Automotive Alchemy
Welcome to 'Automotive Alchemy', a podcast that dwells in the cavernous depths of data, unearthing precious gems of wisdom to illuminate your path to digital marketing success. As alchemists, we understand that each nugget of information is a vital ingredient in our elixir of knowledge. So ready yourselves as we embark on an enlightening journey through the arcane world of data-driven automotive marketing.
Automotive Alchemy
From Dealer to Vendor and Back: Lessons in Website Conversion & Growth
The evolution of dealership websites has reshaped automotive retail, yet one fundamental truth remains—conversion is the key to success. In this episode of Automotive Alchemy, John McAdams, Chief Revenue Officer at Dealer Alchemist, brings decades of experience from both the dealership and vendor sides to break down the state of dealer websites, digital strategies, and the critical factors that drive real results.
John shares his journey from running dealership operations—including turning around struggling stores—to leading digital strategies that fuel sustainable growth. He dives into the biggest mistakes dealers make with their websites, why conversion rates are often ignored, and how to leverage technology to create a competitive edge. The conversation covers everything from the role of AI in marketing to the importance of balancing fixed and variable operations in a dealership’s growth strategy.
If you're looking for unfiltered insights on website performance, lead generation, and the future of automotive digital retailing, this episode delivers. Whether you're a dealer principal, GM, or marketing professional, you’ll walk away with actionable takeaways to optimize your dealership’s online presence and drive measurable success.
Welcome back to Automotive Alchemy Today. Well, I am joined by the Chief Revenue Officer at Dealer Alchemist, That'd be John McAdams. Welcome to the podcast, McAdams.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks, Sean I appreciate it Always great to be here.
Speaker 1:Yes, For people that know John, you might actually be on that first name basis, but if you really know John, then you might call him J-Mac, right? People that get on the inner circle. So today on the podcast we're talking about websites. This is an area of business that Dealer Alchemist has been not in a negative way, but a very deliberately and methodical approach, coming to market with a website platform that they spent a lot of time in 24 getting ready, and I thought this would be a really good time to start on the podcast talking about websites from a perspective first around, just kind of understanding historically where we've been and the reason why this episode I think for anybody that likes to watch and or listen to it is really going to like having McAdams on here is John has deep experience on both sides of the industry. So while he's been an executive in a few different companies on the service provider and vendor side, he has just as many years doing exactly what you might be doing as a dealer sitting in that seat, as a general manager or some other high level management position in the dealership he pretty much has. There are people in our industry that say that I've worked just about every job in the dealership and they're lying, but when John talks about it he absolutely is not lying.
Speaker 1:So I want to get into your personal perspectives on some of this.
Speaker 1:John, it's probably going to feel like softball game for you, but the first place I want to just let you go is just give us a little idea of your journey in auto on kind of how you transitioned from the retail side of dealership to then vendor side, and I think maybe that means that you've done a little bit of both where you've been and you've kind of gone back then vendor side.
Speaker 1:And I think maybe that means that you've done a little bit of both where you've been and you've kind of gone back which and this is what I want you to speak to a little bit A lot of people who have done that I never hear them talk about how valuable it is to have in this transformation of technology era have gone back to be refreshed. When there's so many people that you haven't been in retail for 20 years, Like I can't speak to a dealer when my car buying or selling experience is 20 years ago, I don't, you can. So tell me a little bit like what the audience in mind, what that's like and how you transitioned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, listen, I think that the story is going to be like a few people. But, like you, far too often I hear of folks in the industry saying they're in the car business and for me, selling a car for a year is not in the car business. Right? That's not it. Right, I've sold cars. I was a sales manager. I was a general sales manager. I was a sales manager. I was a general sales manager.
Speaker 2:I elevated myself to director of e-commerce for, at the time, a top 25 dealer group At the same time. Maybe a few months later, they made me the director of e-commerce and director of IT. Right, because I'm that technical and I'm that nerdy and I embraced that as well. So now, e-com and technology together. And then I left retail. So we'll call that eight to 10 years of my life.
Speaker 2:I left retail and I decided that I could take my wares on the road and help dealers as a vendor, based on the knowledge that I learned running all these stores at the e-commerce level and the sales level, and I did that for a digital marketing company in the digital space for auto. And then I got a call one day from a dealer principal who was going to be at NADA, new Orleans, about 10 to 12 years ago. And they said will you meet us for dinner? And I said, oh, I know what that means, I know what this call is about. And I said, sure, let's go meet for dinner. So we went to August Moon in New Orleans great restaurant, michelin Star Ridge restaurant, and it was there that the dealer principal laid out the master plan of how they have five stores. They want me to be the GM of one and that the GM position was open because the store was failing. It was in the red on the financial statement and I was the guy that could come save the store.
Speaker 2:And I said you know what? I'm up for a challenge. I'm a car guy. It's hard to say no to me sometimes, right? So I jump in with both feet. I show up day one, sean, and I get the keys handed to five stores Not one, but five. And I said well, this will be exciting because we negotiated my pay. Plan on one, but we're going to multiply that by five, let's go. Plan on one, but we're going to multiply that by five, let's go. And the very first question I asked Sean was which ones are profitable? And the reply was none Too late. I'm already there, right. So, taking the challenge on, I now became the GM. Over five failing rooftops all domestic, by the way a fleet operations center and an airport services division as well.
Speaker 2:So I quickly learned that in the GM chair, what you need to do to make your stores profitable from the front end to the back end, and what tools you have available to you to do that, and what tools you don't have available to you when you don't have the money to do it. Right, and I still had to make these stores profitable. That and what tools you don't have available to you when you don't have the money to do it, I still had to make these stores profitable. About nine months later, we came out of the red into the black on all the stores. My wife calls those my zombie years. I turned the key at six in the morning and I turned the key the last one out the door every single day. My days off just meant I was there for eight hours, not 12 to 14 hours. That's all that meant, and I'm proud to say that we got those stores in a profitable situation.
Speaker 2:I stayed for three years. Four years after that, I handed the keys back over. I said listen, these are all yours now. They're all profitable. We all have brand new stores, brand new redesigns with Ford customer one with Chrysler. All done, we're good to go. Please do not put it into the wall, leave it right in the middle of the lane.
Speaker 2:And I'm very proud to say that two years later, the goal of all this was realized, where they sold all those stores off and are now out of the business completely.
Speaker 2:So the goal was to get these stores to be profitable, get them sold, make themselves the money and get out.
Speaker 2:And at that point I went back into the vendor side and I can tell you the lessons I learned by going from dealer to vendor to dealer in the GM chair of failing stores and then back to vendor. Immeasurable right, because I now look at myself more than a chief revenue officer. Yes, that's the title, officially, on the card, that's the title. I look at myself as a dealership growth strategist. I really do. And every store is different. I was on the phone with a store on the East Coast just before this call and their situation was much different than the dealership that I spoke to in Colorado, which is different from Texas, which is different from Chicago, and at each station I had to pull from my knowledge and my entire vault of information that I've had, from vendors to dealership operations, to figure out how I could help them grow their store, whether that be from a fixed perspective or a variable perspective. So I'm really happy that I'm able to help not only individual dealers but groups and, more importantly, the industry grow from a technology and a dealership process perspective.
Speaker 1:The industry grow from a technology and a dealership process perspective. So that is such a perfect foundation for people to understand the depth of your experience. And it's not only relative, it's recent, it's back and forth a couple of times within. The most probably tumultuous era for automotive retail has been the internet age right. It just massively I hate the word disruptive, but it has been. It's made a whole lot of dealers feel like sometimes like what are we doing with ourselves when it's actually technology has grown so fast?
Speaker 1:It's been difficult for most people that we're just trying to sell cars and service cars and make our customers happy, but now they've got a layer of technology that comes with training and retraining and a different type of employee that isn't just great at being a conversationalist and selling product, but you get it. So what an awesome foundation. Let me ask you this when you think back to your whole experience on the retail side, what were some of the relative to dealership websites? What were some of the bigger challenges that you like run up, ran up on in the dealership world with with websites?
Speaker 2:You know, in 15 or 20 years I think I've been in the business now 29 or 30 years, I don't want to count them, but I'm sure it's 29 or 30 years. From a website perspective, there's still blocking and tackling that needs to be done. And when I started looking at think about this, when I started in this industry, nobody had a dealership website. Not a single store in America had a dealership website. We may have used at the time bolted board systems, BBS systems to go try to find leads and farm leads. If you remember those old days or somebody would fax you in a lead and you run to the tower and go there'd be paper all over the floor and you'd fight over a paper lead. There was no websites at the time. So when the brick and mortar was faced with digital and websites, we as an industry we kind of caved in a little bit. We're like they're going to take our brick and mortar business and take it all online and there'll be no need for us in the retail world.
Speaker 2:In reality, there are two sides to that coin, Sean. One coin said embrace it, lean into it and win it. The other one said run away from it because I don't know what it is. I ran into it because I had a technology background. I was thriving on it and my mentality was I know we can win this game as long as we have the right pieces. So when I became an e-commerce director, my dealer principal of this top 25 dealer group knew that about me when I got to that store 600, 700 employees, deep, 15, 20 rooftops Do you know how many computers they had in the store Not DMS systems, not green screens? Do you know how many computer system had in the store Not DMS systems, not green screens? You know how many computer system, how many computers, personal computers they had at that at that group One and it was the dealer principal's assistant so that they could do letters, letters. When I left there we had five, 600, you know, computers, Everybody had websites, right, it was a whole different world Back.
Speaker 2:Six hundred, you know, uh, computers, everybody had websites, right, it was a whole different world. Back then it was the, the wild west, right, flash was around still and people like, oh my gosh, a flash website. But you know, others said flash wasn't good and some people said flash was good and there was always this yin and yang, this pull and this pull, no matter who you spoke to, but at the end of the day back then, as it is today, there's still one underlying delimiting factor that will prove you're successful or not when it comes to websites, and that's the almighty conversion rate. Right, If you have 10,000 people come to your website and you convert it 2%, you've got 200 opportunities to work. I don't care if they're good or bad, that's just the number. But if your website can convert at 5% or 6% or even 4% double the industry average, you might have 400 or 500 leads to work versus your 200. So, in my mind, what's old is new and what's new is old. Listen, the websites are better now. They're built faster. They're built in React platforms, they're built in cloud technology, so they're super fast, they're super reliable. There's all kinds of great things about websites today.
Speaker 2:From a technical perspective, we didn't even think about 15 years ago. But 15 years ago and today, if I was running my store like I had to fix my five stores when I got there, I focused on one key metric for my website and that was can I drive traffic to my website? Low funnel ready to buy traffic to my website. I don't want the garbage, but low funnel ready to buy traffic to my website? I don't want the garbage, but low funnel.
Speaker 2:Ready to buy traffic and can my website convert it at 1% more or 2% more than my competitors? And if the answer was yes, I knew I could win that game, because after that it became people in process right. So I take the leads, I convert higher, my people in my process take the ball to the end zone and win. Or my other choice, Sean, is I could start buying a lot of third-party traffic, which in my day my dealer principle was. So against third-party traffic. We were not allowed to have third-party providers because, in her mind, if you're really good, John, you shouldn't have to have a third party provider. So fix my websites, make sure I organically rank and make sure I win that battle. So what's old is new. Again, it's still conversion rate, still conversion rate.
Speaker 1:Well, that's my favorite answer as well. If these roles were reversed, I would have said the exact same thing. Conversion is always the thing that really nobody wants to talk about, and it's kind of been that way for a long time. We're getting into decades of even. Why are the website providers not even held accountable to improve in that area? It's not as if website providers haven't continued to charge a premium for their services, not as if website providers haven't continued to charge a premium for their services, but it's all been focused and fixated on. You know, we're mobile friendly like all the years. We're mobile friendly Like there was all the fights. These guys are seamless.
Speaker 1:Right, you have an M or a mobi site versus you've got one that's responsive, like it's just all these other things that get talked about that Are they important? They are important, but they're not as important as that conversion rate, and so I love that that you. You place it on something that what's very interesting about you saying that, and it speaks to your experiences. The conversion rate could be a challenge on any type of website. It doesn't really matter who the provider is at all. You could have one that has a really flashy, cool, hero-looking image that's static. You could have a site that uses a video header. You could have a site that has really minimalistic SRP and VDP pages and still not have a great conversion rate. What you're talking about is literally something that could be a challenge that is faced by every single provider, or at least many of the providers, and so I think that's really important.
Speaker 2:And you know what's funny about that, sean is a few years ago, maybe even longer, when dealers really wanted a vendor that could give them a higher conversion rate. The industry pulled back and said, oh, consumers will not fill out forms, the forms completion rate is going down and we shouldn't be worried about the conversion rate because that's not how consumers shop. We should look at other metrics instead. And I looked and I do a lot of research. I do a lot of research and I look at a lot of data and at the end of the day, I didn't see that happening as much unless the website provider pulled the ability for it to convert further away from the consumer. But when you actually bring it closer to the consumer, you know what they don't want to do. They don't want to talk to you on the phone if they don't have to. They don't want to walk in the store and drive 45 minutes to get there to find out that nobody wants to help them because they got pre-qualified and they pulled up on the lot in the jalopy. Nobody wants to do that.
Speaker 2:In reality. They want to kind of hide over here behind the keyboard a little bit and go ahead and submit my message or submit my form and let's have some communication back and forth. And if we can have a good communication and good cadence, then I'm sure I'll come in and test drive the vehicle. And we know, if I test drive the vehicle, you're going to make me buy the vehicle, like I hear that a thousand times. Just get them here, john.
Speaker 2:We saw everybody who gets here. Well, let's not talk about that because we know that's not true. But the reality is, if I can get you to complete a form and I get a communication cadence going, there's a really good chance I'm going to get to the next road to the sale, which is setting the appointment, and then you look at that metric, then you look at the appointment that showed in that metric and then show to sell. So let's not forget about the road to the sale. It's still the same road to the sale. We just need more people at the top of the funnel to get more cars sold.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true you make great points there and that whole conversation about people are reluctant to fill out the forms.
Speaker 1:And while there's some truth in that, you can't put that blanket on everything, and for years I've tried to help people understand that once they get to your dealership website, they've already been in multiple destinations where they could have filled out a form and they didn't because they weren't close enough to the target. They hadn't done all of their own research. The reason why Well, now you're at a local dealership site right, because probably they have what you want, and so now you're probably trying to figure out is this really the price and how do I start to engage this process in a meaningful way? But you're literally the target, like if you're the local dealer, all of these other things happen, that kind of get you closer and closer. And the reason why you should think well, people will fill out a form. They didn't fill it out on the third-party site. They didn't fill it out, maybe, at the OEM site because they're working their way closer and closer and closer to where they have to come and get the product in the first place.
Speaker 2:But people don't think that way.
Speaker 1:And what they'll do is they'll listen to all of the research or they'll listen to some. Most people are not even going deep on research. They're just headline lovers, that's it. So they'll see a headline from somebody and they'll think, oh yeah, people don't. That's that's why we ended up having people that would be dismissive of forms are dead. Seo is dead. All the big grandiose things that people say all the time, and most of those people's knowledge is extremely shallow.
Speaker 1:Like they don't get to the deep end of the pool, like that's it so I I want to ask you about from again your experience, um, as as a vendor. Like how has the dealer background been beneficial to you in understanding what now the dealer, as your clients needs are like? How do you does that come into your mind? I'm sure it comes into your thinking of how you're cause you're talking about helping people strategically grow. How does that, how does that kind of come out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I wish I could put a dollar value on it or a number. That would make sense to everybody that's listening, and I don't think I'll be able to. But I can tell you it's completely in value. It has so much value it's crazy right. So, if you really think about it, if we want to help dealers grow market share, efficiency rate, customer pay, ros, warranty ROs, new car sales, cpo sales, f&i gross, whatever it is how we want to grow the store, do you think a person who has gone down that road before a few times would be better prepared to handle the various on-ramps and off-ramps that are involved in that growth strategy, not only from a dealership growth position, but from a technical or digital position and, quite frankly, even a process position? Right, my answer to that has been yes, because there have been very few dealers or dealer groups that I have conversations with the minute they find out that I know conversations with, the minute they find out that I know this part of the business intimately, that we don't get into very deep conversations, and many times they don't surround themselves with websites that we provide or digital advertising that we do, or SEO or reputation management. A lot of the times it doesn't even involve that, or SEO or reputation management. A lot of the times, it doesn't even involve that, right? Because we're looking for a holistic strategy, from fixed to variable to how can I help grow that store.
Speaker 2:And it always starts with the very same question, which is where's the pain point? Now, if you sold 150 cars at the end of December new and used I'll make some numbers up and when you sat down at the end of 24 and you said in 2025, we're going to get to 200 cars a month, new and used Well, where is your strategy to do that? It just can't be. Well, we're going to sell more cars. We're going to do the same thing over and over again, but we're going to sell more cars because that doesn't work. It can't be well, let's drop another $10,000 into Google AdWords and sell more cars, because if it were that simple, sean, we would all do it. We would all do it. It can't be well, I'll run some Facebook ads and that's going to work, and automotive inventory ads and that's going to get me the golden goose.
Speaker 2:I can tell you that's never the solution for any of this. It has to be truly a unique strategy for that store and you have to use multiple data sets. You have to look at where they're currently winning in markets. Where are they losing in markets, and not only just by vehicle sales, but all the way down to the model and the trim level. Who is taking your lunch money and whose lunch money are you taking? And if they're taking your lunch money, why Is it a physical, geographical bridge?
Speaker 2:Is it a river? Is it because we do poorly at setting appointments? Is our website not converting? Are we not showing up organically? What does our service department look like, for example, are we driving enough new visiting owners into our store? Same brand, or are we not?
Speaker 2:Do we have a competitive conquest strategy, meaning maybe I sell Fords and I want to drive some Chevrolet traffic into my shop, or maybe I sell Hondas and I want more Hondas that live in my PMA and maybe my Battleground zip codes and drive them further into my shop. So the strategy is unique for each and every store that I talk to and the minute we get into these discussions and we look deeper into the data from an automotive retail perspective I was going to say car guy perspective, but I'll still go with that when we start to say will this actually work? And if it does work, what do we expect out of it? Do I expect to sell 15 more cars, 20 more cars? Do I expect to have a 30%, 20%, 10% lift in customer pay tickets? Do I want to have more internal RROs?
Speaker 2:By the way, nobody talks about internal RROs, but if you have a really great process to buy late model, low mileage, one-owner vehicles that you bring them into service right and you turn them from the back to the front, that's going to create an RO, an internal RO that we know the shop makes money off of Sales, gets the benefit of selling that car quicker and faster for more money. So why aren't we talking about those things from customer pay to internal, to warranty, to new, to CPO, to use right why aren't we talking about those things holistically to grow the store? Because that's in my mind, that's how I solve the problem at my stores is I holistically look from the front to the back and I figured at each level, how do I increase each level? Working together, not separately. Working together.
Speaker 1:There's too many awesome nuggets to unpack all of them in that answer and you kind of answered the question of. I was going to kind of lead you into maybe common mistakes that you see dealers making with websites today. But before I bury the leads that you just dropped.
Speaker 1:I love all of that, especially when you start to also talk about making sure that there's synergy and efficiency between both fixed and variable operations. Being a guy that my entrance into automotive like you 30 years ago, was in a parts warehouse, that's how I learned the anatomy of a car. That's how I you know my, my brother, my older brother loved to work on cars. I was like reluctant, I didn't want to. It's not that I couldn't, it's like I wasn't as gung ho as he was. But when I worked in an automotive parts warehouse, all the lights came on. I got it like oh, I get, I get. Brake. Caliper pads are inside of there. Oh, here's the brake rotor when. So now, when people talk to me you need to have your rotor surfaced. I know exactly what they're talking about. You only have this many millimeters left on your brake. I know exactly what they're talking about. Hey, you should change your timing belt because you're having a water pump done.
Speaker 1:I know exactly why they're recommending that yeah but I wanted to tell you when you were talking about ros and service department, it made me just think about how valuable it is to make sure that that synergy happens inside the dealership, because those missed opportunities are massive Most dealers don't recognize. I know, you know this, we've had private conversations about this. Your service advisor your average service advisors actually generate a lot more gross profit for your dealership than your top salespeople do. So they certainly talk to more customers and have more dialogue with customers than your salespeople do. Thinking about how the whole thing operates together as opposed to siloing things in a business that really is meant to feel like this big kind of mixed up punch of awesomeness and you hit a bunch of stuff in there. I love that you dropped so much great stuff in that answer.
Speaker 2:One thing before you move on from that.
Speaker 2:Sean move on from that. One thing that I learned from a mentor early on at the top 25 dealer group that I had and he was a young dealer principal at the time. He was building massive stores in places. They told him not to do it, but he had the fortitude and the foresight to know that he was going to grow this into a top 25 dealer group. And he said a couple of things to me that resonated with me. The first thing he said to me if anybody in my dealership walks by a ringing phone, it'll be their last day here. And that resonated with me to this day and that's how I ran my store. If anybody walked by the phone and you did not pick it up and I spent hard earned money to make that phone ring, you don't deserve to work here at my store. Don't have to see that right. He had that mentality like make sure we're doing the right thing even when nobody's looking the old Henry Ford saying right, but he truly believed it. The other thing he told me was if you want to truly know how a dealership operates efficiently, as a GM or as an operator, spend time in service, and I don't mean at the service advisor's desk or the service director's desk. I mean, go into the shop and put a pair of jeans on and put a blue shirt on and go see how to change an oil pump or an oil pump. Or go figure out how to change out a tie rod, go figure out how to pull the exhaust off and put it back on, go work on the calipers and the rotors and all that right, because that will then make you a better operator up front. And I can tell you that it did so.
Speaker 2:When I had the opportunity to go run those five stores as a GM my first spot as a GM over five stores crazy to think about even today. It makes my hair on the back of my neck go up a little bit I decided that I was going to spend a significant amount of time in the shop and see what they go through, right, and then move myself to the service advisor level and then move myself to sales. Now I had to do it all at the same time, don't get me wrong, but it taught me such a lesson of how the dealership operates that I don't think today many GMs really do. They came out of sales. They now became the GM. They're great with people. They're great politicians, I get it. They're good with numbers. I can do numbers in my head with the best of you, but at the end of the day I could also turn wrenches in the back.
Speaker 2:And the technicians that I became friends with are friends to this day, to this day, and they're like are you going to get back into retail, john? I'm like probably not. Not unless my name's on the building. Probably not, because I ran such a cohesive fixed ops and variable operations across five dealerships that I don't want to say it was harmonious, but it was. It was pretty harmonious almost every day and we all had one goal in mind growth. It was always about growth. Growth If growth meant sales and service. Growth meant sales and service, not just growth and sales. Growth and sales and service.
Speaker 1:And you have to think, you have to contextualize that when you think about what you're doing with your website, regardless of who your provider is, all of these things that you're talking about in some way shape or form have some placement, intersection, involvement with what you do with your website. Right, it's your 24 seven, always on representation of your business, and so when you think about your service department, when you think about how active people get, I would say and Sean Kieran, on this very podcast, has said things similar to what you said Like, if somebody walks by a phone, they don't pick it up, they're gone. He talks about you walk around and see trash laying around in the dealership and you don't pick it up. No, you need to become the general manager and the dealer principal that leads by example. Like, of course you pick up the trash. It's the same thing.
Speaker 1:When, then, you think about things that are going on with the website, there are things like the equivalent of a ringing phone on your website. There are things like trash laying around on your website that affect the experience. We talk about customer experience ad nauseum in our industry and yet we still do so many things that clearly have they don't care at all about the customer experience. It's lit service.
Speaker 1:It's craziness. But so I want to direct your attention a little bit to when you were deciding on providers, because I'm guessing that on your retail experience you probably had more than one website provider over the years that you were in retail, and so you probably had to think about what are the things that are important to us, and I know that maybe some of the things today are the same, conversion rate being number one but there's also some things that have changed. It didn't matter how fast your website was in 1998, because we didn't even have high speed internet in 1998. We'd have to worry about Wi-Fi and all these things before the year 2000.
Speaker 1:But then, of course, mid 2000s and of course on it's a lot of different factors retail experience, on decision-making, from old to current. If you're talking to a dealership who's really mindful of we need to grow and our website decision needs to factor this growth part of what we're doing. What are some of those factors? Maybe some of the old ones, maybe the ones that are fresh today. What would those be if you're trying to decide on a website provider? What would those be if you're trying to?
Speaker 2:decide on a website provider. Yeah, yeah, you know, I think that's a. I think that's a fantastic question. Right, and you know you're right, speed wasn't really a factor back then. Now it is right. Next year, two years from now, maybe there'll be another factor, but one that's probably number two. So number one was always about conversion. For me, from a website traffic to website, number two is always how quickly could I get things resolved? And conversion, was that partner of mine? Because, remember, we're all partners. We all say we're all partners. Was that partner of mine available to help me with whatever it is I needed when I needed it? An example of that, sean, would be simple.
Speaker 2:In the car dealership world, things always break on Saturday at 10 am. It's just when they break. I don't know why the leprechauns and the gremlins come out on Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon. On the last day of the month, that's just when it happens. So I need help when I need help and for me, support became secondary. So, yes, I know you're open Monday through Friday nine to five and I get the message. Awesome, but it never breaks Monday through Friday nine to five for some crazy reason. It never needs to modify. It needs to be modified on a Saturday at 10 or a Sunday at two o'clock in the afternoon, as I'm trying to get a car across the curb. That's when it always happens.
Speaker 2:So for me, number two has always been the level of support that that vendor could provide to me. And I want to be clear it wasn't the person who sold me the solution. Yes, I was. Like many of us, I'm buying that person, but I'm buying much deeper in the ranks than that. So, yes, great salesperson came in, much deeper in the ranks than that. So, yes, great salesperson came in. Everything they talked about was on point Fine, great.
Speaker 2:Once I'm in the support role and I need help, how quickly can I get that support resolved so that, quite frankly, I can get back to doing my business, which is selling and servicing more cars, and I don't want to follow up. I don't want to be told it's going to be in dev. I don't want to follow up and say, well, if enough dealers say they want the same thing, you can get it. I am an individual dealer, franchise dealer, independent, and I'm trying to out-compete my other dealers that are on dealer row with me. I need my partner to be next to me, side by side to help me getting that stuff done.
Speaker 2:So support really became number two for me because along the way I've had some challenges with some support models right, and one in particular I didn't know about until after I was already a partner with them right as a dealer. I was a partner with them and I went to call support and you know what? There wasn't, there was no number to call. The only way to get a whole support was leave an email and hope and pray that that email fell on the right ears at the right time and they maybe call me back, email me back, and I realized at that point that my process for selecting vendors immediately changed after that experience. So before I ever said yes to another vendor, I said how about we call support right now together? Why don't we call support right now together, before I become a partner of yours? Let's call support right now and let's see how that experience is.
Speaker 2:Because for me that became almost as important as the website conversion rate, because if one converts high but I can't get the support, I need to convert it another 1% or half percent more. I always needed one more horsepower every month. So not that I use support a lot, but when I need support, when I need my buddy system, I need my buddy system. So support became a number two factor for me, without any doubt in terms of websites I was looking for. And the third one for me really was am I on a legacy platform or am I on the technology that's going to take me to the next level two or three years down the road? And I tell you why that's important. One we've all been on the technology that's going to take me to the next level two or three years down the road, and I tell you why that's important.
Speaker 2:One we've all been on legacy systems that they turn like a big, huge ship in the ocean. It takes them a long time to turn and the car dealership runs like a sports car. Like we turn left and we turn right, we turn left, you turn right sports car. Like we turn left and we turn right, we turn left to turn right. So, on legacy systems, because they're built on that legacy system, you can't change and move as quick as you possibly want to.
Speaker 2:On cloud-based systems, for example, you can quickly change on a dime and when you're built on a code stack, that's built on a cloud-based system, not to get too nerdy. Now, all of a sudden, you've got speed and the ability to turn a dime, so you can turn on almost like on rails right. Remember the old expression that car turns like it's on rails right. That's what I was looking after, because I needed a high conversion rate. I needed great support, and when I decided I wanted to go right, I wanted to go right and I needed my partner to go with me. So those are the three things I've always looked at in that realm.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of people who used to develop Ruby on Rails. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, very interesting. Support is gosh. It's another thing that gets talked about a lot and I think it's more lip service for a lot of people. It's another thing that gets talked about a lot and I think it's more lip service for a lot of people. And if you think about not just legacy technology platforms from website providers, but the legacy of websites and automotive in general, I want to say giant killer, but it's maybe not giant killer in terms of they lost a majority of market share, but some of them it didn't matter how big they got, and I won't name all their names because then people will get mad and they'll think we're trying to throw mud and cowboys on people.
Speaker 1:Not doing that. But you and I have been in this game for a long, long, long time and we know who the first website provider was, and then all the rest that came after it and every single one of them that rose to a certain level of prominence and size and market share. Their downfall was support and whether it completely took them out of the game, because some of them are still in the game, but did it have an effect on them? Every single one of them it did. It had an effect on. Well, next time your consumer can move on. They're going to churn out and try somebody else now because your support's terrible and you promised that it would be better and worse.
Speaker 1:Because I'm a marketing guy, I love sales but at heart, as a marketing guy, for me it's all about brand and reputation. And what are you doing to make your brand matter to somebody? And let's just say I won the heart and the mind of John McAdams as he's trying to grow these dealerships to a place I've never been. You're basically bringing them back from the dead. And so, as you're pulling off this miracle, my brand building, my marketing effort and the reputation of my company of great support got you to say yes in your time of need and then all of a sudden I got too big for my britches or my overalls or whatever the heck I had on my lower half. I got to that point and then it was okay for a while, but then it wasn't and we you and I could sit here and name drop on companies that that's happened to and for dealers listening and or watching. You've felt that pain.
Speaker 1:If you've been in the dealership world for a long time on either side of it. You're in the retail side, selling and servicing them, or you're on the service provider side. Especially if you've worked at, you are at or you have worked at a website provider, you know exactly what we're talking about and yet it's still mostly lip service. How many people right now are trying to champion no, you're going to have a different support and service experience if you choose us. Nobody right now in the website world is really talking about that. It's thrown in because they're all trying to talk about the next thing. That keeps them from having to talk about what you just dropped Conversion. They don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:They don't. They don't want to talk about these things that are really really critically important. So I really really good stuff, let me. I'll keep this train of going. Let's go. I know Choo choo when you think about and I'll give you an example of when you're thinking of advising, especially around this. I love the growth advising. A lot of people talk about it, but you're actually putting detail behind, kind of how you think about this from both sides of your experience dealers and advice I've given to dealers over the years around decision making of websites.
Speaker 1:There's been a lot of times and when I worked at website providers, I don't think they always particularly liked this, but I would advise dealers and I probably would still tell them that this is something to consider today, which is do you really need revolutionary change or evolutionary change? And I can't remember where I heard this. I think it was from the book. You should test that, but it might be different. Chris Goward, awesome book on conversion and all this really old book, but still very awesome. But revolutionary change is you're just ripping the whole thing out and starting over with a brand new provider and you might need to do that because they might not be checking any of the boxes, catastrophic failure. That is the move to make. But there are also times when I tell dealers the best advice I could give you is, once you've assessed all of these things, that maybe it's not revolutionary, maybe it's an evolutionary change where you start to make a few changes and then I also will tell dealers if you don't know even what I'm talking about and it just all went flying across your head, but you know something's not right, then start with the evolutionary things, which means you know that your site doesn't convert well, so you have that conversation with the provider to say, can we even improve it by a quarter of a percent? Because that's actually still significant in this day and age, half a percent, significant in this era.
Speaker 1:So you start there and if they can't improve and you give them a timeline, let's see what we can do in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, however long you want to give them. Then you go to the next thing. Okay, well, I don't like the user experience here. Blah, blah, blah. I don't like how digital retailing isn't working with the site, whatever. When you think about the advice that you give dealers based on how you're going to advise them on decision-making to have better growth. What are some of the top things that come to mind, or what is? If there's one top thing, what is it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, here's what I'll tell you, sean. If your truck breaks down on the side of the road, do you immediately just rip out the engine and try to put a new one in, or do you start to troubleshoot it and say you know what? Maybe it's my starter, maybe it's just a solenoid, maybe, you know, back in the day used to have distributor and points, maybe something simple failed right. Maybe it's just a battery, who knows right. But I'd say that's the right approach to do this with right, because ripping everything out and changing it certainly will have an effect. It can be positive or negative, but until you've really diagnosed and given the proper thought pattern as to what you're looking for, set yourself up with what you believe the benchmarks are right, and the best advice I could give anybody while they're doing this is, as you find KPIs that you think are valid, challenge those KPIs and see if they fit for you in your store. Right. If everybody in the world says that you should convert it 1.8% and you're like, well, 1.8%, that's the number I go for. But if you say you know what I challenge that I challenge that 1.8% and I want to get 4% or 5%, whatever your number wants to be, and do that for a couple of different metrics that you're looking at, that you want to change metrics that you're looking at, that you want to change Because, remember, in order to grow, things have to change right.
Speaker 2:So you want to sell 200 cars this year versus 150 a month last year? Well, something's going to have to change. Do I rip the engine out or do I just need to change the tires? Right? Maybe I'm going to go faster further, or maybe it's snowy and I need to put, you know, snow tires on. There's always a reason that we have to look at that, right. So I look at it as a three-legged bar stool. Right, I really do Three legs. One is I almost put my middle finger up, sorry. One would be car guy, car guy, we start with that way, right? One would be look at your website and look at what your conversion rate is. Look at your sticky factor and decide if that's where you want to be to grow your store. Two, organically, look at your SEO and decide if that's where you want to be. Are you driving enough organic traffic to your website that's actually converting to an opportunity in a transaction or an event that you believe makes sense to grow your store. And in my discussions we come up with those metrics together, the dealers and I, because we have to hold each other accountable for those numbers right. At the end of the day, if we're going to hold your people accountable at the dealership level and your partners, we all have to be working in the same direction. So if I drive more leads in and you're not sending more appointments and not closing those appointments down, I'm probably going to go turn it back through CRM and find out that maybe four or five of them, maybe six or 10 of them, were marked dead because you've got one phone call in and decided that was too much work. Well, let's fix that process, right. That's not a website process, that's not an SEO process, it's not a digital ad problem, it's a store process. But we should be working together on both ends of the spectrum to do that.
Speaker 2:And then, from a digital ad perspective, right, are you driving what I like to call low funnel, ready to buy shoppers into your website, foot phone and web right? Foot phone and web ready to buy? Because yes, there's intent and yes, there's in market. And I'm not saying that they're not important, because they are. But when I grow my stores, with my dealers I look for ready to buy shoppers, I'm looking for lower funnel ready to buy shoppers and, if I can drive that traffic in through a series of processes that make sure that that website converts, but not cannibalize the organic, because let's not do that. I see that all day long. Yes, mr and Mrs Dealer, we've got this awesome paid search program and I look at it 30 days later and all of a sudden, the organic is in the tank and the paid's rolling and they're like see my paid's working well, I'm like, but organically, you weren't paying for it, right? So let's look at it from that perspective, holistically, and then decide together me, somebody else, somebody that has the experience to say okay, john, do I need a new engine, do I need a new starter, or do I need a new car? Right, like you might need a new car. It might be like, hey, listen, this has run its paces and I need a new website, new SEO and new digital ad strategy. Right, and I need a new website, new SEO and new digital ad strategy. And the other thing I would say is and I think we're turning the corner finally, but I did speak to a dealer the other day and we were talking about digital advertising and driving traffic and how to increase growth in his store and he was all in. He was, you know, his guy. They're buying in. They're like, wow, okay, great.
Speaker 2:And then we got to the topic of social and the guy goes social doesn't work. I was like, oh, here we go again. Right, like this is back when uh, in 2000, when dealers didn't have a website and all of a sudden, websites came on the on the scene. We don't need a website website, so the internet will die in a new year. Don't worry about the internet, we'll never need it. Trust me, social is not going anywhere, right, and it should be part of your overall marketing mix, whether it's from a paid perspective, organic perspective. But we can't ignore it because, believe it or not, some people do not use search engines to look for stuff. Right, like if I were to do a poll right now of people, I'm probably one of them. I really don't use search engines for searching anymore. You know what I use. You know what I use, sean AI.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I was going to say there's a.
Speaker 1:There's a pretty well-known dealer on LinkedIn just yesterday, maybe today that's advocating hey, I'm doing all my searches. And he's basically also saying, hey, reach out to me if you want to know what our dealerships are doing, Because he was basically advocating ChatGPT as the search engine as opposed to Google. So, yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2:So, once again, not that I'm advocating or saying it's good or bad, but I test the waters. I said you know what. I test the waters. I said you know what? Let me, for the past few months, let me see what that reaction would look like. And I've got to tell you something. There's a storm of brewing. There's a storm of brewing and either you get on the train or you get off the train one or the other, but there's another train leaving another station, and does it mean we have to do one or the other? But there's another train leaving another station, and does it mean we have to do one or the other? No, I think we have to get on both trains at some point. We have to look and see. So I would be very mindful of what's out there and how to use it, and don't be afraid to try it. And even if you were to fail right, Listen if I started doing searches on AI platforms and they failed.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't stop. I would just see if it ever got better, because it's getting very, very, very, very good. Most of those things that I wanted to ask you. And it's interesting that you kind of landed on using chat, gpt or something similar, but in this case chat GPT to do searches as opposed to Google. It's, isn't it interesting?
Speaker 1:I mean, you and I have been in this industry for a long time and for I don't know, probably until very recently for some people, probably until they saw this episode, for some people, they never thought, you mean, there's a threat to google's dominance of the search game.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and that's been creeping on them for quite some time. It started creeping on them even before, uh, the covid era, but certainly the covid era was like detrimental to their search business, because people were just like we don't need all that, just cut it, cut it, cut it, cut it. And then they to, of course, restore and bring some of that back. But then they've also made all these changes, the enhancements. They call enhancements, pmax campaigns, pmax campaigns, while that's basically their way of saying just answer all these questions and load up the assets and then it'll do all these things for you, correct, which to some businesses, okay, maybe that's super helpful, but in automotive that isn't particularly super helpful because they lock things into PMAX that you can't really see the same way and you can't manipulate and change the same way that you used to, when it was all just kind of wild and free and not in there.
Speaker 1:So anyway, there's been threats to the dominance of Google search game for a long time and it is very interesting to see what's happening now.
Speaker 1:And I don't remember if I shared this with you or not, but because I talked to so many people around B2B marketing and sales these days. I talked to a lot of salespeople. I talked to a lot of folks that you know prospecting is dead. Everyone hates making cold calls. I hated making cold calls. Cold door knocks, cold emails, cold everything sucks. And then I started to think, hmm, I mean, I am constantly.
Speaker 1:I'm in AI for lots of reasons. Anybody that follows me on LinkedIn also knows I'm doing all kinds of generative AI stuff with mid journey and videos and stuff. But I also do stuff that I don't really post on my LinkedIn or tell people about and I might have told you that is I have used as if I were a salesperson. I have taken the example of I'm going to pretend like I'm a salesperson in the Dallas, fort Worth market. In fact, I'm never going to consider Dallas because Fort Worth is cooler than Dallas. Suck on it, dallas. But I'm not even going to consider Dallas because Fort Worth is cooler than Dallas. Suck on it, dallas.
Speaker 1:But I'm just going to say, in the Fort Worth market, I want to know all of the domestics. I want to know every Ford, every Chrysler, jeep, dodge, ram store. I want to know all the Chevy and all the GM brand stores in Fort Worth. Go and search the web and I want you to create a spreadsheet with every general manager, but only if they have an email address, and then you could say well, I also want a personal phone number, not the sales number. If that's there, throw the phone number on as well and make me a prospect list Right. So many people are always clamoring for can I get that stuff? Well, even with hidden email addresses on websites, oh, guess what?
Speaker 1:AI will blow your mind with giving you a fresh crop of. I just got 20 prospects to call today, so for not for you as a you know executive in the company. But I'm sure that you have those conversations with salespeople who are like how do I, you know, I gotta, I gotta, get out there and stay hungry Like I'm a squirrel trying to gather, like you know, okay, Well what are some of the tools you can use.
Speaker 1:Uh, you couldn't do that with with Google, you can't. It won't do the same thing. Could you find some of it? You might find some of it, but it's not going to drop it into a spreadsheet and start a whole workflow and a process for you. If you also say, hey, this is what I sell and here's my voice, and call and basically build a custom GPT and say help me, now build this into my process, Give me the like. The first thing that I would say to these people like it blows your mind.
Speaker 2:So it's interesting that you say that, because I think back in the day, Sean, when I was selling cars and you were selling cars back in the day, you know how we networked to sell more cars. We went to the Applebee's or the local bar after work of course not in a demo and we would pass our business card out right and to everybody. We saw the county fair, the bakery, the Dunkin' Donuts, the Home.
Speaker 2:Depot Donut everywhere, everywhere, and we got our name out and that's how we secured our livelihood by creating our own leads for the dealer. Yes, maybe I took one or two fresh ups because I needed to get to a number, but I generated a lot of my own business by doing that, right. And then, when digital came around, I did the same thing, but I did it digitally, but it was arduous and it was tedious and it was hard work, even so much as posting. I had salespeople individually posting used vehicles on their own Facebook pages for marketplace.
Speaker 2:It's tedious to do and there's now systems in place where you could post all your vehicles as a dealer on Marketplace and, yes, that's not dead. For people who think it's dead, it's not dead, right. The other thing is now, with the advantage of AI and some other technology tools, like you said, as a salesperson, oh my gosh, I wish I had this 25 or 30 years ago, because I'd be ripping 40 cars a month or 50 cars a month, just because it's so much easier. But you have to take the first step to do it, and what I would say to a dealership or dealer group is do some of it yourself from a mid-manager executive level and put that process in place with some people that you know on the floor who will embrace it right.
Speaker 2:And show how great success looks like for them and others will follow along. Because just what you said, sean, from a B2B perspective, it also does B2C right. But you have to just lean into what's available and out there today and, yes, some of it's scary. I know we all saw the movie Terminator with John Kana and the Terminator and Kana. I get it, but we need to lean into it. We shouldn't be contracting at a point where this is going to help the industry be better and really grow the dealership or grow the industry, because I'm quite impressed with what I've been able to do myself from some AI tools that are out there. I can imagine what some even more process-oriented folks are doing in this business than I am with it and I would recommend that dealers kind of lean into that right now.
Speaker 2:I know everybody's using AI as a buzzword. Everybody's using CDP as a buzzword. Know everybody's using AI as a buzzword. You know everybody's using CDP as a buzzword Great buzzword. I remember when CRM was a buzzword oh, crm. Does anybody have a CRM tool? It's a new thing at any DA, right? Listen, it's all great, it's all going to move this business forward, but start to lean into it a little bit more right.
Speaker 1:Don't be closed off to some of this stuff, because I think what you'll find is there's going to be success in each one of those steps that you take. Yeah, I think that's great advice and I mean, I don't think we've even scratched I know we haven't scratched the surface on how AI will be utilized in helping dealers that are trying to figure out every single incremental improvement that they can make relative to their websites. Right now, I think a lot of people think you know like well, ai and my website, like maybe it'll make some cool images we can add, or it'll write some copy or whatever. Yeah, it'll do a lot of all those things if you're good at it. But I think there's more.
Speaker 1:I think there's more around processes. I think there's more around formulations that are done in ai. I think there's data that comes off of that website we talked about, like number one conversion, conversion. I think there are projects and formulas that need to be gone through in terms of some of the data points from the journey that will. Also, ai will like light up the world in ways that um're not seeing and it's underutilized.
Speaker 2:So I think all that's Something I read the other day nothing automotive related, but I'm going to put it out there anyway. The other day they were using AI successfully to determine early breast cancer in women. To determine early breast cancer in women. Right, who would have thought that you'd be using AI to review images to determine the propensity of a potential for breast cancer in women? Like like, if it can do that, it's got to be able to help the car business, right, it's got to be able to. We just have to. We have to figure out how to use it better for sure.
Speaker 1:It's a it's a exciting time to be alive in terms of seeing and for well, people like you and I. It's not the first time that we get to be right in the middle of something that's pretty revolutionary, right, it felt pretty amazing when you're kind of standing in this little kind of stream and the dam breaks of the internet and we're like what Websites like you mentioned in this episode, ton of kind of stream and the dam breaks of the internet and we're like what websites? Like even, like you mentioned in this episode before websites? It's like, hey, there are these lead uh aggregation sites like what's this, what's this thing? Like oh, yeah, well, I used to get this paper thing at 7-eleven and thumb through all these cars and call somebody and now I'm like, oh, that's on the interwebs, oh, cool and you know, pulling leads off of fax machines and all that.
Speaker 1:Well, here we are. It's it's almost like 3.0, because it's the internet itself. Social media was also massive, still is, and now this ai component, it's pretty fascinating. It's pretty, yeah, it's exciting to be a part of it. I think it's a good place for us to to park this episode. Um, thanks again for taking the time. I can't wait to do more episodes with you for the audience listening and or watching. We always appreciate your time. We never want to waste it.
Speaker 1:If you have thoughts, if you like, if you love, if you don't like it at all, we'd still like to hear from you. If we can improve the type of content that we're making, we want your feedback. If you want to learn more about Dealer Alchemist and what they're up to and what they're doing, you certainly can do that as well. It's easy dealeralchemistcom. If you want to connect with John McAdams on LinkedIn, well, just type in John McAdams and you will find him on LinkedIn very easily, and I highly recommend that he posts content there that you'll only find there. And if you need anything else relative to learning about dealer alchemist or John McAdams, well, you can reach out on any of the methods where you are consuming this content, and until next time, well, be kind to each other. It's crazy times out there, so be one of those nice humans and we'll see you again real soon on another episode of Automotive Alchemy.