A window sticker is a label on a new car that shows how much it costs and what features it has. It's helpful for buyers to see all the details about the car.
Carfax is a company that gives you a report about a car's history, like if it has been in any accidents or how many owners it has had. It's helpful for people buying used cars.
LIVE
Everything around us is moving faster and faster.
Data is so important to our decisioning
and so hard for us to clarify that data.
And so the dealers who are getting with this,
I would say it's the same thing with people
who aren't using ChudGDP and other aspects of their lives.
I mean, I don't know if you're still playing
at no offense to TripAdvisor,
but you're still planning a trip with TripAdvisor,
you're playing in the last century.
Today I'm joined by Len Short, CEO of Lotlinks.
In a CDG podcast first,
Len is pulling back the curtain
on something his team has been quietly building all summer,
LotGPT.
Powered by one of the most comprehensive vehicle datasets
in the industry, this new AI tool
can diagnose dealership inventory challenges in real time.
I put Len in the hot seat
to talk through how secure this platform is,
the seven most searched queries from their dealer beta,
and maybe the wildest part,
why he's giving it away for free.
You won't want to miss this one.
A big thank you to our sponsors
for making this episode possible.
Open Lane, Amazon Autos.
And of course, Lotlinks.
Now let's get into the show.
Len Short, back on the CDG podcast.
Len, welcome back.
Hey man, good to see you, Len.
Thanks for having me back.
Thank you for coming back on.
Last time you were on, it was 4th of July.
That was a fun experience,
but you've done some super cool stuff since then.
Where did the summer go, Yossi?
I spent my whole summer in a dark room.
So...
I still spend my days in a dark room.
My wife sometimes doesn't know where I'm at.
She's like, where is this guy?
24 hours in the office.
All right, so Len,
I thought about how to start this podcast.
And I think for someone
who's been in auto retail and experienced as much as you,
it's only appropriate to preface with,
in this business, I feel like every couple of years,
there's some big thing that changes
how dealers do business.
It can be a new CRM, inventory tools,
there's digital retailing, AI, whatever it is,
but they feel like we constantly go through these waves.
And the reason we're chatting right now
is because you've been working on something
that I found really just incredibly novel
called Lot GPT.
And I told you, I said, Len,
I think you have to just present this on the podcast
because I think dealers would want to see this.
And for anyone that's used chat GPT,
and they hear Lot GPT,
it's probably pretty self-explanatory
what you've been working on,
but we'll let you showcase that today.
But before that,
can you just kick us off with,
what is the big idea here?
Like, tell us what you've been working on
and what has been your vision
as you've created this new product, Lot GPT,
for the auto industry?
Yeah, as you know, there's a lot of buzz about AI,
and it is going to change a lot of things
for the good for dealers.
Some people say it's going to cure cancer,
but I think it's going to do for dealers
is make them better more consistently, right?
It's not going to replace jobs.
It's going to make everybody sort of a star at their job.
But AI technology is essentially inert without data.
Like everybody's got the same,
essentially it's an arms race for LLM models,
but it's like a NASCAR engine.
You could have a Roush engine without fuel
and it's just a 575 pound hunk of metal, right?
You've got a fuel AI with data.
And as you know, we started back in 2016
before anybody was talking about this,
building deep learning models,
using machine decisioning in our platform.
I'd go on shows like this and talk about it
and everybody thought, okay, here he comes,
this guy who is, you know, what is he talking about?
You know, I think they thought it was a crackpot, you know?
And, but you know, it's all come around
and that early commitment that we had
has put us in a stunning advantage, right?
And, you know, it led us to build the most outstanding
data science team in the business, right?
I collected, you know, the players in this
and we've been aggregating and organizing, you know,
by far the largest data set of online inventory.
We know everything and every circumstance
around every price move, every car that traveled,
how it sold, so on, you know, for 15 years.
So this massive data set nobody else has
and that's the fuel of our AI.
And, you know, the platform is making such a transformative,
you know, transformative impact on the volumes,
the turn rates, the growth and the profitability
of our dealers, you know, as you know, we've got, you know,
very high penetration of the baller dealers,
the real power dealers and large groups.
And, you know, this has just been a game changer for them.
So we decided to open it up and with a lot of GDP
because dealers, you know, I know they're all going
to chat GDP and they're trying to use the power of AI
to help them run their business.
But there's some fundamental problems with that.
And, you know, so we decided, we've got the status
that we have the ability to do what ChatGPT could never do,
which is talk auto and make very specific recommendations
we have this data, they don't, right?
You know, and that's-
Okay, so you answered my next question,
which was what problem are you seeking to solve
that ChatGPT cannot solve?
And by the way, I don't think it's any secret
that ChatGPT is arguably the most effective AI tool today
in a dealership.
It doesn't mean that there aren't other effective tools,
but dealers I speak with just tell me,
hey, it's at this point, it's permeated
into every department in some capacity, right?
And so what problem did you seek to solve
that ChatGPT cannot solve?
And how are you doing it now with large?
Yeah, so ChatGPT can rewrite descriptions
and do a lot of things with generic information,
but dealers are looking, you know,
the big push we get from dealers is tell me my next move.
Like, look at all my data, you know,
pinpoint where I have opportunity or problems,
and then tell me what to do.
And ChatGPT can't do that because they don't have the data,
or they have general market data.
And some dealers, you know,
I think every dealer in America is using ChatGPT,
maybe every day, but some dealers are trying to,
you know, get around that by uploading
their spreadsheets into ChatGPT,
which is a, you know, tough challenge, you know,
if you've tried to do it and get it to read them correctly
and so on.
But I would advise every dealer to go to ChatGPT
and say, you know, what are the risks
with me uploading my business data into, you know,
public LLMs?
And it will give you a long list of reasons
why you shouldn't do that.
So just ask it whether you should do that and you shouldn't.
There's no data security.
I mean, I think there's been general reluctance to do that.
We had a conversation about this on Daily Dealer Live,
and people were, you know,
that was a real conversation that was brought up.
I would say it was more stark with the bigger groups,
not to say that the smaller groups don't care,
but, you know, the bigger groups typically have tighter
just rules around compliance.
But I wanna, we'll talk about compliance.
I wanna talk about the juicy part right now, which is,
I, my vision for this conversation was I said,
hey, you're doing this really novel stuff for dealers.
Can you just show it to us, right?
Like, show, don't tell.
And that was what I was hoping that you could do
right now on this pod.
Whoever is listening will narrate it for them.
Whoever is watching can actually see.
But are you able to show us just like,
what can you actually do with large GPT
as you've dubbed it on a day-to-day basis at a dealership?
Yeah.
I'll thank you through the seven most popular prompts.
As you know, we've got hundreds of beta dealers using this,
you know, our customers and nine customers
who've been in our beta group.
And, you know, an overwhelming majority of them
are using it every day.
And an overwhelming majority of those
are using it multiple times a day.
So we know what they're using it for.
And so I've just put together, you know, for this,
just, you know, those prompts just to see what kind of,
you know, answers the dealers you're getting.
You'll see why it's so useful to them.
We're opening this up in another couple of weeks.
We've got a, you know, basically you can register
for a invitation.
So you go to, you know, lollings.com,
forward slash lot GTP,
and you can put in your information,
we'll invite you in when we're ready.
And we're doing that, you know,
so we've got thousands of people already done that.
And we're getting hundreds of thousands of queries
every, you know, 30 days already on the platform.
So, you know, as you know,
we've got hundreds of dealers in this
using it, you know, multiple times a day.
So we know exactly how they're applying this
to their business.
And so what I've done here is just teed up
those seven most common queries
that they're using to manage their business in this.
So you go to lotGTB.com,
all you have to do is enter your dealership URL
and it'll take you in.
And what I've done here is I've preloaded
the number one query that dealers are asking,
which is how I do it versus my competition, right?
So that's, you know, they're always,
they're asking a lot of things.
And you'll see, you know, for this dealership,
it's looking at its sales performance
against the local Toyota competitors.
You know, this dealer is crushing its market, you know,
so they leave the market,
their average days of lot are a little bit higher
than the other guys, but their sell-down rates are better.
So, you know, they're in a nice position
and it shows them all of those metrics
for their key competitors,
you know, how they rate on average days on lot,
you know, new days to sale, sell-down rate,
you know, gross, et cetera.
So it's just a quick real-time review
of how they're doing the business.
They get it from the OEM like two months later,
but this allows them to go real-time.
Every dealer is thinking right now,
where are you getting the data from
to make sure that this is factually correct?
Yeah, as I told you, we look at every car on every lot,
when it lands, when it's line-ready,
how it's priced, what the markdowns are, you know,
we get, we're wired into all of the, you know,
the OEM platform, most of the OEM platforms,
we're looking at all the competitor price moves,
we know when things sell, the circumstances.
So, you know, we've got, as I say,
the ultimate data set, 360 degrees.
So it's not only for that dealer, but everything around them.
And that's what dealers really, you know,
you can upload your own data,
and it can tell you about your own store,
but it can't tell you, you know, at ChatGTV,
they can't tell you how you fit in
with the rest of the competition.
So that data set is, you know, the largest,
and many of the big guys buy pieces of it from us,
because they don't have it themselves.
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For those not watching on video,
this is probably the best podcast to try.
You can go to dealershipguide.com and watch this on video,
but it's pretty much, it looks like a ChadGBT screen.
Len literally asked it,
how are my new sales doing versus my competition?
And, you know, it pulls up a paragraph, a chart,
it shows, you know, different columns,
and, you know, literally like an output from ChadGBT,
except this has data that is not publicly available,
which is pretty, pretty bad.
Okay, Lane, can you show us other prompts?
So this is one of seven.
Can you show us the second one?
Yeah, so the next thing that they're asking mostly,
and this is larger because it's already those,
they're very focused on, where's my risk?
All right, you know, because the average deal
will move 60% of his inventory just fine,
but 40%, you know, carries over,
then he gets problems, Mark Towns, holding costs, so on.
So that's a big query.
All right, show me where I have risk.
And in this case for this deal,
he's got 50, you know, high-risk units
that are over 45 days on a lot.
This is for his new inventory.
His Tacoma four-wheel drive models
are showing severe aging.
Some, the oldest one's sitting for 245 days.
So it kind of breaks down by a model line.
And, you know, it talks about his pricing strategy.
He's very aggressively priced in the market.
So price is not really his problem here.
And so, and it gives him a list.
You know, every problem we solve
at Lollings is a bin-specific problem,
so it always comes down to a list of bins.
So the next thing that they're doing most offices
is picking a bin and saying,
all right, what's going on with this bin?
So all you have to do is click on one of the bins.
And, you know, and so it'll tell you
everything that's going on with this bin.
So he, you know, I clicked on one bin.
And this has been on a lot for 45 days.
It has a very high risk score, right?
That means that it's got low demand in the market.
He's an oversupply.
There's some, you know, some situations.
First thing it says is, hey, follow up immediately
with the one open sales opportunity.
You have to understand that, you know,
the status and barriers to closing.
So the machine knows he's got an open lead on this
that he hasn't followed up on.
Len, so with this one specifically,
it would get cumbersome if I had to go bin by bin, right?
And so, is this, why are dealers using this one specifically?
You know what?
Because I think they think bin by bin.
You know, I was surprised.
Because that's, you're like, what's wrong with this one?
What do I do about this?
I mean, it's just how they operate.
You know, I've been on a lot with a massive owner who,
you know, he's a big shot.
He's pointing out his incentives.
I mean, he knows his inventory bin by bin.
And so it's something that they like to use.
It's like, okay, what's going on with this bin?
How's my digital delivering to this bin?
Is my pricing right on this bin?
That does make sense.
Because, you know, if you're doing a lot walk, right,
or you're doing a Saturday morning meeting,
the first thing that comes up is, you know, you kind of,
or you're pointing out the problem of vehicles
or what needs to sell.
And then you're going right away to diagnose, right?
Okay, well, why is this not sold?
And what's the error?
And so that, okay, that does make sense, understood.
Okay, what's number four?
Fourth prompt.
Yeah, so, you know, this gives them an overall view
of what's going on with the bin.
But one of the things that they're doing is,
hey, is this thing priced right?
You know, they're always looking, you know,
can I solve this problem with price?
In this case, he's an 82% market of, you know,
of market on this bin.
So he's priced very aggressively.
The price is not the problem.
And by the way, we see that, you know,
everywhere in this business.
Dealers keep hitting markdown
and it's not making a difference.
And all they're doing is giving away gross, right?
So the next thing is, and this is the number two used thing
on the platform, rate my VDP.
All right, tell me, is my VDP working for this car?
And so it'll go through and it'll look,
he's got a three out of five rating.
He's got good, you know, good photography.
It tells him, you know, specifically what's going on
with his photography, points out when he's got,
using too many stock photos,
he's got excellent pricing clarity, right?
It looks at how he presented his price
and other discounts could the customer understand that,
you know, from the VDP page.
He's got strong CTAs.
He doesn't have consumer reviews.
He should probably think about that.
He doesn't have a window stickers.
Probably think about that.
That helps with conversion.
He doesn't have a car fax, but it's a new vehicle.
That's why he's got, you know, multiple financing badges.
Then what it'll do is it'll read through the description.
And we see, even though there are millions
of merchandising tools on the market,
this is epidemic, you know,
the dealers are just using these run-on sentences
that, you know, the customer can't sort through.
Yeah. And so it'll rewrite that.
And this is all machine learned.
So it's ultimately optimized.
You may be able to do a decent job rewriting a description
because it knows, you know, the English language,
but this does it based on what's actually unique
and going to drive a conversion on this vehicle.
And it optimizes that.
So it'll rewrite his description, give him pointers.
And then it summarizes exactly what it changed and why.
So it just kind of gives the dealer guidance
on how to merchandise this vehicle.
So I had one dealer reach out to me and he said,
hey, Yossi said, I'm looking for some AI
that can help me optimize inventory allocation
and what I'm ordering and what store am I ordering it for
and how many units am I ordering?
Is this, do you see this being able to get
into that territory?
Cause it's already within the inventory.
Clearly the data's there for inventory.
The number one request we get, Yossi.
And so we have version one of that already built
into our platform, our proprietary platform
that our customers got.
And we're about ready to release,
I think in another two weeks, the upgrade of that.
But that's what deal, you know, we all know, listen,
you want to drive your business stock, right?
You stock, right?
You got a good hand.
And so that's why they're all focused on this.
And when I present AI to owners, they all jump to this.
I don't even talk about it and they're like,
hey, you got all this data, you could help me stock.
Oh my God, when can I get that?
So we're on it and there's some pieces of that
even in our free platform so dealers can look at
how they're stock versus, you know,
the competitive vehicles on the market,
how they're performing, you know,
where the blow trends are and so on.
So, and that, believe me, we're going deep on that
because as I say, it's a number one request.
And, you know, it's a perfect example
of what machines can do.
Is it going to, you know, replace your used car guy?
No.
But what it's going to do is just make them more consistent.
I had lunch with an owner of 23 stars and saying,
I got two really, I got two good used car guys,
the rest, you know, and even those guys are inconsistent.
Yep.
Yeah, okay, so take us to prompt number six.
I want to see prompt number six.
All right, so this is again, big thing.
Every dealer wants to know is my advertising working.
It's all digital.
Okay, so the prompt is,
the prompt is analyze my digital performance
for Vin and then the Vin number.
This Vin.
And so it'll tell him exactly, you know,
how it's delivering, whether those,
whether those VDPs are converting
into sales opportunities, real leads, you know,
you know, if he, the dealer gives us more information,
we can show him his cost basis for all of these things.
So, you know, in this case, he's getting, you know,
really good, he's got one open sales opportunity.
This is converting very nicely to leads for him.
He's had a recent activity spike.
This is because he's on a platform of ours.
So it's identifying the risks
and boosting the risk inventory, you know,
and he's got a nice price advantage on the car.
So dealers can really use this to understand
at the, you know, either at the individual Vin level
or the segment level or model level
or overall in their business.
Hey, how's my digital spend actually delivering?
Right, because so much money is wasted, you know,
and it doesn't get to the car.
It doesn't impact the sale.
And this will tell you exactly how.
So again, a huge use case for this
that dealers are using all the time.
You know, and then what I did here is I said,
okay, listen, I've got this risk, you know,
just list for me exactly what units,
new units are on my lot that are at risk.
That's the seventh prompt.
And it was list my risk inventory
and you're basically rating all the vehicles.
You're listing them by what needs to sell.
Yeah, exactly, you know, what their current price is,
their risk score, you know, how long they've been in a lot.
And then the, and this is what every dealer does
because what they tell us is, all right,
tell me my next move.
So the last prompt here is, all right,
develop a price and promotion recommendation
for my risk inventory.
And it'll lay it out for you exactly.
Okay, here are the vins that you don't need to move price.
You're good, you know, but you need to add more,
you know, more VDP traffic in order to move them.
Here are the vins where, hey, you might adjust price
because you're over markets on,
they're not priced forward in the marketplace.
And then, you know, it'll even tell you
which vins to increase price on.
Because often dealers have,
when they have risk inventory, they've marked it down too much
and they've given away margin that they can take back.
And so this gives a dealer a, you know, step by step,
you know, this is what you do.
They can download it, they can share it.
If they're on our platform,
they can actually push buttons and have the machine
actually execute for them, you know, against these things.
So, and that's all dealers want.
They want a quick way to look at the real data
that's driving their business.
You know how hard that is as a business leader.
And what this does is just does it for you and very clear,
just like ChatGDP, very clear.
In fact, it runs on ChatGDP and Gemini.
We use all the platforms and we round Robin.
Yeah, because different platforms have different strengths.
So often ChatGDP is, you know,
their technology is driving the answer.
Sometimes it's Gemini, it tends to be better,
certain things, so on.
So the deal is getting the best of all the platforms.
And, you know, and what they ask before is,
listen, just tell me, you know, what moves to me.
Now I want to step, first of all,
appreciate you showing that,
because that's, you know,
first time I'm seeing the full demo
and it's really exciting.
And I see the potentials.
It's more than just what you just showed now.
I see how this can continue evolving and opportunity
for dealers to have this, you know,
dealer centric, proprietary, you know,
LLM that they can use just for their dealer.
It makes total sense.
Let me take a step back
and put myself into shoes of a large dealer
or a small-day or medium dealer.
But I want to cover all the bases here.
The first thing I'm wondering is
how secure is my data really, right?
Financial statements, all this information,
because it runs on the rails, right?
It runs on other LLMs, like you mentioned,
ChatGBT, Gemini.
So how secure is my information if that is the case?
Yeah, all on our own, some secure data.
So we have their technology,
but it doesn't open up to any of the LLM.
And so we have complete data security for the dealer,
SOC2 compliant, the ultimate.
My CTO partner was head of worldwide security
for Microsoft before we started this company.
So he's a security monster.
And, you know, we've been holding, you know,
proprietary data for dealers for 15 years,
never had a breach, never had a single problem.
So their information is absolutely theirs,
only for their eyes only.
We do not, you know, use their data
on any other learning and so on.
They're completely secure.
We have this massive data set
which we want to make available.
The more dealers who understand
how they have leveraged data to improve their business,
the better market we have, because that's what we do.
And we wanted to create a secure environment,
an automotive rich data environment,
but completely secure for the user
so that they could be free to, you know,
explore their data up against all of our data
and make good decisions without, you know,
opening themselves up to the viability
of opening their data.
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Now, Lynn, have you, has there been something
or some process that you've discovered along this process
or a way that dealers are using this
that is really high value that you didn't expect?
Yeah, what I didn't expect, frankly,
was that rate the VVP.
I thought, because you think merchandising,
everybody knows it's a problem,
but how many times they're actually using that
is quite amazing.
So, dealers, they understand,
listen, currency is a currency and you better deliver
those people to a high quality currency.
So, that and the fact that they have pushed us hard
to boil it down into specific recommendations.
Once they use the platform, they're like, I'm good.
This thing is brilliant.
Just have it tell me what to do.
So, they keep pushing us to just do it.
Like, I get it.
I want to see what it's doing.
I want to lead to the decision,
but then I want it to execute.
And we thought, you know, going into this,
that dealers were going to need a lot more data
and a lot more sort of dance before we execute.
And they're like, no.
I mean, and now what we have in, you know,
for our customers is automatic agentic tasks
where they've, you know,
where we're automatically writing their descriptions
and they've edited how they want that done.
And now it's just executing.
So, they don't even have to think about that anymore.
Yeah, and talk to me when you said executing,
how quick, like what is an onboarding process like here?
Yeah.
So, as you know, I think you'll see,
we're wired into every provider.
So, all the DMS providers, we wire people in every day.
So, all the deal I have to do to link their DMS,
their CRM, their GA, and their, you know, digital data,
you know, their inventory fee provider
is just click through a simple set of, you know,
of just tell us which ones they are.
We onboard, you know, hundreds of dealers a week.
And that'll all get securely pushed into here.
So, now they don't have to ever worry about,
oh, where do I get that piece of information?
I'll be in there.
And, you know, and so the onboarding is very simple.
Generally, all we need is the authorization of the dealer
and it gets done in a day.
I think this problem is a lot of dealers
don't know how to log into GA.
So, sometimes we have to call them up
and talk them through how to give us authorization of the GA.
But, you know, usually that's-
Google analytics.
Google analytics.
Yeah, Google analytics, yeah.
But, you know, we do this.
We've been doing this for 15 years.
We do it every single day.
It's never a problem.
It's a good experience for the dealer.
So, pretty much your vision that you had laid out
months ago to me and I said,
would love to see when it's ready and it's ready,
is that dealers, you know, I pretty much,
I come in the morning, I go in, you know,
I have any questions about my business.
I go into this.
Do you see a world where this is proactively telling you
what I should be doing as opposed to being reactive?
Can I come in and get my to-do list
for the first five things in the morning
that are most important?
Yeah, good morning.
You'll see I've looked through everything
and this is what you need to pay attention to today.
And you just click on it.
Here it all is.
What do you want me to do?
Here's the recommendation.
What do you want me to do?
That's what we've built now into our platform.
Oh, so that's already doing that.
And it's pulling all my DMS data.
Is it pulling my CRM data as well or?
Yeah, CRM, everything.
It's looking at your follow-up rates,
your conversion rates.
If you've got a problem there, it'll tell you.
You know, and that's what the dealer's value
because, you know, as you know,
there's just too many things to do every day
at a car dealership.
Too many decisions to make, you can't keep up, you know.
So if I wasn't exposed to this prior as I have been
and I'm listening, I think there's a part of me
that says it's too good to be true.
Yeah.
And how do you respond?
Or like, what's your, if a dealer right now came on
and said, hey, Len, this sounds too good to be true.
Like, can you like explain, how do you respond to that?
For the people who have used ChatGDP, for example,
if I went on and told you before you ever used it,
oh, this is what it could do,
you just said, that's all paperware.
It's too good to be true.
I use it all day.
I use it all day, every day, for everything.
If my dad asked me yesterday, he's like, do you use,
I was like, dad, do I use ChatGDP?
Do I use ChatGDP?
It's, I talk to ChatGDP more than anyone in my life
at this point.
Yeah.
It's my most trusted advisor
because it gives it to me straight, and I ask it to.
You know, I've trained it to like give it to me.
By the way, we have in our platform,
the dealers who play with us, they can find out,
we have different modes.
We have drill sergeant mode,
and by the way, most dealers select that.
They just want, they just give it to me unvarnished.
We have millennial mode.
Hey, you got a soft pedal, let it go easy.
You know, we've got several tones that it will talk,
talk you through.
What I really love about the car business
is they want drill sergeant.
Just tell me, get me to the facts.
Don't show your code and tell me what to do.
And you'll see, as you know, we've got a wait list for this
and you know, we'll put your listeners
at the head of the line.
So what they can do is go to.
Yeah.
Yeah, I, you know, hey, of course,
cause you've got the, you know, the power guys,
you know, who listen to this podcast, we all know that.
So if they go to lotlinks.com forward slash lot GTP,
L-O-T-G-P-T, they can register there, just, you know,
register as soon as we invite them in,
and that will start happening about a week from now.
We'll start inviting people in
and we'll put your people first
and they can start playing around with it.
And you know, they don't have to take my word for it.
Just go play with it, you know, ask it,
your biggest issue of the day
and see what how it does for you.
I think you'll be impressed.
I appreciate it.
Well, we'll add that in the show notes as well.
So this is, you know, a CDG exclusive wait list,
which we love lotlinks.
So that's L-O-T-L-I-N-X.com slash lot G-P-T.
We'll throw it up in the show notes as well.
So thank you for sending it up for our listeners.
Lenna, I do have a couple more questions before we wrap up.
Who's actually, who do you envision using this in the store?
Is this the dealer principle?
Is this everyone?
Is it the salesperson who's using this primarily?
What happened is we generally have our relationships,
you know, at the owner and GM level,
but as soon as they started listening,
they started, we had to build an invite into our platform
so they can invite their,
hey, my use card guy needs this,
my new card guy needs this, you know?
And so they then invite them,
they can actually control what they see
and they can also share information of our platform.
So, hey, when they get a recommendation is
they can shoot it to the use car part
or to the use car guide to action on.
So it goes pretty deep and, you know, across,
but those are the key positions in the dealership
that really starts with the general manager.
Cause it's a platform that really gets to the heart
of the business, which is, you know,
how do I maintain my volumes and gross?
And that's really what the GM is struggling every single day.
You know, and then it brings you down to the tactics
of how to drive those numbers.
And, you know, so it goes pretty wide in the dealership.
Fascinating.
And before we wrap up on the final question on this is,
I'm literally playing back what dealers have asked me
and I know we'll be asking me after, which is,
and this is the next one, and that is that,
so this is still clearly a pretty nascent product.
I mean, you've worked on it for a while,
but it's been in market not that long.
And so there's definitely some people listening
around saying, I like what I'm hearing,
but I'm going to sit on the sidelines for six months,
for a year, until it matures or develops a bit more.
How do you respond to that?
Like, do you think that that's a wise decision
for certain dealers or do you think they're missing out
on potential?
Yeah, I think for that, yeah.
Well, well, first of all, I want to point out it's free.
So, you know, sitting on the sidelines, you know, go try it.
But what I think is happening is dealers find this
to be an unfair advantage.
Like, it's just simplifying and clarifying key issues
in their business.
And it's just accelerating the pace.
And as we know, everything around us
is moving faster and faster.
Data is so important to our decisioning
and so hard for us to clarify that data.
And so the dealers who are getting with this,
I would say it's the same thing with people
who aren't using Chad GDP and other aspects of their lives.
I mean, I don't know if you're still playing
at no offense to TripAdvisor,
but you're still planning a trip with TripAdvisor.
You're playing in the last century.
So, okay, so, well, you just dropped a massive bomb there
pretty subtly, but you just said it's free,
which I didn't pick up on that, so shame on me.
So, what's the catch, right?
If it's free, how do you make money on this?
Like, what's the long term?
All right, call me crazy and many people do.
But my philosophy is I have this.
If I give it to people and they start to see
the power of the platform,
then what I'm doing is I'm creating
a smarter, more data-driven dealers.
If I meet the average dealer and he's data-driven,
we have a great business.
If he's not there yet, I have a hard time
sort of showing him how our product can make a difference.
So really my motivation is get more people using data,
get more people sort of understanding
the power of this data.
I have a feeling our business will grow
as that marketplace grows.
So that's why we're doing it for free, plus I can.
That's why I'm doing it, I can.
Well, you don't have to convince me on free, trust me.
All of our content is free.
We now have launched literal chat groups
for dealers that are free.
So I love free because free is just,
number one, it aligns with our core values here
as what you're doing is, which is being dealer first
and this is being of transparency.
It's also why I'm asking you these questions
because people are wondering it and thinking it
and it's important that they kind of hear from you.
Yeah, and you would think,
hey, we're in business to make money.
We're actually getting this business
to change how dealers use data information
to propel their business.
I mean, we're on a mission.
I remind people of that every day
and I can tell you that's how they think.
It's the last question is how we're gonna make money on this.
I mean, we've done all right.
Well, you just increased your conversion by like 10x
when you said it's free.
So lotlinks.com slash lotgbt, it's free.
Sign up for it.
Try out and here's the other thing.
One thing I'll point out, it learns.
So the more people who use it,
people are gonna come in and ask it really smart questions.
By the way, there's a feature in it
that shows the hot new questions.
And by the way, if we come up with something
that nobody's ever asked before,
it will learn and perfect an answer.
And then every other deal it gets
to have the advantage of that insight.
So that's why I want more and more traffic on this.
That's why we were so slow to get it to market
because we wanted to learn from the users.
We don't want to sit there in our dark room, like I said,
where I spent my summer trying to dream up what they wanted.
I wanted to give it to them
and have them show us what they wanted
and how they use this in their business.
And just to cover all my bases here, Len,
so given it's free and I'm clearly uploading my data there,
you mentioned it's secure in the cloud,
but is that data, is that shared in any way
with other dealers when I upload data?
Absolutely, it's like, hey, listen, that is a core test.
I'm just trying to cover all my bases
because I just wanna make sure, yeah.
No, they can, let's,
Josie, I think I would last if I did that.
I'd be running out of town so fast,
it's hard to feather, so it is,
100% out.
Wow, well, Len, closing thoughts,
I mean, what is your big vision here as we wrap up?
Yeah, there's a whole doom crowd of,
what's AI gonna do to us,
wait until I guess the nuclear codes?
You know, and there are a lot of people worried,
is this gonna take my job?
You know, as I look at the cardio world,
I don't think it's gonna take a lot of jobs,
I think it's gonna make a lot of people better.
And that's really the promise of this.
So I, there are some categories where you think,
oh man, AI is gonna eat it alive,
but in this case, I think it's just gonna super power,
you know, the instinctual great car people
who run the business and just gonna make them better
and more profitable.
And so my advice is play with it, learn how to use it,
you know, embrace it, it's gonna help you.
This is the category that's really gonna help, so.
Incredible.
Len Short, lot links, congrats on the unveiling
of lot GPT, so you're doing clearly great work
and you have a big vision, so I'm excited to follow this.
And I have a suspicion that our audience
will be very receptive and appreciative
because it seems like you're really doing some great things.
So Len, thank you so much for coming on the show
and presenting this, and I really enjoyed it.
So I'm looking forward to following the journey.
Thank you, sir, for the opportunity, I appreciate it.
All right, hope you enjoyed that episode.
Please give the podcast a rating,
consider subscribing to the show
and check the show notes for links to what we talked about.
Thanks for tuning in, I'll see you guys next time.
About this episode
Len Short, CEO of Lotlinx, introduces LotGPT, an innovative AI tool designed specifically for automotive dealers. This episode dives into how LotGPT addresses key dealership challenges by providing real-time insights into inventory performance, competitor analysis, and actionable recommendations. Len discusses the security of dealer data, the tool's unique capabilities compared to ChatGPT, and why it will be offered for free. With a focus on enhancing dealer efficiency and profitability, this episode showcases the transformative potential of AI in the automotive retail space.
Today I’m joined by Len Short, CEO of Lotlinx. LotGPT is here — and it might change how dealers manage inventory forever.
In this episode, Len Short and I break down the world-first dealer-focused LLM, how it diagnoses inventory issues in real time, the 7 most-searched dealer prompts, and why he’s giving it away completely free.
To try LotGPT for yourself, 100% free, join the waitlist at lotlinx.com/lotgpt
This episode is brought to you by:
1. OPENLANE - The world’s best online dealer marketplace for used cars, bringing you exclusive inventory, simple transactions, and better outcomes. Learn more @ http://www.openlane.com/cdg
2. Amazon Autos - With Amazon Autos, your dealership can reach more buyers, drive more sales, and deliver a modern, more delightful car-buying experience. Learn more @ https://sell.amazon.com/programs/autos
3. Lotlinx - Get the best possible market advantage on every vehicle transaction. Optimize operations and boost profits using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Learn more @ https://lotlinx.com
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Topics:
00:30 How is auto retail evolving?
01:03 What is Lot GPT?
01:44 How does AI empower dealerships?
03:57 Benefits of real-time market analysis?
07:43 Best dealer feedback on Lot GPT?
18:38 How to rate and manage inventory?
20:57 How is user data secured?
23:41 What is the onboarding process like?
33:48 Final vision for AI in dealerships?
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