Yates on AI Search Visibility, Turner on Buy Here Pay Here | Daily Dealer Live
Car Dealership Guy Podcast
Yates on AI Search Visibility, Turner on Buy Here Pay Here | Daily Dealer Live
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Concept
buy here pay here
In a buy-here-pay-here setup, the dealership acts like the lender. The buyer makes payments directly to the dealer instead of a bank.
Concept
real ROI
ROI is a way to judge if an expense is worth it. If a strategy costs money but doesn’t lead to more profitable sales, the ROI is low.
Brand
Porsche
Porsche is a well-known German car brand that makes sports cars. When someone says “Porsche store,” they mean a dealership that specializes in selling and servicing Porsches.
Car
Porsche 944
The Porsche 944 is a classic Porsche sports car from the 1980s. It’s a different kind of Porsche than the 911—more of a front-engine design—and people like it for how it drives.
Company
Slate Auto
Slate Auto is a newer electric-vehicle company in this story. They’re building a facility that helps them customize the look of their electric pickup cars.
Concept
EV
EV means electric vehicle. Instead of using gasoline, it runs on electricity stored in a battery, and that’s a big topic for car buyers right now.
Concept
wrap facility
A wrap facility is where they put the custom vinyl look on the car after it’s built. It helps the factory avoid having to paint the car in tons of different colors.
Car
Toyota RAV4
The Toyota RAV4 is a popular SUV. Toyota is increasing production of it, which matters because dealers rely on steady supply to meet customer demand.
Car
Toyota Grand Highlander
The Toyota Grand Highlander is a larger SUV with three rows of seats, meant for families or anyone who needs extra space. The podcast mentions it in connection with a factory expansion, meaning Toyota plans to build more of these vehicles. That’s why it’s part of the production and investment conversation.
Car
Toyota Camry
The Toyota Camry is a regular-size family car (a sedan) made for everyday driving. It’s often produced in large numbers, so when a factory plans to make more cars, the Camry is one of the models that may be included. That’s why it can be mentioned when discussing production and investment.
Brand
BMW
BMW is a luxury car brand from Germany. When someone mentions BMW in a dealership context, they’re usually talking about selling and servicing BMW cars and SUVs.
Concept
general manager (GM)
A general manager is the top person running the dealership day to day. They oversee how the dealership performs, including sales and service, and they often decide what tools or systems to use.
Term
scheduling tool
A scheduling tool is the software interface that lets customers book service appointments online. In this segment, the AI texts a link directly to the scheduling tool so the customer can make an appointment immediately rather than waiting for a phone call.
Term
AI agent
An AI agent is an automated system that can handle customer requests—potentially including answering calls and guiding callers through options. The speaker questions whether it should be the first responder at a dealership, emphasizing the value of human interaction at the initial touch.
Term
phone trees
Phone trees are the automated call-routing systems that use menus and prompts (e.g., “press 1 for service”). The segment compares AI call handling to traditional phone-tree experiences, implying customers are already familiar with automated routing.
Company
cars.com
Cars.com is a major online automotive marketplace where shoppers search listings and dealers manage advertising. The transcript frames it alongside Google as a key platform where dealerships “live and die” for both sales and service visibility.
Brand
NADA
NADA is a big organization that supports car dealers. Their academy and groups are used for training and sharing best practices.
Concept
SEO
SEO is how you improve your website so it shows up when people search on Google. The speaker is saying SEO is still important, but AI-driven search is adding new rules.
Term
GA4
GA4 is a tool that shows how many people visit your website and what they do there. Dealers use it to see if their marketing efforts are working.
Concept
LLMs
LLMs are the “chatty” AI systems that can answer questions. If you want your dealership to be mentioned, you need to make sure the information the AI uses is available and accurate.
Company
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is one of the AI chat tools people use to ask questions. Dealerships can use it to see what the AI says about them and then work on the information that AI pulls from the web.
Concept
third party sites
AI often uses information from other websites, not just what a dealership says about itself. So you need to be present and accurate on those outside sites.
Company
Reddit is a big online community where people post questions and experiences. If AI is using Reddit content, then what’s being said there about your dealership can affect your reputation.
Concept
loaner cars
Loaner cars are the cars a dealership gives you while your car is in the shop. The dealership then has to decide when those loaners are ready to be sold as used cars.
Term
api
An API is a way for one computer system to get information from another system. If an API is restricted, it can block tools from pulling the data they need.
Term
ftp
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a method for transferring files over a network. The transcript says there’s a workaround where data is dumped out via FTP, which is less automated and flexible than an API but can still move data into a dealer tool.
Company
Over Fuel
Over Fuel is a company that helps car dealers build better websites. The pitch here is that their sites load fast and are designed to show up better in Google so more shoppers actually find and use them.
Concept
fixed ops
“Fixed ops” means the dealership’s service and parts business—like repairs, maintenance, and selling parts. It’s usually where dealerships make a lot of their long-term money after the car is sold.
Concept
oems
“OEMs” are the car brands themselves—like the company that makes the vehicles. Dealership rules and marketing can vary depending on which brand you sell.
Company
Google ads
Google Ads is the service that runs paid ads on Google. If you don’t own the account, it can be hard to see what’s working or switch providers later.
Concept
vdp views
A VDP view is when someone clicks on a specific car listing page. It’s a sign of interest, but it doesn’t always mean they’ll actually contact you or buy.
LIVE
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Daily Dealer Live.
Hi, I'm your host, Sam Darkin.
Thanks for choosing to be here on this Monday, March 30th, a special day, a special week,
especially for my daughter, Carly Dark.
Happy birthday today.
Well, let's get into it.
The dealership playbook is getting split into two right now.
On one side, you've got dealers being told, if you're not showing up in AI, you're already
invisible.
On the other, you've got operators out there making money the old fashioned way, controlling
the deal, the customer, and by even holding partners, marketing partners, to account and
sharing those best practices with others so others can do the same.
Today, we've got both perspectives.
Mike Yates is building AI tools inside a dealership and says the future of demand, it's already
changing.
Tim Turner runs buyrider stores where they don't just sell cars, they are the bank, and
he's focused on performance approvals and real ROI in a tightening economy, including
holding those partners accountable in the marketing sphere.
So what actually matters right now is AI visibility.
Is it getting deals funded?
Is it controlling expenses?
We'll dive into that and more on today's show, but first, let's take a look at today's
auto industry headlines.
All right, kicking things off today with breaking news in the buy sell world, Ed Moore's automotive
group is picking up Porsche, Des Moines, and West Des Moines, Iowa in a deal that's expected
to close April 1st.
If the group's first European luxury franchise and first Porsche store bringing its Iowa
footprint to five stores, the store is also notable in its own right because it opened
in late 25 as the first Porsche dealership in Metro Des Moines since 2008 and the only
one in the state CEO Teddy Morse is pretty candid about what drew him to it.
He's a Porsche enthusiast.
He owns a 1984 944 and he calls the Porsche brand quote a mystical thing.
To find out more about this buy sell activity and more, follow the full tracker at cdgbuysell.com.
And also today, EV startup Slate Auto is opening a $7.8 million vinyl wrap manufacturing
facility in Louisville, Kentucky, which will serve as the national fulfillment center
for its highly customizable all-electric pickup.
The idea is straightforward.
Instead of offering hundreds of paint options on the assembly line, customers choose from
more than a hundred colors and finishes applied at the wrap facility after the vehicle is
built.
The truck itself is being assembled in Warsaw, Indiana.
That's in the Ziggler footprint, love it, and is expected to land in the mid-20K range,
one of only a handful of EVs currently on the market under 30K.
The bottom line, whether the pricing holds is the big question, but if it does, this
is the kind of product that could bring a new type of buyer into the EV conversation.
And wrapping up today's news, Toyota announced a $1 billion investment to ramp up production
of the RAV4, Camry and Grand Highlander at its Kentucky facility.
$800 million will go towards increasing RAV4 and Camry capacity and prep the plant for
Toyota's second Bev and another $200 million to expand Grand Highlander production.
The timing matters, well, because dealers need it.
The 2025 RAV4 has already sold out at most stores.
By the way, we at Ziggler would love more of all the Toyota product.
And then back to it, the plug-in hybrid is hard to find and the 26 model is currently
available only in electrified powertrains.
If this capacity comes online as planned, it could ease shortages on Toyota's highest
demand name plates heading into the back half of the year.
And that is a wrap on today's auto industry headlines.
And hey, welcome back everybody.
As a reminder, today we are streaming as always across all CDG social media platforms.
Post your comments into the chat and we'll bring them into today's show.
We've already got activity online.
Patrick Block Ventures says, Happy National Hot Chicken Day from Nashville.
Had we only known we would have brought hot chicken to the show today,
hopefully my daughter, Carly, is enjoying hot chicken on the birthday.
Igor Kay says, Hello, Sam.
Hello, community.
It's awesome to see everybody here.
And Igor Kay comes back in and says that very big question there on its being under 30K.
Very big question.
Tess also stayed prices under 60K on Cybertrucks, but started at 80K when they made it into production.
So big show coming up today, including we're going to do a deep, deep, deep dive into CDG circles.
We've actually got a guest on today, second up, who will share some conversation coming directly out of the CDG circle community
and a debate going there about how to hold vendor partners accountable in our challenging environment.
So he'll bring that perspective.
JJ says, Hi, Sam.
Hi, back.
Dion Ocio.
Pumped to have you here as well.
So let's dive into today's show.
Let's first up today, Mike Yeats, General Manager of BMW of Bridgewater.
Mike, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Sam.
Happy to be here.
So excited.
Big listener.
Hey, that's cool.
Where do you usually listen?
How are you?
What are your listening habits?
It's in the car listening to you on Spotify.
I love it.
That's cool.
Yeah.
Are you part of CDG circles yet?
I actually didn't.
You're not.
But maybe at some point, you'll join up.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I heard Tim, who's on next, is in there.
So I should check it out.
Yeah, actually, we had a comment.
I think somewhere online, Yossi sent it to me today, where Mike Spiegel, a prior guest,
said, hey, being part of circles, DDL, everything else, it's like a little mini 20 groups, six minutes every day.
And the stuff you walk away from, if you execute on it, it just makes us all better.
And you're about to give us some tips and strategies to be coming better.
So before we jump into the questions for you, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do out there,
and how's biz in your neck of the wood at the BMW store?
Mike Yates, general manager at BMW Bridgewater, been in the car business for 30 years.
Been at this dealership for 27 of those 30 years.
Started out selling cars.
Used car manager, new car manager, kind of took a turn and moved over to fixed, ran service here at the dealership for three years,
and then became the GM in 2016.
So but always involved in IT.
I was in IT before the car business.
So and that kind of will give you a little background into why AI is such a big part of what I do.
How's biz today at your BMW store?
This is excellent.
It's spring here in the Northeast.
We've had a couple of warm days and people are out.
So business is good.
Good. Good. Good.
Well, let's dive into it.
So you've talked about AI tools and you've said, hey, you're not buying AI tools.
You're building them inside a dealership.
Why are most dealers already behind on this in your estimation?
Well, you know, I think there's a couple reasons for, you know, number one,
I think our industry is known for being a little behind at times and especially with technology.
But I think part of what's happened is a lot of people played with AI,
maybe let's say a year ago, maybe two years ago, and it wasn't great back then.
And maybe it made some mistakes.
Maybe they were using it to write emails and it made mistakes.
And I think they kind of shied away from it, but it's gotten so good and so powerful
that I encourage everybody to get back involved if they're not already.
Yeah. So one activity you've recommended, you said, hey, everybody should chat GPT
their dealership and understand what that, you know,
what's different about what shows up today versus back then when maybe GM's first looked at it?
Well, I think this shift from AEO to GEO is pretty dramatic.
Especially in our business and across all these LLMs.
But now these LLMs are generating responses and kind of predicting what you're asking for.
So it's a little more forward thinking than it was before.
AEO was traditionally these answer engines and we were working on answer engine optimization,
but now they're generative.
So now it's evolved to a point now where it's making recommendations,
not just for dealerships, but and I'll give you an example that just came up the other day.
I had a sales meeting a couple of weeks ago and before that meeting I went on GROC
and looked the dealership up and I did a, you know, who's the best BMW dealership in Central
New Jersey on GROC and I don't spend a lot of time at GROC.
So I was a little surprised because we didn't populate as well as I had expected.
So yeah, but what it did provide, once I said, you know, like, hey, I got a great deal from
BMW Bridgewater and kind of trained it a little bit towards our dealership.
Not only did it provide a picture of the front of the dealership,
but it provided a picture of an X3, which it assumed I was looking for.
And then it provided two of my current salespeople as preferred salespeople.
So and how did it find those two salespeople?
And how did it make the jump to the vehicle it produced to you?
And when I looked at where they were cited, it was a dealerator, dealerator specifically.
And there are two of the salespeople in the dealership that have worked really hard
on dealerator to be visible. And I think that's the key point is they're very visible out there
and easy for the LLMs to find.
So I think it's interesting that you mentioned GROC, right? So there are different LLMs,
there's different AI tools you can use for search. So chat, GPT, there's, oh my goodness,
the one I'm just going to think about. Yeah, Gemini, which one do you think is best in our
world and which one are you targeting or driving towards to prepare your dealership to show up
best in? So I've spent a lot of time in open AI, chat, GPT. And I was using open AI before it was
a chat model. So I'm talking 2021, like even back into like COVID. And back then it looked
nothing like what we're using today. Back then it was, it was a sandbox, it would write reviews,
it would write recipes, it was very basic. But I could see back then where it was going. And
I was really intrigued with, you know, where's this coming from? And how's it coming up with this
stuff? And then chat, chat GPT 3 and 4 came out, I think 4 was out in 2023. And, you know, it was
really starting to evolve. And right now to answer your question, it's Claude. Claude is my favorite.
I agree. Why? It's, I think the latest model that just came out, not only is it fast,
but it's definitely, you know, much deeper thinking. And it's, it's advanced. I'm a,
like I said, I'm a chat GPT guy. So I've been paying for chat GPT for years. And just recently
started paying Claude or Anthropic because OPIS 4.6 is just, it's amazing.
So you're a GM who's actually building AI tools. So you mentioned a few of your favorites and why
you're not just buying them. Why build AI tools instead of waiting for a vendor to solve a problem
for you? Well, I, and I'll tell you kind of how it started because we had a shortage of staff in
the service department and in particular in the BDC, and we had a situation where we only had one
person answering the phones. And I actually said to my service manager that morning, I can probably
build a chat, like a voice agent that can answer the phones and get this thing up. And, and I did.
So I built a couple of phone agents and they were, you know, they were capable of answering the phone.
They actually did a really good job. We did end up going with NUMA in the end,
mainly because of all the APIs they already have into the DMS. And, you know, those things were
getting a little more complicated. I got a dealership to run, but it was an exercise. And then that kind
of started the whole process of, you know, we can build some of these tools in-house and we do.
So what's one tool that you've built in-house that is delivering high value to the organization today?
I think, well, the AEO tool that I mentioned in my intake form with you.
So I want to talk about that in just a second. But before we get into that,
you mentioned that you actually unhooked your homemade service call tool you plugged in NUMA.
What made you decide them? I know you said the API integrations. And what's the ROI
been on that tool in service? I'll tell you, it's hard to put a dollar amount for ROI on it,
but I will tell you what's great about NUMA if, you know, if that's okay. You know, I'm not being
paid by NUMA, but I am an advocate. So I think for me and my service manager, the best part of
NUMA is the dashboard and the visibility into what's going on with the phones in our service
department. So prior to NUMA, maybe the service advisor is busy, they got a customer at their desk,
a customer is looking for an update, and they call in and they get voicemail.
That voicemail is a black hole. I can't see the voicemail. I don't know if they listened to it
and deleted it. I don't know if they called that customer back. I don't know anything.
But with NUMA, I got the dashboard up. I can see that that person called in,
and they either did or didn't close it out, did or didn't call the customer back.
But most importantly, NUMA has the ability because they've got access to the DMS.
They recognize that phone number, and they will answer the call with some logic.
They know that that phone number is connected to an open RO, and they will answer the phone and say,
hey, Andrew's busy right now, your service advisor, but I see that you have a car in the
service department. Are you calling for an update? So we've talked a lot on this show about the
CDK wait time quote. They say, hey, in their CDK service sentiment, they said average wait
time in service departments across the country in nine minutes, which is astounding. We talked
about this this past Friday. Does this help alleviate that log jam? And is voice AI, I mean,
to your point, you lost some people, it filled the gap until you had a tool that you could plug in.
And do you monitor your average wait time? And what did that wait time go to from prior to
you plugging in the tool to today? It's probably, and I don't have the exact
number in front of you, it's probably less than three minutes at this point. And we do want
humans answering the phone. We do want the BBC or the service advisor answering the phone,
but Newman's there and is there as a great backup. And it does text the customer as well.
So if they call in and they're looking for a service appointment, they don't get a human,
it will text the customer right away. It will say, do you mind if I send you a text message,
it will send you a link right to our scheduling tool. And they've got it right here on the phone,
they can, they can, you know, go right in and make an appointment.
Yeah, I don't know that we're ready for an AI agent to pick up a phone call at a dealership
first contact, right? Like, there's a business I was calling throughout the weekend. And if I needed
something, the first touch was the AI agent. And I got it, you say a certain word, you press a
certain number, it gets you to a live person. But I just, there's just something about that first
touch to still be human. Is that part of your strategy there thinking, let's let's still give
that human connection from the first touch? Definitely. I think people are getting used to,
you know, we've phone trees have been around forever. You know, good luck getting an insurance
company, getting a person on the phone or, you know, credit card company or something like that.
Good luck with that. On, you know, we're in the service business, we have to answer the phones.
And, you know, obviously, we prefer that one of our people is first touch.
Okay, so you're getting up, you're getting a bunch of, oh, no, yeah, you're getting a bunch
of comments online, just want to share some of those. And then let's go into your self created
tool, this AEO whisper before we do that. Eager K comes in and says BMW is a brand,
it's about to have a lot of brand, new, more existing, redesigned models will be interesting
times for BMW. And then yoga cars is testing the search Gemini list BMW of Bridgewater is first
option while Grocklis Flemington BMW is first option, both have four nine out of five on dealer
radar. Interesting. So I think the question is, is Gemini or any of these tools, what's at
preferencing if it's not rated ratings back? And then yoga car goes on API DMS integration fees
will show dealers what vendors need to pay just to access dealer zone data. I'm all for paying fee,
but some of the fees are 10x what they should be varies by DMS any thoughts or feedback on
how AI is preferencing what options they're showing up in a world where two ratings seem to be the
same. All right, that's a lot of question there, but I would like to answer the one chat about
us and Flemington because as I mentioned earlier, when I went on Grock, I got a different answer
which is expected it's a different LLM. Grock tends to look at dealer radar and it does not
look at Google as seriously, obviously Gemini is owned by Google. So Gemini relies very heavily
on Google's rating and then the tiebreaker becomes the total number of reviews. So that velocity
of reviews and the volume of reviews is super important, especially with Gemini.
Chachi PT also uses those pretty heavily. They consider that to be a really good source to site
as whether or not a dealership is good or not. Flemington's got a great
Google rating as well to write down the street. They're 4.9 and that's not easy.
Here at BMW Bridgewater, I do not have a separate channel for service. So all of our reviews are in
that single channel. We have one Google business profile page. So that 4.9, that's 4.8 depending on
whether you're on cars.com or Google. That's sales and service.
That's legit, yeah. That's sales service combined so you live and die by that both sides.
All right, let's go into AEO Whisper. What was the business need that caused you to say, hey,
I'm going to build this tool and then what is the tool?
Well, I wouldn't say it started out as a business need only because it was a best idea session.
I'm in 220 groups. So I'm an NADA Academy graduate and my dealer has been in the BMW
IBO120 group for many, many years. I'm currently the chairman of the NADA IBO1 BMW20 group.
I'm also a member of INT1, which is an internet marketing, digital marketing group,
which is a great group of very intelligent people on the marketing side.
And there's obviously been a lot of talk in that particular group about AEO, GEO,
and where search is heading because they live and die in GA4. They're very involved in search.
I built this tool to try and win the best idea.
And really what I was trying to show is when you ask these LLMs, like I said before,
you could score really high or show up one time and you rephrase it slightly and you could
totally change. So what I decided to do is just build the tool that ran a multitude of queries
across three different LLMs for a specific dealership and brought that to the group.
And funny story, I didn't win, but I came in second. But I lost a great idea.
So what I think my issue with that with winning is I brought a very complex tool that I spent a
lot of time building and it's not something that someone could take back to the store and go,
hey, I'm going to build a tool. It's not replicatable.
Right. But what I did find was there was a really good business case there for the tool
and for dealers in general. I mentioned before we got on the show here that you had Dave
Spahnikey, I believe, hopefully an importer. You need a marketing, I think.
Yeah. And he talked about doing 250 queries about each dealership every day and looking for
patterns. And that's really why I built this tool. I'll run our dealership through a daily,
I'll run competitors through a daily and it has questions about new car,
questions about used car, questions about service across three of the big players,
which is Gemini, Anthropic, and Claude, and Chappatipiti. So do you sometimes find things that
just surprise you as you're running the queries? What's something recently you've discovered
that you've had to take action on? I think what we're starting to see and as I mentioned earlier
in the show, this generative AI piece, I think it's becoming really important that we talk to
our web providers. And I know our hands are tied with the OEMs telling us who we have to use and
what our websites look like. But I think it's becoming important that we make sure that our
VDPs have got the schema necessary for the LLMs to see them. Because I think where this is going
is that these LLMs are going to start presenting the cars that you have in inventory. And I think
that's kind of where this is headed. So how does a dealer get ahead in this kind of race to
showing up in this generative AI world? I think what's most important is finding out where you are.
When we looked at, as somebody that and most of us dealers, SEO was the big thing and looking at
your GA4 and your search console and all that, those are important things. But they're important to
have a benchmark and to kind of know, you know, is there a trend? Are you going up or down? Where's
the consumer moving? And are we there where we need to be? I think the same thing is true with
AEO and GEO. I think you, us as dealers need to know, are we visible? And if we're not, how do we
become visible? And I think that's, you know, that's the most important aspect of this.
So you created this tool and I love, by the way, the premise of this. You went into a 20 group,
you showed this tool that was super complex, took some time to create, came in second, maybe just
because, you know, it was not repeatable for everybody sitting in the room. But give us
something that is repeatable to our listening audience today. I think dealers have the same
concern you had before having this tool. What are three pieces of information? Or three things that
dealers or you are doing to better prepare for GEO and AEO as a result of this whisper tool?
What are you doing? What are three tips? Well, I think three tips for other dealers out there.
Start going in these these LLMs, start going, go into chat GPT or quad, whichever one you like,
and just start asking the questions about your dealership. Start there. Just, you know,
who's the best BMW dealer in New Jersey? Like, just start, you know,
broad and narrow it down. Just keep asking these questions. That's what the consumers are doing.
And then are you linking the answers back to the source and then saying, hey, as an example,
if Dealerator ends up being the source for one, hey, we need to make sure we show up better on
on that site. I've been really focused on Google. And, you know, that goes back a couple years
when we were 4.7 and I said to the team, I want to be a 4.9. That's the direction the store is
going in that these are all the things that I think we need to improve on. And, you know,
review count, obviously trying to get more reviews. But at the end of the day, you just
got to do the right thing for our customers. It's customer service. We've got to do a good
job. We got to look at our processes. We got to make sure that we're taking care of our customers.
And most importantly are people. I mean, it's the biggest asset in the store here is really my staff.
And, you know, I truly believe that if they're happy, they're going to make our customers happy
and then our reviews are going to be good. So a lot of the sources for some of this AI
search ends up being third party sites. I do want to bring in a great comment from Paul Salisman. He
says, hey, LLMs don't get magic access to every reviewer forum site. They can only use what's
public or specifically licensed. And big platforms are putting up walls to generate revenue from the
AI companies. Talk to us about that. What have you found as you've done your research and work to
increase the way your dealership shows up in AI search? I think he's absolutely right.
They are, they're getting information from Better Business Bureau. Dealerator, like I said,
some of these forums. Reddit. Reddit's a big source that gets cited quite a bit, especially on the
Google side. How does the dealership show up on Reddit? That's an interesting, I've heard that a
couple of times. I haven't done this, but I've heard that some dealers have Reddit accounts
and they will go in there and interact with the forum and, you know, maybe mention that their
dealership is a good dealership to go to. I'm not saying that that's a good tactic.
Like a role of marketing, right? You go have an organic conversation. It's generated.
It sounds like AI engines. It will be like a black hat tactic, maybe, but I do know there are some
people that are doing that today to make sure that they're visible on Reddit. Because Reddit is a
big source and I'm sure everyone out there has realized in traditional Google searches, Reddit,
lots of cases are now on page one and that never used to be the case.
Interesting. So let's transition a little ways from AI search and GEO and let's talk a custom
GPT that you created for service warranty questions. What was that and what were you looking to solve
with that tool? Okay, so my service manager and I realized that our service advisors and technicians
were asking our warranty admin coverage questions and it was pretty constant. The service advisor
would have this unique situation with a car and was just trying to figure out if it was covered
or not and maybe he couldn't get in touch with our warranty admin. So they would call and ask
my service manager, Jeff, who's my right hand man and I decided to build this custom GPT and
187 page warranty policy and procedure manual from BMW and told it you do not have access to the
internet. This is your source of truth and you are going to be asked questions by technicians and
service advisors about coverage. Basically, we call it ALI 2.0. My warranty admin's name is
ALI so everyone in the dealership was given access to ALI 2.0 and it gets used pretty often. It's
also being used by other dealerships who I gave access to as well. It's very helpful and it was
a great tool and it was not difficult to make. So go ahead. Give us the three steps that you
took. You talk about you fed it the guide. You told it not to use anything external.
What format or was it open AI? What did you use to house it? Do you purchase a subscription and then
you hand out logins to it? How does that work for a dealer looking to do something similar?
So a custom GPT is pretty easy, especially these days. It's in chat GPT so I'm in open AI
and as a paid open AI user you can create custom GPTs and in that custom GPT you've got the ability
to upload numerous documents and there's a description box if you will where you basically
give it the guardrails, tell it who's going to use the tool, what it should and shouldn't do
and it's really not difficult and then once you publish it you get a link and then you just
share the link with people and it's not locked down. It's accessible on the internet. You just
put in the link and as long as that person is logged into chat GPT they don't need a paid
account. They just need to be logged into it so that they can access the tool. Yeah I think that's
very cool. Thanks for sharing that with us. So last tool up then we got a lot of great comments
online and then we'll bring you back in for the round table here at the very end. So you also
built a tool. Say it again. I said we're coming to a close. I feel like I didn't get through
almost but we're not quite yet. Not quite. You got some good stuff here. You got a lot of good
stuff. So you also built a tool to analyze used car inventory. Yeah. Tell us about that tool and
what's an insight that surprised you from that. Okay so this started out. One pain point especially
in a BMW dealership is loaner cars. Yeah. And the disposition of the loaner cars when they come out
my core used car manager right and that's been like that forever. So my service manager as I
mentioned Jeff and I he's also involved in this as well. We set out for our most recent BMW 20 group
to win the best idea with a loaner car tool and knew that if we could solve the loaner car problem
that you know we probably would win the best idea. So we set out to build a tool that looks at
what's currently in the loaner fleet and makes a determination as to when that car should come out.
Not based on how long it's been in there. Not based on how many miles necessarily it has but also
take into account the trends in you know is it seasonal if you put in an X3 should it come out
in the fall. So it starts to make these predictions based on demand, demand cycles,
seasonality, everything interesting. Yeah and it looks at what we already have in the used car
fleet or used car inventory. So if we gave him 10 X3s last month and maybe he didn't sell them
it'll look at that and say okay maybe it's not a great time to pull an X3 out right now
but it's also looking at maybe not taking it out at the end of the month maybe in the middle of the
month it makes sense for this particular car and the more the tool is used the smarter it gets
because it also looks at the cars that are being sold out of used car and it'll look and say well
that car came out and got sold in seven days. So let's start looking at you know maybe some more
those should go in and then it looks at the new car inventory to see what we have on deck to go in
and then starts to predict what should go into the fleet so it becomes this full circle tool.
And when you went to create that it wasn't the same type of scenario you created your own
GPT that engaged with your inventory that way or how did you create this tool?
The particular one is a little more complex this is a there's a whole series of really
you know complex decision making going on here. This is done in a tool that's called N8N Nancy
the number 8 Nancy which is a workflow tool and it allows you to employ a bunch of different AI
agents to you know one for the new car inventory analysis one for the use car you know or the
loaner fleet analysis and then one for the use car fleet. How long did it take to create that tool?
You know it happened very very quickly honestly it came together quickly primarily because
we've got some you know some experience in putting tools together like this it did morph
into a use car tool though so started out as loaners that was the you know the real
pain point we were trying to fix and then as this tool evolved Jeff and I kind of realized
you know it doesn't matter if it's a loaner or a use car an inventory the math is pretty much the
same. Yeah is this car hot right now and essentially what we do is we just we pull the
the V auto feed into the tool and it looks at the trend it looks at where the car is priced
it makes predictions based on you know day supply in the market that kind of stuff and it will
actually make recommendations to raise prices on some cars that are in inventory for my use car
manager it will you know more often than not say this car is priced a little too high I think
you know you need to to drop this because the holding cost is is eating away and you know
it's time to get this car out of here. I think what's cool about it as we've really started using it
here in the dealership is it's not looking at a hard 30 day turn hard 60 hard 90 or whatever
it's really looking at when it makes sense and maybe that car should be gone at 45 maybe maybe
it should maybe it's okay to keep it around maybe it's an m3 that's got $10,000 in margin and we're
going into spring and you know a 60 day turn would have you know you would have lost. Yeah so it's
interesting obviously you're savvy enough to be able to create some of these tools you're ideating
different business needs but different business cases that would benefit from it you're yielding
benefit from that. One of the big debates in automotive today is access to data it's integrations
it's api we broke a story with Cox uh well didn't break it there it was out there a couple weeks ago
where Cox basically was restricting uh uh access to MMR we believe we've been told Kelly Bluebook
to another uh competitive uh a tool that's competitive the auto and dealers are like hey
we should still be able to have access to this we're trying to understand both sides a little
bit better so no judgment there did you have any issues on the vauto side getting the data into your
tool uh did you actually have to set up an api or were you able to do it was there kind of a
work around to that? There is a work around and it's an ftp so having the data dumped out you
know via ftp um they there is a way from what i understand to get an api into vauto well i know
there is um but it's a it's a very difficult process and it's through Cox Automotive they've
got a developer platform um where they you know obviously it's important to them to make sure that
you are keeping the data secure as well. Yeah they have a lot of responsibility as do you right
so what what do you see the future of ai creation tools and as it relates to data because you can't
create a tool unless you have the data to analyze with the tool do you think it's going to get tougher
do you think there will be better standards set up for those apis or do they already exist today?
I think there'll be better standards and it'll be everyone's going to have to play nice at some
point because these ai tools are you know they're exploding and you know i understand Cox Automotive
and some of these other big players are going to try and protect their data but at the end of the
day i'm only looking for the dealerships data i just you know i want access to my data or more
you know more readily access to my data. But it's an interesting conversation and debate where does
your data begin and stop who owns the data and who should have ready access to it right so when you
think of a tool and i don't care if it's Cox's MMR kbb i don't care if it's your client set
a lot of that data is protected by federal law right we have a responsibility under the
safeguards act and elsewhere to protect npi non-public information but but but there is a tug
of war behind who can use it and then who can evaluate it and it's not the data itself that
is valuable it's the insights that we glean from it so do you have any comment to data
providers and aggregators that we work with within automotive about making that data more easily
accessible to you and dealers like us that are looking to implement ai tools like this
yeah i'll i'll speak to the npi first um i am not and have not put any customer information
or npi in any tool i'm i'm not saying that you know that it's not protected with a paid account
because i think um if you go into chat gpt and you ask it is this if i put something in here is it
secure or you go on uh anthropics website and ask those questions about security uh one of them
and i won't name which one came back and said well we haven't you've been breached yet and that
you know that doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence yeah that's not even you know as of
today we we've haven't been breached well that you know that's not good um but like i said i'm not
at a point where i'm comfortable with customer data anyway with with any of these you know tools
that's why you know a used car tool i mean what's the worst that could happen my my competitor
somebody hacks in and finds out that like everything else is public everything else is on
my website of course so you know i'm not concerned about that kind of stuff yeah all right so uh
we're going to bring you back as part of the round table uh mike yates general manager bmw
bridgewater absolutely appreciate the conversation today on creating ai tools and thinking about how
you show up in agentik ai and an ai driven search world uh you gave some really cool insights that
i think are valuable to us dealers and as part of the round table i want to bring you back and get
your insight yeah you have the ability to create all these tools you've learned it but where should
a dealer that is a little bit more reluctant start and we'll get that perspective back as part of
the round table mike yates thanks for being on the show and sharing your perspectives
thank you sam appreciate it i'll see you at the end we'll see you back all right so a ton of great
comments online uh yoga car says ai tools are new microsoft office suite for any business to help
you make decisions easier uh a ton of great participation online thank you for uh for posting
your comments in patrick block ventures data providers need to ensure reliability security
and scalability ai is too hit or miss but the ability to prototype and speed to develop is
making it too big to ignore we're gonna talk over fuel right now today's episode is brought to you
by over fuel most dealership websites well let's be honest they suck slow clunky they're hated by
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for supporting today's comment including that great conversation we just had on all things ai
search from a gm actually creating tools that are helping him to better show up online for his
dealership better evaluate and recommend use car inventory and also even give tools to technicians
and other in the service department to deal with questions that are in a big massive guide nobody
wants to read through completely anyway so props to over fuel for supporting the content today
and we're gonna turn straight into our second conversation today now up tim turner regional
manager and partner of buy rider tim welcome to the show hey thanks for having me appreciate it
we're excited to have you here all right before we dive into the question you
which is you're a part of cdg circles and you had a debate within cdg circles recently we want to
have you bring that out to this group here but before we do that tell us who you are what you do
you're a regional manager and partner of buy rider and how's bids in your world so business
is looking up we're having a great month this month it's been a little tough in the buy here pay
here world uh the last year or so but things are trending up and so we're excited about that
i've been in buy here pay here for about 23 years now in the entire time who's been spent with
buy rider my my partnership role isn't with the buy right organization itself the actual store
it's one of the businesses that our organization owns just want to make that clear my role day
today really is driving leads everything related to marketing sales training around that
and yeah it's been a great 23 years it's a great business to be part of i also own a digital marketing
agency it's a small agency serves the mid ohio valley a couple states around ohio
and the two of those things have gone hand in hand and so it's been it's been an interesting journey
you know it's always interesting to me in in in automotive so you're a partner you've had a
long career in automotive in a very narrow segment of automotive right buy here pay here buy rider
whatnot and it's it's it's fascinating all the the niche businesses and and kind of you know
vendor type things that pop up around that right um so that that that brings us to where we were
today um so you're in a cdg circle tell us about the circle some of the people who are in it how
often you engage with it and and then we'll have you share the question or the comment that was
posed posed that you engaged with yeah cdg circles has been invaluable um so for the first probably
couple months i was in there i mean two three hours a day and so probably a little bit too much
i mean morning evenings i mean it's just it really is you mentioned that it's kind of like
an ongoing 20 group it really is the the same stuff you would speak about at a 20 group that's
what the circles are broken into so marketing technology fixed ops um it gets as specific as
rural markets um we have independence everybody's broken into you know their oems and so it's nice
because you know at a dealership you get busy five six seven hours you get slammed but you
still want to go back and catch up on what was being discussed um and it gives you the platform
to do that and so um and to get really hyper specific but also connect on an individual level
you have multiple people reach out directly about something that you bring up they say hey i'd like
to hear more about that now you get to go ahead and you know kind of sidebar that the way you would
you know at the bar after what and one of the biggest challenges i think is there's so much
conversation there's so many topics going on it's tough to like pick one to engage in and then
learn from it and then execute on it an automotive i think a difference maker in automotive is speed
to execution you know to your point a 20 group meeting you go to maybe once a year you talk
about a bunch of different topics you come back try to implement with this you can immediately
implement and then you can get feedback from the group on how the implementation goes real time
and so i think there's faster speed to execution on it all right so let's set this problem up
you managed uh nearly roughly two million bucks a year in google ads and and you popped up in a
group where there were there was conversation around attribution lead attribution and you said hey
digital lead attribution is tough and it's super easy for a lot of these marketing vendors
to manipulate attribution across google ads ga and crm reporting well tell us more about that how
how is it easy to manipulate that well so it depends on the dealer right so like like we're
just talking with mic mic is obviously an expert with ai and that's how they're able to develop
the tools when it comes to digital marketing it feels like a lot of the dealers not just in
circles just people have known over the years from ownership on down they have different levels of
understanding but also interest in understanding what's happening with their marketing spend
and some people despite how how many resources there are to evaluate your digital marketing
spend you know in 2026 still are at risk of being taken advantage of and so we had somebody who
mentioned hey guys you know we're using a new performance max campaign so for you know everybody
online is probably familiar if you're not just display basically within google ads and we're
getting our leads for a buck 50 piece uh combined between i think it was between search and uh
performance max and we're like a dollar 15 a lead like i don't i don't think that's accurate and so
you know somebody came right out uh one of the more vocal members in that particular group and
this was in a growth and marketing group and they said hey man that's bs there's no way you're
getting good leads for a buck 50 piece through google ads um how do you know that's what you're
getting that's what they told us you know they showed us they showed us the conversions and so
it kind of went into that conversation of like listen if you're just trusting what your marketing
agency is telling you um you're at risk of losing a lot of money but also um you shouldn't have to
it's so easy to avoid these things it's sort of sort of devolved into well how do we do those things
and it turned to kind of into a really a kind of a 10-part conversation about how to protect your
spend so okay all right we'll give us some tips today all right if we feel like it's tough to
really prove out that cost per lead and manage the spend what tips should a GM dealer owner
operator take into those conversations with uh the digital lead providers regarding uh
digital spend managing it what are top tips so i'm surprised we still have to say this in 2026
but you should own all your accounts um i still run into dealers who you know a marketing agency
to create a google ads account with a crate they're made of ad account form and give them
some more love access sometimes sometimes they're just relying on just the third party reporting
so something they set up to work or even something uh uh you know this is this is proprietary reporting
so yeah place to start is make sure you know with google ads man that you own those accounts that
you give the agencies access to those accounts yeah so start there and from there it jumps into once
you have access to the account learn how to use it right learn how and if you have to use a third
party use an auditor people auditors are expensive um but you can go on linkedin and you can find a
trusted reputable you know digital marketing to google ads expert who come in and they'll audit
your account for you especially if they have the understanding listen i'm not trying to switch
this is about you earning my business i just want an extra set of eyes on this and so they can take
a look at what your spend is where every dollar is going and tell you what your true attribution is
what is your true lead to sale what is your true cost for sale um junk conversions being reported
you know sometimes dealers will hear well i'm getting 200 leads per month but those leads will be
you know clicks for directions yeah like the calls they're all mixed together since they don't
understand the difference between the value of a get me financed click versus hey just hey get
in touch a evaluate my trade lead versus where are you located and so those are a few um i could
probably you go on you you also said you you also recommended as part of the conversation
you should mystery shop 20 leads and you said track and score everything as part of that you
listed four different things you should gauge or look at when you're mystery shopping those leads
what what should i be looking at so when you mystery shop your leads now that that conversation
was part of holding the agency accountable that was also a conversation about holding your sales
people accountable too right and so make sure you're getting a return on your investment on those
leads but i think it's the stuff we all know speed of contact um the consistency of contact
but you know if you submit a lead uh through you know uh google ads or through something else
and it shows up um as a different type different part of that lead journey you want to be able
you want to be able to that uh to add some level of attribution to that to where even if it's not the
last point of contact even if it's not last quick attribution that it's still part of your
lead journey throw you know a tool like clairvoy or something similar like that to where you know
the money that you spent at least touched that lead so if you determine through this process
some of these analyses you're getting uh bad reporting from your agency or from your teams
even what's the first thing you should do to fix that today so you know i think you have your
auditor on the phone with you a good auditor will partner up with you they won't just give you the
report and go hey go hit your agency and because i think a really intelligent agency can talk their
way out of just about anything sales of the big words i mean they really can they can explain
to you why what you think you see isn't you know the reality of things but a good independent auditor
will sit down with them and go no that's not actually true you have that set up incorrectly
yeah and then from there back into let's you know if we're going to partner up on this
let's figure out what's working right let's take my sold data let's upload it let's create intelligent
audiences let's prevent you know let's use restrictions to prevent currently sold customers
from cost to me clicks searching for oil changes and if we're going to be partners let's make sure
that the money i'm spent is going towards sales and not just i've seen people have you know 5 000
vdp views you know in 10 leads it's not good quality traffic what are you paying for are you
paying for traffic are you paying for leads are you paying for sales unless you're using that offline
data to work with your agency partner to make your spend as intelligent as possible your
hemorrhaging money yeah yeah that is that is that that is uh it's an interesting perspective
what do you say to a dealer listening and watching the show who says hey look um you know
ai is great for mike in his dealership um you're concerned about how you're showing up ai related
for your dealerships in the buy writer world mike's a franchise bmw dealer your buy writer buy
here pay here used buy here pay here used is more about just converting customers to walk through
the door what do most people miss about the buy here pay here business that says hey ai is crucial
it's important and i need to i need to watch how we show up how how leads flow and convert
yeah as it relates to ai you know somebody searching for bmw is going into their ai tool
whatever chat gbt cloud whatever what's the best bmw dealership near me what's the best deal on
help me you know get the best deal whatever it is would buy pay here a lot of times people are
just they're curious about how the process works what is buy here pay here am i going to get rude
is it you know is it still a an intelligent way to buy a car in 2026 what and so they're they're
really looking about the financing and so um not at the scale that mike has but within our
particular area with buy writer our franchise we've tried to go in and ask the tools questions
and like i said we're not a level mike but hey how does buy here pay here work and then later on
coming back to one i bought a car from buy writer and i had a great experience and we're trying to
like feed the information into it not even knowing if that was impacting the results but
i think that's the differences rather than just looking for a brand they're looking for the finance
product itself yeah yeah yeah very cool well i i absolutely appreciate you coming on to show
your perspective uh tim turner uh regional manager partner buy writer uh in circles and the conversations
have gone there in the mini 20 group as you talked about we'd love to bring mike back on mike yeats
back in for a little round table conversation we've been wrapping up our shows with this so
again uh tim turner thanks for being thanks for being here so um so it's interesting both of you
have two very different types of businesses uh franchise new bmw and buy writer actually eager
came in uh to the comment says complete different customer base buy here pay here dealer dynamics
um what do you say let's start with this mike the question i asked what do you say to a dealer
that says hey mike is thinking about ai he's creating tools and solutions to help in his business
i can't do that you know i'm at step zero you're way ahead what's your message about where i should
start as a dealer that just doesn't have that experience yet and then i'll ask you as well tim
mike i think that you know the answer to that is just start just start doing something like
why is this not going away step one step one today is is to go on claude like just start there
just start asking it some questions try and understand what this thing's doing you know
please you we're at the point now where you're either going to consume ai or you're going to
create ai and and somewhere in between there you should at least understand what's going on
because it's it's not going away and you know if you look at let's just take the internet
as an example real quick and i'm sorry i can ramble on i'm sorry tim by the way tim great
job dude um but you know i had the internet uh at home in 1995 and today it's not that much
different it's just a whole lot faster but where look at where ai is coming two years i mean this
is a massive exponential growth in in a in a disruptive tool so it's a my answer is simple
just get in there do something yeah tim you provided some insights and feedback some tips
substrat you within the circles group you know not everybody has the tools to adequately
analyze their their spend cost conversion and all that um where do you start so this ties in
exactly with mike just said you know you said where to start pick a problem right just pick a
specific problem and so marketing was a great place um and so if you have results from your ad
agency upload them to gemini upload them to claw and just tell them exactly what you're spending
what you're doing and ask them to hey i'm not a marketing expert you are what what i'll be asking
my marketing agency how do i hold them like that how do i avoid being taken advantage of um you
know there's all those specific problems we're going to do in dealership you know we used chat gpt
to help us evaluate reconditioning costs across you know 400 different types of used cars where's
my warranty costs going where's my policy costs going what are the most affordable cars out there
to service if they're 10 years old and we dumped it all in again known npi all just standard
information in a kickback said hey stop buying these cars i said i don't want to but and was it
right by the way unfortunately because it was a lot of stuff in our guys like to buy um you know
journeys no fat you know yeah so it's interesting you mentioned uh you mentioned a comment earlier
tim uh buy here pay here you it's a subprime customer you're helping people in that journey
in their credit journey to get better so that they can go buy other vehicles but you also
probably get your fair share of customers that are frustrated right and we'll go online and
probably post things that would hurt the ai search how do you figure out where to invest your time
in a buy rider world and well not even buy rider in a subprime world so that you show up right and
well in a gentic search and and ai search so part of it is drowning out the bad noise with good
noise you have to have as much good original content out there as possible and so when we
do reviews with our customers we make sure we get a photo with them we make sure they use our name
the dealership name it still makes sense to use keywords within or even now you don't want to
coach somebody along necessarily but it doesn't hurt to say hey could you please mention you know
these things um and i think i think and then having a really good answer that's not argumentative
and defensive when you do get the bad reviews because you're not responding to the reviewer
right you're you're responding to everybody else that reads it and the ai that reads it and so
yeah well i'll tell you what to both of you we just thank you so much for being on the show today
i know our round table ended up being short it always is by the way we have such great conversations
mike each general manager of bmw of uh it just it bridge water it just lost my screen here and
then tim turner regional manager partner of buy rider thank you both for being on the show today
sharing your perspective as part of our round table thank you both thank you sam happy birthday
to carly i forgot to mention hey thank you thank you yeah the happy birthday thank you i'm gonna go
getting nashville hot chicken sandwich all right enjoy one for us all would you tim thank you
and to end attempt thank you for sharing the power of the cdg circles it is really cool when
you think about the power that that has for dealers to connect on ideas to share those ideas
executing in real time and to you our daily dealer live listening audience thanks for watching
for commenting in the chat where we break down the biggest moves in the car business as they
happen don't forget we're here live every monday wednesday friday that means next up wednesday
one p.m eastern so if this is your world then we sure hope it is hit like hit subscribe turn on
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everybody
you
About this episode
BMW Bridgewater GM Mike Yates and BuyRider partner Tim Turner debate what dealers should focus on right now: AI visibility and lead accountability. Yates explains why he builds in-house AI tools—covering AI search/GEO tactics, voice backup for service phones, and custom GPTs for warranty Q&A—plus an inventory/loaner pricing workflow using Vauto data. Turner shifts to buy-here-pay-here realities, arguing dealers must protect ad spend in Google Ads/GA4 attribution and verify lead quality via mystery shopping and audits. The roundtable closes with practical “start today” steps for both AI adoption and marketing governance.
Original notes
Today's show features:
- Mike Yates, General Manager of BMW of Bridgewater
- Tim Turner, Regional Manager / Partner of Byrider
This episode is brought to you by:
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