Nowling on Data Cleansing, Karr on Web SEO, Beauregard on Financial Risk | Daily Dealer Live

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Daily Dealer Live!

I'm your host Sam Dark and thanks for choosing to be here right now. This Monday, March 23rd,

we've got a heck of a show coming up today. We're talking about the stuff that's quietly

costing you millions right now and a lot of dealers in automotive don't even see it. First up,

Jeremy Nolan is celebrating a grand opening of sorts, 20 store showroom on Amazon. He went live

last week and he's here to share us, share all about it with us. Plus Doug Carr from Overfuel

is exposing why 92% of dealer websites are failing, there's the millions have lost,

and how that's killing your traffic, your leads, and your conversions. We may ask Jeremy about this

as well. He's an expert on such things and then finally we wrap up with Mike Beauregard from the

NICB who's walking us through the fraud schemes hitting dealerships right now and the red flag

some of our teams might be missing. Today's all about data, digital, showrooms, risk, and how

to fix all of these. Let's get into it and first today's auto industry headlines.

First up today, Toyota and Lexus topped Kelly Bluebook's annual resale value rankings again

in 2026. Props to them makes it Toyota's 10th consecutive win and Lexus' fifth straight. More

specifically, Toyota led eight of 16 mainstream categories with an average resale value of 53%.

While Lexus topped three luxury segments at 47%. For context, the average 2026 model year vehicle

retains just 45% of its value after five years, with vehicles in KVB's top 10 holding 55% or more.

For dealers carrying these brands, that data is a useful selling tool right now,

given that affordability is the dominant concern. Shifting to other OEM news,

Stellanus announced that Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Fiat, and Maserati Bev customers can now access Tesla

V3 and V4 superchargers in North America. And as an aside, if you've checked out oil prices

lately and all going on in the Gulf of Hormuz, this is coming at a good time when some consumers

might be reconsidering electric. Owners of those Stellanus vehicles need an NACS to CCS-1

DC adapter, which is available through LEV certified Stellanus dealerships or

you can go to Mopar.com. Naturally, this gives Stellanus dealers more leverage in EV conversations,

particularly around range anxiety, which that's been one of the stickiest objections in this segment.

Now with an update on some unfortunate news, Hyundai has recently recalled nearly 70,000

Palisade SUVs in the US and Canada following the death of a two-year-old girl in Akron,

Ohio earlier this month. Reports say the child was pinned by a third-row power seat while her

mother and another child were in the vehicle. And because of this, the recall covers certain

26 Palisade and Palisade hybrid models with limited or calligraphy trim packages,

where the second and third row power seats may fail to detect a person and continue moving

after making contact. Hyundai says it's working on an over-the-air software update expected by the

end of March with a permanent fix still in development. For dealers, expect heightened

customer concern around this nameplate and stay close to Hyundai on messaging and remedy timing.

And finally, we turn to the CDG buy-sell tracker for deals to close out today.

CarLock Automotive Group made its first move to Indiana, closing on Carverthood of Columbus on

March 19th and renaming it CarLock Toyota of Columbus. Meanwhile, in Houston,

Gilchrist Automotive picked up Team Gilman Chevrolet on March 16th, renaming it Gilchrist

Chevrolet and adding a Metro Houston footprint to a group that already owns more than 20 Texas

stores. Out in California, Hello Auto Group closed two back-to-back divestitures. Hello Subaru

and Hello Mazda. I actually think those names are great. A Valencia in Santa Clarita sold to Jerry

Siner dealerships. We know them well. In fact, they were on a Subaru segment in the past,

and Girwati Auto Group, respectively, both closing within a day of each other in mid-March.

And finally, Lapis Automotive out of Houston tripled its portfolio in one move, closing on

four Livermore stores. Porsche, Audi, Land Rover, and Honda from Humanski Auto Group on March 17th,

bringing the group to six rooftops in two and a half years. Props to Todd and the entire team there.

And that's our CDG Bicell Update, bought to you by the CDG Bicell Tracker, which you can find

all the time, anytime, 24-7 at cdgbicell.com. And that's a wrap on today's auto industry headlines.

Well, what a week it's been. What a week it's going to be. Going to our social stream, which is

a light this morning. Eager K says, Carvana made another acquisition of a CDJR store in Massachusetts

from my friend, Laura Case Gordon now in Tox to acquire another store in Westward Mass. The plan

is to establish premises in every state. They're looking to corner the market with CDJR dealerships.

Not every state allows Carvana to put their vending machines. So they found a loophole buying up new

car franchises like CDJR dealerships. And we'll, we'll tackle that topic in coming episodes. But

Stellanus's partnership or a seeming partnership with Carvana is super fascinating in terms of

what their intent is, how far they're going to distribute, and how that impacts the overall

retailer world. So as a reminder, we're streaming live across all CDG social media platforms today.

You can post your comments in wherever you are, and they'll come into our dashboard. We'll bring

them into today's conversation. We've got a heck of a conversation. I think we're going to spur a lot

of talk about one thing in particular. We're going to talk a little bit about the brand new

showrooms that Jeremy Nolan has created and opened 20 to be exact. Just this past week to go

for more information. Let's go straight to Jeremy Nolan, sales and implementation director

at Wormann Auto Group. Jeremy, welcome back to the show. Hey, what's going on, Sam? How are you?

It's always good to have you here on The Daily Deal Alive. So for those that may not know you,

just tell us who are you and what do you do out there? Jeremy Nolan, sales and digital retailing

along with implementation director for the Wormann Automotive Group. I work with all 20 stores on

innovation, tech, leadership, accountability, you name it. It's Monday, so we'll see what we're

up and into today. And you and the Wormann Group are very forward thinking. Ryan's been out there

on social media and out there at NADA. I think he's going to a SOTU here in the next few weeks.

And he's very open in talking about his tech stack. A lot of people have been fascinated by that. We

may talk about your CDP and cleansing data and the percentage of data that's bad. But before we do

that, you opened 20 new showrooms. Talk to us about how you opened 20 in one week, basically.

And what have the results been thus far? Well, maybe one week to launch, but it was a process

that our CFO and another one of our directors, Ryan, we put together over a period of 60, 90 days

building Amazon storefronts. So with Amazon, we have 20 storefronts that are now live like

other sellers that are selling everyday products on Amazon. So pretty cool experience.

So you said the first batch went live on Friday and then they've been going through the weekend.

You were part of, and you can see right here, so this is the way it looks. Talk to us a little bit

about what our producers are showing up on the screen right now. Yes, I mean, really, it's very

comparable to a third party marketing page. But in this instance, you can go end to end where the

consumer can find their vehicle, see the price, go through all the options of financing and products,

check out completely and then arrange a delivery, I'm sorry, arrange a pickup to take place at the

dealership on where that vehicle is housed at. And so we went live in Illinois at the beginning of

this month. Our Indiana stores, those 10 just went live last week. We've already had a consumer

check out from beginning to end, take delivery at the store. We received our funds and we actually

have a couple of deals working. I literally was just on the phone 30 minutes ago with our Kia team

because there's a consumer wanting to lease a vehicle now. So like it's really starting to work

well for us. And can they transact the leasing through the Amazon Auto platform as well? Yeah,

so with Hyundai, you currently can. Kia is currently going through the setup. So there's four OEMs that

just went live with new cars. So Kia allows you to list your vehicles Subaru, Mazda, and then

obviously Hyundai. Okay. So you were part of the Hyundai pilot that began maybe a year or so ago.

What do you say to the dealers that say, hey, it was underwhelming. There wasn't a lot of sales

activity in the Hyundai world when Hyundai made its debut on the new car franchise on Amazon Auto.

Sam, actually wild enough, we didn't go live with new Hyundai's back then. We waited to see

what the hype was like and we actually were approached and we were really interested in the

used cars going live. But as part of listing our used cars, we were allowed to list the new cars

and now we see the gain that could potentially come from having new cars listed live on Amazon.

So you held off participating in the initial pilot on the Hyundai new to just kind of validate it.

What did you see in the use space that led you to believe, hey, this will work. We're going to jump

on not just toe in the water. You brought all 20 stores. We did. Yeah. So obviously you anywhere

that you can have your vehicles listed in today's environment is a positive sign. But when you think

about the players that we're up against now on the virtual showrooms, the Carvanas and the Carmaxes

and companies like that, that would that allow a consumer to go end to end on the transaction.

Why wouldn't you want to be on there for that consumer experience? And when you think about

the millions of consumers that currently have a garage or a prime account, our inventory potentially

is now in front of all of those customers as they search. Yeah. So walk us through for the

dealers that haven't seen this customer goes in, they can go end to end in their Amazon Prime app.

So just you can do it on your phone. You can do it on the website. And basically, can I transact

100% of it at your stores in Indiana and Illinois? Yeah. Wet signatures need to be done at the

dealership. And what are those wet signatures in 2020? For like Indiana, odometer statement,

title application, any dealer facing forms that are not inside of the platform, those would be

signed at the dealership. But other than that, I mean, it's just a regular online deal. And what

about the finance step? So customers oftentimes will see value in the products that are offered in

the finance office, they're intangible products, one of the challenges or criticisms of Amazon or

any other completely online processes, the attachment rate isn't as good on FNI. What have

you seen early on? And in, in, in how is FNI addressed as a step on Amazon auto? Yeah. So we,

as I said, we, we just went live, we did sell our first vehicle that consumer did

choose to purchase gap insurance. But again, it's taking the experience and allowing them to drive

it, just as we would a consumer walking in the front door that says, Hey, I want to write a check,

but I don't want to buy any products. So again, there's a lot of education that goes for the

consumer to be able to make the decisions on whether or not that product has been official to them.

And again, it's not about wanting us to be in control. It's allowing the consumer to still be

in control us sell the asset and then earn a customer hopefully in service down the road.

So customer comes to your store to pick up the vehicle. What does the process look like there?

I know early on there was an idea of having a dedicated spot, maybe even a dedicated uniform

that had the Amazon auto. Has that been pulled through this final iteration? And then you talk

about retention. How do you retain that customer? First, what does that process look like?

Yeah. So the consumer can choose to have a full delivery or no delivery at all.

And if they, they choose to have a delivery, we're going to walk them through the service

department. We're going to walk them through the features, you know, romanize it, right? And

it's making an overall great experience for the consumer. What we're not going to do and

with is not allowed is we're not going to try to sit that customer down. And because they didn't

choose a warranty online, try to start pushing warranties on them. That's, that's not the model.

And that's not what that customer wants to experience. And so for our, our first delivery

that we did, that customer was phenomenal beginning to end, worked for a company down in

downtown Chicago, drove out to the dealership. She didn't want to be videoed as our first Amazon

customer. Fantastic. She didn't want part of that. But you know what? The rest of the experience

was phenomenal. We had balloons, a bow. It was, it was, you know, they were welcomed by everybody

and celebrated. And, and now we're just now we're on to other potential customers now.

You could argue that that customer, depending on what their buying habits are, that might be a

conquest for you, right? Because they may not have in the past driven to the suburbs, Schomburg,

for those that know is about an hour drive, if you're coming from the city, they may have chosen

something closer to home. What do you think attracted that particular customer to the experience

at your store via Amazon versus a more traditional method? It's tough to tell what attracted her.

I mean, obviously, it was a used vehicle that they sought out on Amazon. And they just found the

listing submitted their information, the price, price met their needs. Because again, that price

is what I have it listed for on the website. So it's just everything in line for that customer.

There was no negotiations. It was, it was just seamless. So you mentioned that you can either

get a delivery or not. Did she opt in for the delivery or out opted in for the delivery. So we

went over the features and everything on the car. So is there a separate CSI for new cars anyway,

from the OEM, from the factory on Amazon delivered vehicles, if they opt out, are you still held

accountable to that standard? Do you know? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know that. I don't

think that any new car customer is going to show up at the store and say, I know everything about

it. I think by the time that they've completed the checkout, we've created a little bit of rapport

with that customer through our back and forth communication. And, and nobody's going to turn

down understanding the new technology on the $60,000 car that they just purchased.

So as you sell the car and you get the customer data, you want to own that customer for life,

right? You want to provide such a great experience that they're committed to the

warming organization. How do you do that on a deal where the entire transaction was transacted

in the app? And you're kind of the very last step. You've got the balloons, you make it exciting,

they accept or decline the delivery. How do you retain the customer longer term?

Well, I mean, obviously the consumer is still existing in our DMS and our CRM. So we're still

going to continue to try to earn that customer's trust and get them to visit our service departments

by continuing to send out the coupons, the specials, and the experience of what they

received during that delivery to know that they can still experience all of those benefits

years ahead with that trusted partnership. All right, several questions coming online,

which is great. Igor Kay says, big congrats on the new acquisition. Igor Kay goes on says,

FNI menu introduction online for every deal with full disclosure should help.

And is there a menu in that step? It's not necessarily a menu. It's like any DR tool that's

out there on the market right now. So when you think about like a Roadster or an Upstar,

it allows the consumer to check the products, be educated on the products and make the decision

that's best for their transaction. So yeah, it's all the information is there for them to decide on.

Another comment from Paul Salisman that I have a pricing question on use cars. Paul Salisman

comes into the chat says, is Amazon charging for this yet on the new or the use side?

No. Yeah. Are there plans? I'm sure there will be a model for it. We've discussed what that model

looks like. It's nonexistent so far. So again, if we're all paying for all the third parties right

now, why wouldn't we again want to take advantage of the one that has millions of customers,

where they already have their PII and all their buying habits for free for whatever period of

time that is. And so that we're ready. I mean, think about it, Sam. We all remember when Carvana

was trading for $3 a share and they were selling cars. Think about the model of five years down

the road or three years down the road when more and more consumers believe in that end-to-end

purchase and our storefronts have been live for years gathering reviews and building a model

process. Well, my curiosity goes to the next question from Yoga Cars. Yoga Cars says, do

dealerships trust Amazon long term? IE, Amazon Basics came to compete with all partners selling

on Amazon. What would you say to the trust issue of suspicion? Again, Amazon's not looking to get

into the auto industry. They're looking for the storefronts. So again, they'll look for media

dollars. They'll look for advertising benefits. They're looking for the consumer gains and

understanding that consumer's garage. But Amazon's not ever going to have 20 different brand new OEM

locations on there. Think about, you went into it at the intro of the show, like Carvana just

acquired another new car dealership with the goal of getting one in every state. I mean,

this is our biggest competitor right now and this is allowing us to compete against Carvana.

Wait, you said their goal is to get one in every state. Do you know this for fact?

Well, I believe that's what you said at the intro of the show was-

Oh, did I? Oh, I guess I gotta go on and read it more.

I thought you said it was their goal to get a new car franchise in every state.

Okay. I'll go back and reread it. Hannah, fact check me and put it in slack. We'll see that.

So listen, use car pricing is fascinating, right? It fluctuates continually. As vehicles age, some

dealer groups and dealerships have a pricing strategy where pricing decreases. I'm fascinated

by use car pricing on Amazon because what's your pricing strategy on those used cars?

It's the same strategy because they pull that inventory feed directly from our merchandising

tool and so it's the same price on Amazon as it is the third parties and it is on our website. So

again, I think the consumer is just choosing the experience that doesn't require that back and forth

with the dealership. They can just check out if they're okay with the price,

check out and pick it up later. Yeah. And so there's an integration between- I know you don't

use Viotto. I think you guys use Techions, right? Well, Techions are DMS, but we use Viotto as our

merchandising. Okay. So the Amazon tool, I think it's ATIS, I can't remember who it is, but it would

pull the pricing data. So as it goes up and down, it's going to change and that pricing gets dished

up to the consumer, right? And then all the pricing is the same across all platforms. It's all fully

disclosed. How do they deal with Dock V in the app? Just curious. Everything's totaled up inside of

ATIS Inc, all of your taxes, dealer fees. If you have any accessories on the vehicle, it's all

inclusive. Did the first new customer have a trade in? This one had no trade. Okay. Do you own the

trade if they did? We get the first right to the trade, yes. Okay. And then if not, then Amazon would

pick it up and they would distribute it based on whatever method they- That's right. What do they

do with the used car actually? I don't even know that. I'm curious. It's wholesaleed out through a

partner. So it's like a- Not Mannheim. It's the other one. Like an ACV or something. ACV actually is

the one and it's- Okay. They allow that a little bit of range of customers' praise value, but yeah,

we get the first right to it. Very cool. Paul Salisman comes back into the chat and says,

the legacy advertising focused listing services should be concerned. And I- Thoughts on that.

How does this change the game in terms of marketing and reach by distributing vehicles

or at least making them available on Amazon? For me, I believe again that our vehicles should

be listed everywhere for trying to earn a consumer's business and trust. So right now,

you get lost in the pages. So think about two different buyers. So one buyer is going down

the Google route, which takes them to cars.com and traders and all the third parties. And now

you're lost in between 30,000 used cars for sale within a 50-mile radius. But yet you go to Amazon,

that type of shopper, they end up on Amazon autos. And now you have an audience of maybe

3,000 used cars for sale. I'm going to hear a lot sooner and we'll get the transaction quicker.

And actually to the comment about trust between dealers, like I think that's almost irrelevant

at this point, Amazon has trust with the consumer. And I'm not saying dealers don't trust. I think

they do. But Amazon, I just think Amazon has the trust of households. I mean, we all go on there.

We all buy there. We all know how the pricing works. What is the return policy actually,

by the way? So I buy a vehicle from you used on Amazon. Amazon is infamous and famous for

their return policy. It's easy to return something. Is that the same on this platform?

It is. It's a three-day return policy. And again, speaking like a Carvana or CarMax,

they have a return policy of seven days or 10 days. So a three-day return policy on an asset,

I'll take that. Hopefully, again, we've already met that customer's trust, needs,

and wants of what they're looking for in a vehicle. And we should not happen at all.

And then do you know the details behind it? Like, is there a per-mile charge or is it just

you bring it back and walk away? I believe it's up to 500 miles or three days

that the customer can return the car. In hopes of if that customer did choose to return that vehicle,

we can switch them to another asset would be my hope. Yeah. Through the Amazon app or is that

open? It's probably open, right? Where they wanted to meet you. Yeah. Well, we would love to have

you back on the show to talk in particular about how this is working. What would your message be

to dealers that say, hey, I get it. I get the appeal. I get their distribution truly is elite.

And no one else really has a distribution channel like Amazon. But what do you say to the

dealers with a little gun shy saying, hey, their own advertising efforts are going to yield better

results than going through a channel like that? You know, honestly, I would say on those you can

challenge those against your third party close rates. Whereas this is an end to end transaction.

The only ones that you're handed off are the ones that they couldn't obtain the financing

through the lenders that Amazon has set up. You as a dealer are retaining all the profits. So you

keep all your profits on the financing, the products and the vehicle. So like, what do you have to

lose? And I guess the other question would be is you can continue to wait. I'll love it.

You have the advantage during that. I would say all your listeners probably had something

delivered from Amazon to their house within 24 hours or past seven days. So there's just so

many pluses to this. You mentioned lenders. How many lenders do they have signed up? Three lenders.

And that's above and beyond the captive, right? So right now the OEMs that are captive that are

doing this for the new side, it's Hyundai Ford. Does Ford do it through the new side? Ford has

their certified vehicles on, which I'm sure at some point you will likely see new Fords on here.

Kia, Mazda and Superlative for all lives. So all three of our Hyundai stores and all three

of our Kia stores are fully live on here. Have you heard any data from them that says, hey,

here's the number of customers that prefer to go end to end without any communication by a

dealership employee that want to fully execute on that start to finish? I mean, Amazon's quite

as kept with some of the data, which I completely understand. But we do know that there are dealers

that are delivering vehicles, new cars on this specifically. And at the top of that page that

he was showing, one of the cool things that Amazon is doing right now, it's for not their prime month,

but if a customer buys or leases a new Kia throughout the month right there, go ahead and pause.

If you buy a new car, you get a $1,250 Amazon gift card, the customer does.

So like probably beyond any OEM incentives, you get $1,200 bucks to buy or lease your car.

So why do they do that? Because they're not charging you a fee. How do they make money right

now? What does Amazon's play on? When you think about it, they're driving hype,

they're driving experience, and then they're earning a customer on their platform as well that

went from buying laundry detergent to buying a brand new vehicle on the platform.

That would be my thought. It's retention. It is retention. And I'm a very loyal

prime customer. I know my daughter is as well, my son. And I think that at some point, this is

going to be a new model as we've learned from the hundreds of thousands of vehicles that Carvana

has already sold online. Yeah. All right. We want you back to talk about this. I just want one

follow-up item from your last appearance here on Daily Deal Alive. You talked how you had audited

two and a half million of your CRM records, and you told us on that appearance that 48% of the

records were bad. You cleaned them all up. You created a CDP at Data Lake. Ryan's talked a lot

about that. You began marketing to those. Give us the financial impact to the organization of now

having that cleaned up data and now marketing and selling to 100% legit data as per this new

platform. Yeah, we're not at 100%. It's still working through trying to find additional profiles

to clean or append for us. But we are up to about 1.8 million valid records with emails and phone

numbers and obviously almost 100% of where the customers live. For us, it's led to seeing open

rates of 30% and 40% on emails that we're sending out through the CDP, which is as opposed to what

was the rate before? Well, man, I tell you, it was low. I mean, obviously with some marketing

covers, we all know, but we use now Orange Media. And so Orange Media handles all of that for us.

They provide us with all these good open rates broken down by audience. Whereas with my CRM,

or most CRMs that are out there, it's a 1% to 2%, maybe 3% engagement rate open rate for customers.

So for us, the click-through rate is phenomenal. The open rate is great. And you're getting that

message to the customer more than likely than what you were prior. So your most significant

KPI increase is the open rate and the engagement. Probably tough to quantify the impact. I'm

fascinated. You cited the number of records. You're not at 100% record cleansed. Why is it

taking so long? Why is it such a long process? Well, you gotta think some of them you're not

going to get records for. So if someone's deceased or if let's say it was a business email and that

business closes down, you're not going to get that new email for a business, right? But you will

continue to gear out there more and more emails as your customers go to file their taxes or update

their profiles or things of that nature. For us, it's been beneficial because I don't just have

Sam Dark at Gmail. I know Sam Dark at Gmail, Yahoo, your work email and everywhere else that I can

reach for that. And I store all of those emails inside of my snowflake because all of those can't

be stored inside of your DMS. So I'm going to get you one way or another, Sam. I'm going to get that

last one. All right, CDP, data lakes, clean data, Amazon auto opening, 20 show fronts. What's the

next thing you're working on as we wrap up? Last question today. Oh man, we've got so many things

that we're working on. Let's just go with it's spring selling season and we're ready to rock and

roll maybe the Roman automotive group. I love it. We're going to have you back at the end of the show

for the round table, hang out, Jeremy Noling Sales and Implementation Director at Rowling Auto

Group. Go Purdue, yeah. Roman automotive group, yes. Yes, that's what I say. There you go. All

right, we'll have you back at the end of the show. Thanks for being here, Jeremy. All right, thanks

again. All right. All right. It's always fun to talk to Jeremy and learn all the cool things they're

doing at the Roman auto group, including now opening those 20 stores on Amazon. So let's talk

over fuel before we get into our next guest today's episode is brought to you by over fuel. Most

dealership websites suck. They're slow, clunky and hated by both shoppers and Google. Well,

over fuel cracked the code. Lightning fast AI powered sites built to attract, convert, and

dominate every search experience. Is it time for a new website? Go to over fuel.com and use code

GDC 500 in the comment box for 500 bucks off. Props to over fuel for supporting today's content,

including that phenomenal conversation with Jeremy at the Roman auto group about all things Amazon

auto and data lake CDP. He's always fun to talk to. And by the way, I appreciate his complete

transparency. That was a question we didn't get asked is what makes you so bold to come out and

all of automotive and be so transparent about everything you're up to? I believe it's probably

similar to how we do things at Ziggler, which is the more transparent you are, the more you learn

from others, they learn from you. And at the end of the day, executing on stuff like this is or

getting value from all this is all about execution and not everybody is willing to execute,

especially on some of the new stuff that's going on out there. So thanks for being on the show.

Let's turn now to Doug Carr, Principal CEO at Over Fuel. Doug, welcome to the show.

How are you, sir? Great to be here. Good. Good to have you on the show. So hey, for our daily

deal live audience that may not know you, tell us who you are and what you do out there. Well,

sure. I joined the team at Over Fuel about a year ago. I had worked in the SEO field across

GoDaddy, Angie, Adele, a ton of different companies. And I saw what these guys had built

within the dealer industry. And I said, ooh, I really want to be a part of this one. So I am

their main guy for SEO work there. And we have a study that we just released that we're going to

talk about today that's really exciting. All right, let's go into it. You say 92% of dealer

sites failed Google. What's actually broken with the websites? It's an interesting thing. When we

talk about page speed, Google is talking about user experience. That's ultimately what they mean.

And so a lot of people, a lot of people think about speed as being quote, a ranking factor.

But really, it's a, it's a user experience and a visibility factor. And so what we see is this,

our entire industry is rife with problems where we're not meeting the considerations and the

expectations of our consumers. We're feeding them slow sites that they get, they have difficulty

navigating. They can't find what they're looking for. It's slow loading. It's slow to syndicate

through all these other outlets. I loved what Jeremy was talking about there. And so that's

the key problem is that Google is saying, hey, your site has to be fast. But the reason why

they're saying your site has to be fast is so that your engagement is high, your engagement on

ads, your engagements on your map pack, your engagements on your website, your engagements

on your syndication. All of this has to be a high speed experience that is just easy for the user

to navigate. What's killing the speed? Why isn't speed just a given in 2026 with so many tools?

Yeah, they have so much technology. There, there is quite a bit. One is just technical

debt. So we have older CMS sites that basically took the market by storm, you know, 10, 15 years ago,

and they can't really take advantage of some of these new technologies to revamp their sites.

The second is features. So we, you know, chat bots and 360 are probably key ones there that

they will just kill the user experience and speed on the site. And then there's common ones like

people put multiple Google Analytics tags on their site or Google Tagman scripts on their site,

and everything starts to degrade the speed of the site.

So speaking of that, Patrick Block, Motive Ventures comes into the chat and says,

the amount of pop-ups on dealer websites is brutal overall. So March 2026, Doug, what steps could

dealers take to speed that up so that they get out of that 92% of failing sites?

I mean, the thing that they need to watch and remember, 92% are failing. That means there's

an awesome opportunity for a dealer to really transition and change their digital showroom

and get visibility. I mean, we're talking 1.4 times the chances of ranking number one on a keyword,

22 times the traffic that they can get to their site, just by moving that speed up.

And so what they really need to watch is every time they're implementing something on their site,

they want to take a look at that site and look at the page speed score.

Okay. And what's a good page speed score? Well, Google has its own, you know, basically model.

They have a pass fail. It's a 90 or above is basically a good and we're focused on mobile.

Mobile tends to be where a consumer starts the customer journey. They do move to desktop a lot

in auto, but mobile is really that core one that we're focused on when we're talking about, you

know, where can people move the needle? Okay. Is this just dealer or is it all the vendor

partners that are part of this problem too? You mentioned all the pop-ups and the bulletins and

the APIs and the integrations and there's so much of that. We have an incredible opportunity

to fix this across the industry. We have actually worked with multiple chatbot engines. We believe

in chatbots. We believe that pop-ups sometimes enhance and engage the user that may not have

otherwise. And so we believe in those things, but the problem is, is when that degrades your site

speed, it degrades how many people are coming to your site. And so it's great that you can convert

more, right? It's like putting a great salesman in your showroom, but nobody can get to the showroom.

All right. So what's the worst in March of 2026 feature or plugin? You mentioned all the different

plugins that are out there that kill conversion today. The dealer should be wary of if it's set

up right. Some chatbots are just incredibly degrading to a site as soon as somebody puts it on it.

You got to remember that your website is coming from a single domain or a single host. When you

pop up a chatbot, you're doing multiple things. You have to talk to their host and you have to

talk to their website. If they're not doing things like compression and using content delivery

networks and all kinds of things to optimize their code and compress their code down, that round trip

just takes a ton of time, sometimes more than your entire webpage takes. Now, and then they're

moving stuff on the page. So if you've ever been to a web page and you start to see things shifting

around and moving and popping up, those things are really aggravating to users. And so if they can

optimize that speed, we've even taken some of the chatbots and just said, hey, please don't auto

pop up, turn that on and continue to watch your conversions. And just by doing that, we see an

increase in conversion rate and increase in speed, which increases ranking, which increases visibility.

Which, by the way, is an auto pop up chat thing. If I want more information, I'm going to go ask

for it. To me, if I get too many little pop up things when I'm trying to get into a site,

it's really annoying because you've got to clear it. I mean, if I need a chatbot, I should be able

to go find it. I think it's one of the things that dealers really have to test. And good ones,

I think are, they're very good at kind of preceding the customer journey saying, hey,

notice that you're researching this page. Would these things be of interest? And so now you've

captivated that audience, but just the blank in your face, what's your name? What do you like?

They can be. Ours is, hey, test it, test it, test it, test it and see whether it's making

a difference. The problem that we do see is that a lot of these chatbot providers talk about the

conversion rate after they installed it. So the problem is, okay, you increased by, let's say,

15% conversion rate, you increased. The problem was you lost three quarters of your traffic because

you no longer rank up. So which one is really helping you out? All right, so to our general

manager and our dealer audience who's watching right now, what's one thing that a GM could do

this week to fix the problem? First of all, you've got to know it's there, but then what do you do

to fix it? Yeah, you want to do a PageSpeed Insights test of your site. How do you do that? Yeah,

you want, and be careful because a lot of people do that and they don't have origin mode, which is

basically, you want to look at your entire site. Your VDP is a destination page. So testing your

home page really is just one factor. Most people are landing on your search result page or your

VDP, and that's what you want to be incredibly fast. So test the VDP page. Test your entire site

because the journey is right. That's the journey. Someone goes to a VDP, then they go back to the

search and they're navigating and they're going in circles until they find what they need. And so

you have to test the entire site. And it's important to note that improving your PageSpeed

is a 28-day cycle. So Chrome user experience is basically at Google monitors what performance you

have. If you increase your PageSpeed and pass today, you're not really going to see the results for

another 28 days of where you climb in the rankings. So it's a big deal. And we've heard that often on

the show that it's a long-term game. You've got to make consistent moves over time because Google

counts only the consistent effort towards goal. Something we've talked a lot about on this show,

Doug, and we appreciate you giving us the insight into PageSpeed and how to fix it in some typical

strategies. We've talked a lot about SEO and GEO lately. How would you explain in plain English

the difference between SEO and GEO in March of 26? Well, I would say this, that if you were a great

SEO person 10 years ago, or maybe let's say five years ago, you're absolutely doing everything

that GEO requires today. Schema tagging and structured data on your site, incredibly fast

website, incredible user experience, syndication of your website, syndication of your listings,

being on all the directories. Jeremy talked about being where the customer is. When you think about

AI, the biggest problems that we've had with AI today is hallucinations and basically giving

out false information. So AI is hungry to validate, hungry. And so you can no longer think about your

website as your website is central to the spoke. It's no, it's everything is central. And so you

have to make sure that your name address, phone number, your NAP, and citations are everywhere.

All of your information and profile information is everywhere. And so we, when we're working with

clients, that's what we're working on their Google business profile. They're working on Bing. We're

working on listings management. We're working on their website. We're making sure it's all consistent.

We're syndicating all of their vehicles everywhere. We're doing ads. So we're making sure that

everywhere the customer is, the data is absolutely repeatable, verifiable, fast,

and structured so that AI can really devour it and give it back.

So as I'm creating that SEO content for my website, can I use AI generated content or

there's, I've heard an idea that that handwritten human made content is preference by AI. And that

to me seems fascinating. I would say that's not true personally. And we see it with our clients.

Just like everything else, humans can be good and humans can be bad. What I will say is this,

how you prompt and prep and provide data to AI to produce that content is what makes it rich.

And so we have fuel bot, for example, where we take the bin, we have every aspect of what

that vehicle is about, but we combine that with location data. We combine that with obviously

review data and everything else. So we create, we utilize AI, but we're utilizing a number

of sources to make a really rich thing. That's pretty hard to compete with if you just gave

that to a copywriter. Yeah, yeah. That's fascinating that there is some difference,

difference of opinions. And I thought when I first heard this that AI would preference

AI or human generated content, to your point, not everybody writes good, right? So those that

have a challenge with that are going to, you know, not represent their best selves. AI could do it

better, but I feel like there's a human need for more authentic human made content. And

I think people generally prefer the human made content. I can usually tell things that are

created by AI, right? We definitely want the, we definitely want the dealer's voice in there

and verbiage and how they present themselves and how they differentiate themselves. That's

absolutely critical to the sales process, right? Yeah. All right. Last up question,

we appreciate your time on the show sharing perspectives on the importance of page speed

and making sure that you're creating your correct SEO content. What's the cost of not

addressing page speed? I mean, you know, there are probably some dealers that might say, hey,

you know what, 92% of dealers have slower than ideal sites for Google that aren't providing

the elite experience. 8% have a little bit of the benefit, but my gosh, you're with 92% of

rest of automotive. Why not just, you know, go back to selling cars, right? Focus on the

showroom floor, Doug. Well, Shift Digital has done a number of studies on this, on what it

actually costs. But, you know, for every dealer, obviously it's different. My question to a dealer

is that if you could get 22 times the high engagement visitors to your digital showroom,

what is that from a price standpoint? And I'll say this, when I go to these dealers,

they've bought incredible real estate at Crossroads where there's tons of traffic.

They've built this incredible showroom, you know, they have their coffee, you know, station and

everything else. And then they have a digital showroom that nobody sees because it's slow and

sluggish and everything else. And my point is everybody's on digital first. So you're just

hiding your showroom when you're not, you know, when you're not making a superior user experience

in fast. I need to ask Jeremy about this. But, you know, maybe one of the shortcomings of automotive

today, you know, he's opened his Amazon auto showroom is we calculate all those digital costs

as the cost per vehicle sold. We don't do that to your point with physical facilities, right?

To your point, they're beautiful physical facilities. And those are just fixed costs that

just exist. But in online, it adds up per vehicle and that ends up being staggering.

Yeah. Why did Amazon get where they were? Incredibly fast websites, right?

Yeah, very fast.

Amazon is probably the king at producing the fastest user experience. And so maybe we should

follow suit. Yeah. And on that comment, I can't imagine a better bike job. Principal CEO Doug

Carr at Overfuel. Thanks for joining the show today.

Great, great being here, Sam. Thank you so much.

Thanks for the conversation.

Yeah, you know, a lot of great comments online from dealers talking about the websites. But

my favorite, obviously, is the number of pop ups on dealer site are brutal. And I couldn't agree more

with that. And, you know, we transition from Amazon auto and online to the speed of websites

to the speed of the bad folks out there trying to steal our stuff. Let's go to Mike Beauregard,

Supervisory, special agent at NICB. Mike, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Sam. Appreciate you having me on.

Hey, Mike. So I've been in the automotive industry for decades. And back in my time at Zurich,

you know, we sold anti-theft products, etched some others. We always quoted NICB stats, but I

never actually ever met someone from NICB. So tell me who you are and what does NICB do? And

why is it such a credible resource for folks when they're trying to figure out theft in the world

today? Oh, we might have lost Mike, but I'm sure he'll be back in just a moment. Because what I

want to ask, what I wanted to ask, and I can hear you, Mike, can you hear us now? All right.

As soon as Mike comes back, we'll see him on screen there. There he is. All right. Who is NICB

and what do you do out there, Mike? It's the, it's the third guest challenge, which we're running

up against again today, I think. So let's give our producers just a moment. David Frincon says,

thank you, Doug. That's reference to Doug's insight. And then Marv48 comes into the comments,

says, question for everyone, how can a store best appraise a car service? It was over 300 cars a day.

Oh, you can hear me now? Fantastic. I'm waiting for you to pop back up on screen. There you are.

There you are. Mike, tell us what you do. What does NICB do?

All right. You know what we're going to do. So Mike is having some technical difficulties. And

you know, this is one of the challenges of live programming. Last time we went through this,

you know, I learned I just need to give everybody a little bit more time because he will be back.

They can figure this stuff out. But NICB back in the Zurich days, we used to sell

Edge and we quoted the Edge statistics for theft and it helped us develop value in the

product of theft. And what the reality with automotive theft today is that vehicles have

gotten more expensive. Bad actors have become much more sophisticated with AI and other technologies.

And the lure of theft has become almost undeniable for the bad actors out there trying to take stuff.

And so the intent with Mike today is to bring him in and have a conversation on what are the

sorts of theft and fraud schemes that are hitting dealers the hardest and how are organizations

like NICB assisting dealers to identify those thefts and to fight those thefts.

And you know what I'm going to do because we are at 10 minutes to, I'm going to bring Jeremy

Nolan back on and actually bring Jeremy back up. And then if we do get Mike, we'll bring him in.

And we'll do a round table conversation. Jeremy, what's up?

What's going on, man? We got you back. Actually, you know what? If Doug Carr is still there while

they're working out, Mike, let's bring Doug in. We'll do a, we'll just do a little round table

here so we don't kill all of our time because we've got so much conversation. So if Doug is still

around, let's bring him up. If he's not, all right, we're going to bring him into our third box.

You know, I got to tell you, Jeremy, I drive the producers nuts because I am not a fan when we

run into technical difficulties. It's like, let's go. Let's pivot, baby. Let's go. Let's pivot.

So what I'd like to do is I'd like to bring Doug back in, Jeremy. And I'd love to,

I'd love to get your perspective on what Doug is talking about on web speed, page speed.

What have you identified as a problem in March of 2026 as it relates to web speed, page speed,

and how have you dealt with that at the Roman Auto Group? Yeah. I mean, think about it. So like,

if your page drops, you could potentially lose that customer. I mean, if that customer starts

to fill out a lead form and then they go back 30 minutes or 20 minutes later and they hit submit

after they do that, that customer's lead likely isn't getting into your CRM. So we partnered

with our friends at Four Eyes on that product. So we now capture if a customer doesn't get all

the way into your CRM and it identifies it and gives you that customer. Yeah. Doug, is that a

problem? Is that, are you able to identify folk? Like, is that a need, a capability that's needed

within automotive to be able to see people that bounce off that aren't able to successfully

engage with art? Absolutely. And if you can't identify the customer, you can at least identify

who has bounced and who has exited, you know, and you see that, I want to reiterate too,

we talk about the website a lot, but you see it everywhere. You see it on Map Pack. If someone

clicks over to your website and it's slow, they click back to the Map Pack and find another dealer

nearby. If they click on your ad and it's slow or your ad doesn't even show up because your page

speed is slow. So your ad score is slow. So you don't get prominent, you know, ranking on your ads.

You see this everywhere. It's a trickle down effect that basically impedes every part of your sales.

So let me ask you this, Jeremy, you come on shows like this and you openly talk about,

hey, what are the challenges that you're encountering at Orman? I talked a little

bit about this in my segue and you and Ryan both are very transparent. Why do you do that?

Because everybody out there in automotive is hearing these ideas and these best practices

and there are probably some that are running towards trying to accomplish and achieve the same

thing. And that's competitive, right? Yeah, I think Brian and I, you know, and for that matter,

majority of everybody in our group, you know, we've all been watching the transition take

place in automotive and it's not going to slow down. So the more that we can help other dealers

adapt to the newest model or the latest process or the newest tech that's actually working,

you know, I think that that makes us all better. And it actually helps us to strengthen

our relationship with vendor partners. They're more adaptable to getting everybody to work

together to make the auto industry better. We're usually the last to evolve in all aspects and

for customer experience. But you know, some of the vendor, who are we Jeremy, meaning auto

dealers, auto dealers are tend to be the last to adapt. And I'm sure that there's somebody

shaking their head no right now. I'm never getting on Amazon. Okay, let's see how that works out in

the next few years. Well, you know, I think some are slow to adopt, but also some kind of hold out

with hope, right? Hoping that hey, they can still and you know, it's interesting, I think part of

the debate is who's going to control the customer, who's going to control the data, who's going to

control the experience. And at the end of the day, it's 100% the wrong question. Data is data is

everywhere. Everybody has it. What I want is I want that customer to say, Hey, I really want to come

into, I'll say Ziggler, where we share a footprint. So it's very fine line. I want them to say, Hey,

I want to come into a Roman store, a Ziggler store, and I want to have an experience with you all.

And in sharing data helps us achieve and accomplish that whenever we

refuse to share with our vendor partners, OEMs, that's where you get a fragmented process, right?

So, and you know, you asked me a question before the break. And you know, one of the things that

we're working on is, you know, how do we get how do we get back at the independence? So, you know,

you had Zach on last week, and like he said, it's 50 bucks, it's 50 bucks, right? Yeah. Yeah,

we're continuing that 50 bucks campaign across all of our stores. It's doing great. I'm at a store

right now. They have almost a three day wait for oil changes. It's insane. But you know, to continue

to evolve together, I think it strengthens all of us together. And you got to have a fast page

speed, right, Mike, to deliver on that. So Mike, or I'm not Mike, Doug, Doug Carr, Principal CEO

at Overfuel, we're going to do now as we've resolved our tech issues. So Doug, thank you for

being on the show. We're going to flip Mike in, and then we're going to have Mike and Jeremy join

us. Thank you so much for being here and being patient through our technical difficulties. So

we'll make that switch. Jeremy, hang out with us. Sure. And we're going to bring Mike in. You know,

it's 2026, we landed a man on the moon, and now we got our three three screen. All right,

giddy up. Jeremy, hang out with us here, because I think we're going to have an interesting

rand table conversation here. Mike, just tell us what on earth is the NICB do, and how do you

help dealers prevent fraud in the world? Absolutely. So NICB has been around for over 100 years.

We're a non-profit organization. We're funded by our partners, insurance companies, finance

companies. You mentioned a few of our CARVANA, ACV, all member companies. And what we do is we

partner with the insurance companies in law enforcement, and we try to get cases

worked by training education. And that's where I think I love this format. I love this the idea,

because although car dealerships are not NICB member companies, the finance companies, the

insurance companies are. And if we can stop the fraud on the front end, rather than to deal with

it on the back end, where people have already lost their product, or they've lost the financial

interest, that's where we come in. All right, so March of 2026, first rand table discussion here,

Jeremy and Mike, what's more dangerous in March of 2026, bad data or fraud?

I think it's both. I think they connect. You have to pick a side, Mike. And by the way,

if you don't say theft, that's going to be very disappointing. Oh, it's 100%. We have so much

fraud right now in California, throughout the country. What is the most alarming form of fraud

that you're seeing from a trend? Are there any new fraud trends out there? Yes, so what's really

popped up, it's been going on for a while as a leanholder fraud, where they go out and purchase

a vehicle or lease a vehicle. Within weeks of purchasing or leasing the vehicle, they get the

leanholder washed off the title, they get a clean title or quote unquote a clean title,

and then they go sell it to a dealer. And we're talking hundreds and hundreds of cars,

organized groups, and it's all over California that I know, but I know

entire country has the same problem. What can dealers like Jeremy and me do to prevent that

from happening? So on the selling part, a lot of what's going on, they're giving their right

information, names, address, date of birth, all that. A lot of them are from out of the country.

They have a great credit score. And so everything checks out, but I don't think they're doing enough

on the employment side, right? Just because you bring in a paycheck stub saying you've been with

a company for 15 years, making $15,000 a month, technology is here, right? I can have any document.

I've seen incredible titles coming in from China, driver's license. It's amazing how much fraud

and that is coming in that is made overseas. So big problem. You know, you cited a couple

things, document fraud and AI is getting good at helping bad actors create

false driver's license, proof of income, all those things. Why in 2026, aren't there better tools

to help lenders and even us dealers validate things like income residency and whatnot?

We shouldn't in 2026 have to validate that with a paycheck stub. That just makes no sense to me.

Jeremy, am I wrong? Again, we're the last to everything. So let's be last to this experience

as well. Why is that, Mike? You know, I'm not sure. I think there are some things out there.

I know for driver's license, there's companies that have machines that you can put in state

license from all the states and federal IDs and validate it right away. CarMax uses that every

day. So that's one of them. But the identity theft, that's a tough one because, you know,

as we talk about this, dealerships are all about customer service. Law enforcement looks at people

a little differently than dealerships do. So that's why I think it's a great partnership

that law enforcement has or should have with dealers. And I don't know if, Jeremy, you have

any law enforcement that comes and does training regularly or people like auto theft task forces

that come and talk about trends. I think that's a big, big partnership that I think we're missing.

I have some great partners here. I'm here because one of the partnership, Dennis,

who recommended me to come on this program. Dennis Gingrich. Yeah, he's a huge fan. He's

been on the show many times. Dennis and Tolly. So yeah. Yes. And it's one of the things that he

incorporates into his compliance training is he hasn't come out and talked about things going on.

I bring out people from Auto Theft Task Force. Funny story, we just finished the compliance

training. We were talking to one of the employees. They had lost a van several weeks ago. The detective

I had within an hour had the car recovered. So having those relationships and being able to

leverage those is huge. And I think that's where the dealers need to go. So Patrick Blockventures

comes into the chest. Does the NICB have APIs to help with fraud and theft validation?

You're not selling a product. You're selling the deal. No. We're a member of companies that come

in. We connect law enforcement, the insurance companies, the prosecution. We use our experience.

I have 30 years with California 20 Hour Patrol, 25 in vehicle theft. So I get questionable claims

and I'll work those up into good cases and then bring them to law enforcement for prosecution.

All right. So Jeremy, this is, you know, when you talk about Amazon Auto and you talk about

opening this virtual showroom, it seems to me that all the tools Amazon has to validate,

they've probably got fraud tools written into the tool. At the end of the day,

customers can go start to finish. Do tools like Amazon Auto start to finish? Do they change the

way we think about fraud, theft, and bad actors within the auto buying space? Yeah. I mean,

when you think about it, Sam, it also takes it back to this is that person's actual prime account

as well. But more importantly, the dealer is still doing the validation of that customer. So

we're not delivering the car to the customer's house. We have one designated champion at each store

who greets that customer, verifies all of their income, if required, driver's license,

everything that we normally do on any other transaction is still taking place at the dealership.

Yeah. Very cool. Do you think digital tools, Mike, will make fraud less likely in the future?

Will AI and digital retailing tools reduce instances of fraud down the road or will they increase it?

Well, technology is always good, but there's always ways that the criminal element takes it and

use it in a bad way. It's like car dealers. You remember the old days where we had a metal

vent plate with rivets? Yeah. That's gone. It's all Mylar stickers. And how easy is it

for the modern day crew to get a nice computer printed out a Mylar sticker? And it's so easy.

So technology helps us, but it's also taken to the criminal side. Mike Beauregard,

Supervisory Special Agent at the NICB in Germany, Nolan Sales and Implementation Director at the

Rohrmann Auto Group. Thank you both for being on Daily Deal Live for this special roundtable.

Thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. Have a great day. Thank you. Hey,

I apologize for some of the tech difficulties. We'll get rid of those little gremlins sitting in

the tech side of this thing eventually sooner or later. But to you, we appreciate you for watching

Daily Dealer Live where we break down the biggest moves in the car business as they happen. Don't

forget, we're live every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, which means this Wednesday, 1pm Eastern,

tuned back in. I think we've got Scott Boehner with true car coming on. We'll talk a little bit

about the FTC letter that rocked automotive a couple of weeks ago. So if this is your world,

hit like, hit subscribe, turn on those notifications so you never, ever miss a beat.

And we'll see you next episode. Thanks, everybody.

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