Shasta Haddock: How to Convert Social Media Leads Into Car Sales | Business Development | Ep. 675
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If you could pinpoint that one thing that's like definitely get rid of these word
tracks or these types of templates, what would that be for you?
My number one phrase that when I see it or read it from a salesperson or a BDR
makes me want to immediately stab myself in the shoulder is.
One of the things that I enjoy most about producing the dealer playbook is
hearing from you the messages that I get of people who are getting so much
value out of the podcast, applying it to their day-to-day workflows and finding
a thriving career right here in the retail auto industry.
It means the world to me.
And, you know, one of the ways that we make doing this possible is through
my agency, Flex Dealer.
And of course, in the spirit of providing value, I think this is a perfect
time to head over to www.flexdealer.com to show even further support for you.
My beloved DPB gang, right now, if you go to my website, flexdealer.com,
you can get a full free PDF of my number one bestselling book, Don't Wait Dominate.
And the reason I think it's so special is that a lot of the topics that are
discussed in this book are even more relevant today than ever with this
surge in popularized AI and people wondering, well, what can I do next?
How can I have a competitive advantage?
Well, that's all here in this book.
And so I'd love to be able to offer you a free copy of this.
If you go to flexdealer.com, it would mean the world to me because
that is how we continue to produce this show for you.
Shasta Haddock is the Chief Operations Officer at Epic BDC and host of the
I'm a Car Chick podcast.
With over a decade in automotive, she's built high performing BDC teams,
created the industry's first elite response team to convert social
traffic into sales appointments and train dealers nationwide on modern
customer engagement strategies that drive results.
I'm so excited to dig in today.
And I'm coming, I'm coming out of the gates hot Shasta.
I know there are dealers who we still hear this.
They brag about their like 30 minute response time.
In actuality, we get into the store.
We find out it's like closer to 60 minutes.
But we'll give them the 30 minutes and they're bragging that it's
lightning fast, but I've heard you suggest that that that might not
actually be great.
That's that's pretty slow still, especially in this digital age.
So I'm curious your take right out of the gates.
If you walked into that store, what would you do to start
shaving time off of that response time?
There's so many things.
First off, you got to see what the internal CRM process looks like.
Are the notifications set up properly for when the lead comes in?
Who is receiving those?
Is there a backup plan if that person or team isn't there?
And most of the time there's not.
I mean, we talked to a dealership probably less than two weeks ago
that they had leads that had sat for three to six days without being
touched or before they got touched for the first time.
And it's it's painful.
It's so painful because it's so easy to get them.
I mean, it comes down to training your your BDC, your BDC manager
to know how to go find those.
There's some CRMs that once you open the lead, it removes the notification
even if you don't make contact on it.
And so knowing how to find those and checking those periodically
so that that doesn't happen.
I mean, there's there's so many things.
But I would definitely start with the CRM processes
and get in touch with your CRM rep.
They're really amazing.
It's their job to to make your CRM work properly,
but get in there and make sure you've got those notifications set up
properly. You don't have any old users in there
that are receiving those that are now gone.
And really, just make that as efficient as possible
because you can do a lot with a good CRM process.
I mean, it's it's one of those things where it's like, OK,
you, you know, 10 years in the industry over a decade now in the industry.
And do you feel like sometimes I feel this way.
So I'm curious your thoughts. It's like it's 2025.
Are we still talking about CRM hygiene?
It's still and you probably see the same thing.
It's funny to me how talking to different
dealers in different parts of the country, how some are like so in the now
and some even in the future as to how they're doing things.
And then other parts of the countries
are still operating in the 80s and 90s.
And it's like, how are you even operating like that
with all of these broken things?
And there's so much good technology out there.
How are you still doing so bad at this?
Like and it's painful because you want to help them
and you want to you want to see like them operate efficiently.
And it's like they're they're holding themselves back
because they're just so laser focused on one thing.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's like it's kind of this oxymoronic hyperloop
because it's like, what do I want to do?
Well, I want to sell more cars and I want to book more service.
I want to keep my service base full.
Well, what are you going to do to get there?
Well, I'm just going to focus on that.
You're like, but what if you paid closer attention
to your engagement rate and your open your proposal
or your appointment rate and your show rate
and your proposal rate and all these sorts of things
that actually wind up to that first.
It kind of brings me to the next thing
I want to talk to you about loosely related, right?
You look into the CRM, you're going through a hygiene exercise
and you're realizing that some of these response templates
that they're using look like they were pulled out of
an Amway catalog from 1954, right?
Dusty old outdated templates.
But I know you've got a knack for getting people
actually respond.
So when you are looking at these templates
and you're you're examining the CRM,
what are some of the things going through your mind
that you're like, guys, that that is outdated.
Like if you could pinpoint that one thing
that's like, definitely get rid of these word tracks
or these types of templates, what would that be for you?
My number one phrase that when I see it
or read it from a salesperson or a BDR
makes me want to immediately stab myself in the shoulder
is are you still in the market?
I can't stand it.
I hate that question.
It's so ineffective.
Anything that says that
and that's easy to take out of a template,
but more so just going through those templates
and cleaning them up, making them engaging.
If they're just something basic,
the stuff that the CRM puts in there automatically
whenever they set you up for the first time,
it's a placeholder.
It's not meant to be your forever solution.
And honestly, now that we are in the age of AI,
it's so easy to change those,
come up with something different
and make it more creative and engaging.
Like that's the beauty of things like chat GPT.
Even if you don't have an AI software of the dealership,
chat GPT is free.
Like go in there if you know,
hey, this is a 13 day email
that's going out to an uncontacted lead.
Tell your chat GPT that have it
to help you build a response
if you're just not that creative of a person.
I mean, it's very simple, but at the end of the day,
you're not going to sell a car over email.
You're just looking for engagement.
You need to earn their trust
and you need to sound like something
other than every other dealership they've shopped with.
Ooh, I love it.
Two things that you said that I wanna touch on
and dig into a little bit more.
The first is chat GPT is free
and you're really saying,
but give it the context it needs
because I think most people right now
are using GPTs or other LLMs
like glorified Google search.
And they're like, meh, the response is stink.
And it's like, no, what Shasta said
is you actually have to qualify your prompt
in order to get a better result back.
And then the second thing is that,
that understanding that you are trying
to just get a response from them
to engage them and build trust.
So what is your ideal,
what do you find a lot of success with?
Are there certain phrases or word tracks
or subject lines that you're finding,
whether it's text or email or whatever
that just get that person to respond back?
I've had a lot of success talking about things
other than the vehicle they inquired on,
which is almost wacky
and seems opposite of what we're trying to do.
I will throw a wrench in there
asking about their trade,
what they love about their current vehicle
that they want in the next one.
Do you wanna sunroof in your next vehicle?
Are you looking for cloth or leather seats?
Like super random things,
obviously check and make sure
they didn't already send that over
with the lead information.
But just those random things
that they're not used to seeing
that kind of just make them double take a little bit
are where I have the most success.
And so the more out of the box,
the more not struggling for words right now,
not usual, unusual responses
are what can skew them up to be like,
oh, this might actually be a real person
because your customers know we're in the world of AI.
They know more than likely your follow-ups AI.
So anything that you can do
to stick out a little bit,
if you're doing a human response,
you don't wanna look like AI.
You want to look like a human being
and you wanna look like, hey,
this is me legitimately trying to help you
without also seeming desperate
because I've seen that too.
I love it because it's back to
the roots of hospitality.
Yes. Like observe, you know, like you said,
pay attention to what they submitted
in their initial request
and don't ask them dumb questions
that they might have already given you
all the information on.
This idea of hospitality starts with observing a need
or observing an opportunity
and then feeding into it more accurately.
This is gonna be a side note question
but loosely related to this
because I know your husband is a police officer, right?
And first of all,
I want him to know we thank him
for the work that he does
because that is not,
I can't even imagine.
I've got buddies that are police officers
and I'm like, well, I can't even,
no day is the same
and they're out there doing the thing.
But I know that whether we think of it this way or not,
he is like gotta be insane at customer service
because he is dealing with people day in and day out.
He's dealing with critique and feedback
and anger and all the emotions and all those things.
What if anything have you been inspired by
from your husband that you've brought into your BDC rituals,
if you will?
I mean, I don't know that it's anything particular
that he has done,
but the awareness that has been brought to me
about the standards that are put on law enforcement
that every single move that they're doing is watched.
I mean, they have to have their body cams on it all time.
It's now federal law,
which is good, good for the community.
It's good for them for their protection
that they have that.
But also when you know you're being watched,
I think that you generally know to act a certain way
or to say things, stuff like that.
And so in the BDC space,
letting them know at any minute,
we could have to pull any of your calls,
we could have to pull any of your text conversations.
And so you wanna make sure that you're staying
above reproach on absolutely everything.
Like you never know when you're gonna get coached,
when someone's gonna complain to the dealership
and say you said something that you didn't
let them constantly stay above reproach.
And you have to, you can't lie.
If we find out anybody lies,
like that's immediately out the door.
You cannot lie to a customer, you cannot mislead them.
You have to be honest with them
and be the person that you would wanna be speaking to
on the other side.
And I think with law enforcement,
it's the same way like they're just a citizen like you.
Yeah.
True to my view.
I mean, that's really powerful though,
this idea of accountability
and increased accountability and follow-through, I think.
Like I think a lot of organizations,
and I know I've been guilty of it in the past as a leader,
it's like you set kind of these expectations,
but don't create the follow-up
or the accountability mechanism.
And what you're saying I think is so powerful
because from my observation,
and I wanna get this out of the way,
come on DPB gang, you know, I love you.
You know, I'm not here to hurt anyone's feelings,
but if your feelings are gonna get hurt,
I just, you know, it is what it is, you know.
Which is this, like, I don't think anybody's showing up
to work in our industry,
desiring to be a poor performer.
No, I say that all the time.
I think, sorry, say, what is it?
I say that all the time.
Nobody wants to come to work to do a bad job.
Right.
And, but what I do think happens is
we favor short-term wins so much
that there's a great amount of ethical fading.
Nobody knows why they start to go down this path
where they don't know why they wanna show up.
And then we're installing an accountability mechanism
in the wrong sequence,
which just creates more fade-in,
like ethical wondering on this employee's part.
And now all of a sudden
we have a dysfunctional operation from BDC
all the way to frontline,
all the way to back of the house and so on and so forth.
So I love what you're saying about,
hey, like, no, there needs to be accountability.
You will be observed.
We do want to make sure that you're finding fulfillment
in the work you do.
And the way that you find that is by providing an experience
right out of the gates to customer
that they're gonna be thrilled with.
Well, and it goes back to something you said earlier
with hospitality because we, in the BDC,
especially when a new BDR gets trained,
it can be very easy to get caught up in the tasks
and the minute work, the dial, the text, the email,
the video, whatever it is that they're doing,
it's so easy to just get caught up in that
and forget that it's not just phone numbers
on the other side or email addresses on the other side.
These are real human beings
who are about to make a very large purchase
and want to find the place that they can trust
with that investment.
And so it can't just be another dial, another text,
another task checked off.
It has to be, I'm here to be your assistant
in this process, tell me how I can help you.
Here are the things that I know that I've learned
that I'm passing on to you.
These are the ways that I know I can help you,
but you tell me what you need from me.
And it goes back to hospitality every time,
anticipating their need before they have it.
Ooh, one of my favorite words Shasta,
anticipation, use it in your language
and you will avoid, oh, so many arguments.
You may experience this, you may feel that.
That's, you know, I love anticipatory communication,
just trying to stay ahead of things.
Oh, that's so powerful.
It's so much in the BDC,
you get that from just reading the lead.
Like if there was a magic wand that I had
that I could just fix every one problem
for every dealership at the same time,
it would be that every first response,
text message, phone call, email, whatever it is
would know everything about the customer's journey
based on the information they put in the lead.
Like, that would be the thing.
That's the thing that most dealerships
around the country are just missing.
Hey, does your marketing agency suck?
Listen, before we hop back into this episode,
I know you know me as the host of the Dealer Playbook,
but did you also know that I'm the CEO of Flex Dealer?
An agency that's helping dealers capture better quality
leads from local SEO and hyper-targeted ads that convert.
So if you want to sell more cars
and finally have a partner that's in it with you
that doesn't suck, visit flexdealer.com.
Let's hop back into this episode.
That's powerful stuff.
Okay, switching gears a little bit
and related of course,
you've built this elite response team
that took Facebook likes and social metrics
and I'm gonna say the word somehow
because I think some people still wonder
how this possible.
You somehow were able to turn them into butts
in the showroom.
How did that idea even come about
and what were some of the key steps
you found that made that work?
I think the same way that a lot of people's success
came in automotive by complete accident.
What?
When we had freshly started off,
we were working with a few dealerships
but the company was built to help small businesses.
And so back in, I wanna say it was 2017 or 2018,
we had a local gym where you would go to work out
that kind of gym where we were running Facebook ads for them,
trying to just help them acquire new customers,
things like that.
And one day I was placing ads for them
and came across a brand new type of ad
which were messenger ads.
And I was like, I don't know what these are.
It's kind of interesting.
So I was like, I told everybody, hey,
I'm gonna try this out.
I'm just gonna throw a couple hundred bucks
behind it, see what happens.
And it was pretty cool.
You could kind of give the customer
some responses that you wanted to have up front.
And then we played with those for about a week or so.
And all of a sudden I was like,
we should try this for a dealership
because that's time we were just doing
the regular lead formats
or driving traffic to their website, things like that.
And so I placed them for a dealership
whose ad budget was like really, really high
and was like, let's throw the whole budget behind it.
What's the worst thing that can happen
until you realize that's going to equal
hundreds and thousands of messages.
Right.
Somebody has to answer.
And otherwise you just have an inbox full of messages.
And we had a very, very light,
what we called notifications team at the time
that would monitor comments, shares, reviews
on Facebook pages, but nothing to that scale.
They weren't trained how to be a BDC by any means.
They were just handling notifications,
making sure that problems got responded to, whatever.
So out of nowhere with this very large ad budget
where we now have like 300 messages a day
coming into one inbox,
we're like, holy crap,
we've got to build something to solve this.
So I had a few years in the BDC at that point
and so I was like, we need a BDC essentially,
but they're not going to have headsets.
They're just going to be on Facebook.
And so we kind of started training these team members
on how to have these responses.
These leads are going to be much colder.
Well, the conversations are going to be much colder
because these people aren't in the market
for a vehicle per se.
They're just at the time we couldn't target on Facebook.
And so these are kind of just blanket.
And these are people who saw the ad
and they're either interested in a low down payment,
a low monthly payment, a low APR or something along those lines
and more likely they're going to be more
on the subprime side.
So we've got to have these warming trust building
conversations with them.
So we had to not just train people,
build out a schedule, build out software
so that we could get once we converted those into leads
and or appointments, get those to the dealership
to the BDC or whoever needed to have those.
And then before we knew it,
like it was actually going really well.
The ROI's were amazing.
The sold vehicles coming from it were amazing.
And we're like, what did we just do on accident?
And so it just kept growing and growing.
And then we even further turned it into sales events.
Doing that for dealerships who wanted to just do
like a little quick seven to 10 day thing.
And so, but what's awesome is that a lot of people think
that Facebook traffic has to be specifically targeted.
We've got to be looking for this specific audience.
And that's not necessarily the case
because you've got 98% of your market as non-intendors,
but will the right offer hook them in?
Yeah, I mean, well look, that tracks for me incredibly
because it's like, we talk about this in the industry
where people are not buying cars every day
and we are working in the space every day.
So there's already a disparity there
between what the customer is actually thinking about more
often and what we're thinking about more often.
And we talk to them as if they are buying a car
every single day, they're not.
They are more interested in so many other things
day after day after day that to your point,
and you brought this up a little bit earlier,
talking to them about those interests
or things that they're engaging with.
I want to say Robin, Robin Wilson.
Do you call her Robin at work?
Okay, yeah, I had the same thing.
I worked with my dad for years,
but at work he was Joe, you know, right?
So she talked about turning tattoos.
Okay, hold on, I'm digging back into the well here,
but she talked about turning tattoos
into like a sold car for a dealership there in Joplin.
Yeah, so that is funny.
I actually participated in that.
So she did it when we were in the works
of launching our new company, Social Grenade,
we were playing around with some different ideas.
And so we, because of how the Facebook algorithm works,
if you get people to engage with your post on day one,
then you will have that audience
for about 24 to 48 hours afterwards
that your next posts will also pop into their feed.
Now granted, they'll only say in that
if they continue to engage with you.
So if you want to find something to connect
with someone on tattoos are a big thing.
A lot of people have tattoos.
And so this one was show me your ink
and tag your tattoo artists if you have them on social.
And the comments blew up.
It was absolutely wild
because it's something that all of us, number one,
we get it because we want to show it off.
Like, I've got all tatted up.
And so absolutely, like everybody's jumping
in the comments, you have to respond
to all the comments to keep them engaged,
but then you keep them in that,
in your algorithm for the next 24 to 48 hours.
So now we've gotten a tribe.
Now we're going to post a vehicle.
Or I think in that specific instance,
she had that salesperson grab their freshest trade
or something like that, which was like,
I want to see it tomorrow and say,
what monthly payment could you afford on this?
And had several of the people who'd commented
on the tattoo post.
So genius.
Yeah.
And it ended up selling that car that day
to one of the people who commented in it.
So it's all about just building your funnel
within your Facebook and using the algorithm
to your advantage instead of just complaining
that nobody sees my posts, okay, we'll make them.
I want to transition here slightly because,
and obviously related, because what we're talking about
right now, I don't think many are understanding
how massive the opportunity is
when you use social the right way.
Let's quantify or define the wrong way.
So come, they're holding up the white post more.
So glad you're here.
That was the wrong way.
Hey, I sold the car.
Hey guys.
Yeah, exactly.
Right way, let's dissect what you're talking about.
Well, first of all, I mean, even think about
if I wanted to build relationships
and I was new in a community or new selling cars
or a new BDC rep, I mean, I would go
and see what Facebook groups existed around my community
that had, I don't know,
doesn't really matter, 500 plus members.
And I would see how active they are
and I would get involved and I would find out
what people are talking about regularly.
And then I would use that to stimulate conversation
and I would never tell anybody as my first thing.
Hey, by the way, I sell cars or I'm a,
no, I would just go and look what you're talking about.
I would just build relationships
on the thing that they're interested in.
I love that you have this very clear example
and I know you guys have more of how to turn
just relationship building into top of mind
when they're in that market
and how to leverage the algorithms to do that.
And I wanna, I guess, I guess I wanna transition
a little bit to AI and get your thoughts on it.
We touched on it briefly earlier
in this idea of where like, AI is a buzz right now.
I can only imagine, we're gonna get to a place
where it's like, we all use it, who cares?
Like the way Google was in the early,
you know, mid 90s or whatever.
Everybody's talking about it, became a verb
in all the things, yahoo, rose and disappeared
and all the things happened.
It's a bit of a buzz right now,
but I can't think of a better opportunity
when everyone is focused on over here,
like this AI thing to jump back in on social
and build relationships of trust with people
as a human being without AI getting in the way right now
cause like your competitors looking in the wrong,
not the wrong direction, but you know,
in this context, they're looking in the wrong direction.
Well, there are businesses that are so focused on,
on, you know, the speed to the lead
or making sure that at least something is handled,
it may not be the perfect way,
but at least something is handled you can trust
because AI is gonna be there.
It's not gonna call in sick.
It's not gonna get its nose ring stuck on a pillow
and not be able to make it end of work for the day.
Is this a real story?
But AI is always gonna be there,
but us as a human being forced,
we're starting to be able to tell,
I would say at least 80% of the time
when we're talking to AI versus when we're talking to a human.
And we all know from the experience
that we've all done it, you know,
you call into a business
and you know, use Walgreens for example,
you get stuck on there in their phone tree
and you can't get out of it
and then the AI is trying to help you.
Please tell me which department you'd like to talk to.
I'm sorry, I didn't get that.
Please tell me what department you'd like to talk to.
And so it's, you're just trying to get to a human being
or trying to get to a human being
because this is something that
this is a very specific need.
This is very important to me.
I just need to handle it quickly.
I don't wanna have to take the time to do this.
And AI is getting smarter.
We've got agentic AI now that is very interactive based
and learning very quickly
that I think we should probably be paying
a little bit of attention to on the dealership side.
Is it perfect?
No, but it's getting better.
Maybe someday it will be perfect.
I don't know, but it's one of those things that, yes,
if you are lacking efficiencies,
I mean, if anybody knows who Matt Raymond is,
Matt Raymond is the COO of Bowtie Solutions,
which is a service BDC outsourced.
And his number one thing that he always without fail
shocks the crap out of me with
is all of the missed calls at dealerships.
Like he does a lot of overflow service calls
and even dealerships where they're like,
we have absolutely no missed calls,
we're on top of it.
And then he's like, okay, great, try me out for three days.
Like you let your team have three rings,
let it go to a different department
and then I pick up everything after that.
And then numbers are astronomical
and not just the calls he's getting,
but the appointments they're getting from it,
the missed money.
So even on the dealerships who think
they have a thousand percent dialed in,
there's opportunity there.
And it's mind blowing how much we're missing,
but AI won't miss calls.
Interesting.
Yeah, it's not gonna miss the call,
but it may miss some nuance, right?
It's like a weird in between.
I wonder if my thesis here is that
we're eventually gonna get to the point
where it's so commonplace,
AI is doing so many different things.
And then our human nature is still gonna kick in
at some point and we're gonna be like,
but can I just like look another human being in the eye
and just get their feedback, just get there?
And so I think where I think about the BDC
and I could be totally wrong here
and I'm open to that is this idea of,
okay, but now imagine the value of you sitting in that room
getting to be the first human touchpoint
that the customer gets.
Like I think now let's up the ante.
This is gonna make what they do that much more valuable.
And I think we're in a period to your point
where with this little in between,
where sadly by nature of the beast
and in the name of progress and evolution,
these BDRs are just gonna have to be better equipped
at handling the complaints that come from
having to go through the AI phone tree for a minute.
Well, and it's humans need to focus
on what humans do best and what AI can't do,
which is being a human being,
having empathy, sympathy, excitedness,
like all of the emotions that we can have
that AI can try to have,
but it again is not a human being.
It cannot have emotions.
It can portray emotions, but that's where we come in.
And like I mentioned earlier,
we all know buying a car is a massive decision,
unless you're a business owner
just needing a tax write off.
For most of us, buying a car is a really big decision.
It's a multi-year investment.
It's something that we want to be absolutely sure about
and there's a percentage,
a very small percentage of customers
that can do it completely transactionally,
no emotion in it, no big deal.
But the masses, it is something
that they have put a lot of their time into researching,
a lot of money into,
maybe they bought the wrong car before
and realized that this has features that I don't want
or it doesn't have features that I do want.
And so it becomes very emotional for them to know
when they're getting what they want versus not
or when they're being heard versus when they're not.
I think about the process
and we talked about it off air for a minute
that the process that a customer has to go through
in their journey before they even make it to the dealership
and there's thousands of different ways.
Like, 1000 different places they could submit a lead
and most of the time we're handling the lead
the same way which is not how it should be.
Shouldn't be the same conversation every time.
You know, whether it's a lead from Facebook,
they were scrolling on Facebook
or if they were on AutoTrader or CarGurus
or cars.com, one of those other places versus
if they organically came to your website
because they drove past, saw this car
and said, I have to know more about it.
All of these different journeys
are different conversations.
And AI, yeah, I can probably nail that on the head
most of the time by scanning through the lead.
What the human part of that is,
is knowing how much time and effort
the customer put into that.
Acknowledging that, hey, you've been doing
a lot of research, this is awesome for you
and we need to make sure that we get this right
and that we get you exactly what you're looking for.
And it all comes down to the human level
of understanding that AI really cannot provide.
Yeah, which we're gonna crave the deeper we get
into this whole AI experiment.
I love it.
Man, this is so much fun.
There's so many other questions that I wanna ask you.
So we're gonna have to get you back
because I wanna pick your brain.
In closing though, how can those listening
and watching connect with you?
I'm very easy to find.
I feel like the cool thing
about having a unique name,
Shasta Haddock on any social,
Facebook, LinkedIn, really don't use Instagram.
That's just me though.
The podcast, I'm a car chick podcast.
You can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts
or at the BDC on all the socials too.
But like I said, I'm very Google-able.
I love it.
Thanks so much for joining me
on the Dealer Playbook podcast.
Thank you for having me.
Hey, thanks for listening
to the Dealer Playbook podcast.
If you enjoyed tuning in,
please subscribe, share and hit that like button.
You can also join us
and the BPD community on social media.
Check back next week
for a new Dealer Playbook episode.
Thanks so much for joining.
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