire group,
how powerful that's going to be. All right, so, so before you give us how the sausage is made in
between, you've been on only 30, 45 days, right? Are you able to quantify the impact of easily
having this information accessible to GMs to increase sales, increased, you know, better
spend on ads? I mean, like, is there a quantifiable impact of having this at this point?
Not yet. Not yet. I think it's going to be something that I'm going to like review here,
end of Q4, once I have two full quarters of data running through it to see what really
is the impact. But then also, how is it, how has it made everybody else's job easier? And what can
we learn from this information? But, and then you improve it, you make it better, right? Oh, well,
it then it comes down to, you know, we think of all the different tools we have, connecting it into
an equisrade or something like that from vehicle information. I don't have it connected yet, but
you know, what if we did that and then built out something that could go
scale and review every car for sale by owner on Facebook Marketplace and automatically pull the
ones to it and reach, I mean, it's endless of where it could go. Yeah, but it's right now. And
that's the exciting thing for me. It's okay. Here's where it is an infancy stage. Where can this
become in two, three, five years from now for impasse? So did you have to, did you have to talk
someone into allowing you to do this? Like the executive leadership team, when you went to them
and said, Hey, I got a great idea. I'm going to load all of our info into this AI tool, and it's
going to spit out automatically information to GMs. They're going to use it as a resource where
they like, whoa, wait, hold on, like privacy implications, data security, like all the things,
incorrect info. Was there somebody you had to sell quote unquote on the idea?
No. So the idea actually came about with, with ownership as we were looking for a way to
standardize and simplify our, you know, an OTB airport or a daily recap reporter is kind of
okay, I can see value, but now how much more can I get out of this? So what if I took this
information from the DMS and CRM and pulled it in to have one centralized report, but now if I
could do that and layer on marketing data, analytic data, results data, now that just makes
this even more powerful for us to be able to utilize and scale to a whole different level.
And then why did you decide to create your own tool versus go to someone else? And then I'd love
to have you walk us through what the tool is and then how can a dealer practically do this today?
But why, why do it yourself? Just for to your point where the concerns of data privacy and data
health data to me is one of the most important things. And I feel that is one of my most important
jobs is to protect that information, protect that data. So I look at that as my, you know,
the Brinks armored truck driver, that's me of the dealership and nobody's getting into it. So
I make sure that are you are you the AI expert at your store then at the organization? Are you the
person people go to if they want to understand, you know, it's myself and, you know, the beauty of
is I have Mike, our marketing director, he he's the creative side of it. So he uses it so much AI
for creative for script writing for, you know, overlays for everything we need on that side.
And we kind of work in tandem on a lot of different things, but data information analytics,
that's kind of my bread and butter. Okay, so I'm a car dealer. I'm watching this show.
I've heard chat GPT. I've heard you talk about the solution and the benefit.
What can I do to create something similar to what you have?
So first and foremost, sign up and you have to use the paid version of chat GPT. And from there,
you can get API access. Okay. Step one, step two is looking at your current text,
CRM, DMS, those are going to be the ones that take a little bit time, but they will have APIs that
are open and that you can use to query. Wait, so now, now just backup. So that means if I understand
you correctly, you do the paid version, I think it's like 200 bucks a month. I actually saw it
last night when you play, right? Yep. And let's say CDK, he leads whoever. If there's an integration
into CDK, I can actually link this paid protected version right into the DMS and it will call for
information. Okay. Close. Okay. So that's step three. So that's step three. You get excited,
which I love. I am excited because somebody is about to explain what the heck is going on.
Like I have not understood it yet. Everybody's like, Oh, it's so easy. Just do this. That I'm
like, wait, it's not that easy. Otherwise, everybody's doing it. So go ahead. Step two.
So step two is, yes, reach out to, you know, CDK, which they have their Fortellus
integration API cloud, which you can have access to DMS and CRM data.
Yeah, you get approval from them. And now you have that integration. Step three is you create
your e-store, right? Yep, your e-store. Great integration. Yep. Yep. And then step three is
you're setting up your AWS data clean room. So your data clean room for everything from
CDK, from everything from your VIN solutions or Techian or whatever information you're
feeding it, you set that to run to your AWS data clean room. Who do you call it AWS to create
up this data clean room? Is this the same thing as a CDP or a data lake? Or is it different?
Very similar. I do, I was looking at the angle as we're in CDP discovery conversations that we may
transfer over to that instance, but right now I needed a solution. So I just went on AWS and then
I use ChatGPT to, hey, how do I use and set up a data clean room on Amazon web server? And it
gave me 40 pages of information, instructions, how to do it. Wow. And then I connected the APIs
from ChatGPT to the clean room, to from CDK's API to the clean room, and then Google Analytics,
MetaBusiness Manager, et cetera. So all that information now is utilizing everything that's
protected in one instance and not pushing it out. So how are you comfortable that as you put it into
that clean room? Who has the liability if there's a data breach out of this quote unquote clean
room? Is it AWS? Is it you? Who is it? No, that'd be AWS and that's part of their security elements
of it. Okay. All right. So now the API is live. And in automotive, we all know APIs from all the
integrations to the CRM to the DMS and FNI, right? It's that crazy thing that fails a lot on a
Saturday, last Saturday of the month, and you can't call contracts or pricing or print anything
out, right? When you forget to, you know, decode and put the county in and you can't push deals,
yeah, absolutely. Yes, yes, yes. So everybody has familiarity with APIs. All right, what's the next
step? So then it's, it's trading. So then it's running different questions against it and starting
measuring results. And then it's enhancing that API through GPT of giving feedback. So when you
have that, and you pay for that API, you can provide feedback of this was wrong, this didn't,
you know, pull it in correctly, et cetera, you start feeding it back information every
single day to make it better and better as you grow. So that would be my other question, Jared,
is there are all sorts of different formats, you're getting data from, let's say a CRM and a DMS and
from Google Analytics and different lead providers, and you're just putting it all in this space.
Like, there are different formats. They're organized in different ways. They mean different
things. How do you get them all to play well with each other? Different name, different naming
conventions, even. Right, right. So, so is that part of the AI thing that's just pixie dust?
Okay. No, it's not pixie dust. You have to tell the AI, you know, first name here in this field
is the equal to customer there's mapping. Got it. So that's, that's part of the training that
you're talking about. Not only you have to ask it the question, you need to tell it where to
find the answer and how to find the answer. Right. Correct. Before you can ask it a question to
provide data results to you, you have to take the time to go tell it to map first name from field
A to customer first name from field Z16 equal each other. So that's part of that first discovery
phase to it and it takes time and yeah, but the benefit's worth it. So as you set up that integration
with the API and you push the data in, does it just automatically prompt you for that or do you
have to tell it, hey, I need you to prompt me for this? No, I sit there and tell it what to
connect in terms of what's how to think about it. Yeah.
Well, it's just how to consume it. It's no different than if you think about it,
how we are trained to go read a financial statement. And when you're training somebody
at the store, okay, here's your advertising credits. Here's your advertising cost. This is what
that means. That's in essence what you're saying, and you're doing to the GPT is with this data
field. This field equals this. This equals this to itself. Yeah. What's the most surprising
as you did this and you did this for the first time, like you're you're experiencing and discovering
something that's not been done by you or anybody around you. What was the thing that was most
surprising? Like was there a takeaway where you're like, holy cow, that's cool. Like I never knew
that I was surprised that that could be done. Though actually, if something I found I was just
querying it yesterday or not yesterday, but last week, and it was something I was just like, oh,
I wonder what's our close rate of leads that are older than 21 days? Oh, I want to know these things.
The fact I don't have this drives me nuts. Okay, good. Right. So I was like, oh, this, you know,
this store on the hoe, we're only at 2% close rate on these leads. Okay. And now it's like 21
days in order. Okay. Now identify which lead sources have the highest and lowest engagement
after 21 days. Yeah. Okay. And now it's the situation of why. So then you can take this back
and I can have a conversation with that ecom director say, Hey, here's the data. Let's go
inspect this a little bit further. Is this a people process or a provider? Which one of those
is the problem here? So that we can identify it and make adjustments to continue to grow and get
better. Very cool. So what did this cost you all in? So the the integration, the AWS space,
the subscription, I think 200 bucks a month or whatever, what what what is the cost?
I mean, it ended up costing me in terms just, you know, integration cost and some software
costs ended up costing me right about $1,000. And then of course, you know, there's, there's
the ongoing pieces that, you know, subscription. No, just up front was about 1000 and runs
three, that's a while 800 to 1200 a month, based upon how much data we're feeding it,
how many people for all the rooftops, right? Yeah, individually. Yeah. And a lot of those
are paid for calls of the API. So if you do it a lot more, it's going to go up. If you don't do
it as much, it goes down. And who charges that? Is that AWS or is it the source of the data through
the API? So everybody, everybody charges for data. Everybody's charging. Everybody's got their hand
out. So I mean, you're paying like a toll. Yeah, it's exactly like a toll in every direction.
Yeah. But, but the chat GPT side is just a monthly flat, right? So it's, it would be,
but they limit you, but they limit you to how many calls of the, got it. Okay. That makes sense.
That makes sense. So Lauren asks a great question. She says, does it do things like help your desk
managers write better deals or your inventory manager better position your lot? She's asking that.
So it's funny. I was so funny. She says that I was with David Long's morning clubhouse room and I was,
somebody mentioned like, gosh, what if you just took all your FNI lender docs and uploaded to this
and you could literally have your FNI guys figure out based upon, you know, DTI and score and rank,
which this could almost make it so that this would just tell them, which bank is the best option
based upon the customer's dynamic and be able to give you a profitability scale of which bank
you should send it to. And I'm just, I'm sitting here thinking, I'm like, taking notes. I'm like,
okay, let's add this to future planning. So that's something I have penciled that I want to add to
it. But I think that'd be critical for the FNI team. It's one of those things where you don't know
what you don't know, right? So as you're going through this seemingly limitless configurability
of this system, it's like, you can really get down to the nitty gritty. It's, it's really
remarkable. I mean, I'm curious to see what questions you come up with in the future and how
you can, you know, action that out. Yeah, no, myself as well. So, so it's interesting. Why do you
think so many of the AI providers charge so much for their technology right now? So I always give
the example of one of our, a store out there that paid a $4,000 setup fee, $4,000 a month,
it was a bolt-in to their CRM, they had no idea what it was doing, but they paid it just because
it seemed like cool tech. You set this up for $1,000 and you've got some nominal, you describe it,
monthly fees. Like, why are some of the providers paying so much when you can do so much on your own?
I think it comes down to, you know, time, but it also comes down to our mindset and automotive.
We are very reactionary and we are also very focused on the 30-day window.
Yeah. So it's one of the things is I need that shot in the arm now. This something can help me
sell 10 more cars a month. Yeah, I go pay three grand for it, but I'm selling 10, 12 more cars or
I'm solving for something like, you know, an overnight lead volume and hey, I'm getting 60%
of my leads overnight. I have to have AI to be able to respond to these after hours or else I'm
going to get hosed because the two stores that I'm in competition with have something, I'm never
going to get that engagement. So it's, I think that's the difference too, it is this is help
operational AI. Yeah. This is more operational kind of leadership management type of things
when you're mentioning it or tools that are generative and conversational AI tools that help fill
a void and or gap of our day-to-day operation. Yeah. Tyler LeBlanc says, when you talk about
that FNI tool, SelectFI does that, right? So SelectFI apparently does the feature that you're talking
about relative to providing finance feedback. So if you were to, and we've only got a couple
minutes left, the producers are saying, we got to go, we got to go, we got to go. But I just want
a couple more questions, such an exciting topic to me. What is, what would you do differently if
you were building this again today from scratch? What's a takeaway that another dealer wanting
to replicate what you've done could learn from? I wouldn't have waited. I would not have waited.
I mean, I waited probably six months after just initial thoughts to do it. I would have started
right down right there, even if it's simply as starting with the CRM or DMS integration request,
because that does take a little bit of time. Yeah. So, and that could slow you down and then we get
distracted and now it's, you know, by the wayside. So biggest thing I would say takeaway is if you're
thinking about it, start now, make a plan, draw a plan out of where you want this to be in a year
and try and get from one year to six months and then continue to grow out.
I love that advice. So it's with GMs right now. Who's your next rollout? This will be our last
question because they're driving me nuts to go. No, I love it. So the next piece I'm going to be
rolling this to is our ECOM team for a better accountability across the day-to-day operations.
Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Well, I got to tell you, this is a fascinating conversation, Jared Killaway.
You've explained things to us that everybody wants to know with specific steps on how to
achieve those next steps, which is awesome. So VP of Digital Ops at CAS Auto Group, Jared Killaway,
thanks for joining the show and thanks for sharing your perspectives on all things chat,
GPT. By the way, a lot of the prompts that were in the CDG email and newsletter that went out came
from you. So those are tried and tested in that environment as well. So Jared Killaway, thanks
for being here. Thanks, Sean. Oh, it's a pleasure. Thanks for having me so much.
And guys, now a quick note from our sponsors, Toma. So most voice AI is frustrated customers
and waste everybody's time, but only Toma customizes AI agents to your dealership.
So calls actually get resolved. That's why top dealer groups trust Toma to automate their phones.
Visit www.toma.com forward slash CDG to learn more. And I want to do the same thing here.
If you can figure out how to use your phone and scan the QR code here, you'll be good to go. You
can hop right in. So we just want to say thank you again to Toma for sponsoring the show and
letting us do, letting us do what we do best. Giving, giving voice to all of automotive. That's
awesome. That's right. So all right. Next, next up, let's dive into this today's industry pulse.
Of course, there has to be a cool graphic for that. There it is.
All right. At Sawyer Merit on X posted something that got a lot of traction over the weekend.
He claims that all the cars on the market today, what do the best, what's the best selling car,
the fastest production car, the safest car and the most American made car have in common?
So think about this. What do all these cars have in common? Best selling, fastest production,
safest and most American made car have in common? I don't know if I'm going to agree on this, but
we'll go down this rabbit hole. They are all EVs, which got us to thinking then why are they so
hard to sell? That's so true. I don't think they're hard to sell. I just think politics has pushed
demand. Politics has tried to push EV demand beyond what it naturally is and infrastructure
hasn't been there. Consumer understanding, education and appetite hasn't quite yet been there.
Then battery technology in the past hasn't been there. I'm of the belief, Julie, that as the
incentives peel away, we're going to get to some sort of a natural demand. It's going to be different
all across the country based on geography, how much infrastructure there is in different
geographies, but there will be demand and it'll probably surprise some people where that sits.
The big mistake and I think, I mean, this is politics, but the big mistake was
government tried to create demand where there just wasn't demand and they tried to force
infrastructure where there wasn't infrastructure and it was costly. And by the way,
nobody wants to have this debate, but they've made that mistake during things like COVID and
create scarcity, don't create oversupply. When you want to push out an initiative,
create exclusivity and create scarcity. Don't flood a market. When something can become too easy to get,
nobody's willing to pay anything. It takes me back to my English roots as an English major.
I forget what the quote is, but whatever we can get too easily, we don't value. And that's the
case with EV. That's the case with a lot of different things that government does. Government
is a very blunt instrument in the marketplace. And listen, and it's also not a one size fits all
approach. I mean, this was a very easy or rather relatively easy adoption for Europeans because
the way society is set up is so completely different. We live in the United States of America.
We have a vast amount of terrain to travel every single day. So I mean, EVs just don't fit
everywhere. Which now I think why it's so exciting to see this evolution, right? The plug-in hybrids
and now the, what are they called the ER EVs? The EVs with gas generators. Like, that's it, man.
If I can drive around and bring a charging station with me, that solves the whole EV
adoption problem right there. All right. Well, that's a wrap on today's industry
pulse. Fascinating conversation. Thanks for the post to X. You can join the conversation after
today's show and post comments as you want, just as a segue into our next segment. Actually,
we'll cover these comments. A lot of great comments online coming from our audience.
We'll recap some of them at the very end. But let's head to our next guest,
founder of Auto Genius, Ben Haddon. Welcome to the show. What's good? Welcome, Ben. What's happening?
Ben, thanks for being here. Doing great. This is so awesome. Great. This is awesome. Thanks for
being here and having a voice here in the voice of automotive on this Daily Dealer Live show. So
before we get into it, I'd love to ask you two questions. How's Biz? And as part of that, tell
us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Auto Genius. Oh, business is crazy. Let's see,
our company's grown about 400, 500% over the last nine months. We have a little bit of an
interesting story. I've been in auto for since like 2008 about early dealer.com had a bunch of
startups in between, sold them. And we made it a mission to make a startup that was guided by a
community. So we created this thing called the Auto Genius Community, like 6,000 dealerships now,
or represents about 6,000 dealerships now. And they kind of, they're our compass for our product
roadmap. And the major problem that we found that nobody could solve was speeding up websites. So
we figured out how to increase the speed of any website on the internet by 50%.
And that increases your leads 34%. But not really what I wanted to share today.
What I have for you today actually has a lot to do with what you guys are just talking about.
All right, how does it relate? So I have a Rivian, I had a Model S, right? My family actually,
see my uncle has four dealerships here in Burlington, Vermont.
And what I've continually realized through sort of like all the tech adoption cycles
was that there was sort of this rebuttal that kept on coming up.
Right when I was starting to like introduce websites into the market through dealer.com,
people would say, well, why would I want your website? Maybe just a webpage with my address on
it. Right? Because if they want to see something, they should just come on in. And then it became
like price transparency. Well, if they want to see that, they should just come on in. And then
it became digital retailing. Well, if they want to see that, they should just come on in. And it
was like, really, like, is this going to be like the rebuttal every freaking time?
Right. And then I realized, by the way, Ben, I get that before you say I realize, I get that
because in automotive, we've been taught since the early 90s when I got into the car business,
we're best when that customer comes in and sits in front of us. And so I get why old dogs push
back on that idea of turning it over to a more virtual space. So then your thought was, thank
you, Ben. I figured out and sort of started graphing together that a lot of dealerships
want to believe they're an optional purchase. But then they start behaving like they're an
obligated purchase. You can't have both. And an example of that, you know, if I was the only
guy that had water, I can just play a game where I say, I'll wait till they get thirsty.
Sure. A lot of dealers can play that game. Actually, my uncle here, I think his Audi store,
yeah, you have to drive like three and a half hours to go get an Audi in Boston,
like otherwise, you know, I got the water, man. You know, you want an Audi? Come on in.
But that also explains why dealers are really hesitant to innovate. Because if you got the water,
and you can just literally wait until people get thirsty, then why do I need all this tech?
Or why do I need you all these things? The aha moment for me, if you remember, I don't know,
if it was like 2016, 17, somewhere in there. Coxado had a study, it was like
customers hate spending three and a half hours in a dealership.
Yes, which we've known for a long time. Yes.
But here's how I would test your brain to see if you're a little too data drunk. Okay.
What did your brain immediately go and try to optimize in that sentence?
The time in the store. The number. Yeah. Right. We actually have gotten so short-term thinking
in automotive that what we immediately beam into is, well, I'll take that three and a half hours,
I'll make it 45 minutes. Our minds skip over the word hate, which is crazy, because we might
just make a 45 minute process people hate. In other words, there's no such thing as a fast
cruise ship, right? A cruise ship is slow as hell, and that is actually part of the experience.
If I went to go get a Hermes purse, the 18 months that I have to wait to get my wife that purse
is actually a benefit. She gets the brag that she's getting such a rare. Oh, I have to. Same
with Ferrari buyers, same with Porsche buyers. If you have a black Submariner on your wrist right
now, you could probably just walk into a Rolex place and grab it. The guys that brag about their
Rolex are like, no, no, no. I've got the ceramic Daytona. It took like 18 years for them to finally
get, you know, so then this strategy that you're talking about, this is what you call the blue
ocean strategy. And this is an idea of creating a space that is uncontested. It's taking it above
price. It's taking it above all the traditional constraints of automotive, and it's creating a
space where the value delivered to a buyer or a consumer is so high that they become comfortable
in that space, even in the face of different competitive facets, different marketplace facets
and all that. So when you think about creating that space, what are some of the steps to getting
there? Like to a dealer listening today saying, you know what, I get that. I see the need for
a space where I don't have to compete on price, where I don't have to compete on availability of
a particular vehicle or features. I want to compete on value and delivering an excellent
customer experience. So the first thing I think to figure out is where are you
on the axis of optional to obligated, right? So, you know, my uncle actually really can just
play in this obligated space, right? Like he can absolutely hang out there and crush the market
because the market has basically been dominated and I'm not going to use the word monopoly,
but he's got your own market, right? Now, if you're in a metro area with like 20 competitors around
you, then as soon as we switch from a customer saying, well, I'm obligated to buy a car because
I live in America. And how that kind of has to do with the EV thing is that a lot of people
hate their obligations and an EV is obligating me to also get a charger and it's obligating
me to stop at a place for 25 minutes to charge it and it's obligating me that it's actually adding
net more obligations. It did a raw effect. 100%. The brilliant thing with Tesla to the point earlier
was they made it the wait list, right? They actually, that wait list became a benefit.
They created scarcity. That's my whole point. Yes. 100%. You create scarcity. If the government
had created scarcity around EVs, people would be clamoring for them. There's certain health,
there's health initiatives that if there'd been scarcity around being able to get this thing or
that thing, people would have paid a lot of money to go get it. And that's this space you're talking
about where you don't have to compete on price. You can compete on the value delivered by it.
And by the way, neither is right. Like what I'm saying is I'm suggesting there's multiple ways
to exist as a dealership. We've all known that. And what I've kind of created is a map to get you
into the strategy or reflect the strategy that you want to find the blue ocean. Your blue ocean
might be experiential. Cool. We can get you there. Your blue ocean might be more towards
instant gratification. Get you there as well. So if I'm a dealer sitting watching this and I'm like,
okay, I kind of get what you're talking about. Some of it's like nebulous, right? What are some
specific steps I could look for to figure out that blue ocean for my own business? And how do I
pull up the graph space? Yes. Producer Sam, could you please give us the graph? And by the way,
to our audience, don't freak out when you see this graph because this graph is very busy. But go
ahead. It's crazy. But what you're looking at is the magic quadrant. And you're looking at the
bottom portion is optional purchases. Okay, as you go up to the top, you're looking at obligated
purchases. The far left, you're looking at something that's delayed gratification. And the far right,
you're looking at something that's instant gratification. If you can zoom in on the top left,
what you'll see is car buying. Yeah, I see it there. Car buying is surrounded by other things
that are slow obligations like replacing your roof, going to the dentist. All of these areas
actually have insanely predictable cash flow. PE companies seem to love them for roll up strategies
because they can then innovate them pretty easily
and compound the growth. If you look at where Carvana is, which is not too far away from the
regular car buying, it's just drifted a little bit towards instant gratification. That's them
seeking out blue ocean. But if you look down towards where Ferrari or Porsche is,
which is down in the optional, like you don't need a Porsche, right? That's starting to bring you
into more experiential. And so as you go either direction, what you'll also see are marketing
channels that help you get to that direction. So if I'm trying to be more like Porsche,
then I'm having events at my dealership. Events are a very optional, slow thing, right? If I'm
trying to be like more on the instant gratification side, then I'm going to be doing TikTok. I'm
going to be doing Instagram Reels. I'm trying to get people that are impulsivity-based buyers.
So each one of these, actually, you can draw a line from where you are to the marketing channel
as a path to get more and more of the blue ocean that that area would capture.
So everybody sort of starts in that top left area, but then can find little pockets where
they can go, you know what? Like I know for a fact right now, the undervalued mediums
are probably in the bottom left in traditional, which is crazy because I've been a digital guy
my entire life. But what I realized is like no one would send a wedding invitation through email.
Right. Right. Like if you have something important to say, you would use direct mail.
You'd use the slowest, most optional thing to get in front of that person, right?
Is that right? I don't know. Debate it. I love it. I'm not sure. I'm not sure that is correct.
Like any more, nobody goes to the mailbox to pick up a piece of mail. So I think wedding invite is
a very specific one, right? Aside from that, there's a lot of junk that comes in the mail.
I never 100% of it is a lot of it is still meaningless. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But if you actually
showcase effort in in your direct mail, it'll it'll work. 100%. I'll ask you guys a question.
Like think about this. You have a million dollars to spend right now. You go spend $500,000 on
producing and like getting a great cast together, making a beautiful ad.
Then you spend the other $500,000 and you can either spend it on TV or you spend it on OTT.
Yep. Right. Or YouTube pre-roll. If you're a viewer, which one inherently feels like it has
more meaning, even if it's the same exact ad? Julie, what do you got? Yeah. OTT.
Hell no. What are you talking about? Wrong. If I saw a Doritos ad on the Super Bowl versus a Doritos,
the same exact Doritos ad on YouTube pre-roll, digital pre-roll. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Digital
marketing inherently actually feels cheap, right? Digital marketing is almost the way of saying,
I subconsciously am telling the consumer I paid the least amount of money to get in front of your
eyeballs. But when it comes to effective connection with that consumer, the way digital media can
saturate and give a message over and over again, to your point, it may feel less, but it's actually
more effective at delivering the message. Yes, no. That's got to be our last one because we got five
seconds less left in the show. What would you say? Shoot. I would say no. I would say saturation.
So now you're looking at saturation versus quality. Yeah. I would say depending on the
strategy of the dealership, if you're trying to just hit as many eyeballs as possible, fair.
But if you're trying to generate meaning, which is going to be more important in an AI world,
like an AI world starts delivering you things instantly, but at the same time, you are,
yeah, exactly. I want to be different from everybody else. Ben Hadley, I hate to cut you.
Founder of Auto Genius. It's been an incredibly interesting conversation. Thanks for showing
us how to seek out those areas where we can deliver the best value to our customers
every single time. Appreciate you being on the show, sharing your perspective. Yeah, thanks for
having me. Thanks, Ben. Dude, we had a lot of great conversations just going in the last 20
seconds here. YogaCar said most cases car purchases is an emotional purchase unless the car totally
broke apart. Lauren Klein, thanks. We are all old car guys. And then of course, Lauren Klein also
says the operational possibilities are endless if you're using that data correctly. And I think
that is, that is true, right? Yeah. But good show today. And we learned something about ChatGPT.
I'm going to go out and research AWS, like the sterile room for protective data, because intuitively
I've known I don't want to put data out there for sure. So that is, that is smart. And to our
Daily Dealer Live audience, thanks for watching Daily Dealer Live. We break down the biggest moves
in the car business as they happen. Don't forget we're here live every Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
1pm Eastern. So if this is your world, hit subscribe, like, turn on those notifications
so you never ever miss a beat. And we'll see you next episode Wednesday, everybody. We'll see you
guys.
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