Bottom Line (Aired 08-04-25) Boost Dealership Profits with Trust and Lean Marketing

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Success isn't given, it's earned. And earning it means becoming the person who deserves it. The bottom line is where we cut through the chaos to simplify success. Uncovering the strategies, mindset and resilience it takes to win. Real stories, expert insights and practical tools. Because the only way to the top is by putting in the world. This is the bottom line. Welcome to the Bottom Line. I, I'm your host, Ryan Herpin. And on this show we like to get honest about what's working and what's not. In this ever changing business landscape, from real world strategy to hard earned insights, we go beyond surface level success into the truth behind the numbers. Today's guest is Daryl Steed. He is the founder of Smartwolf Consulting. With more than 15 years in the automotive industry, he's helped dealerships across the country fine tune their fixed ops, improve inventory strategies and cut the bloated marketing budgets, all while boosting their bottom line. Known for his no BS approach and deep operational knowledge, Darrell is here to talk about what actually moves the needle in this business. Darrell, welcome to the Bottom Line. It is such a pleasure to have you here. [00:01:17] Speaker B: Thank you so much. It's, it's a real honor and I love talking about how we can improve people. So I forward to, you know, discussing this with you. [00:01:27] Speaker A: Fantastic. So I kind of want to frame a problem today. I want to look at this from a, a fun lens here and, and I think one of the problems that, you know, dealerships across the country are facing is their service department really isn't hitting those profit goals. And it often feels like they're just spinning their wheels. So I want to dive right in and get to the bottom line as the name suggests. So why do so many fixed ops departments struggle to be profitable and, and what's usually being missed? [00:01:59] Speaker B: Well, I mean, like you said, it's, they're struggling with it and really what it comes down to is a couple things which will probably be a constant theme with what we're talking about is people. It's finding the right people, but not just finding people that have skills, it's the ones that care. Right. Like that actually want to make it work for people, connect with people and create an experience. Right. And so that's the big thing that we're seeing is there's an exodus of talent or hard work or connection that's being trained in people. The other thing that we're not seeing is we're not looking at fixed operations as a way to pull it back in or make it full circle. It's we want to do service and we want to get these big tickets. But just like sales, we're not looking at is this the best thing for our future business. And so we're not creating that dynamic of where you are the trusted source against all the other competition. When you look at, let's say a franchise dealership, their competition isn't other franchise dealerships anymore. It's the Jiffy Lubes, it's the Midas's, it's. Everyone can do these type of services. So if you're gonna be a little bit more, which is perfectly fine, your service, your care, your connection, your ambiance when you're there has to be elevated. Otherwise I'll go get it done by Uncle Joe in the backyard type of service. [00:03:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more on that. If there's one thing that I know is very, very true, the customer experience creates loyal customers to come back. That's just really what it is. People don't always remember the service. The thing is always going to be the thing. What people remember is, is the interaction, the overall atmosphere, the kindness, the willing to attend to them. Right. There's a whole lot of that human aspect that's easily missed. So something that I've always been a numbers guy doing what I do for a living. I'm also all about the numbers. But what is the first number or metric every service manager should track but often misses? [00:04:03] Speaker B: I mean, my opinion. I mean, you could make this an argument for pretty much anyone and get 10 different answers, but it's gotta be, what is the life cycle of that customer? You've sold them a vehicle, now you're going to service it. How many times are we going to see them back and what's the value of that customer? And you really should know that. So that if I know outside of the car blowing up, right. And you have to fix the whole thing. But you should know we know they're going to be back here four times in three years and we are going to make X off of this customer. And if you see that go up or down, you should be making pivots of why that's happening. The other thing would be that most people would probably agree with is you need to know your efficiency in your shop. What can you do and how quickly can you do it, but not just fast, efficiently. So it's not just about speed. You have to look at the effectiveness of stall efficiency, what you're doing per hour, who's doing that. And I can give you a Quick example, I was working with a store. There was a guy that was like, at 120% efficiency, the guy was just cranking out stuff, and everyone's like, well, we don't want to, like, change that we don't want to take away because he's billing more hours than, like, the average guy. Now, the downside to that was, is we had a lot of comebacks. So though he's billing those out, then work had to get done a second time. So there's this. You have to understand what your effective efficiency is, not just how quick can we get them in and out. [00:05:31] Speaker A: That's also a really good point. You know, something that I kind of summarize from some of the things I pulled out there is, and it's something I go back to a lot is you cannot manage what you do not measure. If you're not measuring everything, you have no idea what kind of opportunities you're missing to utilize that knowledge. Like, you know, something we said before we started recording this, this segment, you know, is. Is people say knowledge is power, but applied knowledge is really the power. The data is useless if it's not utilized, and you can't utilize it if you don't have it. So there's really good points in there. So you talked about stall efficiency, but you mentioned it. So can you explain stall efficiency in, you know, how it impacts the bottom line in simple terms? [00:06:13] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, real simply put, if I have, you know, you go into a shop, they have 10 stalls. If I'm going to do an engine, and that takes eight hours, that's a whole day's worth work. Now, simple math is, is okay. If I'm going to make $2,000 of profit to do this engine, it costs 6,000. We charge 8, we make 2,000 bucks. How many jobs could I have done in that stall to make that same amount of money? So is that the best use to my time? Not saying you're going to refuse it, but you need to understand, I can't take six engine jobs and tie up six lifts if I can actually put $5,000 through that every day, and I'm only making 2,000 on it a day or whatever it may be. So you really have to look at what jobs are more profitable, which jobs are profitable with quick turn. And you want to make sure that you're constantly moving that in and out of the shop so that you're not tying yourself down to what you think is the good job. You're like, oh, we're billing 8,000. Well, but if there's only $1,000 profit, is that the best use of your time? [00:07:15] Speaker A: See that, that's something I feel is so easily overlooked in a lot of different industries. It's, they look for these big ticket items, big ticket services, products, whatever it is, and they just go after that. But they're not, they're missing the value to time portion there. How much time is really spent to gain that value? Because it might be a bunch of smaller jobs that add up to being more than that one big one, right? Yes, there comes additional complexities and whatnot, but sometimes the return on investment is better if you steer away from some of those time consuming jobs that you can't turn a big profit on. But you know, what systems or tools have you seen work best in fixing those, those broken processes? In a service department you've got a. [00:07:55] Speaker B: Lot of new softwares out there. And now with AI becoming the new hot buzzword, I'm sure that these will become even more efficient or Skynet will take over. One or the other is you have like Irecon or fixtops Digital or you know, a couple of those guys out there. Rapid Recon is a really well known one where it's when you look at these things they like they're making everyone be efficient because there's an accountability to each thing. So the tech has one, the advisor has one, the parts. So it makes everyone stay in that efficiency zone. And they, they're colored. Right. So if you're in red you're too far like you should have been done things. And all it does is essentially like you said, we're now measuring and putting a mirror and when or a magnifying glass on it. And when we do this it's like okay, now everybody knows what they're doing, there's no more. Well, he said, and she said no, it's like everyone has to do their job. As like Bill Belichick said, you just do your job, don't worry about doing anyone else's job. If you do your job, we're going to obviously do well. And I think that's kind of the key of being efficient is understanding you don't need to do make up for other people. You just need to be efficient at your position or your job and take accountability for it rather than if this person would have done that. Like we can't get caught up in that. Right. We have to take that self responsibility. The other thing too about fixed stops, when we were talking about the measure, I will tell everybody as a coach and somebody that has been working in dealerships for a long time, though. You need to measure it to manage it. That is true. And you should measure everything so you can manage it. I will also tell people, don't start measuring something unless you're going to manage it, because all it does is create a pitfall of like, oh, I'm failing in that area as well. So it's. I'm not saying don't do it, but if you're going to go like this, now that we have the measurement, we're not going to manage it. It's just one more area that you're causing roadblocks and disconnects. [00:09:48] Speaker A: That was pure gold. [00:09:49] Speaker B: And. [00:09:50] Speaker A: And I've got to highlight one aspect of that that you touched base on multiple times within it was accountability. Right. One of the philosophies I have is accountability is best when it's as simple as cardboard and crayons. Accountability is so powerful, yet so avoided. And methods I've used in the past are as simple as whiteboards with, here's how many hours you have, here's how many hours you did, here's where you're at, here's how much you have left. Things like that can really make a difference. So implementing the right tools, software can give the people, the team, the visibility they need to meet their target and to exceed expectations. [00:10:26] Speaker B: I agree. And when you say, like, accountability, it starts with communication. I mean, everything starts with communication. But do we like. And this is where we've lost it. And I make jokes about this in the sense of like, we know that the COVID happened and this changed the industry quite a bit. And I'll say, like, you know, it then spanned through that and we had the fake flu and we had all these things going on, and so we had all these changes. However, we lost an exodus of talent because we kind of became like auto dealership millionaires. Right? Money was just coming in, people just had to do it because they got so pent up. And now we're getting back to where you need to have a skill set and training. So accountability starts with that communication. Do your people even know what their goal is? Do we communicate that in a way they understand not telling someone this is what you need to do. Do they understand it and interpret it as such? So, you know, we really need to get back to that core philosophy of communication and training and development so people actually know what's expected of them and then how to execute it so that they're not guessing of, if you leave me to my demise, I'M going to do it the best way I know how, and it probably more than likely is not going to be anything like you want, but I'm going to do the best I can to get it done. It's how do we make sure that it aligns with the same vision so we're all rowing in the same direction. [00:11:42] Speaker A: That's, that's so much to unpack there. But you're so right in so many levels and to our audience, if you're enjoying this conversation like I am, don't go anywhere. Maybe grab some popcorn, coffee, do some stretches, whatever it is you got to do. But we're going to be back with more Daryl on the Bottom Line. Love what you're watching. Don't miss a moment of the Bottom Line or any of your favorite NOW Media TV shows, live or on demand, anytime you anywhere. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and enjoy instant access to our full lineup of bilingual programming in both English and Spanish. Prefer to listen on the go catch the podcast version of the show on the Now Media TV website at www.nowmedia.tv. from business and breaking news to lifestyle, culture and everything in between, now media TV is streaming 247 ready whenever you are. We are back on the Bottom Line and we are still here with Daryl Steed, the automotive consultant, the founder of Smart Wolf and a special specialist in maximizing profit where most dealers are are bleeding cash. This segment is all about the Buy center. The that chaotic zone where a dealership decides what inventory to bring in next. Daryl helps teams simplify the process and turn guesswork into strategy. So Daryl, such a pleasure to have. [00:13:07] Speaker B: You appreciate being back and this is a topic that I'm really fired up about. So perfect. [00:13:13] Speaker A: Perfect. So let's get right to the bottom line. The problem that I see if, if I were to sum this up for dealerships across the States, you know, is their Buy center is chaotic and it often feels like they're guessing which cars will sell. And that comes with a lot of risk. So if we're diving into this, what's the biggest myth about what makes a great vehicle to bring into inventory? [00:13:37] Speaker B: So Buy center is this new buzzword about how you get acquisition and the first thing you have to understand is what is like where are you getting it from? It can be auctions, private party, third party leads. There's lots of sources to get this. I specialize in maximizing that inventory and profitability. So I try to get away from the auction. They're not bad. They have A use, but there's a lot of fees and there's a lot of risk and there's a lot of things you deal with. So how do you generate your own profitability and bring that back in? And that's through private party, third party leads. First party leads and tier four marketing are also known as social media. And you got to know the first thing you want to know with what cars you want to get is your sales strategy. You know, what have you sold before? What are you going to sell? And more importantly is, are you a volume store or are you a more profit store? But low volume, right? Like in. And it doesn't mean you're a bad store. You're just like, I'm not trying to sell 700 cars a month because that takes its own challenge too. I want to sell 100 and I want to make a little bit more profit. You need to know that and you have to own that decision. We see all the time stores and like I want to sell more cars and I always ask that question, if I bought a hundred cars for you right now, dropped them on your lot, what would happen to your service department? What would happen to your recon? What would happen to your. And people go, oh, I didn't think of it. You have to think about three steps ahead. You can't be reactive to this market anymore. It just changes too fast. And so that's where buying comes in of how are we now taking control of our business and bringing profitability in from the streets. Right. Rather than being reactive and having to go make bad decisions because now we need it rather than being proactive to it. [00:15:23] Speaker A: You know, it is funny because this same exact thing you said applies to manufacturing across the board as well. When you're buying inventory to produce a product, if you streamline that process so well, now you've got all this product that you have to sell. So there's so much that ties to the worlds I'm so used to. And it's interesting because you put it in such a simple, simple way. It's easy to understand and easy to explain because I feel like when it comes to oh, I want to sell more cars, a lot of people aren't thinking about the, the, the response that comes with that automatic thing that happens in that process. Now you're having to overload service department and now maybe personnel is going to be stretched pretty thin because you got all this additional inventory things to deal with. It can be troublesome. And a lot of people think, you know, build more products, sell more products. Doesn't always mean you're going to make more profit. That comes with additional expenses and costs as well. So you could be more. Right. But how, how can a dealership simplify and streamline that that buy centered process? [00:16:27] Speaker B: So let's give the probably the three simplest things that I teach with Smart, Wolf and Street Smarts, which you see the background behind me, that's the acquisition academy that I've created. But the first one is that you really need to understand is buying is the hardest job in your store. There's not anything harder than that because you have to go one, understand inventory, understand pricing, understand value. And you have to engage with your customers unless it's an auction. So you have these, there's so many pieces that you can't kind of halfway do this. You got to be focused to it. Number two, and probably the one that we see where most dealers struggle or fail at is not understanding that for I want to say it's 10 years running, they are the second or third least trusted position in America for an automobile salesperson. So knowing that you have to create a different dynamic and there are two companies that have done a relatively good job of that, which has created more noise, which is your CarMax and Carvana. You need to be the reason they what do you do? They don't. What do you do that's better or easier or faster? You need to create a different dynamic of not only do we sell cars, which we're, we know we're good at, we also buy, but our buyers don't sell cars. Right. Like we want to treat it as its own thing. The customer doesn't have to get that 1980s version of the car business. And number three, which is the one where I spend all my time in is you have to find people that care but actually want to win. Right. And you know, I breed a winning opportunity and a winning mindset because you're going to hear, no, it's too low, I want more, I mean going to hear every version of this. And you need people when they hear that know how to talk to customers, educate customers and create a dynamic experience that allow as we talked about them to know like and trust you to want to do business with you. Because your people are the difference in this industry, not your product, not your money. It is the people that people want to deal with. Right? People want connection. And so those are the three simple things I say. That's where we're going to start and then we're going to get into a plethora of other things. But these are the core foundations of what we need to understand. Do it correctly. [00:18:41] Speaker A: Man, I tell you what, I kind of wish I had a note and pen for everybody that is watching this because that is so powerful and so true in so many levels. It's so easily missed. When you're caught up in the day to day mundane, the, the grind on a regular basis. You can miss some of those underlying, very important core aspects of the business. So necessary. And that customer experience, that, that one to one relationship, that mutual respect there, there's so much there that can make a positive impact on the business and if it's overlooked, it can be extremely detrimental to the reputation and success overall. So it's funny because I've got to ask this question because I know there's people out there that are running one way or the other and might not see what the right path is. But what data should guide the buying process and the buying decisions? Is it, is it the gut feeling or is it the metrics or are we looking at a combination? [00:19:34] Speaker B: Man, I'll probably get harangued for saying anything like this from both sides of the aisle, but it is really a combination. The analytics and math has to be your driving force to sit there and do the, you know, get the book out of your pocket and figure out what it might be and the feel for it. That was very successful when we didn't have the analytics, when we didn't have these fast moving drivers. So you want to look at the math. However, there are certain things that come up that you need to understand. How are you going to do it? It's not just the math, it's is this car best end user for me, is this car the best end user for this market? And to give an example is all right, if you're in the Midwest and or let's say you're in the like Texas area, right? That's big truck country. So trucks are going to perform typically a little bit better. But if you get like a car that let's say like a Mini Cooper, well, that probably isn't going to be the fast mover in that area. It's not a bad car, it's just not right end user for that. So even though the analytics will say you bought it right, if it's not the right car for you, you have to keep in mind where that's going to go. Where are you moving that? The other thing you really want to understand in the math is it is a numbers game. So you really have to understand are we Buying everything. Are we surgical to what do we want to buy? Like have a mission of what you're going to go after and you have to own that mission. So that's where the analytics come in too. If you sell cars, 15 to $40,000, don't try to go buy $60,000 cars, don't try to buy $10,000 cars. Stay in a zone that you know, allows you to operate your business unit rather than someone else's vision. [00:21:11] Speaker A: You know, I think this is kind of the perfect segue into this next question, which is almost mythical in a way. This is one of the hard ones I have to deal with in, in different industries. So I'm curious your your thoughts on this, but how do you teach teams to see what the market will want in that next 30 to 60 days, not just today? [00:21:32] Speaker B: Well, that is one of those mythical ones. One you're going to use a little bit of what you've sold previously in the last two weeks to a month, right. To kind of see what the trends are. The other thing you want to look at, which is historical trends, not for what we sold them for, but where do we see markets pick up? Because unfortunately, as much we don't want to go back in the past, the past can teach us things about what's coming. You know, outside of COVID which kind of disrupted the market for a while. For a year and a half, two years it was, we knew in winter it slowed down. We also knew when weather crept up. So if we know snow's coming, it's probably a good idea to buy some four wheel drives if you're in, let's say, sunny California. In San Diego, four wheel drive is probably not necessary. Two wheel drives are probably okay. So it's understanding your dynamic, your market and seasonal trends. But then the other thing is, which you might not have experience with is have a risk assessment of what cars are you willing to go after that you don't have experience with. To build experience. That doesn't mean you decide I'm going to buy 30 Range Rovers or I'm going to buy, you know, a bunch of Rivians. Right. You like. But you might buy one or two and see if we've never sold them, we don't have experience. We also need to get outside of our comfort zone and start developing strategies so that we can grow as other markets shrink. [00:22:49] Speaker A: That's a really good point actually. [00:22:51] Speaker B: And. [00:22:54] Speaker A: It'S one of those things where you can only go. I've always learned how to utilize my previous data, you know, Track everything so you can see you have the best possibility of seeing what's coming up. Right? So seeing those trends, which I think is really ultimately the best way to go about it, you know. So real quick, you know, this has been absolute gold for those who want to sharpen their inventory game. Where can they find you? How can they reach out? [00:23:19] Speaker B: It would be hard not to find me. So there's two websites. I have smartwolf consulting.com, and that's the one that's probably pulling up right now. And then I have. The thing you see behind me is called street smarts. That's the acquisition academy. It's the first of its kind. So instead of a sales academy, it teaches you about acquisition, and that'[email protected] which also pivots into the smart wolf. And then if you're one of those people, you're like, I don't like websites. I understand. You're more of the social person. You're in social. You can find me on LinkedIn, you can find me on Facebook. Tick tock. There will be no dancing. Okay. But there's tick tock stuff and Instagram. Pretty much any one of those social media filters, and you just send me a message and I'm one of those type of guys. It's like, we're not. There's no set thing. Like, as you read up the price plans, it gives you ranges because we customize everything based on what you need, not just saying, you know, here's the playbook, and then good luck. We want to make sure that you're successful. [00:24:16] Speaker A: That's fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. Hopefully people are going to be trying to find you pretty quickly now. Don't go anywhere. We're going to be right back on the bottom line with more dare. We are back on the bottom line with more Daryl Steed of Smart Wolf Consulting. We've talked service, we've talked inventory. Now it's time to talk marketing. And this is going to be a hot topic. If your ad budget feels bloated and your sales don't show it, you're not alone. Darrel helps dealerships cut waste and get smarter about where their dollar goes. So today this, this segment is a pretty important one. So I kind of want to frame a problem here before we introduce Darrell again. You know, a lot of dealerships across the country, and I know this to be true, the problem that they're facing is the marketing budget feels really, really fat. It's a really heavy expense, but it often feels like they're spending more but selling less. So, Daryl, welcome to the show. Glad to keep you on here. I want to dig into this. [00:25:21] Speaker B: Yeah, this one's a big one. Ad spend, media spend, whatever people want to put it. Marketing dollars. Again, we go back to the nada. How they teach a statement what they've the premise of running the dealership since the 1960s. And unfortunately, this isn't your daddy's dealership anymore and it's just a different animal. And marketing has to be understood of what's your cost per acquisition, what's your cost per sale. These are all metrics we're going to track. But now it's changed on how we can get that in a more effective manner. Now, some people aren't going to like hearing this and it's okay. But the big stuff, right, the stuff we've been spending thousands of dollars on, you can get the same type of movement by utilizing the most important piece of your store and they work right there with you, which is your people. And the reason I bring that up is, is social media. Now I'm going to refer to social media as tier four marketing because you have tier one from the manufacturer, tier two to the region. Tier three is your autotradercars.com and all that. Tier four is your social media and every version of what that means your people work for you. And their individual brand is what people connect with. Why doesn't that reflect with your store? They can post, they can do ads, they can do all kinds of things and they're free. Yes, you can spend money as you get up, but you have to develop a social media strategy before you pay to get us one. Right. The second part of this is when you think about social media, it's kind of like the new SEO search engine optimization we have for years got SEM. And SEM is effective. No one's going to take that away. But to get your own territory to go against like companies like CarMax or AutoNation, like these big boys that spend thousands of dollars to own that space, you're constantly having to spend that money. So you do SEO, you start doing blogs and post and you start building your website and you do. These are all great. Why aren't you using your people to have 100 people in your store or 60 people in your store creating SEO for you? And why aren't you encouraging your people to do this? Because it creates their own brand so that in the event they went somewhere else, you helped them get there. Right. Be the person people want to work with and empowers their people. And that's where I think we can really start a conversation of marketing is how many people are doing this and then how many people are still relying on the $50,000 a month to mailers or TV or radio, those type of things. [00:27:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I feel like what you just said there deserves some applause because that's such an intelligent strategy that I have yet to hear another person bring up. I've utilized it in different businesses, different service based businesses, pressure washing, vinyl printing. There's so much opportunity there to have the team be a part of that, that, that free media exposure. Oh my goodness. Especially when you create an atmosphere where everyone feels valued, heard and a part of the overall goals and objectives. Now you've got an army of social media exposure, many of all types of passionate people that want to present your business not just from the lens of sales, but from culture, atmosphere, family. My goodness, there's so much opportunity there that's being missed. You couldn't be more right. So kind of a deeper question there is, is how do you identify when ad spend is no longer giving you the return you're looking for? [00:28:50] Speaker B: Lots of different ways you can look at like how many deals did you make? But again, we get back to the old school adage of a CRM and things we've used, which are they're necessary. I'm not saying throw out CRMs guys, but we only give the first lead, the first attribution. Well, what if they went to four different sites? Who gets the credit for that? So when we're looking at these things, we don't even know now when you're talking about advertising for service a little bit more direct and a little bit more effective because we know they came in, they came in off this ad. It's kind of a simple issue, but when it comes to sales, it's very muddy. It's very like just murky of how you track it when you think about these other things, and I don't want this to be lost is if you decide like, you know what, I want to take control. I no longer want to release control and hope for something to happen. I want to create a plan and I want to make it happen. Right. Is you have to do training because you can't just let someone with a phone and social media go go crazy on your dealership. Because we also need to make sure they're saying things that are professional that we don't just unleash hell's fury on us. Right. So there's companies like Social grenade which I've partnered with, with Street Smarts. There's other influencers out there that'll help you. Like if anyone's following it. Goat for Real, which is on TikTok and everything else, he sits there and talks about human issues, right, like that people deal with and shows consumers how to like go about dealing with the dealerships and then shows the dealerships how to then two way communication that in social media and drive your own traffic. Can you imagine you're on social media and let's just say Facebook is the, you know, it's a big one that people know and you start doing ads and then you do personal stuff. So they, they need to know you as a person. You can't just be serving up, here's a car, here's a car, here's a car. And you're going like this. Everything I see from you is a car. You need to blend it. And that's where the training comes in from. Like companies like I spoke about. But then all of a sudden you get a lead to your own personal messenger and they say they're coming in. What do you think the likelihood is of that, of them coming in and transacting? Is it higher or lower than what you're paying to get in there? They saw everything. They like you, they love you, they trust you. They're coming in, barring budget, they're going to transact and that cost you time but no money. So yeah, time is worth something. I'm not going to sit there and say time isn't. But if they're at work, what are they doing with their time? Now the caveat to this, where people struggle with this is do they actually like working for you? Because if they don't like working for you, they probably aren't going to want to be really advantageous about pumping up the where they work and everything else. And I talk to people all the time and say, what do you do? And they say yeah, I work at this dealership. And they're like quiet about it. And I'm like man, you need to tell people what you do. And they're like yeah, I don't want to do that, I don't want it on social. You need to also look at that as advertising because if you're spending all these advertising dollars and driving traffic in what does that culture look like? And are your people proud, excited, pumped up and screaming it from the rooftops of where they work because you take care of them. So there is a disconnect that we also have to fix in that as well. [00:31:50] Speaker A: 100. A very firm belief of mine is the business doesn't make the people, the people make the business. If you give people a goal and objective, a purpose to buy into, it goes from a job to a career, give them something to be proud of, give them something to that that they feel is bigger than themselves. And now you've got those people that want to present right and, and you hit something so important you don't just want to turn them loose on. Let's load social media with all this different stuff. A few things to consider. Like I said, training. There's got to be a little bit of training there to prepare them so you're not having a negative effect in the same way where it could be very positive, it could also be very, very negative if there's not the proper training involved. But at the same time something I can see where businesses might get a little concerned if, if their employees media to also promote the businesses. How do we keep them away from spending all this time on their phone and just masquerading as we're doing this content? For me it would be simple. You can see if posts are being made and kind of a generalization of how much time it takes. But something that's really important and I've got to ask this, what's the first place most dealerships should look to tighten their marketing? [00:32:59] Speaker B: Me personally, I would say the first place you want to do is third party advertising. Not saying it doesn't work, but because there's some stores that they, they've done it, they've got it locked down, they've done it well. But there's a lot of them that go like this. Okay, we're going to give it a try. But then they don't have the process in place to make sure it happens right. Or they don't have the strategy in place to ensure they, they sell these cars right, they drive the traffic in and then like, okay, now what do we do? So I always say third party is something you want to look at because there are some strategic things you can do and then there's some things that are ancillary but you might want to do but maybe you're not ready for. The second place I would immediately look at is when you're doing SEM, what is your strategy with your SEO to do this? If this is where our SEM is now and this is where SEO is, within two years or three years it should get to this. But if we're only going to stay here, this is a bad spin because you're never pushing this up. So you really need to understand what your plan is to reduce and get more effective results. And then the third thing I would say is, you know, not just the social media is you really want to engage with the AI of understanding market analytics. But being careful of understanding AI is not there to replace, it's there to efficient, to be more efficient and then maximize time. So it will tell you the analytics like a clairvoy, it'll tell you where your market is and then you can then really surgically get in there. But you have to really formulate a plan of like we've talked about in the previous segment. Once you know it and you have the information, you've got to measure it and then execute it. You can't just say well Great, we spent $50,000, we have, and now what? Right, like if you're going to make the investment, you have to have the follow through behind it. [00:34:47] Speaker A: That is extremely true. And to put the icing on this cake, can you share a story of a dealer who, who's, you know, who cut their spend and ended up selling more? [00:34:59] Speaker B: Yeah, so actually I got to work with a store and they made a really big jump pre Covid. So this wasn't like they decided to like take advantage of the market. And they were selling about 100 new cars and 50 used and they said you know what, new cars kind of sell themselves. They were an import brand. So it kind of took care of itself and they just shifted all their spends to use cars. Well now this store, within a year and a half's time, they went from 60 used cars a month to over 300 used cars a month. Single point store. Wow. But they reduced some spin now because they have such a presence, they've actually been able to reduce the used card because now once they get the traffic to them right, they see all the inventory. So now they've gotten really surgical to where they have a cost per sale of under 300 a car and they're doing 3, 350amonth and now they're doing 150 to 200 new. So they went from a 150 car store to a 500 car stor, kept that going through the tough times of COVID and are still in those numbers, you know, four or five years later. And when you look at that, it was a testament to them empowering their people, saying this is and they told their people, this is what we're going to do, this is the strategy we're going to do. And they were going to be very high volume. Gross obviously went down, but they made it up in volume. Well, guess what? Everyone won. They reduced expense, they sold more cars, they made more money and their CSI and everything else didn't get worse. Right? Like they kept their customer service up. And that's, it's not easy. It's extremely hard work. [00:36:29] Speaker A: That is extremely hard. I've got to jump in right there because this conversation is absolutely incredible. There's so much power to it. Don't go anywhere. We've got so much more to unpack with Darrell on the Bottom Line. Love what you're watching. Don't miss a moment of the Bottom Line or any of your favorite NOW Media TV shows. Live or on demand, anytime, anywhere. You can Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and enjoy instant access to our full lineup of bilingual programming in both English and Spanish. Prefer to listen on the go catch the podcast version of the show right on the Now Media TV website at www.nowmedia tv. From business and breaking news to lifestyle culture and everything in between, now media TV is streaming 247 ready whenever you are. We've made it back to the Bottom line. We are still here with Daryl Steed, the consultant strategist, the truth teller in an industry that is, that often avoids the hard conversations. So this is something I love to talk about. Let's, let's, let's put some pressure on some pain points here. This segment gets to the core of Daryl's work, telling the truth even when it's uncomfortable, because that's where real growth happens. Growth doesn't come from comfort zones. If you want to grow, you want to succeed, you got to get good at doing what's hard because then life's going to get a whole lot easier. You keep doing what's easy, life's going to get a whole lot harder. So you got to get comfortable being uncomfortable. And Daryl, it is such a pleasure having you on the show. I'm so excited to talk about this with you. [00:37:59] Speaker B: No, I mean, I'm pumped about this. So for those of the people that don't know the smart wolf consulting, we have a trademark phrase, which is the truth hurts only when it should. So anything we talk about right now, if you get offended by it, it's probably because it hit a little bit close to home. And that doesn't mean that it's true in the market. It means that you, you believe or someone knows that it is to be truth. And I think that's why I'VE been really successful. No one typically likes it, actually, I can tell you they hate it. But when you tell the truth, it also resounds with them, is, I'm not the guy who's going to pump rainbows or, you know, and do all these type of things. It's, I'm going to tell you what I see, I'm going to tell you what I've heard, and then I'm also going to get your input. And then let's find out how we can essentially make the truth empower you rather than hurt you and change that perception of people. And you can do that a lot of different ways, through reviews, social media culture, and I like to focus on those because the only way we get hurt is when we start lying to ourselves. [00:39:00] Speaker A: That is so true. It's so, so true. And, and the fact is, you know, a lot of the audience, at least the dealerships across the states and probably around the world all together is I'm sure they see that things aren't working. But people aren't just being honest with themselves. They're avoiding the facts. They're hiding from the truth or escaping the accountability. Because we don't like being uncomfortable, right? Our brains are wired for survival, not thrival. So as soon as you go against the grain or you swim against the flow of the river, things get difficult and we want to go back to taking it easy. So avoiding the truth is a survival mechanism. It's not one we like to choose all the time, but it is kind of a natural inclination. So I've got to ask, when you say the truth hurts only when it should, what does that really mean in the car business today? [00:39:48] Speaker B: Well, let's just line out a couple things. We know about the auto industry. It's still one of the least trusted industries in America. That's not me being mean. That's the truth. Like if you go ask consumers, and part of that is, and we'll call Hollywood, a little bit of this problem is name a movie that painted the auto dealership into a positive light. It doesn't exist. They're all great. I love every movie ever made about dealerships, but they're all very, you know, we're a little bit of below the fold. The second part is, is that we don't expect the level of professionalism and care that this industry comes with an income. So a doctor, you know, the 95% of doctors hold themselves to this esteem and they operate in a certain way of professionalism and they make wildly good money and other Professions like that, dentists, doctors, engineers, they, they're very structured and they do certain things. The auto industry is the, one of the most high paid fields in the America that doesn't require a degree. But we don't treat ourselves or expect or lay expectations in that same regard as a doctor, a dentist, an engineer. And so that's where the truth really has come in, is like, we have been very fortunate to make very good incomes all across the country. When is it, when are we going to start acting like we should? When are we. And when I say that is a hype income professional. [00:41:14] Speaker A: Oh, and that right there is one of those pain points that people like to avoid. It's, it's, it's, if you know you're doing well, why not improve your service, your, your expectations of, of service delivered. Right. And, and I love how you brought that up. So a good question that I want to ask is, and you've been, you've dealt with dealerships for a long time, you've dealt with the automotive industry for a long time. What are some of those lies that dealerships and people within those, those entities tell themselves that, that really hold them back? [00:41:44] Speaker B: I mean, the first one is like, you know, the, the old adage of like, well, we're doing okay. Like that word all in itself should go away. Okay. Like, yeah, I can't even. We don't have enough time to get into that. The other one is the word try. Well, we're trying to do better. It is physically impossible to try to do anything because the moment you do it, you're doing it. You cannot try anything. It's a word based in failure. So you can say, I tried. No, you didn't. You either did it or you didn't do it. Yoda said it right, in 1980. Right. The little green guy got it right. We either do or we don't. Okay? There is no try. So these are things we tell ourselves so we can say like, well, we tried. We're doing okay, rather than saying like, we're. This is what we do. The other thing I see a lot of stores doing is like, all right, Ryan, Ryan's down the street and he's doing this. And we compare ourselves to you. Stop. What is your business plan? Be the best you you can be. Right? Be. Don't sit there and worry about what he's doing because do you have the same people, the same budgets, the same. Yeah, you might have the same new car brand, but that's it. Everything else in your store is going to be different based on culture, direction and leadership. So those are the things I think that we find that people like to tell themselves. And the last one is, is that it's too hard or it's not the right time. Like we want to kick it down the road because we're afraid to actually do real work, hard work, labor type work of like putting an hour's time. And that's where I come in. I am not this huge corporation of consulting everything else. I'm an army of one. Street smarts is soon in the future going to be expanding to bringing some different things into the fold to make the street even more powerful for you. But I tell people the reason I don't fail is because I'm so small, that all I have is time and hard work to ensure you're successful. I'm not afraid to roll up my sleeves. And that lets people know, like, I have to get in the trenches to help you. And I expect that out of you as well. So it's. We're not looking for the easy road. It's. Sometimes we have to work through the hard road. [00:43:46] Speaker A: You know, it's funny, and I was trying to hold it together because the first thing came to mind, the two things came to mind, but the first one was Yoda. I, I cannot get over that because that is so true. This is something that I like to echo myself when I hear clients say, oh, we're trying, we're trying, we're trying. No, it's either you do or you don't. It's plain. And then. And then the second thing is progress over perfection. If you wait till the for the perfect time, you're never going to get started. It's just move. Don't try to be perfect. You're going to make mistakes, you're going to fall down, you're going to get back up. You're going to learn faster if you go the wrong road. And sooner you learn, the sooner you go down the right path. [00:44:23] Speaker B: Right. [00:44:23] Speaker A: So it's, it's progress over perfection. You wait too long, opportunities are going to pass you right by, or people are going to forget about you. But there's, there's definitely a fine line of, of just got to move it. [00:44:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Real quick. I would tell you too. You're saying progressive production is learn how to fail forward. Failure is going to happen. Fail forward. But more importantly, this is the truth. I want to kind of leave people with as we wrap things up. I mean, you might have one more thing, but is stop looking at everything you do. Is an expense. You have to start looking at things as investments because you can't get better without investing. If you say it's an expense, then you intended it on being something that was going to perform out of day one. You have to invest in something before it becomes an expense. It's an expense. Once it starts working, it's an investment to see if it works. [00:45:12] Speaker A: I like that. I'm glad that you differentiated that because that is extremely, extremely important. If you label it as an expense, you kind of lose the opportunity to see where things can improve, change, and what it could really advance to. But, you know, this has been like a master class, honestly, in so many different areas of business success that apply across the board. [00:45:31] Speaker B: So. [00:45:31] Speaker A: And you're keeping this honest, sharp, and incredibly powerful and valuable. Where can the audience find you? How can they get a hold of you? [00:45:40] Speaker B: So I have a website, smartwolf consulting.com that you can get to. You can hit a contact, set up a call. I also have the Street Smarts, which is autostreet smarts.com which really focuses on acquisition. And then anywhere you can imagine, social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, you know, if you put in Daryl Steed or Smart Wolf Consulting, you will find something on one of those mediums everywhere you go. And really, guys, I'm one of those guys. Let's have a conversation. If it's a good time for you, you're ready to start winning, right? Let's win, right? And I like to tell everybody is like, look, we're going to take everything in the streets. We're going to take your consumers, we're going to take business, we're gonna do everything else. We're going to bring it back into your store in a smarter way so you can, guys, be profitable. But winners start where loser quit, right? So if you're ready to start winning when losers quit, that's where I pick up. Because that's where we start winning, right? When everyone says it's too hard, let's actually win and do it. And I hope to hear from you guys. And if you just want to ask a question, questions are free, right? And I'm always here for the help. [00:46:45] Speaker A: So I got one really good question, and I'm sure others might be thinking this too. When's the right time to get in contact with somebody like you? [00:46:52] Speaker B: When you're ready to start moving, when you want to win or make more money or you just need to change how you're looking at things? Maybe it's not rebuilding anything you Just want to like I need a different insight. I found this to be helpful for myself. You've probably done it yourself. I have a coach, right? I have a coach to make myself better. Sometimes it's not about bringing a consultant in to change my business. Sometimes it's about hiring a coach that gives me the view, which is not very expensive to have a coach so that you can challenge yourself and then implement what you're doing. And sometimes you need the full blown consultant to come in and do it with you. So there's no better time. It's when you say, I'm ready to start winning and I'm tired of being okay or mediocre that, you know, let's get to it. [00:47:35] Speaker A: I could not agree with you more and I am 100% on the same page with you. I have coaches today. I call them a little different, I consider them my mentors. But man, without that guidance, I would not be where I'm at right now. I wouldn't be moving as fast as I am right now. You need someone to challenge your way of thinking. Same reason why LeBron James has basketball coach. Not because the coach better than him, but he can see the forest beyond the trees. So Daryl, thank you for sharing your insights here on the Bottom Line. Your no nonsense, data backed approach reminds us that success doesn't come from fluff. It comes from clarity, courage and consistent action for our viewers. Whether you're in fixed ops, inventory, marketing or just trying to lead more truthfully, remember that small improvements when focused and intentional drive real results. I'm your host, Ryan Herpin. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time right here on the Bottom Line where we cut through the noise and get down to what really works. So remember, success isn't given and it's earned. I'll see you next time on the Bottom Line.