Nowling on "Golden CDP", Perdikis on Agentic in Auto, Camastro on Cadillac Wins | Daily Dealer Live
Car Dealership Guy Podcast
Nowling on "Golden CDP", Perdikis on Agentic in Auto, Camastro on Cadillac Wins | Daily Dealer Live
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Term
EV deliveries
EV deliveries mean the number of electric cars sold to customers. More people are buying these cars to help the environment.
Brand
GM
GM stands for General Motors, a big car company in the United States that makes many different types of vehicles.
Brand
Hyundai
Hyundai is a car company from South Korea that makes many different kinds of cars, including electric ones.
Brand
Nissan
Nissan is another car company from Japan that makes many different types of cars, including electric ones like the Leaf.
Term
hybrid sales
Hybrid sales mean the number of cars sold that use both gas and electricity to run, which helps save fuel and reduce pollution.
Brand
Toyota
Toyota is a well-known car manufacturer from Japan that is famous for making reliable cars and hybrids, like the Prius.
Brand
Honda
Honda is a car company from Japan that makes reliable vehicles, including popular models like the Civic and Accord.
Term
tariffs
Tariffs are extra charges on goods brought into a country, which can make cars and parts more expensive.
Car
Chrysler New Yorker
The Chrysler New Yorker is a big, fancy car that was made for many years, known for being comfortable and stylish. It was popular among families who wanted a nice vehicle to drive around in, especially in cities like New York. People talk about it because it represents a certain era of American cars that were luxurious and well-made.
LIVE
We're doing better as a result of social media presence. It doesn't do those three things, man, it's on the chopping block. It's in return on investment, discussion. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of The Daily Dealor Live!
I'm your host, CMDark, and this is the gathering place for all automotive to learn, to share, to have a voice. What is the voice? The voice of automotive. Thanks to you for choosing to join us this Friday, October 3rd. Let's dive into today's automotive headlines.
First up today, we take a look at some of the winners and losers for Q3 sales so far. Urgency around the now expired Federal EV credit gave a boost to some automakers, while others struggled to keep momentum. Among the winners, GM sales rose 8% year over year, with a record 66,000 EV deliveries, 4 jumped 8.2% as the Lightning and Mocky posted their best quarter ever. Hyundai delivered its best Q3 ever with 13%, with EV sales so
pouring 153% in September, and Toyota led the pack as well with nearly 630,000 sales. That's up 16% largely thanks to hybrid sales, and in the middle, Nissan dodged a 5% increase to 223,000 units, even as infinity sales slid nearly 10%.
And near the bottom, Honda was flat in Q3 at just over 105,000 sales, which is interesting though, because I see many Honda stores online saying they had their best month ever, and with accurate down nearly 7%, Volkswagen fell 6% year over year to 87,000 units.
Next up today, let's talk Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. She's warning that tariffs will likely squeeze the North American auto industry permanently. Speaking in Toronto this week, Whitmer said the impact is already being felt on both sides of the border.
I can attest to that in Toronto where you cannot have ATOs because it's US made vodka. You've got to go to the Russian made, which seemed odd to me.
Automakers are stockpiling parts workers are seeing bonus checks cut by thousands of dollars and suppliers are facing higher costs, forcing them to delay expansions.
Whitmer compared it to the 2022 ambassador bridge blockade, when 144 million in wages were lost in just a few days, and also caution that tariffs don't just hurt neighbors like Canada and Mexico, they open the door for China.
Interesting news, let us know if that is relevant to you or if you care. Next up today, a new report is highlighting the massive performance gap between dealerships that invest in SEO and those dealerships that don't.
SearchLab Digital analyzed more than 2200 dealership profiles across 20 major US cities, and here's what they found. They found that top-ranked stores appear in more than double the search results of lower-ranked competitors.
And shockingly, dealers sitting at the number 10 ranking would need to spend roughly get this $245,000 a month on paid ads to match the organic traffic of a number 1 ranked store.
The study also revealed how many dealerships are still missing easy wins. Nearly half, here's the key, don't list service in parts separately, almost a third haven't enabled vehicles for sale, and fewer than 20% of dealerships surveyed are using all 10 available.
10 available category slots, what's the takeaway here? Well, SEO compounds over time, and dealers who clean up the basics can capture cheaper, steadier traffic, while those that put it off risk falling further behind and paying more to catch up later.
And that is a wrap on the news this Friday, October 3rd.
Fascinating. Do you care what Governor Whitmer says? I'm sitting in Michigan right now, so I guess I probably should care, but, you know, Supervisor Dan says no Tito's is the real issue here, and, you know, if you're in Canada, that could be the issue for you.
So everybody, welcome back, you Lee co hosting daily dealer live today, appreciate you being back here.
And those for those joining our live stream, as you can see, you're already active in the social media were live across all CDG social media platforms, post your comments, we'll bring them into today's show, and we've got a heck of a show and store for you, our daily dealer live audience coming up today in a moment.
We've got Nick Perdique, a CEO of InRide to talk all things AI and tech, and we've got Bill Camostro, dealer principal, partner at Gold Coast Cadillac here to talk about how he's winning in the Cadillac world on the East Coast.
But first, we're going to head to Rorma, not a group to their sales and digital retailing director, Jeremy Nolling, but we'll get there in just a moment.
A brief little amount announcement about an ADA, you Lee, you headed to an ADA this year.
You can join us.
So as everybody knows, Cardinalship guys back with our second annual NADA party happening in Las Vegas on Thursday, February 5th, it's the hottest ticket at an ADA 2026 with special guests and top automotive personalities to be considered for that formal invite, just hit the link in the show notes.
We've got to join, fill out that questionnaire. Spots are limited, unfortunately, we can't bring everybody to the party.
So RSVP today, and we hope to see you in Vegas, which will be a heck of a lot of fun into our social media audience post up where you are.
We've had people watching from all over the globe. It's the cool part of the internet, including an American Airlines lounge a week or so ago in Boston.
We had one listener, so I'm post up where you sit today. But without further ado, let's turn to sales and digital retailing director, Roman Otto Group, Jeremy Nolling.
Jeremy, welcome to the show.
Hey, Sam, thanks for having me on today.
Dude, we're pumped, we're pumped to have you back for a couple of reasons and then we'll start with the first question we always asked, but before we get there, Ryan Roman came on and he talked about tech stacks, and it was a masterclass, Jeremy.
You've got a high bar to exceed. It was one of our most listened to daily dealer lives, and it really Ryan really detailed authentically and transparently step by step how to build a great tech stack.
And he gave you all the credit for it. No, I'm kidding. He didn't write it.
He knows a lot about all things digital and AI, which is interesting because not every dealer knows it. So tell us Jeremy House biz and then tell us a little bit about what you do at Roman with Ryan.
Yeah, I mean, business is good. It's a big. I know that there's there's stories that are that are not as good as what I'm going to share, but I will say for the year we are very happy with where we're at in the Roman on motor group and we just continue to chase after it.
And if it's if it's with people process, customers, tech, whatever it takes, we are pursuing that avenue to continue to drive the success across the group.
All right. So Jeremy, give us some insight into Ryan as we delve into this topic. Many CEOs and heads of large groups are not for thinking or open to thinking about technology in a different way.
And you guys have gone all in. What is it about Ryan that's led, you know, use an organization to think a little bit differently about that.
You know, with Ryan, he's he's different than other DPs that I do know in a sense that he's very forward thinking and the people that are around him are just as forward thinking.
So it's not just an idea, but it's all ideas and if it's worth pursuing after vetting it out, it's something that we chase together and we just follow the trickle down effect of, you know,
if we believe it in at the top, we can implement it all the way to the bottom and making sure everybody's aware of that.
Okay. So when you think about the future success of the Roman organization in your auto group, what is the most important task or project you're working on today in your role of sales and digital retailing director, October of 2025?
What is the highest ROI activity you're working on?
Data cleansing right now, data cleansing, and I have to still add in the CDP with Teleum and our partnership with Orange Media and how they're driving the success for us.
Okay. So build the need for data cleansing for us. Ryan, talk to us a little bit, but it is interesting to me, you know, I've been an automotive for all my adult life really.
It's fascinating to me all the data that exists out there on all these different platforms, and we know it's not accurate a lot of it, but build the problem for us Jeremy.
Well, I would say the problem exists when the consumer actually starts to shop for a vehicle.
And if they give us a dialed down email address that they don't really use or check that out.
And we don't update that in the CRM when they say yes or the DMS when they go through finance, then at that point, we now have that dumb down email address to market to for however many years to come.
And should any errors happen across the ownership of that consumer to where that email address is modified or changed or I know Ryan referenced in a in a calm.
Our DMS we know that we're not the only ones that that happens with.
And then you factor in physical addresses when the customer comes into the service drive, if if a number is transposed in the cell phone number or physical address, now we have bad address that we're mailing or calling to that consumer.
And we just finished the process of cleansing to and a half million records.
And the importance behind that as Ryan shared when we did our initial cleanse was, you know, 48% of the data was bad.
And so how does that sit with any dealer in the country that's never gone down the road to identify.
Am I emailing the wrong email address? Am I mailing this and wasting it and we all know that we have wasted ad spend.
But correcting it and being able to have it stored somewhere where it's a center of truth that no one can manipulate it.
And that you have an ongoing self healing process to continuously cleanse that data month after month.
Now you know that the information is going to get to the consumer on all three channels at any given time that you choose.
Wow, that's an astounding percent of bad data.
So and you talked about email being one component that's bad.
What is some of the dirtiest data that you consistently saw in that subset that was bad?
You know, that in a in a in a in a calm or no, you know, calm, that that was one of the biggest ones.
But again, trans errors was something that we've seen a lot of and numbers was something else that we've seen a lot of.
You know, overall, you know, 30% of consumers did live at their actual address.
And, you know, that that email number you already know.
What's the decree now internally? I mean, obviously you guys are spending a hell of a lot of time and a ton of money to make this right now.
Some of it may have been innocent, you know, input incorrectly, transpose numbers.
As you said, some of it unfortunately can be deliberate, right? Maybe they don't want a survey from a customer.
So, you know, things are being flipped around.
What's the battle cry internally now, you know, now that you guys have done all this work to ensure.
We've spent the time and money to make sure that we're going to market effectively.
All of us need to be rowing in the right direction.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's always important to validate it and, you know, our partnership with Techion, they they help to provide us.
Report each month of undeliverable email addresses once we started this journey.
So it is it is continuously talking to the advisors about the importance of validating or correcting information whenever the consumers in front of you.
But the neat thing about what we're going to be doing going forward will be that self healing monthly where it's automatic updated.
And Ryan, you know, we have something special coming up here.
And then next few weeks that you look something special.
Yeah, you'll be able to follow this whole journey again with with Ryan.
And again, his commitment to making sure that we have marketable data and the highest quality customers that the dealership can receive.
So Jeremy, you cleanse the data.
You pull it into a CDP, right? Ryan talked to us a little bit about that.
And then after a certain amount of months, it drops out and then it goes into the data lake, right?
Is that kind of the flow or the stream?
Now, our structure, our structure is the DMS and that data feeds inside of our snowflake and inside that snowflake is the center of truth.
And then through a snow pipe, that's what powers the CDP and it writes back live as well as activity takes place inside of the dealership.
So the CDP is bidirectional to techie on.
So as the data gets cleansed, it pushes it back.
Our CDP is bidirectional to our snowflake.
To your snowflake. And remind me what the snowflake is.
It's a big story.
It is a big storage cloud.
And that's a whole show in itself.
Is that the data lake, Jeremy?
What's the difference between a data lake?
Okay.
Okay.
So you have the CDP and then it's snowflake, which is the data lake.
Data lake is longer term, right?
And that's where it sits long term.
Yeah.
What happens once it's cleansed and it's right?
And you bring it back into techion, right?
So then your service riders that are engaging with that data daily are able to deal with the most up-to-date data, right?
Yeah, that's correct.
So, you know, we did partner with someone that's going to be able to deliver PII back to the DMS, which is great.
We can't update whether or not the customer owns the vehicle, but we can update that marketable information, which is the most important.
And that's cutting edge in the industry, right?
Because there's not too many of these data lakes that are able to cleanse it and then push it back if you do it independent of the DMS.
Are you aware of any other DMS providers that can allow that bidirectional push?
There's a couple of other ones that do.
And again, this will all be working on putting that list together so that we can help to inform the dealer body.
That's the one thing that Ryan truly wants to drive along with the success of the organization is how can we make the industry move forward?
So that everybody benefits?
Yeah.
So, all right.
So, that's coming up.
You're teasing it.
You're not going to tell it.
Can you give us one or two other DMS providers that do that that will allow that bidirectional push?
And by the way, ours, CDK, we love them.
I'm sure they do the exact same things.
They can call me and tell me they will allow it as well.
Okay.
Yeah.
It is interesting.
You're probably seeing this.
Is there becomes a focus on cleansing data and making sure that customer records are accurate?
It used to be this big battle with DMSs and CRMs for data.
I think a lot of these DMS providers are saying, look, we see the need for this and we want to participate in this.
Jeremy, are you getting a lot of pushback as you're engaged in this from any CRM or DMS provider?
No, we really have it.
You know, the folks at Tech Yan have been welcoming us with their arms wide open for quite some time.
So, we have a great partnership for the commitment for them to drive the auto industry better.
And what about our partner with the Roman Automotive Group to help bring innovation to that front?
So, proactively, by the way, what are we listening to?
I went on this.
Somebody's office and their little speaker started to talk.
I love it.
By the way, you know what that means.
Their Bluetooth is connected somewhere else.
Yeah.
The future of automotive is technology, which is awesome.
Yoga Cars asks a question.
Yoga Cars says, are all your stores on Tech Yan, or do you have some that are on different platforms as well?
No, we're all stores are on Tech Yan DMS.
It was a great store for us.
Okay.
And you, how long ago did you switch to Tech Yan?
Probably a couple of few years ago, right?
It was, yes.
I think that also placed in 2022, 23, somewhere around.
Okay.
All right.
Now, and I know you're going to talk to us about every this at some date in the future.
But tell us what you know about creating that single customer, that single golden record across sales, service, BDC, and multiple rooftops.
And a larger organization like yourself, if a customer buys it one store, that correct identifier.
How do you make that exist everywhere?
Yeah.
So, you know, obviously, again, the stores are separate from each other, each has their own DMS, DMS site, but all the profiles again live inside of the snowflake.
So we can always identify, update, should we need to, but we will dedupe all customers so that we don't have a lot of duplicate records, and we'll go with the most current record.
And then, you know, the process of it is super important.
So just like with every other technology that's out there, that sometimes dealers are missing formed on of AI, or CVT or a CEP, there are unknown truths to the data cleanser.
The data cleansing process.
And within that process, you want to partner with someone that can provide you not only the most up to data information, but can they provide you up to three or five email addresses?
What's their process for providing a propensity score for that customer?
So you want to educate yourself through and through about that partnership that you're going to have.
And if you find the right partners, they can pull from all three and build you the best profile.
And that's what we chose to do was build the best consumer profile for our stores and those employees that work inside of there.
So give us those tips for finding the right provider again, because something that we found, you and I talked to all these different AI and tech companies.
And it truly seems to us like we are in a gold rush of AI and technology today. Steve Greenfield came on with automotive ventures and he said, look, the bar to entry with AI is so low.
And as far as creating solutions, the value isn't in creating the technology.
The value is in the problem and understanding and filling it.
And so it's interesting. I get hit up every single day.
Yesterday's no exception by some ex employee of some other company that saw the need decided to meet it.
And maybe they have good AI. Maybe they don't most often. They don't.
What's your advice to a dealer in October of 2025 getting in and data by so many of these providers to finding the right one?
Well, I guess I guess number one, listen to your staff, right? What is what's causing the biggest problems inside of your four walls right now?
And is there a solution out there?
Or do you have you vetted out all the products that you're currently using and you're identifying like do we really use this?
If you are using it great, but it's a new partner came out that designed something that you can create one less log in for your staff, right?
So they now you have some products that serve multiple purposes versus just serving one purpose.
And that's what you know, the goal is and with an ADA coming up in a few short months, there's no better time than to start that survey right now.
And that's one thing again that that we do that I really enjoyed set of our group is as Ryan will invite the director team and then several of the general managers to come out to the event and actually divide and conquer find what's important to you and don't sign anything.
And we all sit down and have a discussion about everything.
What was the product and how's it going to benefit the group and you know, the other thing I would say for multiple rooftops that that were a little bit different as is our tech stack.
And you can find the tools that we use or talk about inside of our tech stack at all the stores.
So we mirror everyone across that. So the conversations that training the accountability is now easier to manage.
And everyone talks the same language, no matter what rooftop you're in or what brand you represent, the tools and the technology that we use drive the success and the overall performance of the store.
So as you're walking down the road of cleansing this data is there one or two KPIs are a metric that proves quantifiably that this is working.
Well, obviously your engagement rate, open rates, deliverability rate for emails. That would be one. If you are sending out mail, you're, you're looking for that reduction in returned mail to the dealership.
And then for text delivery rate, you know what and which by the way, the phone numbers was the lowest amount of numbers that were bad.
Less than one less than one percent of our cell phone numbers needed to be modified when we did this data plans. And so that that speaks volumes to me because when you think about it, the technicians valid or the advisors are validating the data, they make sure that they can reach that customer or shoot them over the estimate.
If they don't update the email address or the physical address, that's really the only way that we're on the variable side, marketing to the customer. And even for the service side, that's the only way that we're marketing to the customer.
So now there's a big conversation to be held around that.
What's your hunch? So you really kind of alluded to it, right? I think an automotive sometimes some rooftops, some bad actors can play the game of putting in incorrect information so you can't get in touch with that customer or maybe the customer has a problem and they don't want it to become uncovered.
Like does this sort of eliminate some of the game, the gaming that you see one off by bad actors across different organizations?
Well, I think if you have the right partner with the data cleansing process, they can provide you dashboards and I'm waiting for us to go live.
Literally, we just got off this call last week on what it looks like and Ryan and I met with him on Monday, but once our dashboard is complete, I'll be able to go all the way down to the user of who modified the email address.
Oh, wow. So you can, it will show where it's going on. It'll demystifies it.
So you can see it. So repeat offenders. That's correct.
So it's interesting. The other question that I have in my mind privacy is such a significant issue and automotive and protecting customers data and information is significant.
When you go through and you cleanse this data, are there are there protections in place to help make sure that the people that don't want to be contacted.
That's preserved from rooftop to rooftop or you know, maybe like how how does how does this process think about that data privacy and and opting in texting and other things.
So David Steinberg, that guy is so instrumental to the success of what we've been able to do with our snowflake that partnering with a company like him who really doesn't have any skin in the game as a lead provider or anything else.
He is there to help you to keep you informed about even more is to help you advance into the newer technologies that are out there. So with David, he's helped to deliver data to our snowflake.
And now he's helping to securely deliver all the cleanse data and structure it properly by rooftop by department into the snowflake again, along with Dominic Darling.
And the new project that we'll be launching with David. I may get in front of the cart with him. He may start blowing up because I know he just did a couple events here meetings and headlines waiting to sign up for this, but consent management.
And so consent management is more when you think of opt out rules and consumers can now sue dealerships.
So David has a product that we will plug every vendor that we are partnered with because when you think about the opt out game.
You can opt out in the CRM, but that may not stop my super scheduler or a marketing platform or, you know, anything else an eye packet for rings sent from the customer.
But with them in from our CDP as well. So everything will tie into this consent management tool. So if you opt out of my marketing from the CDP, it will now opt you out from everything else.
I don't have to have a concern of customers being updated with the messages that they've opted out from now. Is that something that's done manually or is that part of the technology because now the opt out isn't even a hard opt out.
It's gotten so complicated now even the intention of wanting to opt out is considered an opt out like it can be soft, but you still communicate.
So that's part of the technology. So really if you opt it out, it's going to write back to all of those other channels through David's tech. Now, obviously that's that's very deep in the weeds of what David can talk about. He loves to talk about.
I just know that it can be done by his company and that's what I mean is before you used to have to say stop or don't contact me.
And now it can be as light as, you know, I'm not interested in having this conversation.
That's an opt out.
Yeah, I'm sure that David's going to use some of those new references for that.
So Jeremy, we're tied on time. We're getting really up to last question or so. And I want to echo something that we asked Ryan back back when if you're a dealer, certainly you've learned a lot of lessons as you've gone down this road.
What are a couple lessons or mistakes that you would be like, look, if I was to do this over again, not a chance in hell I'd go down this road or that road or that that was wasted time or money or resources.
What are a couple takeaway lessons for dealers in October of 25?
Well, Sam, I'll tell you this. It's almost like you know what's going on with Ryan right now.
And if they follow, if everyone wants to follow Ryan Rorman or a Germanelling on LinkedIn, we're together a story.
What we did and how we would do it differently next time.
And it's going to be very detailed because again, I think that if we can continue to drive the industry forward, it'll help vet out the wrong partners that people are signing with on a daily basis.
And it'll help to get them the right products for their people and for the consumer experience overall.
But yeah, there is data cleansing being number one is something that I would put up that towards the top of the list.
Okay, and listen, this isn't a paid piece. You're not selling something on the other side of this.
It would be great once you come up with this to have you come back on and share because this is the place where we all want to learn these lessons and understand what's going on.
And you've got the experience and you've learned the lessons presumably. So finding out what a couple of those toughest lessons would be.
And you know, that leads me to my very last question in order. And you sort of already said it, you know, if my budget's tight and I've only got limited resources to pursue this, which would you attack first?
Would it be cleansing that data? Would it be standing up the CDP? Would it be layering in AI? Would you start with AI? Where would you begin?
I would start off with an expense analysis report to identify all the things that you can replace with a CDP.
I would then go ahead and move towards the data cleansing process. And some of that can be tied into the CDP rollout.
So, you know, it really isn't as time consuming or as expensive as what everyone portrays it.
There's a couple of raised companies out there that are portraying it as it's very expensive and it's time consuming. No, it's not.
We're 10 months into this thing and we've signed over a year ago. So I don't think it comes out of that.
Jeremy Nowling, Sales and Digital Retelling Director, Roman Auto Group. Thank you for joining the show sharing your perspective and sharing the steps in the journey you're taking as it relates to cleansing the data and standing up this data lake and really engaging with customers in a unique and interesting way.
So thanks for being on the show. Thanks for sharing. Thanks.
All right. We're behind as we always are when we talk with a great dealer that's doing interesting and fun things. So let's talk a lot links dealers with dealers win with every
VIN the AI powered platform uses the most robust VIN and shopper data to help optimize every vehicle and protect profit. Take control of your inventory today at lot links.com. If you're on the live show, you can click on the QR code.
If you're watching on the podcast, you can go into the the show notes or you can just go to lot links.com L O T L I N X dot com. We appreciate lot links for supporting the content today, including that fascinating conversation with Jeremy. So a special thanks to lot links.
And without any further, without further ado, let's go to our next guest CEO of in ride Nick Perdika. Welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you.
Hey, Nick, great to be here. Thanks. Thanks for being here. You know what? Today is supposed to be fixed ops Friday and we have been overtaken by all things tech and AI. So I'm excited about this. We are going to do fixed ops Friday next Friday.
But if you take us into fixed ops, we'll deliver on that piece too. But tell us Nick in your world, how's biz and tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Sure. So business has been incredible. I mean, every since we've launched the in ride platform with our auction site, you know, with the.
It's been just over a year now and dealers can get vehicles directly from consumers using our platform. So it's a real win win for both the consumer and the dealer community.
And then, as far as my background, been CEO of in right now for a couple of years, my background is more in the technology space running software companies, kind of serial entrepreneur here in the DC area.
And got involved in this as a as a new launch into the car, you know, automotive industry. So here we are.
Nick, I'm going to ask a question you may not like, but I got to ask it. So we have talked to so many CEOs and leaders of AI and tech driven companies. They are all over the place.
I brought up the quote from Steve Greenfield talking about, hey, the bar isn't that the creation of the technology. It's finding the solution and then meeting it.
How does a dealer this month in October of 2025 tell the difference between a product that works that delivers ROI and one that's just trying to find, you know, just trying to create a technology and offload it. How do I, how do I separate through the noise. I get hit up every single day.
Yeah, sure. So from our perspective, you know, I was looking for a way to solve a pain point that we were having inside of our own business.
We didn't come out of this with AI on the forefront. It was really about serving this other need within the automotive space.
And we built something as a result of trying to manage the amount of bandwidth and deal flow that we were seeing coming into the business. And we found initially using the more traditional BDC method and approaches is that we were running up against.
And so we decided to experiment and using a little bit of that background from my previous years, building software for larger enterprises.
So look, there's got to be a better way to do this. And so we started a few months ago doing that. And the proof is really in the results that we identified and we found very quickly we ran both traditional BDC and AI side by side on a different set of leads.
That the results were incredibly more beneficial towards the AI side, you know, the cost per lead, the outreach, the 24 seven continuous operation, where you can respond anytime of the day somebody wants to talk to you to being able to support our sales team, right through the AI mechanisms and tools.
And I'm telling that you can just build, like you said, there's a low barrier to entry, but there's a lot of nuances that you have to be very careful of when it comes to AI.
You touched on it with Jeremy a little bit earlier about privacy, data, consent management, and even very important all the security frameworks that need to be in place.
I have experience knowing, you know, what do you do or how do you handle this, you know, people coming in trying to enter into the AI realm is not you could write something, you know, in a weekend to do something very simple, right, they oversimplify it.
And there's a lot of hype out there today on AI everybody's talking about look at all these great things that you can do, but there's really a practical component.
And when you kind of peel back the onion and figure out what works and what doesn't work, you figure out very quickly where the rubber meets the road and what we were able to do with the AI with trade age and AI is we build something we'll talk a little bit more happy to elaborate, but it is more about a specific use case that no one else had really addressed before, because our business was all about acquiring vehicles.
And so how do we optimize that process, how do we put it on steroids, and how do we get dealers to benefit from that, and that's how we ended up with this.
All right, so walk us through that. What problem in this use car acquisition process does your agentech AI solve actually give us two parts of that. What is agentech AI from a high level, and then what what problem in use car acquisition does it solve.
Sure, so to demystify a little bit what is agentech AI mean it's basically the orchestration of multiple models working together and interacting with your process and your workflows so that you might need to pull in certain tools and data from one source from a different source and a different model to accomplish a specific goal or outcome that you're looking for.
So it is it's a layered, you know, multi multi AI process basically, and that's in the simplest terms.
And so what we found was by incorporating AI into the outbound process. So let's say you know you're a dealer and you have a thousands of customers in your database, right.
And some of those have been tapped into maybe you've done outbound promotional offers, you know, from a sales perspective to get them in.
What we do in the problem at pain point we solve is about acquisition. So if you can tap that customer right if you can identify which customers are ready to sell that vehicle back to you, either as a trade or just a direct acquisition.
And take them out of the loop of, you know, other competitors that we all know about, you know, the big two that account, you know, basically dominate the market today.
Carbonacarmac.
The faster right the fastest you can go to if you can attach an opportunity to those individuals, we found that the results and the response rates were very high.
How does it, how does your AI do that? How does it identify the time in the cycle that the customers ready to trade and then exclude those other big competitors from that opportunity.
So we look at customers that have engaged with a dealer on a near term basis. Let's say, for example, a serviceline customer, right. Somebody's been through there.
You know the vehicle, you, you understand the code, you know who the customer is, you have their contact info, you very likely have consent for texting.
And our platform is specifically dealing with the texting aspect. So a dealer will send us a list or we tap into the DMS and we, we gather that information in conjunction with the dealer.
And then the texting of that to that customer begins.
And there's an engagement that goes on during that process, right. If they're ready and interested, you know, they're going to respond. And then AI does this job of handling the interaction.
And it took a lot of, it takes several months of really fine tuning it to get it to that point where that interaction is so human like an RAI, by the way, it's called Carl is our AI's name.
People actually will, you know, if we reach out to them, like one of our salespeople will reach out or one of the dealers, you know, acquisition managers reaches out, they're like, hey, I just talked to Carl is he available.
So it is, it is very, very, you know, it's got that empathy in the human and it handles situations that you might not think of. So it's not prescriptive.
So, so what are the most important data signals for targeting these sellers and which are noise that maybe even humans could learn from as they're looking to do.
So, you know, you know, you might not be going after somebody who just bought the vehicle, you know, bought a car from you last month, right, and came in for a basic service for something, you know, so you may be looking for somebody who's got vehicle that's a year old, you know, or older, who's been in the shop recently, maybe in the last six months.
And we typically will go back say six months to a year and then we refreshed that about every couple of weeks to a month so that you're getting really fresh information and data.
And you guys talked about, you know, cleansing that data, we do work with dealers to help them figure out how to do that.
But clean data is very, very important. And then visibility into what's going so you can see what is actually working and what's not right.
So, do you create us do you create a CDP for customers or a data lake or which, which does your company work with the end right.
So, we do use a series we use vector data just with I don't want to geek out on you guys, but you know, there's, there's a, there's a certain amount of data that is actually, of course, you know, stored within a secure repository within the cloud environment that we operate.
And so, we're running that separate from the DMS, but then we're feeding that data back to the DMS so that dealer can update what's going on and have a way to track those interactions and exchange it's, you know, between the AI and the customer.
All right. So, what metrics with this product is you're seeking to get those use cars, those trade ins is from a BDC standpoint, you're engaged with consumers.
What are the top metrics that prove ROI in your AI tool?
It's, it's response rates. So, we see a four to five X response rate over say traditional email.
They're opening those texts. I mean, traditionally, if you look at texts are open with it 90 to 95% of text versus 20 to 30% of emails.
So, texting is a very effective approach.
And then what we're seeing is the, the, the profitability of those deals that are coming in, right, is considerably higher on a trade in and say if you were to buy car from, from an auction site, purely, right. So, you're getting 28, you know, $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 additional profit off those customers.
So, you acquiring use cars is such an important part of anybody's business right now, Nick.
Or would you recommend like, how, how should a dealer think about like a buy center? Does this technology replace the buy center? Does it enhance it? Like, how, how should I think about use car acquisitions with this tool?
Well, it's definitely enhances it and it allows you to focus on the things and opportunities that are going to be the most profitable to the business, right. Instead of thinking about, OK, we're going to look at, you know, going to call or email and try to touch, you know, 1,000 customers, right.
Think about the volume and the human factor, how many people you have to employ to do that. Instead, you can really focus on the low hanging fruit, the qualified opportunities, the ones that are coming, responding and saying, yeah, I'm ready to upgrade, I'm ready to trade or sell.
And now you can focus on those instead of, you know, spinning your, your tires, wheels on the others.
Is there any type of a stat about the number of vehicles you guys are successfully using this tool able to acquire in a monthly basis? Or is that coming in a future?
You know, it's coming and we, we've launched this commercially, only about a month ago. So it's fairly new for this, but we've done the tests over the past several months, because, because I said we used it.
And so we've done about, I'd say on a monthly basis on an ongoing monthly basis, we're running probably two to 3,000 leads through the AI.
And we're getting responses on a daily basis to give you an idea. If we're doing about 50 outbound to 80 outbound a day, we're seeing about 10% of those converting to qualified leads.
So in, and it's just a numbers game, you know, in sales, it is all about, you know, if you had a thousand a day, you know, get a hundred of that. So, so the numbers are pretty compelling.
And, and then is there a delta, you hinted at a little bit earlier. I'll ask this is our last question. Is there, is there a delta on cost of acquisition? Like, is it amongst like, are you able to acquire them for less with less acquisition expense? I mean, obviously you don't have an auction fee.
You're not paying a separate individual. What's the cost savings there?
So, we did the, this was the math that we experiment and we tested, you know, traditional versus AI.
Traditional per contact about reach was about four and a half dollars, what it turned out to actually getting in touch.
AI turned out to be 30 cents. Wow.
So, yeah, you figure, you know, you do the math, right? Yeah.
And so, and it never, that's the other thing, you know, you don't have to have to worry about AI, you know, taking any sick leave or taking off for vacation.
It's always there and it can scale at those numbers. So, the ROI is very strong. And again, you're like, what we do now is really offering more because we are fairly new into the market in this very unique use case is that we're saying, look, proof is in the pudding.
Right. You should not as a dealer have to pay for something you're not getting value from. And so we decided to do our launch as a, you know, 30 day free trial for dealers. So that way they have an opportunity to test it out and see how it works.
And if it works, which we're confident it will for them, then they can go into a month a month subscription model. Right. No long term commitments.
You know, been there. I hated that myself as a customer having to deal with that. So we're all about delivering value on an ongoing basis.
Well, Nick, pretty casio in ride. We appreciate you joining the show sharing your perspectives on use car acquisition using AI. Thanks for joining the show. My pleasure. Thanks for having.
Fun conversation. We've ended up talking a lot of AI today. And I have us, I have a sneaking suspicion. We're going to hear a little bit more. This is a master class on all things AI.
And by the way, our own J Law teased in. Fixed ops Friday is on Fridays when we have fixed ops as part of the conversation. But as a tease to next Friday, one week from today, you want to be here.
Because we're going to have an F and I round table unlike anything else. We will talk about the latest greatest F and I topics.
We're going to talk about AI and how technology impacts the world of F and I. And what is the future of F and I when you think about digital retailing and online retailing, Carvana, some of these other retailers.
This is the place not only you want to be, but your finance teams as we debate and discuss what is F and I look like today? How's it changed? And where will we be five and 10 years down the road? So next up today, though, let's turn to dealer principal partner, Gold Coast Cadillac Bill,
Bill, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. Hey guys, so we're doing fantastic. Bill, tell us how's biz and give us a little bit of information about yourself as part of it.
Business is good. I mean, I very quick snapshot. I grew up in the Bronx, lower middle class family, typical New Yorker, Italian Irish Catholic, if it matters.
I never barred a dime from anybody, just hard work and be hanging around guys like you. I've been able to become, you know, I would consider a successful enough to make me happy.
But a lot of the dreams from Bill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of it comes from from participating and immersing myself in a lot of venues like this. You know, I've done my share of podcasts.
I speak at a lot of events around the country, mainly just about my experience and a lot of the information that's been given to me and I share with other people so that they can hopefully improve their worlds.
I found your first two first two guests, very interesting. Bob Rorman was a personal friend. I knew him very, very well. What's interesting is his son has grown his business in a very entrepreneurial way and operates.
You know, kind of big, big scheme. Bob Rorman ran a very large, profitable organization out of his suitcase. Yeah, out of his suitcase did all of his own commercials, if you remember, really a great guy, an icon of the business.
And I've been, I've been around long after being to be around a bunch of them. But go coast catalogs, been catalogued. You live the year, 16 years in a row, putting this year.
And we, we intend to do so again this year and, you know, hopefully some of the questions you ask and some of the answers I offer will give you some of the reasons why they'll tell us one tip to, to being catalog dealer of the year.
Like that's a big honor. That's huge accolades. That means you're top in the world of catalog. What's one thing that you've done this year that has given you that leg up the other dealers could learn from.
You mentioned something earlier about SEO versus all the things that you pay for, right?
Yeah.
If you go to my LinkedIn account.
Will you come out strobe on LinkedIn? You'll see, I do a lot of grassroots videos while I'm driving in my car to work. I call it my cup phone series.
If you will, okay, because I get all the tro, the trollers tell me, put your phone down your driving.
So I have a cup phone and I actually record grassroots videos. And in the greater New York area, New Jersey, even the people have done really, really well in life. They understand the blue column mentality.
Even if they have all the money in the world to buy whatever they want, they understand that they go to the deli, they, you know, they go to a local time restaurants.
So I speak from, you know, I speak from that perspective. I do a lot of social media with Joe Piscopo, you know, Jersey Joe.
I do a lot of social media with Joe Kozy who's big on CBS radio. I try to make sure I involve the kind of, you know, the, the ecosystem of our local environment when I, when I promote from an SEO perspective.
And everything that we do ties into that and drives traffic back to a website from organic perspective, including tunnel towers.
You know, I had Frank Siller at our dealer of the year party thing. And I'm not dropping names. This is all about search engine optimization, bringing eyes to us so that the things we do spend money on.
We, we, we, we, to be affected, we spend less, but they become like an accelerant on an open fire.
So you're kind of, your strategy is to maximize organic social media. It's to be out there as much as you possibly can so that when people are trying to find you, SEO works in your favor, which by the way,
the flip side of that is some dealers would say, I don't want to be on social media. I don't want to be out there. There's too much risk of saying the wrong thing being seen wrong doing the wrong thing.
And then you end up, you end up in trouble, right? Did you have a little bit of trepidation at the beginning bill where you're like, I don't want to go on social media because I don't want that scrutiny, right?
Well, first and foremost, if you guys talk to me for another 30 seconds, you'll realize I don't have a problem being on social media. That's not allowed.
Okay. Number two, number two, whether, no matter how wide field or no matter how anybody else feels, the internet doesn't have feelings.
And everybody's, you have to be, to be successful in any business today, you have to meet the customers where they are.
And that same argument can be overlaid on the EV versus the ice engines, the internet, social media.
You know, this is the, you have to meet people where they shop and how they shop and what I have found is this.
You know, years ago when I started 40 years ago in the car business, you had a telephone, you didn't have on hold.
And the customer got a newspaper. If you had the car and they called you, they'd come in and they'd buy it, right?
So the only thing between us and the customer was the telephone. Now we have several layers between us and the customer and the telephone is part of that.
The one thing we have an advantage of today is if we're proactive and put our feelings aside.
Every customer is holding one of these in their hand or in their pocket or on their belt loop.
When you go to work back in the 60s and 70s, you didn't have one of these when you're built.
So you couldn't shop 24 hours a day. You could only shop when you looked in the paper and you had the phone.
So now if you meet the customers where they are and you're in a way that is appealing to the customer, you're reaching them.
You have an opportunity to grab the eyes. Now what you do internally in terms of your processes, your people, how you engage with customers is really what the defines.
And I listen to your prior guests and they're dead on what they're saying, but there's one missing piece to this.
If your people and your processes don't match the digital experience that the customers had, you're wasting your money.
Yeah, you're wasting your money.
You have spent an equal amount of time working on both.
And I would say the one thing that I like to give myself a little bit of credit for is I'm in my business five days a week, sometimes more.
I'm talking to you on my day off. That's why Central Park Pictures right behind me. It's not virtual.
And the second thing is we give out a thank you letter to every customer. Now you're going to think this is nuts.
Okay, but this is a great tip. Any dealer's watching this. Try this. I'm telling you I'll send you a copy, maximize your business.
We have a thank you paper. Is this paper bill is like a piece of paper. Where do you send this paper? Where do you send this piece of paper?
Well, what we do is we give one to sales people who have to give it to the customer at point of sale.
That delivery at point of sale because at delivery, the shiny object is $6780,000 object is all their attention span is paying attention to.
So when they're selling the car, we give it to the customer and the self person reads it to them.
It tells them all the benefits of buying a vehicle from us, the loan a car program, the VIP program we have, which is a card that goes into wallet.
If they're a customer, they get also some benefits to come back to us. They can even give that to other people. It's given to them right there on the spot.
The thank you letter also has my name and my personal self will never.
Because we're in the business of working on human nature and what's attractive to people.
We connect with people, we ferret out people, we find the buyers, we make people into low funnel shoppers by using digital.
It's a necessary effort. However, if you think that engaging with customers is ever going to be trumped by digital, you're dead wrong.
We don't have a chatbot as the president of the United States. You don't have a chatbot as a wife or a husband.
You don't have a chatbot for a dog. And if you walked into a business where it had nothing but speakers and chatbots, you probably wouldn't buy very much there.
That you know an interaction that human engagement is extremely important.
Anybody watching your show right now.
Probably has three different experiences and three different takes from three different guests that you've had.
That in itself says everything in itself. It says everything.
So humans humans need that how we get to that place is what's key in our business today.
Yeah, it is interesting. Some of the best best practices we've heard on the show.
Take us back to a more manual process time, right?
So you mentioned a piece of paper. You mentioned a letter.
You're insane for giving out like what do you say to a dealer that says you're insane to give out your cell phone number to the general public.
They could be they could reach out to you at any time. Well, happens if you get harassed and called over and over and over again.
Like isn't that a risk as a dealer principle? And as someone who says prevalent on social media as you are. That's a risk.
Okay, so there's three things going on. I'm going to talk retail fast. So listen fast. Okay.
All right, here's how it works. One, every salesperson and service advisor that hands out that letter to a customer is going to do a better job because of that.
Yes, it's a number one. So as self-ful, these mechanisms built into it. Yes.
Number two, when a customer calls me and actually gets me on the phone,
I will commend the advisor or the salesperson and never give them a hard time when I resolve the issue because they've given me an opportunity to support my own business.
Lastly, the only time I will give an employee a hard time is when they don't give the customer the letter.
I find that about it after the fact or the customer has gone to social media and given us a bad review or a bad survey.
And I incentivize all of my employees to get good surveys to really earn the survey.
And it's in our work tracks. Have I earned a hundred percent? If I haven't, let's resolve the issue.
If I'm not participating in the solution, I may as well be part of a problem.
And I know a lot of dealers out there save themselves. I didn't do all this and work all these years and invest all this money to participate in my own business.
Well, I do. So that's just the way I am. I mean, I'm a young, I'm a young, I'm young inside. Let's put it that way.
But I love what I do. And I think the passion for what I do, you know, kind of carries me forward.
It is very challenging to my employees to say the least.
But we're learning search of excellence, we're not in search of mediocrity.
So either you participate in the solution or you can watch from the mezzanine section.
So you've given some incredible best practice tips that any dealer out there could listen to.
In the minute,
I think I would interrupt you. That letter has a QR code on it.
I love it. There's the time.
You are at point of sale. And it ties the customer right into our appointment schedule before they even take delivery of their car.
And we show them how to use it. Our online appointments and service are at 40% right now.
The industry I believe is like 10%.
A manual process tied into your digital process that is consistent from manual connection to the customer into the experience.
Because you're not a technology of verse. You've found some very interesting and unique ways to integrate technology into your operation to better deliver to your customer.
That QR code is one example in 30 seconds. And I know this isn't fair. It's not fair.
Is there one other solution that you've been able to tie technology into that manual world to better deliver to the customer?
Yes. Numa.com. Look it up on your website. Numa and you ma.com. We use Numa AI and service customers.
So some of the biggest problems you have in service are advisors talking to a customer. And you can use this on quick stops Friday.
They're talking to a customer. What most advisors do is they turn down the volume of their phones that only have to bother with it when they're talking to people.
What Numa allows us to do is it's IP specific. So the customer calls in equals directly to that advise their advisors desk.
And they opt in what they voice out the text opt in. And they can voice command text and carrying on a conversation.
A meaningful conversation with solutions, scheduling services with the AI at that point in time.
And there's a text transcription. So the actual advisor talking to a customer can actually watch the conversation, taking place real time.
And they can when they're done with the customer can jump into that conversation tethers us to the customer increases retention, increases our our own account.
And it makes it which is life easier because they have less CSI issues with the customer.
Yeah, Bill, Bill, Camostro, dealer, principal, partner, glucose, Cadillac. We absolutely appreciate you coming on the show. We'd love to have you back again in the future.
Thanks for tying all these things back together with us and sharing your large and life personality with our audience.
And any time guys, you guys do a great job, by the way, you don't really bother.
Tell us the two of you, the two of you guys are really polished and good looking. It makes me feel.
Only between only at one PM Eastern Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
Listen, who goes to your makeup artists? There's no makeup artist. You can't make this. This is.
Hey, thanks for being on. We appreciate you guys. Good for to see you soon.
And to you are daily deal a live audience and you really make sure you check out a check us out next Friday for a F and I round table.
And thank you for watching the daily deal live where we break down the biggest moves in the car business as they happen.
Don't forget we're here every we're live every Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
So if this is your world, hit like, subscribe, turn on those notifications so you never ever ever miss a beat.
And we'll see you next episode. Thanks everybody. Thanks guys.
About this episode
A deep dive into the automotive industry's current landscape, focusing on Q3 sales trends, the impact of tariffs on the North American auto market, and the importance of SEO for dealerships. Guests include Jeremy Nowling discussing data cleansing and its critical role in customer engagement, Nick Perdika explaining how AI can enhance used car acquisition, and Bill Camostro sharing grassroots marketing strategies that drive customer loyalty. The episode emphasizes the blend of technology and personal touch in modern dealership operations.
Original notes
Today's show features:
Jeremy Nowling, Sales and Digital Retailing Director Rohrman Auto Group
Nick Perdikis, CEO of inride
William Camastro, Dealer Principal, Partner at Gold Coast Cadillac
This episode is brought to you by:
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inride – inride’s Trade Agent AI helps dealers by mining their customer database 24/7. It finds trade-in opportunities, engages owners, and books appointments automatically—faster than any human team. Right now, dealers can claim 30 days free PLUS a discounted monthly rate. But hurry—this exclusive offer ends October 15, 2025. Go to https://inride.com/trade-agent-ai-demo-request/ today!
Car Dealership Guy is back with our second annual NADA Party—happening in Las Vegas on Thursday, February 5th. It’s the hottest ticket at NADA 2026. Spots are limited and unfortunately we can't invite everyone —so RSVP today at https://carguymedia.com/cdglive and we hope to see you in Vegas!
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