#164 - Our Process For Vetting Your Vendors

Foreign.

Welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. A podcast by Dealers for dealers. Here we go.

Hello. Welcome to this episode of the Independent Dealer Podcast. Today, Luke and I are. We're like, how far away are we? 3,000, 4,000 miles now?

Where are you at? I'm in Dominican Republic, so we are a ways away. I'm, like, probably 1200 miles from home, so. Yeah. And then another 3000 miles from you, so maybe 4000 miles.

It's got to be a really good life to be able to just bail out of your dealership in the middle of stimulus tax time. You guys are in the middle of buying a new home, and you're just like, forget that I'm heading to the Dominican Republic.

Well, I can, you know, luckily, and I'm going to foreshadow a little bit here. Luckily, I have vendor technology that allows me to do a lot of work no matter where I am, Jeff. So we have management in place, and we try to make sure they know what they're doing. But my cell phone works down here. My DMS works down here. I can buy cars down here. I can do pretty much anything. I can hop on Zoom or on Google, meet and have discussions with employees if I need to. Everything works. So it's lucky. We're lucky that we've been able to get the right vendor relationships and we've actually put people in place that we can really work from wherever we are. Yeah.

I'm curious if. Do you have to exchange your dollars into Dominican? Is it the peso down there? And is that actually a better exchange rate to buy cars these days? Is that the way you're doing it?

I don't know. Mannheim may. May try to extract as much as they can out of us, but. And maybe acv, too, but it's. It's not that bad.

Yeah. Yeah. And to that little side note, you know, hopefully prices are starting to kind of chill out a little bit, but it is definitely, definitely still hard to buy. Definitely still really hard to recon. And so we're going to talk today about kind of choosing the right vendors and vetting the right vendors, service providers, both software, service technology inside your dealership. Because this is a topic that comes up so, so often, right? I mean, this is really. It's constant.

It's a constant. It's a constant battle within your dealership to make sure you have the right technology, you have the right software, you have the right hardware. And honestly, without being able to go to conventions over the last year, it's been a little difficult to really survey what's out there. You don't see a lot of the new products. You don't know what's going on because you haven't been able to walk. The expo. And expos are probably the biggest part of the convention, is building that relationship with vendors, getting with the expo, seeing what's new out there. And honestly, we haven't had an ability to do that lately.

Yeah, it's really. I find it so funny in the car industry, we love our vendors like we love little products and services and an app that does this and a software provider that plugs in here. And these guys do this for me. And it's just, I find it so interesting. And I don't know if it's the same way in other industries, you know, you know, dental industry or real estate professionals or, you know, I mean, how many different vendors do you have, Luke? You probably have two dozen, almost three dozen different vendors that you're cutting a check to every month.

I like to know. I like to choke that down. Right. So let's go across it. I have a service. DMS have my dms and my DMS has my website, my CRM. So that's all wrapped up into one. So then I use. They use Carfax. And you know, I think that's pretty much my big vendors are that number, you know.

So what about your buying tools?

You know, I'm still pretty old school when it comes to using buying tools. I evaluate. I actually evaluate my cars inside of IDMs.

Okay. You're not using a separate booking or buying tool. You're not using. Are you subscribing to a transportation company?

So, yeah, I mean, I use. But I only use. What is it called? I just blank. Central dispatch.

Yeah, central dispatch. So you're paying them every month?

So I'm paying them a little bit every month. But you know, that, that's kind of just, that's where.

So that's at the beginning. Now are you. Now again, are you paying a. You know, if we, if we keep going down this line, are you paying a Google Ad or a Facebook ads company to run your ads?

No, I'm paying one company that handles. I'm paying one company that handles all my digital advertising.

You have one syndicating your inventory to, you know, Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist.

I do not do those. Okay, but I think, I mean, I don't know, I just don't do that. That's not part of my marketing. So I don't have a Ton.

Do you have a separate lender integrator that takes your information from idms and pushes it to like, Cuddle or Westlake or Lobel or Route?

No, luckily, you know, if we do an outside deal, we have relationships with finance companies in town and we also have, okay, we use a used credit union, so we don't. We don't have all that going.

You pay separately for like 700 credit or Experian Equifax credit polls.

So we, we've been with Equifax for years. That's who pushes, you know, that's who we report to.

We other issue.

We don't pull many credit bureaus, so we don't really have that problem. If I have to pull a credit bureau, I go directly to Equifax.

Okay. So I'm just trying to dig out all your vendors or potential dealers could have. Right. So what about an underwriting system? Do you use an Auto Zoom or any kind of a scoring model? Okay, you get your own scoring model. Verification, employment verification, income verification tool. We do all that in house. I know there's vendors that provide those. Obviously your GPS provider, you're paying them for your GPSs. And then if we keep going down, we have our forms providers. You know, you pay IDMs, but I think you probably also pay them for a use of the Walter Kluwer's retail installment contract based on usage. Quite possibly. You probably do. I think I do.

I don't.

And then let's see here. Obviously we have accounting. You probably pay your accountant to do some bookkeeping outside of your comptroller.

I think you're right. I do have 12 to 15 minutes.

Okay. I don't know if we need to keep going down this road, but.

No, I think you're right. I think you're right.

So I'm just trying to think.

There's a lot of them, and some.

Of those are services. I get it. Every industry is going to have attorneys. Every industry is going to have accountants. Every industry is going to have, you know, compliance officers and some of these things that we just need to have. But anyways, what I get back to is it's so interesting in the auto industry is. And we're going to dig into this more when we talk about how to vet your vendors. But we all do want. We want a million things to happen, you know, and we use 12 different vendors to try to get those to fit. And that was always my argument. If you listen to early podcasts, I was like, I just want one vendor that will come out here and do it all. I want them to have a carvana style website that start to finish, it's all integrated into one service and it does the whole thing for me. Like a dealer, turnkey, dealer solution from start to finish.

Yeah, that'd be great. I don't think it can be done.

It can't be done because a no company is that proficient. You look at some of the largest providers that try to take on the most and they do it all kind of half a. And everyone hates them. Right. But also you'd have to pay that company $5,000 a month or $10,000 a.

Month and no 1,000. Right.

And everyone would be pissed. Oh, that's $10,000 a month. I'm not paying $10,000 for a service provider. And you're like, you're paying $10,000 a month for 10 different service providers. Like what's the difference? So I think there's also an obstacle, a hurdle there where you know, some of these vendors know they can get, they can get $99 a month or 599 out of you for this little teeny plug in piece that you have to have and it's an easy sell. And then they can go get 10,000 dealers to sign up for this little integrator that pushes your stuff over to Craigslist or something.

Yeah, anyways.

No, every so often I get a little bug in me and I'll use my hammer integration to push some craigslist stuff over. But yeah, that's funny.

So I think we're getting to here is we, we've come up with a 10, 10 step process to vetting vendors and to make a decision on what you're going to do and how you're going to spend your money. You know, this is probably not the end all be all but I think it's a good process to start because you know we are going to have conventions this year and before you get to the convention you probably need to, if you're looking for something new, you probably need to sit down and go through this, you know, through this steps.

Yes, Huge, huge. We all like to go to convention and get sold the new shiny penny or the new solve it all problem. But if you go in there with a game plan, you're not going to get sucked into sales pitches and stuff that you really don't need. You go there with a game plan knowing what you're looking for. What is your, what's your headache, what's your pain with your current provider?

What are your Needs. What are your needs? What's going to make you more money?

Okay. Yeah. So, so specifically you would say first off, you're going to identify all the vendors that you know of that are in that category. Right. Say you're struggling with inventory acquisition or booking or, you know, days in market type data that you want to have. You got to go out there and figure out who are these guys. Right.

That's number one. Because everybody knows the big companies playing in that, you know, V Auto, what's, you know, inventory plus, there's others, I don't know. But if you were looking for that product, there's products out there that do it. But you can't just look at the, the top one. You've got to look at everybody because the top one may be too expensive, it may be too flashy for what you're doing, may not be what you do. So you got to make sure that you identify all the vendors to start with.

Mm, yeah. So you say you look out there with your leading vendors, but also some of the up and comers. Right. Because there may be some opportunity there for guys that. And we'll probably get into this more. But some of these, they're just so overbuilt for what I do, man. These are like, you know that most of these software products, when they build them, their eyeballs are always set on the big new car store, 15 rooftop type franchise deals. Those are the ones they want that's, you know, the big fish. And then they overbuild it and little guys like us come in and we're like, yeah, that's like 30 features that I don't need and will never use. But yet you're going to charge me the same for my one little rooftop as you do for this guy's massive.

Or, or Jeff, they underbuild it. That could happen too. You could outgrow your product or there could be someone out there that doesn't really have all the functionality that you need. Maybe when you first started in business, you were only selling 10 cars a month and this worked fine. But you may be a, you may be a 30 car month now and it just might not be what you need anymore. So sometimes you have to step into a product that might be a little too robust for you if you want to grow because. Yeah, but you know, because there's a way to get a software company could slow you down from sales if you, if you've already passed that, you know, past that point of your dealership site.

Yeah, I definitely think of Some of the free DMS or CRMs that people use. And it's like, okay, well, is this really giving you what you need? And I think this might be in your situation here somewhere. But, you know, again, it probably comes back to the contract and you're going to talk about that later. But what are they doing with your data? You know, who owns that in those situations? It ain't free, you know, I'll tell you that. Like, they say it's free, but.

Yeah, and that's. Once we identify the vendors. I think you just need to make sure you identify the leading people in that area and also the lagging people in that area. Because you may not fit with a leading person. You may. You may be in the middle somewhere. So you kind of have to rank them from who's got the best technology to who's got the worst. And where do I fit? You got to be real with yourself. Don't. It's just, you don't need to. You don't need to believe that, you know, that you're leading in an industry when you're only selling 20 cars a month. So, you know, you got to know where you are, who you are as a company.

And so much of that's going to have to do with the price, right, Luke? I mean, obviously the price tags. One of the first thing us dealers look at is, okay, what's this going to cost me?

And that's.

And what's it going to add to my bottom line? That's the bottom. That's really one of the most important things, right?

That's number three and price every single vendor that you've listed, because if you call them up, they'll kind of tell you where you are. And so know what your budget is. If you don't know what your budget is and somebody hits you at $1,000 a month for something, you may go, holy cow, I thought I was going to spend $50 a month. So you got to know where your budget is, because you gotta make sure, okay, this product's gonna add to my bottom line. It's supposed to. Every. Every product you add to your dealership, every vendor should add to your bottom line. How is it gonna add to my bottom line? How can I use maybe a thousand dollar a month vendor is the right person if it'll get me $10,000 a month in revenue. So you gotta kind of know where you are, right?

So I'd love. I don't think there's an answer to this question, but they all. It's always the philosophy of, well, if this can add one more sale, if this can add one more sale to you per month, what's it worth? It's worth that thousand dollars, right? Cause you're making a copy. So if you can get one more sale, it pays for itself.

That's, that is the old school method of thinking about that. And that's one of the things that Joe Lascota, when I did my cmd, he said you need to look at the revenue that's going to produce. And it should be, I can't remember the exact number, but about 10% of the revenue that it produces should be this product. So you got to make sure you know what you're doing there. One more car a month and you were paying a thousand dollars per product. That's a bad product, period.

So you would say maybe rule of thumb would be like a 10x 10x, right? This thing's gonna cost me a thousand dollars. It needs to put $10,000 to my bottom line somehow.

10,000 gross? Yeah, I think it's 10,000 of gross.

Okay.

Make sure, make sure you're, it's a 10x type of situation. It might be a 5x, but it's somewhere in there. A 1 to 1 ratio is bad because let's say that one, let's just say you had a third party lead generator that says, hey, you pay me a thousand dollars a month and you just get one sale that's gonna do it. Well, that one sale that month netted you $900. You lost $100. Right. So, so make sure you don't look at it that way. It's not about sales, it's about gross.

Yeah. And it makes me think about also when you say gross return on investment. Right. I know some, especially advertising vendors, they say, well, you know, you're going to spend $10,000 a month with us, but that's going to equal 5% return on your money or 20% return on your money. You're going to get $10,000 net out of it. So I think you've got to look at those return on investment type numbers with a very. Yeah, what, what is it? It's 10x5x7x, like okay, I'll, I'll give you $10,000 a month in advertising spend if you're going to prove over time. And of course, you know, there's some other ways we'll talk about how to vet that. But you're going to prove that you're going to give me a, you know, $50,000. You know, gross bump, you know, if.

You'Re spending, if you're spending $10,000 a month on advertising, I don't have my calculator real handy. But you know, it should produce you 500 leads, right?

Yeah.

Something to that effect. And that's the way you have. Look at it.

And sales too, not just leads. We talked about that, but we don't.

You know, 500, you know, 500 leads should produce 250 appointments, 25 sales. So that's, that's how you have to look at that type of thing.

So step number four, Luke, you'd say talk to your peers, right?

Oh man.

Obviously we're big on this.

You've got to. And go to the forums when you're at conventions. Talk to, talk to people, Talk to people who use the product and also talk to people who used to use the product. They may have some insight as well. You shouldn't go up to a dealer who's never used Product X and listen to their advice on product X because they may have used, they may have done a demo and hated the product. But you may talk to a dealer that's been on it 10 years. That tells you the products. Amazing, right? But you also may sell to a dealer who was on their product for, for five years and it didn't fit their dealership and they didn't like the product so they moved. So you need to, you need to have across the board consensus. Not consensus, but across the board knowledge of what's going on.

Yeah. And one thing I would, I would mention as a tip for search the forums. So don't just. A lot of people will just jump in and ask a question, hey, you know, I'm looking for dms. What do you guys recommend? And it's like, okay, hey, I don't know if you're in here, but that is asked every single week. You're going to get a lot more information if you go read previous co posts because it's really hard for other dealers to be motivated to chime in on the best DMS or the best gps every single time it's posted. We feel like broken records, so we stop responding. And then people feel like they're not getting advice from other dealers. So just real quick, make sure you search the posts in the forum. And then after that, if you have a question, hey guys, I read everything about everything, but what about this little angle that I didn't see covered?

And maybe maybe say, hey, I'm thinking about going with product X. Anybody who's been using them from, for a lot of time that I could reach out to with a private message because I think that, Yeah, I think that's going to help a lot.

Yep.

Identify the, identify the people who use it and then if I. The people who are probably users and con users, you know.

Yeah. And also the motivation behind them, you know, I mean there's, there's a lot of people I know that will just blindly back a certain company because that's, you know, maybe they're financially invested, maybe they, whatever, whatever it is or they're part of the company and you didn't realize that they're actually an employee. Wait a minute. This guy, this guy actually works for this company. No wonder he's, you know, so adamant on pushing their service or product.

Yes. Number we on five, Jeff.

Yeah.

Okay. Number five. Determine if there's new technology around the corner. So, you know, you may think right in a second that X product is just the way to do it. Right. But you may not know that there's a new technology that's going to make that obsolete. So before you hop into a contract or anything like that, figure out the technology, figure out this is the right technology for you or if there's, you think more technology coming, that's really going to change the outlook of that type of product.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I think back to the GPS days when we were using 3G or 2G and you signed up and you bought 50 of them and you're like, oh, six months later they're not going to be serviced anymore or whatever. So now I've got a bunch of GPSs out there that are going to be useless in a couple months.

That's a real words, real world example of that. I mean, if you didn't know what was right around the corner and you were using that or went price shopping and bought the cheapest GPS out there.

Yeah. Guess what? They were trying to unload them on you.

You just wasted all this money. And they're really, they are some really good GPS providers out there that would have told you the right.

Yeah. And I also think about, you know, consumer behavior. You know, we talk about, you know, digital retailing and remote deliveries and that's one of the reason I went to text only for CRM. I don't email, I don't really phone call much. I only text. I dropped my CRM and I went to a text only platform because I just felt like that was the way people were doing it and I might stick with it for a while and Move on again. But unfortunately, I didn't follow Luke's steps, and I'm stuck in a contract with my old CRM for a few more months. That's part of it.

You know, that happens.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so then on to number six. You're gonna be doing a demo.

You got to. You got to test drive it. You know, you hardly sell a car without somebody test driving it, right? So you need to test drive it. You need to demo it, you know, and that goes from using their demo process, which they will let you do, but also maybe going to another dealer that, you know, that's using the product and watch what they're doing with it. So multiple test drives, make sure that this product is going to do what you need it to do and easily.

So I run into the issue so often when I do demos on products, especially the software products, obviously, that it doesn't do what I like. I think I'm a pretty, like, user friendly. Like, I'm the kind of guy that goes to a restaurant and I look at all the ways they're doing it wrong and tell them, and I can see how to do it right, how to streamline it, how to make it more efficient fast. So when I do product demos with these guys, and I'm like, guys, like, why do you not have this feature? Or why is this feature over here? Or why did you not include this thing? Like, you know, if you did this, dealers would love you. And we all want this little button. Just add the damn button. But they're, like, pure. I mean, where's the argument for that, Luke, to be like, hey, you've got it.

So you've got to make sure that the product you're test driving is fixable, I guess, or upgradable. Because if you just buy an old product, you know, and spend a lot of money on that old product, and they. They don't have upgrades every month or every couple weeks, you're going to be stuck because you're going to say, oh, my gosh. Well, it should do this. But if you know the right people and reach out and say, hey, can you get your product to do this? Yeah, they're a true company. There are companies out there that can upgrade. It may take a little while, but it'll, you know, it'll come.

Yeah, I also think so. I have another software provider in my rental business, and they are incredibly responsive to user feedback. And that is, I find so interesting from a very, very, very large software provider. They have a user forum where you go in there and you suggest ideas. And other. Other users can upvote these ideas and say, hey, yes, this is something. We need this. And it gets upvoted in this public forum where everyone can see what's suggested and what's not. And the company jumps in and responds and says, hey, guys, I know you all want this. We're going to do it in Q4, or, hey, guys, actually, we can't do this at all, so sorry, I know you want it, but. But there's like this public acknowledgement of what is needed and what they will do and won't do. Whereas some of our other software providers, it's completely in the dark, like, oh, well, I'll submit a service ticket and see if that's something we can add. Well, I don't know who you're like. And you're like, there's a million dealers that need this fixed or need this working. I know it now. I'm going to either create a Facebook group and bring them all in and we're going to fricking rally and storm your door, or you guys could stop making me act like I'm the only one that has this problem, because I know I'm not.

So you know what's interesting, Jeff? My new service software that we've been on for, I guess, six months from now, so it has the same user feedback, blog or whatever it is, and you can upvote, and that's, that's pretty neat process. And every Monday morning when you log into TechMetric, it says, hey, these are the new features we have this week. It's. It's a pretty awesome deal. And I think that is the way of the future when it comes to software.

Yeah, well, it's the only way to go. And to the larger point, it shows you what vendors really care and want to innovate and want to make their products fit the consumer. So many of them come in here as, like, they think they're like artists, you know, like, oh, we designed this amazing thing, take it as is. It's not being changed. And you're like, well, I don't want to deal with you because you're not going to, you know, you're not going to be flexible or do these things that fit. And I know I'm a small fish, so it's hard for me to make demands, but anyways, I think that's a huge mentality kind of framework to look at when you're, when you're, when you are narrowing down your choice of vendors. And that would be step number Seven. Right. Luke, after you've kind of test driven and demoed some of them, you're going to kind of. You think we should narrow it down to two providers?

I think so. I think you should narrow it down to two. Two being, one is this is the best product on the planet.

Right.

And the second one being, you know what, it's not the best product, but it's a really good product. And it, you know, so that way you have. There's probably two different price points there too. Then you got to make it. You got to make a decision, you know, well, we'll get to that. But two vendors makes it better for you, I think. Not just going, this is the one I'm going with. I think that it's not the right way to go.

Yeah, yeah. So you want to have kind of an A and a B choice when you're maybe leaning towards, but you're not 100% in love with and always kind of keep a fallback that's either either beating out on price or beating out on some like, you know, super key feature that you feel like you must have.

Yeah, 1A and 1B, you know, that's possible.

And then step number eight is, you know, you say, discuss the process of switching vendors and going through things like data transfer. And I know obviously with your dms, it's like, Jesus, I get in a divorce, it is a hassle. But GPSs are the same way. Your CRM is going to be very similar. You've got huge amounts of data that's very valuable to you. You've spent a ton of money building up that database. If you're just going to dump it and not bring it with you somehow.

You'Re losing a lot. And I'll tell you, I'm going to tell you, everybody this. If you're switching dmss or if you're switching your website or if you're switching CRM, there is going to be a problem. I'm just going to let everybody know that it's not. Flip a switch and everything works. So you've got to, you've got to have that mindset going in, but you need to find out what dealers have switched. How did it go? Was it bad? Was it good? Did I get my historical data? Did I do that? There's a lot of things you need to, you need to know. You need to find the pitfalls before you're in the pit and not able to get out of it.

Yeah, realistic. Being realistic guaranteed you that you took notes during the demos and during the honeymoon phase and they promised you everything under the sun and that your dad would be transferred in two weeks and that you're, you know, you'd have a username and password within 5 days and be up and running. It ain't going to happen. I don't care what company it is. Very, very few of them will meet the targets that the salesman gave you. That's just unfortunately because.

Because a lot of times at your dealership, you're not meeting the targets that your salespeople gave your customers either.

Yeah, think about your service department. It'll be done on Friday. It ain't going to be done on Friday.

Salespeople always, what is it? They over promise, under deliver and under deliver. Yeah, people always do it. So just keep that in the back of your mind.

They over promise, but yet they don't have the, they don't even have the authority to deliver. That's what's so interesting. They're not the ones actually doing the data transfer. They're not the ones sending up your username. You're passed on to your CRM or your, or your whatever those customers.

Success. Success.

LMNOP guy that changes every two months. And. Yeah, so. So be realistic and on to number nine. Number nine is huge. Contracts, Luke. Oh man, can we not sign contracts? Everyone knows that if your software or your service is good enough, you don't need a contract.

Yeah, you would think that, but I guess, you know, if they're giving you, you know, only you're gonna have to enter into some contracts every once in a while and probably more on the DMS side because if they did a huge data transfer and they didn't charge you for it, they've got to make sure that you're going to be with them to cover that expense. Because you know, it could be, you know, 35 to $5,000 expense at least that they're taking on here. And if they, you know, if they say, oh, you know, you don't have a contract, well, be really weary of that. But read the contract. Make sure you know what you're getting into. If you know you're signing a 12 month agreement, make sure you know, make sure you know how to get out of that agreement. If it is 12 months, make sure it doesn't auto renew for another 12 months.

Yes. Put it in your phone as an alert 60 days before it expires to revisit that. That's huge. Because you're going to want to cancel the two days after your contract. Auto renewed.

Yeah. Because Some of them require a 30 day notice, written notice. Make sure you know who to send that to. So make sure you know all these things. Write them down. Keep it. These are my contracts. Make a, make an Excel file. These are my contracts. This is when they renew. If I want to get out of it, I need to do it by then and look at it. Make sure you know what you're doing. And if you go with the least amount of contract time as you can, who knows, you may go out of business and still be beholden to this contract that you owe $6,000 for. So it's very important, we hope none of you go out of business. But it happens.

In your opinion, do you think that those big vendors are flexible? If you go to them and say, hey, I absolutely love your product, it's the best thing. I want to sign up, but I don't want to be, I want to be a three month contract and then month to month.

I think there's some that are, do.

They have the flexibility?

I think some are, I think some of your bigger providers aren't because they, they don't have to be. But I think, you know, I think there's some that are, some that aren't. You need to know who they are and try to negotiate. That's all you can do, try to negotiate. And if you can't negotiate the link to the contract, you know, then you may want to move on to a different vendor.

Do you think it'd be useful to set them up? I mean, it kind of makes me think about one I recently got into that was requiring a contract like, hey, can I just make all these, like, you know, I'll do a 15 month contract up front because I want all my expiration dates to be in December. I just want everything to expire December 31st. I'll sign whatever period you need. If we're six months into the year, for 36 months into the, whatever anyway. So that's just maybe some food for thought if you want them all to match up. Like, hey, I know that in June, I'm slow. June, July is my slow time. That's when I'm going to revisit all my vendors. That's when I want my contracts to expire.

You know, and typically the national convention is in June. So that might be a better, that might be a better fit. So I would probably, I'd ask. I mean they can only tell you no. And I think that if you could enter into a 14 month contract instead of 12 months, you're probably Going to be in an advantage with these companies anyway.

Yeah. So, Luke, let's wrap it up. Step number 10 is pull the trigger, make a decision.

You know, I know of a couple of dealers that have been talking about what DMS they want to go with for years, you know, and actually, they're probably, probably running two dmss now. So, you know, why. Why keep putting it off? Because if you know you're going to do it and your old one's about to go away, you just need to go ahead and do. Could be costing you money and you don't even know it.

Yeah, I think a lot of people are just so scared of the change. They're scared of what might be. They're hoping maybe they get some bugs worked out. In the meantime, you don't want to be the guinea pig that.

I'm not saying be the first. I'm not saying be the first, but, you know, if other people are using it, they like the product, you know, it's probably time to change.

Yeah. And I think a lot of dealers know, like, even for things like, you know, you should be using a car specific accountant, just do it like, oh, this guy's been running my taxes for years. I just don't want to go through the hassle and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, no, no, no, no. Like, put it in your calendar, schedule it out, have the conversation with the firm, you know, make the move, because in the end, it will be better off.

That's, you know, honestly, that's probably one of the biggest, you know, vendors choices that's going to make. The biggest, you know, deal of your dealership is going with the right accounting firm. And so there's two or three really good ones out there. And, you know, make the decision sooner than later. Make it after you file your taxes this year is what I would do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A couple of them are really expensive, though. I. My. I just paid my bill yesterday for taxes and accounting and, I don't know, some sort of, like, oral surgery. I don't know what they charged me for. Man, that was a steep one, Luke. So, I don't know, you don't want to use. Don't use Luke's accountant. He is pricey.

Well, I can tell you this, he's good. And. Yeah, you know, Jeff, what do you. I mean, what do you think it's worth spending a year to make sure your taxes are done right? Oh, I think it's.

I think it's probably 12 grand.

I don't know, 10 to 15 grand. I mean, that's what it's worth. And you gotta, you gotta think about that because one mistake could cost you thousands and thousands of dollars.

Yes. And then the defense, there are other, you know, we did some inventory changeover and we did a lower of cost or purchase. So my inventory. So sure, yes, I get it. I paid them an extra five grand for some reports and some accounting changes, but the theory was that it saved me 30 grand on taxes, so. And it probably did a 25.

They probably did. So, yeah.

Okay. Any other parting words, vendors, before we go here? Yeah, obviously support the vendors that support the podcast. You know, we talked about many. Obviously, Dealer Re is a huge sponsor of the podcast. They've been behind us from day one as far as great guys. And when we talk about, look at who they are and if they like the dealers and if they have integrity and if they're here to back the dealers, which I said earlier in the episode. But Dealer Re is a big one. You know, guys that are always there, the drop of a hat, a text message, a phone call. They. You won't go two hours and not get a response from them.

So I had a personal testimony from last week. I gave Taylor a call on something that was happening with a warranty issue. Customer was. Was somewhere else and they weren't getting. They were a little outside of our range or inside our range. So I called Taylor. Taylor was in. He was on vacation, I think. Last week my phone rang within, you know, a minute from Tim calling, say, hey, we'll get this taken care of, not a problem. And that just the service that Dealer Re provides for me, the money they save us on the. In the long run, there's no better product out there than reinsurance, which we've always said. Mm.

Yep. So obviously a vendor plug from us at the end of this episode, but we try to be impartial to all vendors across and hopefully, Luke, you know, we talked about this before, but no promises, but in the works would be a vendor breakdown, obviously. Luke and I both have dealerships that we have to run. So to go into every vertical of a dealership and kind of lay out the top five vendors and break them down by quality, feature, price, and do that work for the dealer community would take a lot of work, but would be massively useful.

I think we're going to try, but it's just, we don't know when that's going to happen. So audit all your vendors over the next couple of weeks as business starts to slow down. Audit your vendors, make a list of who you have, who you'd like to be with, what it's costing you a month. And that way you know where you are, where you can go, and how you can make more money and save some money at the same time.

Awesome. Luke. Talk to you next week, man.

So glad you joined us. Please take a minute to leave us a review and share this podcast with a friend, the Independent Dealer. Podcast Dealers Helping Dealers.

Sam.