Show notes
To get a demo of how Accu-Trade works with Service Drive:https://www.accu-trade.com/contact/Speaker 1: (00:00)Good afternoon, everybody. And welcome to this week's vendor with Robert Holland said good day, Bob. It's been a while. It's been a couple weeks. I know you'reSpeaker 2: (00:09)I knew my friend. I caught the, I caught the stink. This thing is not a joke. It's like for real buddy. And when you're 70 years old, like hits you in the nose, it's like getting a punch. First time you get smacked in the nose. When you're in seventh grade with the first real fist fight, you follow me. you get that stinger. You know what I'm saying?Speaker 1: (00:31)Whether you gotta take, if you gotta take a break to you know, we'll be fine. I'm sure we'll get through this. There's lots on the go. I was just commenting. I was just commenting that you had at one of those lucid motors, electric cars through the lanes the other day,Speaker 2: (00:46)FirstSpeaker 1: (00:46)One I had seen come up for wholesale. So that's prettySpeaker 2: (00:48)Cool. Yeah. Yep. Everything's moving around. There's no question about it. So people buy it. They can make a profit everybody's over word. They gotta, you know, a lot of people take a little, take a little profit and run, man. You know what I mean? Nobody's committed that any of these junks, you know, it's amazing. So just a funny side story quick, Shawn, just to start, right? So I've been doing this for a long time and everybody gets sick of hearing that, but it's true. It's I'm over 50 years doing this. And first time this has ever happened. I mean, we used to go through a period where we get cars stolen off trucks, cars out of auction, you know, things stolen replated whatever. Last night we had a, one of our guys pinched a, a, like a next to new Volvo, a 20, 22 Volvo got traded at Lexus store.Speaker 2: (01:40)So he, he grabbed the keys, took it out and he's taken our, one of our attorneys to dinner last night, this, his birthday. And Mr. Frankenstein, Hank Stein, Hank, the best attorney in the United States or Canada, by the way. And you know, they come out from having dinner and they had the car park right in front of the restaurant and it's stolen a 20, 22 vavo. Now I thought they were playing with me when it, when, when I heard they, you know, car had stolen. Cause when you stop and think about this in my entire life, you know, we've had all kinds of things stolen, but we ain't never had a Volvo stolen. Like who's stealing a Volvo. . I mean, you ain't parting the Volvo route, right? It's not getting exported. It's not going into container to vena a Whaler or something. It's it's, it's a, a Volvo that got stolen in front of the restaurant. I don't know. Maybe that's not funny to me. It's hilarious. It's not funny. We got a car stolen. It's a 60 car, right. I'm trying to, I can't wait to find out who stole it. And what's the reason behind it.Speaker 2: (02:48)Like, it's not like it's a civic, you know, type something or other we're they're gonna chop it up and put it in a, in a, you know, port the thing out. It's a so well, I,Speaker 1: (03:01)I got a Volvo. Well, it brought up a bad memory for me. I got my Volvo stolen story for you then. So we had the Speaker 1: (03:10)Well, I, I agree. So these our yard manager opened up the gates for the auction cuz the snow plow was coming in cuz it was wintertime and he opened it up at five in the morning, about five 30 in the morning. Some guys came in, stole an old Volvo station wagon. Used it to grab moreSpeaker 2: (03:25)Of those. That's that's different. They stole a car, they didn't steal a Volvo. They stole, they stole a, a car. You follow me. That's true. But when you're at something late model, there's gotta be a reason behind it. You got, you got something going on, right? Ain't nobody still Google. The number of cars vavo is the last manufacturer to have cars stolen. It's like out a hundred thousand. I would agree. It's less than 1%. okay. I'm sorry. I'll just,Speaker 1: (03:53)I'll just no, no, no. I'll just finish off my story. So we ended up the, well, the police found the Volvo weeks later, months later, even in the back of the woods started right up. It was used in some sort of ATM Grabb one of those old cash machine ATMs of a convenience store. Oh I love it. Ice or whatever, gave it back to us. And put it through the lanes and it brought the same money that it was worth. What months laterSpeaker 2: (04:17)As cars normally do. That's why it's comical.(04:20)When I listen to people, fist fighting over a CR or a PDR or some sort of something that's wrong with the car and you know, give it back and arbitrate it. And it's absolutely comical, but it's, it's almost like chisel and granite when something's wrong, rather than everybody off in the chain of command, they wouldn't answer the phone. He doesn't do anything. The time is up 10 days is over. Just go sell the car again. It I'm telling you that more than 60% of the time, the car brings as much or more money and everybody's temperature can go down and you don't need to take Prozac. And you know, like all kinds of things, man, you know, get over it and just like go do it again, put it outta your mind. And everybody stays normal. It, it happens all the time. In fact, it's a high percentage of times a car brings more, you know what I mean? I don't know how we got on that, but it's that's been my experience.Speaker 1: (05:17)Well, and I was kind of briefly chatting with you about before the call about how dealers seem to be putting vehicles up on multiple different marketplaces, trying to get the money. And you said, well, it's all about relationships. Or the lack ofSpeaker 2: (05:32)We're gonna have to go down that rabbit hole different time because that, that requires like a whole different mindset. It's where, you know, you have a lot of guys try to get the last 15 cents for a car. And in the process of doing that, they get less because when you actually have a relationship with people that you're doing business with and you need to be at the, you know, like you need something to happen, you need another for grand to make a deal and you got a relationship. I can only tell you hundreds of thousands of times where somebody that's doing business with us that really needs something to make a deal. We absolutely will do it with our eyes closed and nothing to talk about. That don't happen when, you know you're, whoing a car out to 50 different places and there is no reciprocity.Speaker 2: (06:17)That's a whole separate issue. Probably a bad topic to get onto today you follow me. But I think if anything happens to be an Axiom in the business that we're in that turns out to be one that is almost never broken. You follow me where you're actually doing business with people you can trust that actually are not scam artists that really do need help and they can reach out and actually find that help at will. You know, it, it's, it's a different circumstance. That's a whole different topic today. Shawney I was thinking about just bringing up the topic that, you know (06:57)Brian Kramer has finally been landed to lead Accu trade, which to me is a phenomenal thing. I've been talking to Brian for probably a year or so.Speaker 2: (07:10)Following how they've actually used our tool in their dealership to, you know, we have a lot of dealers at this point in large dealer groups that are turning out to be the cream of the crop because of using our tool in comparison to other stores in their groups. And what we're finding is that when it's used the way we designed it to be used for communication capability for insurance, for, you know the ability to actually help a salesperson and a consumer, as well as the manager to understand, you know, catter dog DNA what is actually a fair price for something and rationalize it in a way that is it's not just verbal, it's visual and then it's factual and then it's scientific by the time you get to the leveraging the EKG or what we call the O B D Tel, right?Speaker 2: (08:08)All of these things when they actually are used in a consistent manner incrementally, the rooftop actually starts to Excel, right? Because they trade for less, they trade easier, they trade with better communication. They trade for, to be a cat when it's a cat and a dog, when it is a dog and it's not random let's call it the luck that you traded a CARF to be a cat when it turns out to be a dog. And then going through the torture session with, you know the service department actually coming out and breaking your bubble because it's a, an absolute turd and we traded it to be a shiny little object. You follow me. So all of these things, and Brian has led the charge in his use case and his stores in a way that it, it basically changed the culture.Speaker 2: (09:02)And it, it, it kind of like gets the entire dealership on board with a process that and you can use it and they do use it in conjunction with other platforms for other reasons. But when it comes to service drive acquisition it's, it's in a different class. It's not even in the same category when it comes to you know, a salesperson being involved in the trade process, which, you know, that actually rubs off believe it or not into the conversation with the consumer. So it, it just kind of like morphs the the energy and the the honesty and the I would call it the legitimacy of the process. And because of Bryan's success with that suffer from his pedigree. I mean, a guy's got unbelievable pedigrees.Speaker 2: (09:57)He's got a deep history in retail success simultaneously having success in the wholesale side being a a new car dealer it's and not, and recognizing the fact that you don't ignore wholesale because it goes back to the old story, Shawn, if you're not the best end user, there's no shame in recognizing it and finding the best end user to actually get actual cash market value for that vehicle fast, easy in the bank, next case you see. So I'm very, I'm very, very happy that we now have, I think what I'm calling 'em the Pope I would say the spokesperson that has skin in the game that has experiential knowledge of how we built and what we built and how it's leveraged in, in the showroom that in conjunction with the again, the leveraging of the B D the EKG, the reading of the heart monitor of the vehicle, talking to the appraiser before you've welded yourself in those Hamburg, you follow me, there's no shame in knowledge, knowledge is actually nothing to be embarrassed of.Speaker 2: (11:14)And if we have the knowledge prior to pulling the trigger going in deeper on 122,000 mile car, that you're not gonna spend money on, or going in a little more shallow in a off brand unit with 42,000 miles, that's gonna take a, let's call it a a rebuild in a a reconditioning department in order to get it to the point where you might be able to retail it. It's just incremental use of historic and, and current data that surrounds every VIN before you touch it while you're touching it after you've already owned it. And because we have a need for, in my estimation, a a legitimate voice that is a, I hate to say it a do, not a pontificator, someone who's experienced you know, the the set that we've built to be able to speak the language to a dealer where we're not telling a dealer without experience how to do his job better, but helping them understand how you can leverage our stuff in order to actually make not only your job easier, but more efficient.Speaker 2: (12:38)And I would say in the world that we live in efficiency is at the top of the order of things that everybody dreams of, right? In other words, there's only X amount of time in the day. And as you know, the way our worlds are evolving, there's no time to take a private defecation. You, you see what I'm saying? It's just like morning tonight, you're on a a curve of activity that it don't give you any five seconds to do anything outside of the what the noses on a grindstone doing. And my feeling is our tool set. Actually, it, it fits, facilitates that if, if, if that makes sense to you, Sean,Speaker 1: (13:29)I like itSpeaker 2: (13:30)Agent, that's the number one thingSpeaker 1: (13:31)That's exciting. I'm sorry, go ahead. I'm no, I'm just super excited about Brian heading the charge. It's, it's gonna be, I think you nailed it with the product and you nailed it with him, energy, honesty, and legitimacy. So it's, it's superSpeaker 2: (13:43)Cool. And, and we gotta have experiential it's this where we, I know I overused the max plank example of you know how experience is more important than you know, like formal learning, experiential knowledge supersedes anybody reading the book and, and then trying to explain what it is you wanna say being in the trenches, being face to face, having a juggler vein pound in a little bit, when you get stuck in a weird spot and knowing how to actually find your way to the promise land in those circumstances, that's something that you don't learn in a book. It's something that it requires being on the hot seat, how to handle the hot potato and doing it correctly, where you have a high percentage of wins, right? If you don't have that, it's so difficult, no matter how much artificial excitement you want to infuse into something car dealers are not stupid.Speaker 2: (14:46)I, I, you know, I've said it many times, I believe we're the most resourceful people that I've ever had experience dealing with, including lawyers and doctors, including professors. It's difficult to a, a car dealer. They smell it, they say it and when they experience something that actually is useful to them you, you, you have a a different set of commitments to it. It becomes part of the DNA of their activity. And my feeling is, and until now I, I believe I'm, I'm accurate when you're actually being introduced to a I think a you know, a, a platform that it really is built to to be part of a dealer's daily operational skill set. When you have somebody that's actually experienced it to help you through that can read, you know, the personality that dealerships to understand how in instances this will be a a winner for them.Speaker 2: (15:54)It's, it's really exciting to me. Dealers that have started to use it the way we have designed it in the service drive. You know, we have guys that are buying 40 and 50 cars a month that never systemically bought cars out of the service drive. Now, you have to think about what that means. You're buying cars with pedigree your trading cars with pedigree. It means you more than likely sold that sucker new the probability of that being a better retail unit is algebraically higher than being a random buyer in a marketplace that that's, you know, more than likely a car that's flunked, somebody else's shop. And now you're gonna try to act as if this is gonna be a great purchase. You're buying something that is in your there's no transportation. There's no, there's no entire day sitting there going through CRS, breaking balls, trying to find a car that you think you pinched.Speaker 2: (16:53)No, these are cars that are already there. The…
Full show notes at the publisher 
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
