Being a Part of the Automotive Conversation with Glenn Pasch

Glenn Pasch is the CEO of PCG Digital, an Inc 5000 agency that specializes in helping dealerships and businesses generate qualified shoppers. As an expert in digital marketing, he has been featured in CBT News, Dealer Marketing Magazine, AutoSuccess, and Automotive News.

Glenn is also the Host of the You’re In Charge-Now What podcast and Co-Author of two books including Selling Cars in the Digital Age and The Power of Connected Marketing. He is also an international speaker who has spoken for NADA, Digital Dealer, NIADA, the World Shopper Conference, and more. In his past, Glenn was also a guest professor on Automotive Digital Marketing at Northwood University.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• Glenn Pasch’s background and how he ended up working in the automotive industry
• How running businesses in the hospitality industry is similar to running dealerships
• Do successful dealerships have a unique mix of business models?
• Aharon and Glenn talk about using paid advertising and driving quality leads to different types of dealerships
• The challenges of digital retailing and how to conceptualize a digital dealership
• The value of having personalized conversations with car buyers

In this episode…

A good car dealer should be able to match a buyer with a car. But, the best dealers aren’t focused on selling cars; instead, their priority is to help customers buy a car.

For years, every car dealer had a shop where buyers would walk in to find the right cars to buy. In this scenario, dealers had the opportunity to physically help buyers find the right cars, but that has since changed. In the last couple of years, thanks to advancements in technology, car dealerships have had to embrace new ways of marketing, communicating, and selling cars.

In this episode of the Inside Auto Podcast, co-hosts Aharon Horwitz and Ilana Shabtay are joined by Glenn Pasch, the CEO of PCG Digital, to talk about the challenges of digital retailing, the similarities between dealerships and the hospitality industry, and the value of personalized conversations. Keep listening!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• AutoLeadStar
• Ilana Shabtay on LinkedIn
• Aharon Horwitz on LinkedIn
• PCG Digital
• Glenn Pasch’s website
• Glenn Pasch on LinkedIn
• You’re In Charge- Now What with Glenn Pasc‪h
• Brian Pasch on LinkedIn
• Clubhouse App
• “Conversational Websites, Virtual Test Drives, and Pontiac Trans Ams” with Kevin Frye
• Kevin Frye on LinkedIn

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by AutoLeadStar, a company that helps car dealerships engage quality customers on the web and convert them into car buyers.

Co-founded by Aharon Horwitz, Yishai Goldstein, and Eliav Moshe, AutoLeadStar’s state-of-the-art software automates a dealership’s entire marketing funnel and provides around-the-clock service for dealers.

AutoLeadStar’s innovative technology helps dealerships automate ads, connect with customers, and discover ROI and performance metrics. 

Visit their website at www.autoleadstar.com to learn more about their around-the-clock marketing service.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to Inside Auto Podcast where we feature everyone and anyone you’d want to talk to in and out of the automotive industry.

Ilana Shabtay 0:16

Ilana Shabtay here with and Aharon Horwitz, co-hosts of Inside Auto Podcast where we interview top dealers, GMs, marketers, entrepreneurs and thought leaders in and out of the automotive industry. And before we introduce today’s guest, this episode is sponsored by AutoLeadStar.com. The AutoLeadStar platform is built on a technology so powerful, it allows you to market, sell and service cars as you would in the real world online and at scale, making one to one matches between shoppers and inventory. AutoLeadStar is the only platform that is powered by scale, speed and specificity to change the way dealers do marketing. Welcome back Aharon, how are you doing?

Aharon Horwitz 0:55

Ilana, I’m doing amazing. How are you?

Ilana Shabtay 0:57

I’m good. Season two is exciting?

Aharon Horwitz 1:00

Not only is season two continuing strong, it’s about to get extremely strong with the guests we’re going to introduce but it’s the second day of nada today, right?

Ilana Shabtay 1:10

Yeah. And we’re gonna talk about that a little bit virtual nada. Never thought we’d come to this day.

Aharon Horwitz 1:16

Well, listen, it could not be more fortuitous for us than to have a person who does not need much introduction, if any at all. It is our distinct pleasure to have Glenn Pasch on the show. Glenn is the CEO of PCG Companies, a well known organization throughout the automotive industry. And Glenn has worked for 20, 30 years now, in all aspects of automotive. And I think leadership is helping dealers and retailers understand what it takes to be digital, what it takes to market in an era that’s connected. And not only has he done that, he’s actually written two books about it. So that’s exciting to have a published author on the podcast. Glenn, Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. How are you?

Glenn Pasch 2:00

I am phenomenal. Thank you both for having me. It’s sort of funny now we’ve reversed seats, you were on my podcast, you’re in charge. Now what now I’m on yours. So I get to be on the other side of the mic here.

Aharon Horwitz 2:14

What goes around in pods around?

Glenn Pasch 2:19

It’s great. Great to be here. Excited.

Aharon Horwitz 2:20

So Glenn, we’d like to get a little bit of a flavor. You know, we do these things that are short. So we want gold. Right? So we want to know from you again, don’t you know you’re gonna give us your highlights from your bio here. We want to know, how did you get into this? Like, where did you come up? And how did you end up in the automotive industry with this marketing angle? and What brought you here to where you are today?

Glenn Pasch 2:44

Wow. That’s a crazy journey. Not planned? You know, I respond. Yeah, no, I’ve worked in a lot of different industries. I worked in hospitality for a long time and I worked in wrestling. Yeah, I work well, I was an actor for about 10 years. So that means it goes hand in hand that you work in restaurants in New York City. So I was waiting tables, bartender, cook, expedited who did a little of everything. And then I just got to the point of saying I’m not going to make it you know, I put in 10 years, and I was fine with that. I just said I gave it my all. And I transitioned. And I started working in customer service, you know, because that’s what hot you learn in hospitality. So I started helping companies with customer service. I ended up working in customer service call centers, where, you know, you started learning how to build teams, I knew how to build teams, but it became more formalized how to create more like franchise how to how to replicate and scale processes in teams, so I could go open another office, and then that would escalate. And then when I got to a point of saying that was enough of that, I was building my own company, too. You know, I said, Alright, I’ll try my own little company here. And then my brother Brian, had already started PCG. He was in more of a direct mail type of business. And he saw SEO moving. He started it. So he was helping me advertise and build my website and taught me how to you know, he’s saying you got a blog, you got to speak, I think I spoke to a digital dealer for my own company before I spoke for him. And so we traded services, his company was growing. But he didn’t know how to build the processes and scale. He’s more of an idea and a marketer. So I said, Well, I’ll trade off services, I’ll build this. And then we looked at each other one day and said, Well, why don’t we work together? So we’ve been together for about 11 years and automotive just happened to be one of the industries he was working on. You know, when you start your company, you go to everybody. So in the beginning it was restaurants and small businesses and doctors and laser eye surgery and all that plus dealers. But automotive actually at that time. That’s back way, way back when you started having the online forums and people would spend all night, you know, arguing very much we were laughing before about clubhouse. But this was the online version of clubhouse, where you would just be yelling at each other about SEO and you don’t know what you’re talking about. And you started to build a name through that. And also, that was the beginning, when digital dealers first started and conferences about marketing were going on. And do dealerships have money to embrace digital marketing? And we just stepped into that, through speaking, you know, growing our business through speaking at these conferences, getting known writing for publications, and so we sort of fell into it. And it’s been a match. And so we still do about 20% of our business and non automotive. But that’s where we’re here. I know a little long winded, but that’s where we’re here.

Aharon Horwitz 5:46

That’s awesome. That’s really interesting. So do you still think back to those days in hospitality at all? I didn’t do just something, you know, suddenly something came to you? Or if you put that in your rearview mirror?

Glenn Pasch 5:55

No, never always, always, always. I actually think that dealerships are very similar to restaurants. Yeah, because if you think of it as a restaurant that has a structure, meaning we know how to greet our customers, we know how to seat them, we know how to serve, clear the table, we know how to create order for our food. So there’s always these processes, but every day is different. You could be slammed busy, you could be empty, you could have someone come in whose family, somebody calls out sick, something changes, but you have the structures versus someone who every day is like a factory mentality where everything’s saying Same thing with automotive, you have all of these processes. But today, it’s a Tuesday, I have no idea why. But we are slammed. And then another day, it’s rainy, and there’s not and so but so so I see a lot of that. And ultimately, I think the biggest thing that dealers need to focus on moving forward because pricing is everybody’s about the same price more or less, is really they have to double down on customer experience. I mean, that’s how they differentiate their sales. That’s what they should be focusing on. That’s what they should be marketing.

Aharon Horwitz 7:05

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think I think those muscles of customer experience in hospitality inventory supply management. You know how you present a plate, how you present a showroom at present. But there’s so many obvious analogues. Weirdly, I’ve never thought of that before. I’ve never thought of a car dealership as being similar to a restaurant but in every way, it kind of starts to

Glenn Pasch 7:29

a restaurant, one of the keys I learned from being in the kitchen, one of the most away a restaurant is profitable? Well, there’s two things. One is if you have a liquor license, that’s where you make your money, right, because you could buy a bottle of liquor for 10 bucks, whatever, and you sell six, seven drinks out of it at 10 $12, whatever, you’re making money. But the key to a really successful restaurant is food management, how they stock food, so they’re not throwing things out, it doesn’t get wasted, how do I, you know, use something today, and then it becomes another dish the second day. So that’s really key. Because if I’m losing all of that food cost out the back door, I lose my profit very similar to a dealership, if I’m buying cars at the wrong price, or I’m not pricing them correctly, or I’m not, my process doesn’t really build towards a profit on all of these cars, then I’m not I can be selling cars. So the number looks good to my region, but I’m not making any money.

Aharon Horwitz 8:32

Right? Right. Now something I’ve been thinking about on dealers is like, dude, do you feel that every dealership that’s successful kind of figures out their unique mix of the business model, right, because in the end of the day, there’s multiple profit centers that a dealership could could kind of double down in and all of them come with their own risks, their own rewards and whatnot? Do you think that dealers that are successful sort of develop a real muscle around maybe one or two, or maybe the concept of balance, you know, there’s a dealer, that’s just phenomenal, the, the new car biz, and they’re, they do enough in the use car to kind of, you know, be okay, and they’re fixed Ops, you know, has some level of high saturation, but, but it’s really their new car stars, then there’s other dealers that are just aggressive about that balance of they’re, they’re never too at risk. And I do feel like that happens in each regional ecosystem, or is that sort of a changeable thing for dealers? In your experience?

Glenn Pasch 9:26

Good question. I think we all as leaders, a lot of times default to what we’re comfortable in, or what we’re good at. The majority of general managers coming up through, you know, to their position come through the sales or the variable side, right? They’re not coming through very few come through the fixed ops side, right. So that’s where they’re comfortable. Now, in their journey, if they were part used car manager at one time, and they understand that value, and they may embrace it, I think The most successful dealers, or dealerships really look at it as a team, they really look at it. And that might be the dealer above the general manager of staffing their team of saying all of these are great, valuable profit centers. Well, who is staffing my service? And who’s my fixed ops director? And where’s their talent? And are we holding them accountable as to what we can get out of there? Same thing with new Same thing with us. So I think to your point is that left to their own devices, we will do what’s comfortable, we may add, hopefully, we ask for help. And we hire somebody to, you know, fill in the gap of what I’m not good at. I mean, that’s why my brother and I think work really well is, we don’t really step on each other’s toes with similar skill sets, we have some in the middle, but I always joke, he’s the idea. And he’s the marketer, and he loves the data. And I’m like, great, what can we do with this data? How do we build the processes? How can we write from a people’s side? So the same thing in a dealership, I think those successful ones, really look at all of them as important and put the right team in place to get that value out of that department.

Aharon Horwitz 11:12

Got it? Okay. And then I wanted to ask you about that, I’m just taking a few notes here for a later question so I don’t forget. I mean, you guys, do you have one of your services directly paid paid advertising, correct? Yes. So one of the debates we have internally at auto lead star, and I’m curious about how you think about this, like, we think a lot about like, leads as meaning our album, you know, we we have we have a bit of an algorithmic approach, and like our algorithms can go and get and can get a guy’s meat lamb lamb on the pod inside, although sailo is our chief of product, Glenn Pasch. When you don’t put recording on your studio door, what

Aharon Horwitz 11:54

So what we were gonna say what I was saying is that, like, we think about leads and like, what we found is when we play with the algorithms enough, we can kind of sync set it for whatever context we are looking for, for example, we could say, go get us the, you know, best cost per lead, right? Well, obviously, if you want to go best cost per lead, what’s gonna happen, you’re gonna just use the dealer’s name, eat up all their organic traffic and suck in all their which, you know, which isn’t necessarily something Google’s not recommending. Right. But the point is, that’s not obviously for those who want to deliver quality products, you don’t want to rely on that. That’s traffic, right? So then you say, Okay, well, now, let’s say best cost per quality lead. So how do we define a quality lead? Well, right, there’s, and that’s where it gets tricky. For example, there are dealers that we see where when we bring them bring them a trade in lead someone looking to trade in a vehicle, they’re exceptional at flipping that trade and, and turning it into a sale and they love, they love that there’s other dealers that don’t have that muscle internally in their BDC, or whatever it is to really handle those trade and leads. So understanding the dealer strategy, and making kind of the marketing strategy be able to be adaptable for us on a product level. But I think for an agency on an agency operations level, to that dealer strategy, you know, if they’re good at the new cars, and they’re decent at the use cars, well, if you suddenly flood them with used cars, they may not have enough people to or know how to actually pull that off. So I think like those elements of adjusting are just very, very interesting when you’re trying to be a vendor for you know, a business that doesn’t look 100% the same from one rooftop to the next. Is that something that you think about when you start working with a dealership and try to adjust your guys strategies to theirs? Yeah,

Glenn Pasch 13:33

yeah, one of the interesting things is I think you touched on it when I first started in automotive, this the word franchise was always thrown around. But it never looked like a franchise for real, right? When I think of a franchise I think of, you know, McDonald’s chick fil a, all of those are you go, yeah, Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks wherever you go. It’s pretty much the same, meaning that the physical location might be they put it like in our town to Starbucks went into an old bank. So it’s configured a little differently, but the food’s the same, the coffee’s the same, the how they greet you, how they ought, right. That, to me, is more of a franchise where they say, if you want to work here, this is what you do. So if I was the manager of the store, and I leave and you step in, right, or a lot of steps in and she’s the manager of the store, it isn’t good, she decides today, we’re doing everything different, because I know better. That doesn’t happen. It’s okay, great. You follow our rules. So that was always an interesting thing. And so that to answer your question through that sort of track, is that you have to, you can’t just say every Hyundai Dealer is running it the same way. They’re not. It’s a personality driven business. And to your point, you have to realise we have a pretty lengthy startup conversation part. It starts in the sales part. It’s you know, our marketing people are reaching out to us as an agency because we are a little different. We are more customized, we are more one on one versus an agency that’s going to just say, Well, everybody gets more or less the same. And then it’s through sales, through our startup to say to them, what are the models that are important to you? Where are the areas that are important to you? How important is using cars to you? How important is service for you? What are you currently doing? What are you trying to achieve? What you know, and so you’re working with a balance of dealers, hire you as an agency, because you’re perceived as that with your expertise of understanding this ecosystem to get me opportunities. But if I don’t have that conversation, I’m guessing. So I’m a pretty good guesser. But maybe I’ll only get to 75% of where I really could get if you were involved, so we started demanding that from our clients. And I think to your point, you have to because, you know, you could turn around and look at a map and say, Oh, that’s a great location to go advertise. And then you talk to the dealer and you say, no one’s coming from that you can advertise to your blue in the face, no one’s coming over here from that town. And that’s the feedback that we need. And to your point is, you guide them and you try to push them a little bit. But you’re right, if you think us cars are great, but they can’t handle it, then we’re just wasting money. And

Aharon Horwitz 16:28

by the way, it’s a really insightful answer. And I appreciate that. I think that like exactly what I was talking about those conversations that you’re part of, in our pre broadcast, we were talking about these running conversations, hearing that perspective, I think it’s very, very interesting and important. And actually, I was saying to Ilan earlier, like, you know, with the proliferation of clubhouse and you know, what goes on on LinkedIn, it’s kind of like we’re all in this just ongoing conversation. And then you know, that the, it gets, it gets advanced to different corners, which is kind of cool to see that. You know,

Glenn Pasch 17:00

it is but the key really always is, is what are you doing with the information? You’re not going to go back you can sit in clubhouse till you’re blue in the face, you know, but I find myself I said it Android

Aharon Horwitz 17:10

I can’t get into it. I’m one of those like lame people.

Glenn Pasch 17:14

You got to go through an iPad. That’s what one other person said. I listened to it on my iPad, but I have my phone.

Ilana Shabtay 17:22

phone number is there iPad connected to it?

Glenn Pasch 17:24

No, it’s all, it’s all about the phone number of you can get it all I think of your phone numbers registered to your iPad, I think. I mean, you can text on your iPad.

Aharon Horwitz 17:36

you’re doing I gotta say before Ilana jumps in on more tech I like I entirely stop I you know, I have no use for that. That I don’t know why there was a time where I liked using it and I cannot for the life of me remember what I needed it for?

Ilana Shabtay 17:50

entertain your toddler.

Aharon Horwitz 17:51

I use my phone. Or like, I mean, what’s Why do I what’s an iPad for

Glenn Pasch 17:55

I used it much more when I traveled. Because sometimes I didn’t want to bring my computer to my laptop because it was lighter. I use Kindle a lot for I mean used iPad. I use Kindle. So I read a lot of books on a Kindle device on the iPad Kindle. So I am okay. Yeah. Yeah. But what we were saying before is that, you know, clubhouse I find myself sort of repeating what I was saying to a lot of this morning, there was a discussion in the Clubhouse room. It wasn’t it. I just get frustrated. Because what happens is, is dealers and business owners, it’s not just dealers. So this is not about dealers, but business owners and people sometimes go to extremes really quickly. So this concept of digital retailing, everybody either loves it hates it, punches it, this isn’t true, then it’s well, nobody wants to buy a car online, nobody. And I keep saying to them. I’ve been active in it. Nissan hired us like 18 months ago now it’s probably two years and we started a pilot with 20 stores. There was a third of them that said, if this is not going to sell many cars this month, get it I don’t even want to talk about right. So even if you think of even the people that you could know in the industry that said oh man, they’re really doing this online like a Brian benstock a paragon or Eric called down a classic Chevrolet. We worked with him and there’s a few others that are really doing it. Well. It started a while ago, and it’s been a couple years of this evolution, right? Everybody’s going digital retailing because it really caught fire, especially during COVID because everybody had to figure it out. But now everybody’s frustrated. Like it’s not perfect. I said. So my point today was just level set for a moment, folks, it’s just starting. You should be thinking where we’re going to be a year from now two years from now I know that’s hard because we’re in a 30 day dealer cycle. But I said let’s just keep it even simpler. Someone who bought a car during COVID. They leased a new Lexus or BMW last March? Well, two years from now their lease is up. If that was the process they went through, what do you think they’re going to expect two years from today? Right? If it was that easy for them to do it all online, talk on the phone, no game, boo, boo, boo, boo, boom, pick up the car, and we’re done. They like that. They’re gonna think you’ve evolved off of that. And gotten even better, faster, simpler three years from now, not. When we went back to our old ways, you got to come into the dealership and get that now I know, half of the dealers who even went down the road of COVID. And tried all this went right back to their own ways, that’s fine. But those other dealers who are going to keep pushing through and trying and testing and working it out, it’s still in its infancy. But for some reason, we expect it to be perfect already. 100 really, really was

Ilana Shabtay 20:53

done, I think it’s very hard for dealers to think past 30 days, but it’s all about the process and the evolution. And it’s I think it’s even more than digital retailing, it’s being able to market and identify different buyers and have different conversations with them based on their their buying habits, whether that’s digital retailing or something else, and the evolution of that we’ll see I think in the next year or two, and dealers should be focusing on that. How are you guys? Besides for digital retailing? How do you kind of conceptualize a digital digital dealership?

Glenn Pasch 21:27

I think I try to keep things very simple in my mind, and hopefully it’s simple in their minds. But if you think about it, and we are now allowing it, we should be evolving our website, and the technology on the website to really mirror our dealership. So very simple questions. If I go into a dealership and ask a question, I’m going to get an answer. I’m there, they’re going to give me the answer. Is that answer on my website? Do I really need to go into the dealership or talk to somebody? Can I get it on your website? Now we start thinking, is our website really an information hub for our brand? For our processes? for how we do business? Am I here to help you? Is it staffed? Like your dealership? You know, on Saturdays, we got to have everybody in, we’re busy. We know certain days of the week, we get to have staff, it’s busy. But yet, our website probably has five 810 times the amount of people who come to our dealership lot. Go on our website. Is it staffed to answer questions when somebody has a question? Are we making it easy? If somebody says Can I look at this car on the website, can I talk to some help? And I push a button in a form that comes up, which now tells you that I’m not ready. I’m not, I’m closed. Let’s go right into I’m closed for business. And now let me type in my name. And I don’t care how good your BDC is, I don’t care how good your salespeople are. You’ve gone back to your toddler, you’ve gone back to another meeting, I’ve gone to do something else too. And now you’re going to call me a couple hours later. I’ve already got to you. And then the bdcs and everybody gets frustrated, nobody’s picking up their phone and nobody’s doing this because you weren’t available when that person asked the question, right? So if we start evolving that to be present for them, so we’re serving them when we’re available versus chasing them when it’s convenient to us, then the technology should just be available for the customer to do as much as little as they want. The problem again, with some of the technology, we’re worried about why aren’t they doing everything? versus what if they just do these couple steps and submit it when they talk to us? are we picking up where they left off? Are we acknowledging what they did? Are we right? Or is it? What brings you here? You know, there’s so many pieces. But I think that goes back to what we were talking about earlier about customer experience. And I think dealers need to pause for a second and just ask a question of saying when a customer is done doing business with us? How do we want them to feel just like a restaurant, when they walk out? They said Oh, that was good. They may talk about the food. But mostly they’re gonna talk about the service, how they made them feel, and it was great. And then we recommend it, we recommend the food’s good, but boy, the experience right? So then we have to reverse engineer back and say, well, then what do our people have to do? The actions they have to do to make them feel that way? And then we build a process and then we train? Then we go, Well, what technology? Do we need to help our team do that better, and make it easier for a customer? Then we go back to the website, how does that technology make it easier for our customers to find the information to communicate to ourselves, make it easy for our salespeople to understand what they were looking for. So when we communicate, right, you see that’s the work that has to be done. So a true digital dealership is just an online, true online mirroring of what you do. When customers come on your lot, that’s what a true dealer digit in my mind, how do I mirror that online?

Ilana Shabtay 25:10

Oh, I was gonna say nothing, I think it’s about transforming your website, making sure it’s mirroring what you’re doing at the dealership, but it’s also staying on top of the metrics and the data and seeing what’s working. And I’m thinking back. We had Kevin Frye on this podcast not too long ago, I think a couple weeks ago, and he was mentioning that they had a chat and everyone was falling off the second the chat asked for their information, which on the one hand, it’s tricky, right? Because you want to give information. On the other hand, the dealership wants to lead. He said the second that they looked into that, and they changed it to say something like, you know, Honda requires us to ask you for your information before we move forward, they added like one sentence to change the customer experience. And the fall basically stopped and they were getting way more leads. And I think that’s such a good example of it’s not just transferring your website, making sure your website mirrors the kind of customer success that the customer experience that you want. But it’s also tracking and making sure that it’s actually giving you

Glenn Pasch 26:07

absolutely I mean, that’s what you do to your staff. They don’t just send them leads and go, I hope we sold cars, you sit there and say, well, what’s your appointment ratio? And what’s our, you know, what’s the percentage of the customers that we get back? And what’s the gross that we got on this? And what’s her appointment ratio? And she’s like, we have all these metrics. But you’re right, they need to inspect and and you know, Kevin is one of the best in the industry at this. But that’s his responsibility. He looks at it and says, I need the data. So the same thing, we could fall in love with the fact of this button. Someone says I have this button and I love this button. And I say, or they asked me Should I take that button off? I said, I have no idea. Is it tagged in analytics? Over the next two months? Tell me how many people click that button. Right now you can say nobody’s clicking it to get the hell off your website. Or if they’re saying, Well, a lot of people are clicking it, then you can have the conversation saying, Okay, well, what happened? Well, we got this many. Here’s how many people clicked it: 100 people clicked it, but we only got 20 people to submit the information. They said, whew, that’s a disconnect. Because out of that 20 how many you’re talking? I said, Well, that would be a case to say, Well, what do you think if you put a chat that popped up? And you started a conversation with 100? How many people could you start building relationship with to your point, then you got to look at the drop off, then you have to look at how we phrase our conversation we have to how we ask or when do we ask for their information, or, you know, all of that is constant tweaking to refine the process. And even if it works today, it may not work six months from now, because other pieces of the business have evolved, or people’s comfort with technology, or what they’re willing to put up with has evolved, their patience level has changed. And we have to constantly adapt to your point. But you have to measure you can’t just get gut doesn’t work, not with this type of stuff.

Aharon Horwitz 28:06

Totally agree, Glenn, it occurs to me also there that the you know, the the things that car dealers know how to do so naturally, which is, you know, basically understand a match between a person and a product and the vehicle product or the service product, meaning good car dealers and good trained car dealer staffers, they’re very, very good at that. And they do it in all sorts of ways that are kind of uniquely human right. So when he walks in the door, there isn’t like a note, there’s no x ray camera that’s gonna build analytics on them and say, this person fits perfectly for this Cadillac, you know, what doesn’t happen, the salesperson has that through conversation, or through their they’re practice eye observation, essentially make that match. I think one of the challenges we’re facing in digital today is that in the old days, every dealer had a shot, right? People walk into six, seven stores, and you get your shot to try your skill at making that match and trying to pull the pull through. Now, you have to do it not only on the website, you’re lucky if they come to the website for more than a few seconds, you have to do it up thermal in the the ether that is Google and that is Facebook, and that is you know, all the other places where people spend their time and consumers. And so I think, I think part of the message I’m taking out of your, you know, what you’re saying is that the showroom experience, which is defined by personalization by one to one by unique insight, by expertise by by hospitality, that has to be essentially translated into digital at every level of the consumer experience and every touchpoint and that’s the only way that dealers are gonna be able to compete with the Amazon versions of car sellers that we were, you know, we’re up against.

Glenn Pasch 29:47

Well, yes. And so what’s going on, I heard it this morning, I’ve heard it, I’ve said it but someone said it the best this morning so I can’t remember who’s but I will give them credit. I said the best deal. dealers aren’t focused on selling you a car. They’re focused on helping you buy a car. slight difference of all your marketing, right? So is your website set up to help them buy a car and get the information? Are you helping them from you know, help them figure it out right to your point when I walk on the lawn? I’m not selling you that car. I don’t know, I’m asking you questions, to find out what you’re interested in, what you’re looking at, because you came here to buy a car. Right? There’s a reason why you’re on the lot. If I bought a car three months ago, there’s no reason for me to be on your lot. Forgetting service. I don’t need to be here. So if I’m here somewhere in the next four to six weeks, I have to pull the trigger. Or else why am I here, we don’t need to be that the days of three months of research in six months are gone. I can do my research. I think the numbers are like six weeks, three quarters of people, three to four to six weeks. And they’re done from research not from when they come on your research to buy. So if we start up change, your point is to start marketing, why we’re the right business for you to come. Because we’re going to help you buy a car that’s right for you. We’re not selling you a car. That’s right for us, we’re helping you buy a car, once you get up there in the mix. People will then give you the opportunity to come to your website. Now again, at every moment through the funnel, you have the opportunity to screw that deal up. Right You just have the opportunity to blow it. So I could make a click on a nice ad on Facebook and Google lab video pre roll. Here’s the best reasons why we do the best to help you buy a car and someone goes Oh, that sounds awesome. I come to your website and it’s a train wreck. You’re right is that same branding on the website so you go Oh, yeah, that’s that’s the website I saw over there. Right? Yep, I’m in the right place. And then it’s easy. And then when I reach out and talk to somebody is that mentality of I’m helping you through your journey to buy a car. I’m here to help you. Will that continue? Or is it up? That’s why I ran into the wall because I’m somebody who’s trying to sell me right. You know, so I think to your point, all of it has to be connected. I think dealers have to really double down on their branding on that. Why should you buy from me? Right? That whole concept of why buy but really understand it so that you explain the technology and why this is what’s in it for you. When you click this button, you can customize your payments now your trade, get pre approved, right big green button, you’ll see it everywhere and do that and guess what? Here’s a button over here if you have a question, you can talk to us at any time and we’re here to like all of that has to be all thought through end to end. But to tell on this point, like if you’re not measuring everything. You’re gonna miss something, right?

Aharon Horwitz 32:44

You’re just not Absolutely. Okay, that was awesome. So we wanted gold Ilan, I think we got gold from Glenn.

Ilana Shabtay 32:50

That’s gonna say again, did not disappoint

Aharon Horwitz 32:52

you guys, I want to encourage everyone to go right now to Spotify to Apple podcasts, Stitcher, wherever you listen to. But whatever you use, download Glenn. Subscribe to Glenn’s podcast you’re in charge. Now what with Glenn Pasch. It is worth it. It is interesting. And you will not want for thought provoking content in those conversations that Glenn facilitates. Glenn, thank you for being here. We appreciate it so much.

Glenn Pasch 33:21

My pleasure. Thanks so much. I love these conversations. I really appreciate what you guys are doing, the value not and beyond your tech in the product, which I think is phenomenal. The fact that you guys are out here doing this and you care to help that just makes you guys stand out as well and appreciate the friendship getting to know you guys more and like I said, this is this has been a great, great day to start my day.

Aharon Horwitz 33:46

Amen. Amen. Thank you. People subscribe. Let’s do it.

Ilana Shabtay 33:51

scribed Spotify Apple podcast Stitcher. Deezer inside auto podcast. If you liked this episode, please subscribe. And Glenn, thank you so much again.

Glenn Pasch 34:00

Appreciate it. Thanks, everybody.

Outro 34:06

Thanks for listening to Inside Auto Podcast. Check out our other episodes with top entrepreneurs and industry leaders.