Autotrader US’ Post

Transcript

Cody, let's get up to speed. We've seen wild fluctuations with the used car market over the past few years. Things are extra competitive these days. You know, Cody, when we were at your booth at NDA, there was an incredible stat about the massive reach of Autotrader, Kelley Blue Book, and dealer.com. It was in the billions, Billions of views and billions of actual shopper sessions. Break that down for us. Yeah, thanks for and that's 100% true. You know, we see everything come across our platforms. You know, our teams are out of field every day speaking to thousands and thousands of dealers to help them uncover opportunities, finding ways to drive more revenue and ultimately global client satisfaction. Now, I personally believe that golden ticket for dealers is that we see the good, bad and ugly. We also know what great looks like. And when you really boil it down, the common red thread through all of it is these three things. It's people. Processes and their products that they're selling. Yeah, that's really what it's all about. Cody, we were talking earlier about a recent car shopping experience you had with your wife, and it really covered all three. I'd love for our viewers to hear this story because it's a good one. I was every salesperson's dream. I was told I was a cash buyer. I had excellent credit. I was fully transparent about every detail. I didn't beat him up on price, everything they needed to know to close the deal. And I was willing to drive a couple. I'll be a couple hours coming, make the vehicle a purchase. And so ultimately I was way down and it didn't go right. It went actually backwards. But you know, through my story, I'll just highlight that, you know, it came down to having the right person, you know? Having the right process and ultimately then I will cover this in a minute. They had the right thing, which was the product that I wanted. Let's talk about dealers that say, you know what, I, I have people problems. Well, ultimately it doesn't matter if you have people problems, if you have the right process. And, and let me tell you something. So Cox Automotive and especially our trader, we have proprietary softwares where our Autotrader leads are called enhanced leads. And we have a couple of terms like, especially for dudes, like actively shopping. We could see a customer, we can tell the dealer, hey, look, this person's actually shopping or ready to buy. Well, when you have that, you need to have your best people on it, not the rookie, not the green P that just came in and got out of train on my best people on that lead to make that deal happen. So you know, these enhanced leads, they, you know, 59% more likely to close every single time and they generate 36% higher close rates. They're not competition. Like we see that through our software. It's amazing and gross is not a bad word. We want dealers to make money. I think it's a great thing. I used to be a dealer. I love it. And those enhanced leads and they close. 29% higher gross profits that are nearest competitors. I mean, wow, who would not want that? Let's talk about products. You know, that third key ingredient. We know how competitive it is out there and you talked about, you know, sales coming back to, you know, pre COVID times. What can dealers do to help their products stand out? Like give us some best practices because you see it all. And it sounds, it's actually kind of weird. It's sad to say. It goes back to the basics, which is half photos have really good competitive prices. Then there's have video have custom comments. These things are the basics, but ultimately be transparent in how the software that actually customers can engage in more. And I want to ask you one more thing before we go enhanced leads. You know what, what does that change for a dealer like from what they're looking at? What does that, what does that lead look like That's different than the competition constantly contacting, contacting, contacting. That's what they have very little contact rate or close rate on this. Now volume might be there, but the contract, so think about us. So we have an enhanced lead which tells us, hey, my name is Cody Gentry. I'm actively shopping or ready to buy. In my case, I was ready to buy. I've been looking at this thing. There's my trade in. Here's all this information that I want to do. Here's all the processes and I'm, I mean in bright lights ready to buy. You don't ignore that. I'm telling you right now, if I have 10 or 20 leads sitting in my queue and I'm, I'm the best of the best. I'm that home run hitter we talked about, I'm going to go call Cody Gentry right now and we're going to walk with this thing out. And guess what? They're gonna make me a raving fan. I'm gonna be in and out of there in 30 minutes. Cody, I want to thank you again for talking to us today on Up to Speed.