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
The Reputation Economy: Why Online Reviews Matter More Than Ever
In this episode of Automotive Alchemy, John McAdams, Chief Revenue Officer at Dealer Alchemist and a 30-year automotive industry veteran, dives into one of the most powerful (and often overlooked) drivers of consumer behavior—online reviews. Whether you’re a single-point store or a publicly traded dealer group, your online reputation is no longer a side note—it’s a make-or-break factor in dealership growth.
John shares practical, battle-tested insights from both retail and vendor perspectives, including:
- Why reviews now rival personal recommendations in consumer trust.
- How a few bad reviews (or a lack of new ones) can derail sales and service retention.
- The Four Seasons approach to responding to feedback—what to say, what NOT to say, and how to elevate every customer touchpoint.
- The three metrics every dealer should track: response rate, review growth rate, and sentiment analysis.
- How AI is helping (and sometimes hurting) reputation efforts.
- Why Fixed Ops is your biggest untapped opportunity for positive reviews.
If your online reputation feels more dumpster fire than five-star, this episode offers a clear starting point and a strategic path forward. With John’s sharp advice and deep experience, you’ll walk away with actionable ideas to turn customer reviews into a true growth engine for your dealership.
Welcome back to another episode of Automotive Alchemy, where we turn automotive dealership challenges into the strategies and solutions that help dealers grow their businesses. Today we're talking about well, it's one of the most powerful factors that influences consumers' decisions online reviews. It's not a new topic, but it probably matters more now than it ever has. So it doesn't matter if you're a single point dealership, maybe you're a small to mid-size group or a large publicly traded group on the national stage, you're yeah, all you big guys. Your online reputations matter as well. So if you don't want to be in that position where it makes or breaks you or you don't know why it is well, this is a good episode to be tuning into.
Speaker 1:Today, john McAdams, the Chief Revenue Officer at Dealer Alchemist, 30-year automotive expert and someone who has far more than a few things to say about the topic, is joining us. If you missed, by the way, if you missed one of our last episodes, I recommend going back and checking it out, because it's loaded with lessons learned from both sides of automotive. Because, oh, by the way, john's 30 years have been spent in retail retail, just like all you, dealers, as well as on the service provider slash vendor side. Welcome back, john. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing awesome, sean. Thanks for that. Clearly it sounds like I might do a whole lot of talking all the time based on that intro, but being a 30-year car guy, I embrace that. So thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. We've got a lot to cover today, so I'm just going to jump right into it and, for people that are new to this as far as paying closer attention to it specifically, I'm going to ask you and run you through some questions that just help people kind of get a level set of foundations. So this is it. When's the last time you bought something without checking reviews first? Anything Doesn't have to be a car.
Speaker 2:You know what's crazy, sean is, before all this online review reputation component existed, we really didn't have a lot of places to go right in the. Maybe in the past we went to at what was called consumer reports. Before I bought a dishwasher, before I bought something electronic, I went to consumer, I had to go to the store, I had to go find the, the pamphlet, the book, and then I could surf through it and figure out whether my, my friends and my family left a positive or negative review about that particular item. You know, and then you know fast forward to where things are online now, where instantaneously we can make a decision based on a star rating of people we may or may not know as to whether or not I should engage with that business or I should buy from that business or I should visit that business. And that really permeates not only from buying large ticket items, such as vehicles, or medium ticket items. It actually applies to where you want to go to eat your lunch or dinner. I would probably say I look at my reviews for almost everything that I want to do online for an unfamiliar business. Once I've become familiar and I've grown some trust factor there right now it's my experience and then I get to either return to that place of business or buy more of that product again or buy more of that product again. But initially I'd say right now it's almost 90% that I'm looking for reviews before I were to buy anything.
Speaker 2:Quick story I bought some sprinklers online. I've got horses. I wanted to buy some extra irrigation sprinklers. I went to Amazon. You know what made me purchase it the number of reviews and what they said. I had no a concept of whether they're good or bad. I basically bought these based on what other people's experiences were yeah it.
Speaker 1:That has become. It's almost uh, in a stealth manner, just become the default way. All of us are kind of like crowdsourcing credibility and trust through other people, some that you know right, some that you're like I don't know, but they're in the same. Most recent example for me is wife and I. We bought a travel trailer a couple summers ago and there's like things that you can do. You can change out the mattress if you don't like the bed. I'm so I'm doing.
Speaker 1:I'm shopping new mattresses right now, shopping a new faucet for the little kitchen or for the bathroom sink, and I found not only reviews, but I found a bunch of them through products that I found from a Facebook group that owns the exact same Jayco trailer that we have, and those people's product reviews were even recommendations. So the story and really the community capture of this, is so much bigger than it was when reviews just became a thing Like oh, you can rate this store, you can rate this product, you can rate this dealership. Why do you think people are at that point now where they trust these online reviews as much as they do a recommendation from somebody that they know that's a friend or family member?
Speaker 2:You know that's an awesome question. In the past, we would always believe our friends and our family right. We believed that what they told us they wouldn't want to put me in harm's way. If they had a bad experience, they would let us know. But because the entire world is now online and maybe that's not a true statement, but most of the world is online, right, and most of us have worked really hard for the money that's in our pocket we don't want to make the wrong decision and and and burn some of that of that money, Right? So we want to make the right decision for the beginning.
Speaker 2:And because the society has turned so social in nature meaning online social I don't mean let's go out to the bar every Thursday, friday night and be social. I'm sure that still happens, but not to the degree it used to, for sure. Now, social for a lot of people is online and many folks have now become those other folks online, have become their friends and their family. So even people they've never met before, people that might be in the same community, that might be buying from the same dealership or going to the same restaurant even though I've never met them, I feel like because they're part of my community, at least online, that there's a trust factor built in there, right. So it's taken it from the offline. Let me trust eyeball to eyeball my friends and my family, those conversations, to an online environment or ecosystem that now says you're part of my online community, although we've never met. We don't even know if we like the same things or not. But I'm going to trust your review over no review at all.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense. I tell people a lot, even in big brand, when you're building a Over, no review at all minds. I'm curious to know your thoughts on reviews and how they have such a big impact on purchase decisions. Can a few bad ones really drive customers away from a dealership? Do you really believe they can?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it could drive consumers away from a lot of things, right? But here's where I would help to educate, based on my experience inside of this, inside of 30 years in the car business both running stores and servicing and managing stores is this you don't want to have a five-star review where you're perfect. Let's just get that out of the way. We all have big egos and I want to be a five star as well, but then that tells me that you're sort of gaming the system that would tell me that you don't do anything wrong, and I don't care if you're a car dealership or you're, you know, perry stakehouse or ruse chris right.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, something could go wrong at any given time. So first of all we need to do is make sure that we don't think we need to be a five star across the board, right, because there's going to be some negative. Whether we believe it or not, that's the perception of that consumer and that's the reality. What we really need to think about is A what's my most recent or newest experience, right? So inside of platforms like Google, you get all your reviews collected, but click the newest button, right? Don't just live with the most relevant because that's what Google. So inside of platforms like Google, you get all your reviews collected, but click the newest button right.
Speaker 2:Don't just live with the most relevant, because that's what Google wants you to look at. Click the newest and go through there and say, out of the last 10 newest reviews that I have, are they all positive? Because if they are, then I start to feel really good about myself. If they're not positive, how do I go to improve that so they don't happen again? And the key to all of this is to respond to every positive and every negative review, not some, not part, not just the ones you feel like, but every positive and negative review needs to be responded to, because even if it's a negative review and you respond back to it and there's a solution in there. As a consumer, I know you're going to work with me versus just not responding and then I feel like typical business ask for my review, got it, didn't respond. I don't think I'll go there.
Speaker 1:I will go somewhere that actually cares about me as a consumer I've heard you say before regarding reviews and I think it's really smart is why are dealers not treating that communication channel similar to the way we have a timeline? When somebody sends in a lead, it's literally somebody that's making a, so it may be in defense of because it does happen, like even the review systems themselves are not perfect. Sometimes you have people that wrote something about you and they never even had done business with you perfect. Sometimes you have people that wrote something about you and they never even had to done business with you. But the attention to these things in a timely manner I think your advocation of that is super important because, especially when people are writing things that are genuine, where maybe the experience wasn't great, but if it is great, them hearing from you again, it actually even more so deepens that anchor of maybe you're buying and earning some loyalty with somebody who really appreciates the fact that you've now even recognized how they are telling you that they appreciate it being treated nicely. It's all of these things that you intentionally do to protect your business right, and ultimately they have really, I think, important effects on things like even retention, and they have that not just sales retention right, so they're staying around.
Speaker 1:But service retention, like I told you you've heard me say it before when you miss in the service department and they actually write about it, if it was really, really bad, it it'll very likely cost you the customer, because the trust and betrayal hurts so much worse when you can no longer trust the people that are now supposed to fix on your car. If you have a bad salesperson that like, if they still love your brand, they'll love it. They'll usually give you another shot because they love whatever product it is or brand you sell for sure. Yeah so any thoughts on that. I want to take you to some of the good, bad and fake a little bit category, but yeah, you know, I I would say this is um.
Speaker 2:So as an industry, over the course of 15 years, we've tried to figure things out. I'm not going to go to the negative side of the house. We've tried to figure a lot of things out. We've had people come and go give us some ideas based on their own opinions, but at the end of the day, we, as dealers I'm going to include myself in that because I was a GM over five stores, right, so I'm including myself in that bucket we may have gotten some bad advice along the way or, quite frankly, advice that has since changed, let's put it that way, meaning that, with all good intentions, we were told to do X, y and Z right, or don't worry about X, y and Z, it'll never matter to your business, and maybe we follow that advice. And now it's a different world, it's a different ecosystem. Everything is completely different 180 from where it was before. So where we may not have been paying as much attention to reputation management as it pertains to the growth of my store, we may have thought of it as a nice to do, not a need to have to have. I'm telling you, probably about seven to eight, maybe a decade ago, that nice to have turned into a need to do this the right way, for a couple of reasons. One is if you want to grow your business, you can't be out there with negative reviews, out there, thinking people will still spend $80,000 with you with a bad review rating, right, and conversely, on the other side, if you really do good reputation management, it factors into SEO. And if you do good SEO and we'll talk about that at a different time but if you know it's a contributing factor to positively affecting your search engine optimization to drive more traffic organically, because that's what Google wants, why would we step over that? Why would we step over that dollar to pick up a nickel somewhere else? Don't do that. Make sure we've got that down and I'll tell you there's three things today maybe we're going to talk about later, but I'll bring it up and then I'll stop. There's three things that we should all be looking at.
Speaker 2:Typically, what we look at, sean, is we look at that star rating. We're like, oh, I've got 4.3 stars, I'm cool, I'm good to go. Well, I'm going to tell you that the average star rating. I'm not going to tell you what the average star rating should be, but that wouldn't be the number I'd be striving to at 4.3, just for the record. But I'd be looking at the response rate right, how quickly are we responding to those reviews that are left online, both positively and negatively? And I'd be looking at my review growth rate, which doesn't seem like is a big thing today, but when I speak with dealers, I'm like we're going to look at these three things because these things are positively going to move the needle for you. So, review response rate how quickly do you do it? Two, what's the growth rate look like over time? Are you getting enough reviews to impact your business?
Speaker 2:And the final thing, which is probably one of the most important, it's your sentiment analysis. Which percentage of good versus bad Do we have similar bad month over month that we're not addressing and correcting? But if we did, it would turn into a positive sentiment versus a negative sentiment. Do I have more green on my sentiment report than red? Those are the three factors to know if you're actually driving your business forward towards growth, with reputation as a component, or are you just on, set it and forget it? I've got 4.3 stars, john. Don't worry about me, I'm good to go.
Speaker 1:I love that. On sentiment, I love all of that, but you're essentially just in a different way, telling dealers there are signals that are coming that you can identify. If you're doing these things, you will end up identifying specific signals within that sentiment that might batch things all together to say this is actually something we need to work on. We need to improve this right. This is holding us back. We could sell more, we could make customers happier, we could keep from churning customers because of this issue. Yeah, I really like that. That's so, that's strong in my world. I'm always thinking like where are the signals that lead towards okay, now that's a major uh you know issue or problem or opportunity to get better. So I that great advice.
Speaker 1:So a lot of people are familiar with seeing like a one-star horror story review. Right, like, oh, my goodness Nowadays I mean, we've been at this for a bit how much do these types of negative reviews affect dealerships nowadays? And I'm guessing that you might take someone into well, are you actually responding? Are you resolving these things? But I mean, how much effect do these horror stories have?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, first of all, reviews need to be legitimate. Let's get that out of the way right. A legitimate review for Google means that they have actively inquired with your business or transacted with your business, so let's set that table now. So, sean, you're an influencer, you come into my store, you have a bad experience. You then get online, you tell all your followers how bad of a dealership I am and they leave negative reviews. Well, 99.9% of those reviews would be invalid because they haven't followed the rules of what's a review or not right. So let's be clear about what's a good review, what's a bad review, and how does it stick or not stick. If it's not legitimately interacting with your business or transaction of your business, it doesn't have the place to be there and they can be removed. Number two if it is a legitimate you know review and they have transacted or inquired through tell me more about the vehicle that I'm selling and they didn't have a good experience, they have every right to leave that there. They have every right to voice their opinion. This is America. They have every right to do that.
Speaker 2:Our job as dealers is to make sure that we address those concerns right and make sure that publicly, because we were publicly now onto a forum right, publicly, we acknowledge those that are there and we work to resolve that issue and we should never, ever, ever, ever do what many of us may want to do, which is say something in a lashing out manner Now I know we've said that in this industry before. I come across it every single day where I'm like did you really, in writing, respond back that way? Was that the best way we could have managed it? And I listen, running my stores, I had a flake yes, we call them flakes right when this gentleman parks his vehicle near a cement factory every day and the acid peeled off the paint on the top of his truck and he expected me to repaint the vehicle.
Speaker 2:And as many times as I tried to explain it to him in the best possible light, he just wasn't hearing what I was saying and he kept leaving review after review after review. At some point we have to look at that and say I can make 99.9% of my people happy, because I really do want to make people happy, and I think every dealership does, but there's always going to be that one flake that we can't make happy. My suggestion is you take that entire story offline. You just take it offline. Let that one go and go affect the ones that you can possibly make a difference with.
Speaker 1:Isn't it funny how people have very high expectations of accountability for everybody but themselves? Correct, correct, right, right.
Speaker 2:Funny so.
Speaker 1:I'm guessing that all the other trucks you sold from that that same um, you know batch or that year. That's why I didn't peel off of all of theirs, because they weren't yeah, they were fine, they were all fine yeah, gosh, what that's a.
Speaker 1:that's a great, uh, true world example, though that's so. Um, you spoke to this a little bit in terms of right way. You know right way, wrong way for businesses to respond to negative feedback, and I think that's important, that people kind of hear that loud and clear. It's like you do have to make sure that you and you and I are guys that have been in this for a long time. I think it should be said we have sympathy for dealers who have had to actually become so much more technically capable. Right, the skill set in 1989 wasn't let's see how fast you are at typing, it wasn't right. So, type that response back to this customer that sent us a lead through this thing called the internet Okay, it didn't exist.
Speaker 1:So, even if we wanted to go back to the seventies, you know, in earlier eighties, like so there are also some things I think that people just need the encouragement to know that, yeah, reviews is a really it is a very significant part of your business, meaning that you need to almost think PR, like like public public relations, how you are talking to people, and it might feel like it needs to be a little bit more professional or polished than you want, but is it too simplified to maybe encourage dealers, especially if they're a part of a brand that has an overarching, like our group brand?
Speaker 1:Feel the bigger you get all the way up to the publics, because the publics clearly have this in play, all the way down to a single point. Think about how you would want to portray your brand's message and the voice of your brand in the moments when people are saying the greatest things about you and how they loved having this purchase experience with you, as well as the personality of your brand and how it communicates when somebody is unhappy about something. Is that too simple, or is it at least in the range of what you would tell dealers to do?
Speaker 2:You know, I would tell dealers to take the four seasons approach right and find somebody that you trust that will take the four seasons approach. And it doesn't mean acknowledging that you did something wrong. I don't think I've ever written a review response where I acknowledged where I did something wrong. It's always. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to contact us. We strive for 100% satisfaction for everything we do for all of our customers. My manager, john McAdams he's a general manager of the store. He will personally be reaching out to you to see how we could have done better. I didn't acknowledge wrongdoing. I didn't ask you to do anything for me. I said we were going to handle it until it got resolved. Because here's a quick example I was looking at some review responses the other day and the customer was a little bit surly, just a little bit surly, nothing major, just didn't feel the right way. And the response that the person gave to him was this we don't see you in our system. Please call the store. I'm sorry. You want me to do more work to call your store, not knowing who to talk to because you didn't give me a name or a number and it's my fault that I'm not in your system.
Speaker 2:That's not the Four Seasons experience. The Four Seasons experience says Sean, no matter what it is, you want more towels. You got twice as many towels as you asked for. You want a key to the gym again because you lost it. Let me bring you to the gym. You asked you where the bathroom was. Let me come out from behind the counter and hand walk you a person, walk you to that facility room. Right?
Speaker 2:That's the four season experience. That's what we have to do online, instead of getting our backup or thinking that a short, cryptic message because it's a response technically it's a response. I'll give you that as a response. But is that the four seasons experience on a maybe not so positive review? That's going to make me, as another consumer, feel like you really care about me? Probably not. But if you just go that extra mile and yes, I know we're all pressed for time, I fully understand it. But when you've got somebody who hasn't been 100% satisfied, our jobs as ambassadors for that store unless my name is on the building and paragraph three, my job as an employee, as an ambassador, is to make sure I give them that four seasons experience every single time, without fail.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great advice. I mean, many years ago the book Be Our Guest came out, all about Disney's customer service approach, and that's exactly what you're saying. Is that four seasons experience and you contrasted it with an example that essentially was saying we don't believe you, we think you're a liar.
Speaker 2:We don't see you in the system.
Speaker 1:That's what essentially, that's what the customer hears.
Speaker 2:I don't believe you. Oh, okay, that's going to go far.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's true, and I you know, not not for nothing. I think it's important in this day and age where a lot of dealers and institutions mostly media companies in our industry want to tell the story Like we've all figured it out and every single dealership all across the country is just hitting home runs when it comes to customer experience and reputation and we're all doing things right. And the truth is there's a lot of dealers that need the encouragement of like this is how you need to do it, and sometimes you're going to literally bite your tongue doing it. It's fair to say that, especially inside the industry, there are absolute nut job customers out there that you, like you said, you can't make everybody happy, and there are people who will never be happy, no matter what you do. But it doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a process in place to handle it. Like even if the nut jobs out there that just never understands like I don't see myself when I look in the mirror and then it's my fault, right, you still have to account for all of that because you're a business and you need to be professional. So I love that you're sharing a lot of little, just practical things around the issue.
Speaker 1:So let me ask you the last handful of questions I have for you on this episode, because online reviews will not be going anywhere. We all count on them, right? Whether we're buying cars or something on Amazon, we're always looking at reviews. They matter to us more than ever. Do you see any trends that have come recently, or is there anything new that might maybe shape part of how the future of reputation management shakes out? And that's just me guessing if you have any thoughts on it. I don't, because I don't know.
Speaker 2:I don't pay as close attention to it do you as you do I don't have a crystal ball, I really don't, um but but I've been doing things long enough that I have feelings, gut feelings, and so do a lot of other people in the car business. Right, like, like. And I'm sure if there was a thousand car guys and gals in front of me right now I'd say does some of what we do? Is it run by our gut feeling? There's going to be a lot of hands that go up, right, because people tell me, john, you got to take that out of it, you got to only go by data. And I'm here to tell you that, doesn't? My gut's been real good to me over the past 30 years. I look at a lot of data too to inspect what I inspect. But it kind of tells me, my gut tells me, that as the new car industry kind of pivots back to pre-COVID to a degree, incentives are back, rebates are back, $10,000 off, $5,000 here, $8,000 there, you know, $1.9 for 72, $60,000. All that is now back in play that we might lose sight of the lessons we learned coming into, going through and coming out of COVID. And I would ask everybody who's listening to make sure that we check ourselves sometimes when we do have an awesome sales month and we are moving metal across the curb and we are burning gas and we're like high-fiving and clapping because we're doing a great job, that we take a little bit of time and an introspective moment and go back and make sure that we've done everything right, because that's what's going to shape the future for you.
Speaker 2:When the next change comes Positively or negatively the car business is going to change. I don't know what that is. I don't know what that looks like. I don't have a crystal ball, but it will change. In my 30 years, I've lived through so many different changes in the car business, but the one thing that I've always held true for myself when I was fixing my stores and running my stores is I always took an introspective look back to make sure I wasn't forgetting things along the way. One of them could be reputation management. You might just get away from reputation management because you're just selling 400 cars a month and you're used to doing 200 and the money's rolling into the bank. I get it. I'm with you. I'm that guy too.
Speaker 2:But remember, when the downturn comes and things tighten up and consumers want to make an active decision on who to spend their $80,000 with, it's probably going to come down to the review. It's not going to come down to how beautiful your building is. It's not going to come down to your beautiful landscape. It's not going to come down to whether you had the gorilla on top of the building. It's not going to come down to the wiggly arm man out front all the balloons, right? That's part of all what we do. What's going to happen is they're going to look online and they're going to make a decision of where to go buy that vehicle, because they've already decided on the brand that you sell.
Speaker 2:And if we have lost sight of reputation management along the way and we've allowed that score to drop to a position where, as a consumer, I feel I could do better at another dealer and, by the way, that other dealer is 10 miles away at 60 miles an hour, what is that?
Speaker 2:Six minutes, so a six minute ride, maybe. 10 minute ride, 15 minute ride, if I can go there and get a better experience, because, remember, at the end of the day, consumers have it in their head because we tell them that they will be there all day long to buy a car or a truck. Let's just call it out. Let's just call it out right, if I'm going to be there all day long. You know where I want to be, sean. I want to be somewhere where, online, they've done a great job for the consumers, because I have a better shot at getting in and getting out and probably paying what I want. Fair or unfair, good or bad, that's my life. That's my perception. I'm going to start with somebody who has a higher rating online than a softer rating. That's just how it's going to work and I don't think I'm that much different than anybody else buying a high-ticket item?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think you are either. I love that you mentioned actually gut instinct. I think there are studies out there that people can go look at, and I know it can vary depending on what you're trying to make a decision on, but more often than not, not our gut instincts are actually right.
Speaker 2:Um they're actually right.
Speaker 1:So, uh, last three questions. I think I'm gonna roll you through and and give me like quick, like just quick, quick thoughts on them. Um, ai, do you think it's changing this part of the business and reviews? Do you think it's changing this part of the business and reviews? Do you think it could be a positive, a negative? It's just early indicators or maybe what you're seeing, what you're thinking.
Speaker 2:I love AI. Here's my take on it. I've used AI in review responses before and I've seen where it could make things more efficient. You could answer more reviews with AI right, just have AI write the review and response and send it out. Ai could help me go through sentiment and find out positives and negatives and larger green clouds versus red clouds right, there's a lot of positives to AI. Red clouds right. There's a lot of positive to AI.
Speaker 2:The one thing that I've seen it not do a great job at all the time is the response, because some responses, as you know, you can't tell tone in text and words. You can't tell tone, and a few times probably more than a few times I've seen AI read the situation completely wrong, right, and then respond to it. So, for example, one of the ways people get over on the system is they'll leave a five-star review. They'll give you a five-star and beat you up in the verbiage all day long. When AI sees a five-star and thinks it's a positive, so it just tells you everything positive, right. When reality, the consumer realized that you might not like my negative review, so I'll give you a five star, you'll probably glance over it. In reality, I just left a scathing review for you. So I think ai is get smarter, will become a a deeper part of this, of this portion of the car business. But you know right now when, when people aren't happy, they're emotionally charged and you need to be really human about what that response looks like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally agree. What do you think successful dealers will and what are they doing differently when it comes to how they're managing? What are like successful dealers today? What are they doing that makes them better at managing their reputation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they focus on it right. So think about this, right. Every new car usually gets a review sent to them, because in order to RDR a car new, you need an email address. So you sell 200 cars, 200 email addresses in the system, 200 invites go out Simple math.
Speaker 2:And we all love the front end and we love fixed ops right, but we always seem to focus on sales as the driving factor for reviews. I'm going to say we should absolutely focus on that and make sure that we still get 100% of that right. But usually fixed ops is the best, fastest and quickest way to make an impact. You have many more consumers coming through. Let's call it 2,000, 2,500 customer pay tickets and warranty tickets come through your shop on average. It could be more, it could be less. That's 2,500 opportunities. You had to do a much better job than the 100 or 200 you sold out the front.
Speaker 2:We're incredibly happy because they're buying a brand new car, so they should be awesome. But when I come in for service, that's where we need to shine and we need to do a good job at greeting. We need to do a good job at making sure that their email and their cell phone numbers are updated in the system so that when we do do an awesome job with that consumer, they get the ability to get a review sent to them. There's some key things out there that we're missing.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I would look at and I still look at to this day with my dealer partners is I look at how many valid email and cell phone numbers are they actively increasing or modifying in the DMS every month? Because if I have a 30% email collection rate, 70% of those things are going to never get to where they got to go. Right so, and and those are just the hard, rough numbers. Right so, and from from experience, that's where I found the biggest opportunity to get more positive reviews at my store, because I mandated the front do it. That was easy. That was a hundred, a hundred, 150 cars. I need it for an RDR all day long. Make sure it's in there easy. It was service that I needed to win that, because those are the ones that could quickly increase my review count and my scoring on these reputation profiles.
Speaker 1:Love it. I think you kind of answered my last question, which was going to be like if there's one piece of advice to a dealer that's actually struggling because their online reputation is, I guess the kids call it hot garbage today. I'm like it still comes from what you and I called it, which was dumpster fire. Where do you get hot garbage from a dumpster fire? But any any part I know. Sorry, I got always got to make it a little bit, a little bit funny. Uh, but any last thought on, just imagine a dealer, who they are, they're just dumpster fire city. What would be maybe the very place to start? You just articulated a whole like that where they should build a whole process around. Where would they start in all of that? Yeah, super simple.
Speaker 2:Go to Google, tell me, figure out what your star rating is. It's right in front of you. Look at how many reviews you have and see if that's the review number you want. Right, because there's a formula for it. By the way, this is not hypothetical. There's a formula for how many reviews you should get, based on X, number of cars you sell and X number of customer pay and warranty tickets. You write it's a formula and if you feel like your number doesn't match how long you've been in business and doing this, then you know that you're not getting enough. We call that review volume. Then you step it back or step it up and you look at other platforms, like Meta, like Facebook, and say, well, what do those review counts look like? Although they don't do counts, they do.
Speaker 2:You're an 83%, no positive reflection. So are you happy at 78%? Are you happy at 83%? Most dealers will tell you no, john, I'm happy. You said 100%, but you told me not to be 100% and I still stick by that. Come in the 90s, come in the 90s, be real. Everything I do isn't perfect, but I strive for perfection and I try to make and, and most importantly, look at the newest reviews. Don't click don't don't be lulled into the most relevant the most relevant to google users of the newest are the most relevant to me, right?
Speaker 2:I mean, they're the most real. This is what I'm doing real time today and if you look at that and you say, wow, I feel good. I've gotten three reviews today and I sold 300 views this month and I sold 200 cars call it 200 cars, new and used and I write 3,000 ROs in the back. Do we all think two or three reviews is the number it should be? I mean, I thought we did better than that. I thought we did a great job. So you know, set the benchmarks up If you need help with what those benchmarks should be.
Speaker 1:You know, let us know. I love it. I love it. Okay, audience. Thanks for listening and or watching.
Speaker 1:We've touched on some really great points today. There's always more to unpack. If you want to go deeper, hey, check out the webinar that John and I did on this very topic. You're going to find that easily if you go to the Dealer Alchemist YouTube channel or onto their LinkedIn page. If you and your dealership have opportunities to improve outside of reputation management, perhaps you need a better converting website, digital marketing that actually produces sales opportunities and builds your brand at the same time, maybe there's other areas where you'd like to grow.
Speaker 1:Well, john just happens to be one of the best growth advisors, who happens to sit in the C-suite at Dealer Alchemist. Yes, this is the official Dealer Alchemist podcast and talking to him is a great place to start. Conversations with John are totally free. How about that? 30 years of experience, his friendship we have to earn that, but he has a genuine interest in helping dealers. Everybody that knows him knows this about him. He cares that the dealers he works with get better every day. That's why he has so much practical knowledge to share Because, as we've mentioned. He's been on both sides of the fence in this industry, so connect with him first and foremost on LinkedIn. You can hit him up there and get connected, no problem. You can also connect with him johnmcadams at dealeralchemistcom. Thanks for spending your time with us. We certainly appreciate it and, depending on where you are like it, subscribe it, share this. You know all the stuff and we'll be back before you know it with another episode of Automotive Alchemy.