Follow Up Friday: Sales Per Person, Generative AI Vids, Twitter CEO

Paul Daly: 0:30All right. Okay, today might be one of the most fun shows we've ever had. Because this is like a follow up Friday feeling show. And if you've been listening for a while this is gonna be different than anyone you've ever heard before, I promise. Really, one no, you gotta. You gotta get. You know, sometimes the news just isn't interesting enough.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:53

That's the problem. That's actually the real problem. Or like, everybody had nothing to say, great. Here. Yeah, go?

Paul Daly: 1:02

Well, it's the thing about everybody having nothing to say is that everyone's got to pretend they have something to say. Which is like, I understand, though, that's the news business. Fortunately, we are not in the news business, Kyle, fortunately, we are in the community business, which means we can have fun, which means we can give commentary, which means we can gather people around meaningful things. Even if we don't report on the news. We're still going to talk a little bit about the news. You know, one, one real fun thing to talk about. What's up, Russell? Good morning. Glad you're here today with us on this. I don't know what we're gonna call it follow up Friday feeling. Let's start out by setting one thing in motion. Because I feel like you know, every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings back from It's A Wonderful Life. It is always awesome. When people become a first time dealer. We celebrated that hardcore with Daymond Lester a couple of years ago, when you know, he was in and around dealership serving dealerships working and then all of a sudden, he became a dealership. Today we're going to celebrate another one. Now this one is a little bit different. It's the one and only loved, hated polarizing, always enjoyable and engaging. Brian penstock is now the dealer principal of his very own store. He's been vice president of Paragon Honda for so long with the singer family, but now he is the dealer principal of White Plains Honda. And we just want to give you a rousing round of congratulations man holding that he's just if you're just listening to the podcast, we have a picture up where he's holding his you know, New York State motor vehicle dealer, big license that goes on the building. And that's, that's a that's a that's a pretty genuine smile. I see. And

Kyle Mountsier: 2:40

that's a proud feeling. Yeah, you know, I do think it's like one of those like, Ha man did it made it, I'm sure that just the ride to get there the things that had to be done. You know, it's it's a lot going around it. It's cool. You know, many of you will recognize if you're looking at the picture, and you're different or for there's some partnership there with this. And so, you know, it's like a big family. That's that's bringing into a new Honda dealership. And if I had to guess we're all going to be shocked what happens in the next couple of years. It'll just be full go full. Yeah.

Paul Daly: 3:14

Oh, yeah. Now now it's like, no, all gas, no brakes. I

Kyle Mountsier: 3:17

mean, he's kind of lives that way. Anyway, hey, if you know of someone who's become a first time dealer, whether it's a general manager that moved up, or someone from outside the industry that came in, or whatever, please send it our way, send it to us on social media email to crew at a soda.com We would love to celebrate it on this show. Because it's worth being celebrated. We're gonna be with a lot of new faces, you and I, next week, at the Reuters automotive retail event in Vegas and tell people about it. I cannot wait because we you know, we obviously with dealers, and we've got our circle and community. But next week, the ability to be in the room with some of like the industry partners that serve the OEM side, OEM representatives, and then some of the top dealerships in the country, dealer groups in the country, the way that they're thinking about data and customer experience. And we've got over 20 podcast episodes ready to go. So if you're not coming, you get to hear from all of the people that are actually going to be on ground speaking on panels and in Keynote stages. We're going to bring that right to use we'll be launching those quickly after the event. So stay tuned. We'll let you know when the show amplify is out and you can search it on all podcast platforms early next week. Super excited about that.

Paul Daly: 4:30

So many new people and you and I better get like the lemon, the lemon water and the honey tea and whatever else we need because literally we're sitting at a booth for three plus hours doing Gatling gun style podcast interviews with many people we've never even talked to before. So we got some research to do. We got some fun to have and if you're going to be in Vegas, please make sure that you come by the booth and say hi i also have a little stuff going on the more than cars premiere if you don't know what that is go to more than cars.tv Akena T The show pilot episode for automotive and it's a lot of fun. And you'll be surprised at how fun it is. And good it is. And we want you to be at the live stream on May 24. So are you know, the live stream,

Kyle Mountsier: 5:09

we got to run because the year the two years episode of All Things used cars is coming up in less than 15 minutes. So we got to get to some. Some follow. Okay.

Paul Daly: 5:20

Okay. So so it's great follow up Friday. So yesterday, we broke down the na da data. You know, from there twice Annual Report pack. Patrick Monsey, their chief economist always does a great job. And one point that we brought up, we went back and forth on we were kind of like making some inferences based on the data. We were right. But this was about how many vehicle sales per person on average across the country. And there was like a number and we were like, is that new and use combined? Like what's it going on? Well, fortunately, nada, management instructor for the nav Academy, nada Academy, Michael Lukey, as a friend of ours, and he sent us a text message this morning to just make sure we knew exactly what's up. Basically, the average was that there's the data point was an average of 102 new vehicles. And 137 us vehicles of sales per salesperson we were like is that split out? Is that combined? We assumed it was split out. But he commented to clarify on our nav a data report personnel is split between new and new salespeople as that is how it is often on the financial statements. So the totals are independent of each other use would be 12 cars a month, on average new would be 12 cars up month on average. So if you were to

Kyle Mountsier: 6:30

set it up, no, no, no, I used 137 divided by 12. Oh, yeah, sorry, four, and new is 102 divided by 12 will get you 8.5. And if you remember yesterday, we said that's an average of 19.9 cars per salesperson across the board. So we had it right? We confirmed it. He did say though, that the number peaked in 2020, and has been on its way down over the last 10 years or over the last two years. And he also said, I think in a note to you that the disparity or the difference between kind of the high and the low is a lot different, like it used to be a lot more meat in the middle. And now we're seeing extremely high volume sales and extremely low volume sales. So the that messy middle is not as messy anymore. It's a lot cleared up where we've got a lot of like 3040 car salespeople, and then a lot of like five to 12 car salespeople. So

Paul Daly: 7:25

just it makes a ton of sense. Actually think of the world where we've here hearing like all this back to basics talk and people saying like, hey, like we need to learn how to sell cars again, it sounds to me like the people who have sold cars pre pandemic, still know how to sell cars, and they're getting all the deals when the new COVID babies as they've been calling, calling them are migrating toward the like, What do you mean, you have to go ask your husband? Like what do you mean, you're supposed to just buy this car because I have it right, that doesn't exist anymore. So thanks for being a part of that conversation, Michael. And just it's just fun, like having the conversation because it matters and in your store. If you see that middle disappearing, like jumping off and use cars. Hey, you know, we're talking about sales today. But

Kyle Mountsier: 8:10

yeah, speed of, well, its speed of recon today, which has a significant impact on speed to retail. Right. And so people are going to be better if the Recon timeline is exactly right. So come on in. Ah, so

Paul Daly: 8:23

speaking of timelines, segue we're gonna follow up on a video from a story that we talked about yesterday. Obviously, Google had their annual i o conference where you know, they're they really not new products and new technologies. And obviously, AI is all the buzz ever. I can't go anywhere without hearing it. So the timeline on this video that was posted on LinkedIn by George Jones, I'm thinking made it maybe I don't think he made it but he posted it. So that's why we saw it from this is Google's Google CEO Sundar Pichai. His keynote at the recent conference where it kind of aggregates how much he said AI in this like 25 minutes segment so roll the video. It'll be a lot of fun.

Unknown: 9:06

I mean, ai ai ai generative AI generative AI can drive ai ai ai ai ai ai ai ai ai ai ai who uses AI to bring ai ai ai ai ai

Paul Daly: 9:21

that was the keynote, Keynote the keynote Okay, so, so I know we joke about this and that it's hilarious, but we've seen trends like this like geez, remember blockchain and NFT. Now granted, AI is a lot different way more impactful. He actually said in the keynote, that generative AI is more profound than fire. Like the invention of fire. I'm not buying that one

Kyle Mountsier: 9:50

hashtag stockholder comments. Harness the power of fire but Better look.

Paul Daly: 10:02

Yeah, whatever. No. Well, it's like what happens if there's no electricity so the fire the fire is more profound at that point.

Kyle Mountsier: 10:10

Electricity

Paul Daly: 10:12

AI start me a fire. Well, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Kyle Mountsier: 10:15

So hey, we did have a I do something though. Didn't we bought? We did we had a partisan tower we had.

Paul Daly: 10:22

Okay, so we asked Chet GPT What are the five top vehicles in the US five best? Actually, we use the word best because we knew it'd be a little ambiguous. What are the five best vehicles of all time in the US? And then it went on to give us a very, I'll call it a disclaimer. Right? Well, the best could really be but either way it said I'll do the best I can. So we're gonna read Chet TPTs AI generative AI their best five vehicles of all time. Go

Kyle Mountsier: 10:50

ahead, Kyle, you wait was this chat? Was this chat GPT that you did this with? There was a GP to Google. Okay, so GP I should have done it with Bard. Mr. Now we can look at what we can compare notes later, maybe maybe we'll drop a social post look out for it. So Chachi pie, started with Ford Model T said it was the granddaddy of all cars. The Model T made cars a thing, which is very descriptive. Over 15 million sold, and it practically invented road trips. That's great. This is verbatim by the way. This is verbatim. I had some anecdotal notes in there that number two, the Chevy Impala. This beauty was America's sweetheart in the 60s. It had its ups and downs, but we still love it. And I fully agree. The photo on the screen is definitely not of the Impala in the 60s, which was no more loved car than the probably the 2017 that's on the photo that I could put on

Paul Daly: 11:45

loves these cars. Take apart Pluto loves these cars. It's like I sold like a million of these things. He's the best one

Kyle Mountsier: 11:50

or three of them were on the front line in every color and get them off.

Paul Daly: 11:55

23 Todd computer was like I have 123 on the front line.

Kyle Mountsier: 12:01

Oh, another car that has a lot of cars on the Ford F F series. America's tough guy truck for over 40 years. It's like the whole vehicles strong, reliable, and green eco. I was like thank you up there Chad GPT

Paul Daly: 12:18

and this is 2021 Before the lightning was even like a thing, right green, you know, that sounds like a marketer Chechi BTS got an inner marketer and I'm gonna chat GBTC

Kyle Mountsier: 12:27

or it's been trained by something like Ford winning train chat GPT to say the Ford F 150 is

Paul Daly: 12:34

right eco friendly it added an exclamation point at the end of it to

Kyle Mountsier: 12:37

now this one this one I get like I think that it got it closest to write Toyota Camry the Gary's like your trusty best friend. It's got your back always reliable and loves long drives on the highway. It's like slap that in a profile and and run with it. rounding it out the Honda Accord, affordable, efficient and just plain sensible. The accordion has been the go to family car for decades. It's like the comfort food of cars. I just want to know I want to know someone at Honda if they were like, We are known by chat GPT as the just the clean, sensible car like nobody's putting that ad anywhere. Yeah,

Paul Daly: 13:19

I was thinking like since that we talked about Brian Van sack becoming a hot Honda dealer. And I would just like that picture of him with those three words next to it affordable, efficient, sensible. I was like that's just a meme waiting to happen. It's a mean way to happen. But but let's tie it back down. Okay, we're having a lot of fun today. Let's tie it back down. Kyle, how can dealers use chat GPT in their everyday life? Like what's one or two examples of people like where you can use generative AI to actually serve customers better serve your people better?

Kyle Mountsier: 13:48

So I think there's two primary uses for AI in general, that's a thought starter and a thought enhancer, right? And so one of the ways that I think about a thought enhancer is how do I take a list of features and a vehicle type, put them in to a to something like Chachi Beatty and ask it to write a human word description with like an eighth grade reading level attached to it based on those feature sets. It gives you a really clear description. It's like It's like the V auto cheese but way, way better, and future state. So I think that that's one of the ways I think the the other way is like, Hey, I'm having trouble thinking of ideas of things to do in my marketing campaigns. Here's all of the unique selling props that I have. How could I go to market with a strategy that's going to result in sales or service and get some thought starters out and kind of expand from there? There you go. You go.

Paul Daly: 14:46

Speaking of thought starters, segue, our final minutes of the show. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that Elon Musk is set to step down as the Twitter CEO and set a new chief executive slide to take The role in six week, six weeks Musk tweeted, well, I lost it. I lost it. I had the tweet in here. Oh, excited to announce I've been I've a new CEO. Well, that's verbatim. I've hired a new CEO for x or Twitter. She will be starting in less than six weeks, around six weeks, my role will transition to being executive chair, CTO and overseeing product and software and system operations. I don't know what she's going to do that because it sounds like he's still doing everything. She's gonna talk to the people. She's gonna talk to the people.

Kyle Mountsier: 15:33

Can I Can I just plead the fifth on this one. The good news is Tesla stock was up three and a half percent on the news, because those stockholders are excited to maybe see him have some renewed focus back on the EP brand. And that's your automotive take on it for today.

Paul Daly: 15:51

Well, look, we hope we gave you a little shot energy going into your Friday going into your weekend. We're going to head to the All Things use cars right now on clubhouse, go to clubhouse search all things use cars. We'll see you there.

Unknown: 16:15

Evening

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