0:00 / 0:00

Live at Digital Dealer Interbrew Series with Gary May brewed by PureCars

Car Guy Coffee Dec 07, 2023 16 min

0:00

About this episode

Gary May joins the Car Guy Coffee Podcast live from the Digital Dealer Interbrew Series, sharing insights on the automotive industry's current challenges and opportunities. He emphasizes the importance of integrity in data reporting and the need for dealers to adapt their marketing strategies to connect better with customers. The conversation touches on mentorship for women in the industry, the significance of accurate data tracking, and the necessity for dealerships to take proactive measures in a changing market. Gary's enthusiasm and expertise shine through as he encourages listeners to embrace growth and innovation.

Topics: data integrity dealer marketing strategies mentorship for women data tracking customer connection industry challenges opportunities for growth

Car Guy Coffee Podcast Live at Digital Dealer Interbrew Series feat. Gary May

Welcome to the Car Guy Coffee Podcast Live at Digital Dealer Interbrew Edition, where we interview Dealers, Vendors, Sales Guys and Gals as well as incredible Voices in our industry that are committed to seeing the Upshift and Uplift of our culture. Featured in this episode is Founder and President of Interactive Marketing and Consulting Services, Gary May. Let’s Brew!
Don’t forget to share and subscribe!

Brew Brought to you By Our Proud Sponsors At:

https://www.drivecentric.com
www.vincue.com
www.fixedopsdigital.com
www.teammxs.com
www.m1-data.com
www.321ignition.com
www.purecars.com

Select text to request an explanation

Hello and welcome to the Car Guy Coffee Podcast. This digital dealer interview series

is brought to you by our friends and partners at Pure Cards, ben Q Team, MXS, Fixed Ops, Digital and One Data and Analytics Drive Center.

If you want more information or want to partner with the group, go to carguy Coffee dot com. Let's grew coffee podcast with the one Man.

Welcome to the excited This exciting guy over here is doing so much on for so many different people. He always brings this smile and I love how he

connects so easy to everybody. Brother, how much fun have you been having

connecting this particular with that amazing Jack. Thank you along the dress and joined

you in the connections. The networking actually been walking around in cleaning in front

of us, a client around the show, or multiple clients around the show.

See if she's sitting in that vendor booth right now. Yeah, a

lot of networking, a lot of fun bringing ideas to the dealers and to the vendors that want to actually improve things in all these times of headwinds and challenges. Because every challenge they have a sich An opportunity. So spending a

lot of time really getting the dealers and the vendors that want to to really move the needle with everything that we're dealing with is an industry, and you do that all the time. One thing that I've always respected about you is

your honesty about what's happening in your products, what's going on and things like that. In your numbers, you don't skew numbers. You're very accurate on

what you say, to the point where when you hear misinformation you will check somebody like all of us. Second, you'll call it out mad. Respect

for that and I honor that a lot. There's so many things about you

that just really stick out to me, to a lot of people that walk around here. In Integrity is one of those works that stick out to me.

So I appreciate the integ Hey Dealers, Car Guy, Coffee podcast, and Certified Solutionaries are honored to be part of team. Thank you. The

solutions they've been ruined for you to acquire more vehicles, advertise merchandise, and manage those vehicles has made them one of the most sought after dealer partners in the marketing. They are one hundred percent CG see it proved and when you

visit them at Benku dot com. You'll see a whole hill of beans worth

of reasons why tank you, let's prove thank you? And in my mind

and in my heart is what we think, we feel what we've done in the last sixteen years. In a month is imax is to I believe,

normalize how it deals the improvement, but to normalize what a dealer does, to normalize how a dealer measures, to call things to pass, to challenge the norm, to change the way dealers get, change the way that most vendors hit their monthly performance reviews and say, hey, here's how many eyeballs you get. What do you want to concentrate on next month? Hold on,

you're getting a check. How can we not telling the dealer the client

what they should be concentrating on. The conversation doesn't change. Automotivator and Elie

it said one of the last times we talked together as nineteen ninety four.

This is not like minute ten. And we've been through two incredible down cycles

since two thousand that I've lived through in the industry my twenty three half years.

So really it's about moving forwards. So what we're doing on the day

to day dealership consulting side is really having dealers change their focus on what they're doing. Everybody's getting there's OEMP from their home chushan inventory pushing APR. Is

that anybody really pushing affordability or communicating with customers in an area and a time where things are becoming less affordable? Are you making yourself stick out through your

messaging, through your style of selling. Are you just relying what the OEM

and vendors are telling you to do, your plug in tools, your metrics, or are you making the decision to top of the customers truly source them on the road to the sale. Heel that data back into the marketing department

to make those decisions. Understand where your website can be better. Understand where

your marketing can be better. Understand where you can ship cars faster with a

guy like that, a guy like guy like God Brady, the only God pay dealers, franchise and independent. We have some great news for you and

your number one sales pro your website. Partner with Team Mxcess. We have

the ability to pull you out of that cookie cutter merry go round and help your website embody what it means to do business from the highest quality production to the most strategic optimization. We want to help you connect better to the ever

changing market. You and your team to at least let us do a quick

and free check up on your website. We can't wait to hear from you,

the team says dot Com back to the show. Appreciate you know,

just another one of those great guys walking around. Here you go and if

you remember, you got to remember. If you can't check your car,

can always ship your pants. So this is what we have to concentrate on.

Consumers are worrying about that car payment and coming into winter where heating costs are going up, and they're looking at ten twelve fifteen to eighteen twenty percent interest rates on their newer used cars. Except for when the subine and the

drop rates come out heavily on November one. Everybody's bringing their programs back.

You got the zero one nine, two, nine nines, but the average person is still looking at the most expensive car payment used car payments in his in one hundred and ten hundred and fifteen years of the automotive franchise. You're

looking at probably another interest rate pipe before December thirty. You're in the same

bus and even though the strike right now is affecting parts and fixed stops, because it's not yeah, not yet, it's gonna happen. If the strikes

don't end in the next two to three weeks, you're gonna start seeing December, January, February availability in months no different than the COVID one as a result for what's available to sell. But at the end of the day,

you have to be able to movement. Are you working on your vehicle acquisition

strategy if you've not eased off the gas as new vehicles have become more available.

Look at every part of your operation, both for variable ops and fixed stops. Do you have the right message, Do you have the right culture

internally to sustain it? As these cats we're talking about all the time,

the dealership culture, are you looking at correct measurement and are you making your decisions to pivot or make new updates to what you do based on real data or somebody else's data for you? And then the beautiful part being involved in

another company On the WIA side, you're really concentrating as we build up to May fifteen, sixteen, seventeen eighteen, Colorado Springs twenty twenty four, Shy and Mountain Resort is advancing the women in the INDUS. We've been working on

the mentorship platform. We're always working on our speakers and Joe Webb and Dealer

knows always does a great job. Joe webbslog, Oh, we know you're

doing the show so far. We just wanted to quickly remind you about our

partners at bixops Digit and how they are automotives premier service marketing and technology company.

Not only the croud sponsors of the Car Guy Coffee podcast, but they also serve as your dedicated to point of contact for all your online service marketing related needs servicing dealerships throughout the US and Canada. The mission is to create

a better online experience for your service customers while using data intelligence to drive more fixed operations revenue. If you want to take your service marketing efforts to the

next level, go to bi Digital. Back to the show, let's go

working on our speakers, working on the content to bring the best conference alone in the industry, definitely for the women in the industry. Veronica is working

very heavily on it, working very heavy on making sure our wives needed to that you're showing all the all the pictures of where we're gonna be. So

she's a love Veronica. She's always working the golf lessons for the ladies.

On the last day of the event. We got self defense classes, we

got yoga, we got golf. So I get to enjoy steering improvements in

the retail side along with the headcount. That's really making the biggest impact in

the human capital side with the ladies in the industry and getting them ADATs, getting them mentored. I actually have to admit a fumble here live in the

social media world. Somebody did select me as the mentor. I be get

the notification, but as certain CEO of the company who's here said Hey, by the way, how's the mentorship going with my staff? And I'm like,

oops, So I did a little fumble. After you know who you

are, You'll be reached out to you very shortly by a bearded gentlemen from Texas. Yeah, the mentorship platform, what we're doing with our virtual vendor

book, the content, the newsletters and everything that needs to be done for the ladies in the industry. So I'm in a great place. Our consulting

side of the business has grown. We can have our best year by about

history. It's nineteen pre COVID our best year ever. We're going to beat

it by about forty Really excited about that. Dealers are calling every week and

we're moving them forward. We're still hitting three to five x ROI on our

clients. With their investment into our marketing, our consulting, our BBC training,

we're getting a three to five x return for our average clients. Some

are better, but three to five average ROI on their Excited about the close of the year. I'm really excited about what's gonna happen for twenty twenty four.

For the dealers that are ready for You're not resting on your laurels, not waiting for the OEM to drive track for you. You're not waiting even

for your regional for your area marketing, your tier two. I'm just gonna

call it stuff to work. You have to be the best marketer for you.

So I agree with you, and that all the way down. I

want and I want to echo this even to the sales pro on the sales floor. Don't rely on your dealer. No, you got to do it

yourself. You've got to find ways to market yourself and get stronger about that

and get yourself out there. It's good to get a piece of the potecrom

the dealer, but bring your own pig sometimes. I'm gonna tell you it

tastes way better. So I love what you're talking about here, Gary,

and you're you're so right on all levels. We need to get better at

that. We can't express and put that things happening because if you do as

we know and he threw some stats out there, the rest of this year is gonna be difficult. If you just rested. Quick question, do you

know what smart Pixel two point zero, Location IQ and Audience IQ have an coming? You know? I do. They are solutions that our friends and

proud sponsors m one Data and Analytics are brewing for automotive anon. Once again,

you're right, my friend, and we want to invite all of our audience to go to m one hyphen Data dot com to see how they can help propel your business forward with the right data insight. Go check them out

at m one hip Data dot com. Let's brew Come on now back to

the show. This is a time to go, This is a time to

get better. This is a time to find tools or partners that can help

you and guide you to get there right, So don't be afraid, be excited because usually where there's a downturn, there's huge opportunity. So take that

opportunity right now to grow, build that business and become something massive because there is a two signs of every point. Eventually things are going to get good.

Rates are going to be well, we'll have more cars, we'll have all these things where it's going to be more advantageous as a dealer to be able to be profitable and selling you right, But until then gets strong, it does happen, you'll be able to crush it. You won't just slowly

ease into it. You'll go right into it. Old cases, old like

seventy five miles per hour going down the highway doing it right. That's the

way up for ninety ninety five. I'm not Protential's a little different down there,

right, So beautiful thing. I'm excited. I love what you're talking

about. Gary. You always bring great information in your theories and the way

that you think. They're not theories, just exactly how it goes. So,

folks, if you need some information, reach out to him and his company. They're doing big things. What's the best way for them to reach

gither go to www dot imacsweb dot com, imaxweb dot com, Coller Office at eight one seven, five two nine, nineteen forty five. I think

I get that in their questions on the website, that's all right, perfect something correct like you guys. So it really comes down to find us on

social right. You can find us on the web. You can ask a

dealer any of the thousand plus we worked at it in the last sixteen years.

And really the best tip, the best advice I can give right now is tear apart everything, ask questions. We've onboarded four new dealers in the

last month and a half and the first things that we found were some of the basic one oh one digital marketing funds. It's really important to make sure

your house is clean and you're tracking everything you're doing. You're measuring and then

you're again pivot you're able to move that and if you're not measuring properly, and trust me, it's some of the easiest times. GA four was not

like the overnight. Oh I understand all this stuff. GA four you got

to invest some time, get on those free Google videos, understand whether you get fully certified, and you just watch the content get certified on GA four, work with vendors that are properly reporting their data to your GA four data layer. Still dealers out there at sale, over sixty seventy percent of dealers

are still missing a lot of their data, a big chunk of their data, whether it's phone calls reporting in GA four, whether it's even their Google business profile, because the tracking parameters are not correct. They don't haven't connected

the Google Ads accounts not connected to GA forour so it's not recording any data.

So you actually go down to the campaign level, it'll say paid search, organic date search, referral aiate search doesn't work that way simply because ads and analytics are not connected. That's your vendor's responsibility, but dealers, it's

also your responsibility. So make sure you got a clean house, get educated,

understand what you need to do, and then grow your business. You

all heard that right here he might charge his hous right, but he's willing to do that. That's what it's about that we're making it ring over here,

becaus put in that high quality inside a car guy coffee are This guy right here really has an act for making not feel so smart. But it's

because I have I am smart enough to have That's why I have friends.

I don't know. You gotta ask you. Remember, the most productive day

of the week is today. You only got today. So do what it

is that you can do to improve. Pay attention to the things you need

to pay attention to, and call people that can help point out the things that you haven't been looking at that you need to see properly. Have people

in your corner to help make sure that you know what you're looking at.

If you're looking at it this way, it can improve. But Gary,

we are so thankful, so thankful for the time that you've giving us.