23 - How To Get The Most Out Of Conventions

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Independent Dealer Podcast. Today, Luke and I are going to share with you our convention planning 101 tips. So we're going to give you some real practical advice. If you're planning on attending the NIADA convention next week in Las Vegas, this is going to help you out. If you plan on attending any convention ever in any industry, this is still going to help you out. These are really practical tips you can put into place right away to make sure you're getting the most bang for your buck out of these conventions. Luke. Right?

100%, Jeff. Even if you've been to convention for 10 years, these are some things that you need to be aware of. And if you haven't been to convention yet, any type of convention, this is something that will probably save you three years of going. It took me a while to learn these things and honestly, if you're, if you're going to the convention and you don't have a plan, it's going to be overwhelming. So take these points as you will, but you really need to implement something to get the most out of the convention.

Welcome to the Independent Dealer podcast, the podcast for auto dealers to learn and grow together. Here are your hosts, Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. Yeah, and first off, Luke, I really want to plug. I mean, I think both of us see the value in attending things like this, right? And whether it's, you know, car related or technology related or maybe even completely, you know, just has to do with your life or your family or, you know, it's a Tony Robbins event. I mean, sure, go into these things and getting together with people, I mean, it's different than just reading a book or listening to a podcast or, you.

Know, it is, it's so, it's so rewarding if you do it the right way. And that's what we're here to try to make sure people know that there's a way to do it and there's a, there's a right way to do it, there's a wrong way to do it. But you're so right on that no matter the industry you're in. And I believe the car business probably has, I don't know this for sure, but it's probably got the most conventions and, you know, it feels like it, right? Every week there's something else going on, but either it's management or advertising or learning to turn cars faster, whatever it is, there's a lot going on. I probably go to 4 year old, which might be, which might be too many But I tell you, I come back with some great, great things to implement. Awesome.

Awesome. Alright, share us your advice, Luke.

So number one is something that we all deal with that we need to audit, and that's number one, is look at your current vendors. Okay. Before you leave to go out there, I want you to ask questions to yourself. I want you to say, all right, what kind of questions can I ask the vendors while I'm out there to make the product use better? Right. So we all have all these products and there are functionalities within these products that we don't know how to use. So it might be. Just write a list of some things that maybe you're doing in a spreadsheet or you're doing here or you're doing there. Just talk to the vendor about it. Maybe they can say, hey, there's a way to do this inside of the, of the, of the computer program you're using or the app you're using. So I think, I think that's big. Address the vendor while you're out there with any issues you're having in the product. Let's say it's hanging up when you're trying to do this or it's knocking you out of the system when you do that. Talk to the vendor about it. Because when they, when you're out there, you've got, you've got them right in front of you. You can sometimes talk to the product engineers. There's all kind of ways to better use your system if you only ask and tell them what's going wrong.

1. One year I was at a convention and I spoke to my DMS provider and there was a lot of features I didn't even know they'd implemented.

Exactly.

I mean, I didn't even know that it was there or an option for me to integrate this, that or the other until I talked. So, I mean, there's one thing to go in, acting stupid sometimes and ask them what's new. Ask them what the coolest new thing they just developed or come out with and have them demo it for you. It might be a module or a piece that you're not even using.

Yeah, you're right, Jeff. When I was at Nada, and I think we talked about this before, and you and I use a bunch of dealer socket technology. I sat there for two or two and a half hours talking to product designers, people who know way more about the product than I do, and I came away with just a wealth of knowledge that I'm using every day in my dealership.

Mm. Yeah, I'm gonna avoid that booth for fear of being thrown out. But another topic. What else you got?

Billing concerns with vendors. This is a great time to bring that up, guys. Let's say you think you're overcharged, or this. Bring a copy of your bill and sit there and let them walk you through it line by line. You might find that you're overpaying for something, or you may find you're paying for something you're not using.

I guarantee you, if you have not audited your cost of GPS units, if you use them for those, buy here, pay here, dealers out there, you are definitely overpaying because with the competition and you know they're not going to tell you that you're paying too much. You got to ask them. And maybe you've got quantity breaks you could do that you didn't know about or maybe mean. Yeah.

Because there's gonna probably be, if I had to guess, five or six GPS providers on the floor.

Yeah.

And you can walk around to every single one of them. And I'm not telling you every single one of them has a perfect product, but you could walk around to every single one of them in price. Shop within 20 minutes and you'll probably save yourself some money. So make sure you do.

Right there.

Yes, sir. And then the next thing is, if you love your vendor, which I love most of my vendors. If not, I've already fired them. But while you're there, negotiate a better rate. Because I'd be willing to bet you they've got some convention bonuses they're handing out and they're able, when they're at convention, they're able to give you a better price a lot of times. So if you're not happy with what you're paying, try to negotiate it or.

At least get the free stuff.

Get the free stuff, Right. It may not be a cut monthly, but you know what they may be able to. Let's say it's your website provider and you're paying what you think is a handsome sum every month to your website provider. You know what they may be able to do? They may be able to build you a new site at no cost so you can freshen up your site. You might still be paying the same amount, but you may save $2,500 and get a better product out of it. So there's different things you can do to help pay for the convention.

One thing I would like to add or chime in, and I don't want to get ahead of you, but along with the you know, the vendor space, the. What do they call that, the convention center area, the expo area. Right. My suggestion along those lines is definitely go in there a lot. Don't be scared of it. Don't think you're gonna get sold. Don't think that it's some weird place and it's not part of it. That is, it's just as much part of the convention as the breakout sessions and the education sessions. Because you're going to get educated on if you're using the right thing, if you're not. So my recommendation would be go in the first day, talk to all your vendors, break the ice, get comfortable with it, hit the ones you really want to hit right away, but then go back the next day and hit the next level, you know.

So that really leads us into my second point.

Okay.

And that's if you have any interest in a vendor that you're not currently using, get more info, talk to them. They're all right there. And the next thing in that whole piece is have a plan like you're talking about, have a plan for the expo floor. There is so much to gather there. And I say you might learn more on the expo floor than you know, sometimes. And you learn in the classroom because it's a little different teaching opportunity.

And talk to the vendors that you don't know. You see a name like, you know, cr bw. What do they do? I don't know. But you know, this is maybe my third day at the Expo. I'm going to go talk to the lower level ones that I don't even know just because I want to get educated on what they do. And I didn't know that they could help me out.

You know, that's. I always, typically, the first day that Expo opens, I just walk the whole floor, right. And I don't really talk to anybody. I just walk it and see what's there, see what's new that I hadn't learned, get a feel for where my vendors are so I can go back to them later. But I typically go in there three or four times, but the first time is really just a walk around. And I try to, at that point, try to make a path of where I want to go. Definitely, you got to walk it. You got to ask questions about things you don't know, because we don't know what we don't know. Make sure you got a. Make sure you got that plan. But the next thing under that is don't go for the shiny new product. You know, I've seen people in 20 groups. And I got this one person in mind that every time they go to an expo or to a convention, they come out with this new product that's going to transform their dealership. I don't think that happens. Honestly, I don't. Your dealership is what it is. You can make it better by learning things. But just because a vendor tells you that, just if you subscribe to my third party sites, you're gonna get 50 more leads a month or 300 more leads a month and you're gonna sell 40 more cars. It's probably not gonna happen. So make sure that you don't get sold. We're car salespeople and we like to be sold and we like to sell. So be aware of that. Don't buy things just to buy when you're there because it's really. It can happen.

Yeah, you can get caught up in the hype or the excitement or. Yeah, yeah. I don't, yeah, be careful you're not making any purchasing decisions until you let the dust settle for sure.

And you know, know what your business needs. That's my last point in this is if you have a plan of what you need in your business. Let's say I go out there and I know that my website's a little dated. I know my DMS doesn't do exactly what I want it to do. Well, I know that my two things that I need to get coming out of convention, a better website and a better dms. So what I would recommend is spend most of your time looking only at those two things because other things, they're gonna creep up around you and it's just gonna, it's gonna take you off of the point of what you really need.

Agreed?

Alright, next thing, map out the education and determine the correct path for you. Some people buy here, pay here, some people are retail, some people have a service department. If you don't have a service department, you don't need to go to the fixed op meeting. You just don't need to because it's not going to do you any good. And I dare say that if you're planning on having a service department, you may not even need to go to the fixed ops. A couple of things you may get confused. But you know if you've got the time and you want to do that, fine, do it. If you're buy here, pay here, you probably need to stay in the buy here, pay here field. You don't need to wander off into to retail and it's just not, it's not going to be good. It's not going to be a good use of your time. So, you know, make a path, decide what you must see, decide what you have some interest in. And the third category would be if I have time. You know what I mean? So map it out. If your must sees are all throughout the place, do your must sees. If you're interested in something and it falls into an area where you can actually do it, do it. And then the other thing is, if I have time, I'll check into this. But make sure you stick to your core business and educate yourself on that.

Yeah. And the thing I would chime in here might be a little cynical, but I would say even be, you know, this is my own pet peeve. But I don't like going to 50 minute infomercials. No, be honest with you. I avoid the sessions that are, you know, GPS technology, changing the industry, taught by X&Y, GPS provider, you know, like there's some good things you can learn there. And I think most of the speakers these days have been very much educated that this is not a sales opportunity, this is an education opportunity. In the past, it's kind of been touch and go, but along those lines, definitely attend. If it's, if there's a dealer panel, if there's a panel at all, go to that one. You will get the most out of the panels. Also, don't be afraid to walk out.

Yeah.

If you're 15 minutes into it and you realize this thing's going to be an infomercial or you realize that this Yahoo has no idea what he's talking about, or maybe you're way beyond the knowledge that he's sharing 101 and you're way past that. Run to the one next door. You know, don't be afraid to. To get up and move.

Totally agree with that, Jeff. And I've done that before. You know, it's. This year is going to be different than most years if anybody hadn't looked. But there's going to be a dealer educating dealer series. And I know you and I are big on that, you know, because that's what we like, you know, and you see it a lot in the Facebook group that there's a lot of good dealers and, you know, learning from them sometimes is better than learning from the vendors. Not that the vendors don't have something to educate you on, because they do. But I really think that you're exactly right on. Don't get sold in infomercial and don't go sit in those infomercials, because that's what they are. Be cognizant of who's teaching. For sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I. And to the convention's credit, I'm pretty sure that's been a much stronger focus. I've looked at who's presenting a lot of these, and, yeah, I don't think that'll be as much of a problem as I think maybe it's been in the past.

For sure. And don't get me wrong, some of the smartest people in our industry are the vendors, for sure. And they have a lot to teach. But as long as they're not selling, you listen to it. Because at Nada, they do. I mean, there's a lot of vendors teaching at Nada, but they forbid it. And they record every single session. If they see that a vendor even, they can mention who they're from to start with. But if it's ever mentioned as more of what they do and they are tossed. And we're getting to that, too. So I think that's a good point. The next point is networking, man. Guys and gals, you won't have a better place on the planet than next week in Las Vegas to do some serious networking in our industry. Some of the best and brightest are out there, and there is so much you can do. So, you know, plan your networking as well. We're talking about plans here. You know, we all have such a. Such a vast pool of people to look for in the dealer situation because we're in the Facebook group. You know, some people who were there that comment a lot, you know, you know who's probably going by this time. Maybe we do a check in today on the page, but know who's going. Go ahead and plan it out, Facebook, message them, text them, say, hey, I really would like to get with you on this because there are so many people that want to give their time, do it. You know, talk to these people, make a list of. These are the people I want to touch when I'm out there. Please walk up to me, walk up to Jeff, to Dan, to Joe, to Jack Carter. There's plenty of people out there. Henry Mullinax. What a. What a great wealth of knowledge. These people will help you. And so please do it. Make the list and work the list.

Yeah, and connect with them beforehand. Don't just wait to run into them out there. You know, send out a message or a text or a post or something and let people know you're going to be there. And, yeah, make a plan.

Make a Plan with your fellow dealers, also with your vendors. You know, you might think of networking, just being dealer to dealer, but some of my best friends in the industry are vendors, and I get some grief from that sometimes. But I really like some of the vendors. And I would say if you have an issue, sometimes the best way to resolve that issue is by being friends with a vendor. There is special treatment out there sometimes, maybe not in pricing, but if you have an issue, sometimes it's a lot easier to pick up the phone and call somebody if you already have a relationship with that. That vendor. So network with vendors as well.

Yeah. And along those lines, I'm sure you're going to talk about this, but these small discussions, the side discussions that you have with an individual dealer, whether at lunch, breakfast, or, you know, after get togethers, those are the ones that really bring the most value in my opinion. You know, I get some really good information from the education sessions and some grand ideas and to change. But the real nuts and bolts and the real practical advice comes when I'm bouncing ideas off another dealer or I'm learning how they're doing something or I'm helping educate them. And that just reinforces it in me. So those. You've got to get out of your shell. If you're, I mean, if you're scared of it, you got to talk to people. It's. It's those conversations where you make the connections and you get the real, you know, nuts and bolts education for sure.

In the company, because the people you're networking with may already be doing what you're thinking about doing, or they may have already done it and says it doesn't work. So make sure you do that for sure, Jeff. You know, the next thing you can do when you're out there networking wise, and this is something that, that I feel very passionate about, is that, you know, make a decision when you get out there. Do I want to be more involved in the association? Some of the. I mean, I mean, literally everything I've learned in the last 10 years when it comes to the car business has come from my involvement in the Carolina Independent Dealers association, which in turn puts me in the national. But, you know, make a decision. Do I want to be involved? Because if you want to be involved in the state association, you want to be on a board, you want to do this. All the executive directors, not all of them, but a vast majority of the executive directors are going to be out there. You know, search out your executive director from your state or search out board members from your State, you can go on the website right now and look and see who the board members are. A majority of them are going to be out there, talk with them, see if there's a committee you can be on or if they're looking for new board members. Because I promise you, it will be rewarding. And the networking that comes in there will, I promise you will pay dividends.

Mm.

So do that. You know, the last thing in the networking thing that Jeff and I definitely are passionate about is 20 group. This is a great time to learn about 20 group and is a great time to ask other dealers who in 20 groups, you know, if they're looking for members or this, that and other. If you would fit in their group. The networking that comes from the 20 groups is amazing. So I would say this is. This just gives you a great opportunity to Discuss more about 20 groups.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure the. I'm sure the guys will be there, you know, in the expo hall, and they'd love to chat with you about it. Right?

For sure, for sure. The next thing. And this is something that all of us may, you know, not all of us, but some of us may have. Have some fun with, but playtime in the desert. Hey, we're in the desert. It's Las Vegas. You gotta have fun. All right, but, Jeff, what should we not do?

I would say my advice is enjoy the fact that it's in Vegas. I completely love. Because I'm about 90 minutes away, and so I'm going to be sleeping in my own bed most of the nights. But you got to be careful, man. Don't overdo it. Remember, while you're there, stay focused, have fun, have some drinks, go out, spend some evenings talking to people. But, man, if you wake up the first day with a hangover and it wrecks the rest of your weekend, you're gonna regret that. You know, remember, while you're there.

For sure, Jeff. And that's. There's plenty of social events that vendors are putting on that NIADA is putting on, that everybody should be at, because that's, you know, that's the playtime within our industry. You can sit there and have a drink or two, discuss, you know, what you're wanting to network with with another dealer, because they're going to be there. So have fun out there, relax a little bit, but don't wreck your trip because, you know, all of us have paid good money to go out there. Make it worth the while.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I would say, you know, my thought is spend a couple days Afterwards, you know, if you want to really live up the Las Vegas lifestyle, do that after the convention. But at the same time, I know the importance of getting home when that fire is still in you. You know, you're going to be pumped on Thursday. You want to get back to the lot and make a plan of action.

That's my last point, Jeff, and great job leading us in, but that is so important. Outline a plan on Thursday, you know, or on the flight home Friday morning, whatever it is. All that stuff's fresh, it's all bouncing around. Write it all down. Then you can go back and trim that down. You don't have to go with what you, what you wrote down. You might write it down Thursday on the flight back, scribble some stuff out Friday morning. But I think by the time you get back into office Saturday morning or Monday morning, have a plan of attack. Know what you need to do because it is going to be so important for your, you know, for your growth as a dealer. If you just come back with nothing in outline, you may try to implement too much and that creates real issues. That creates issues with employees. They think you're just coming back and throwing everything against the wall. So don't do that. Have a plan of action and have a time for that plan. You may come back and want to change everybody's pay plan. I don't suggest that, you know, you may come back and want to go straight into retail. I don't recommend that. You know, you need a plan of action. If you don't, you're going to wreck your business.

Yeah, I remember back in the day, I would come home and the employees would be so scared because I would come in, just start throwing grenades with half hatched ideas. And it was always very, I think, nerve wracking for everyone when I would go away to 20 groups or conventions. But yeah, my suggestions, just like you said along those lines, is take, you know, prioritize your notes and your plan of action and just take the top three and try to knock those out. You know, the three that are really gonna move the needle for your dealership and implement them, implement them well. And you're not gonna do all 50 of them. You know, you're gonna have 30, 40, 50 ideas when you get home, get the top three to five done, then, you know, work on the rest of them next year after convention.

You know, you're so right.

Can't bite off too much. I think.

Yeah, I think even if three to five is a perfect amount, anything over that, I think you Would you. Would overwhelm your staff, and you'd probably overwhelm yourself. So. Yeah, please, Jeff, that's such wise knowledge there that it's just, you know, don't screw up everybody.

Yeah.

So, Jeff, when you getting in, buddy?

You know, I'm gonna be whenever I feel like it. I might run up for lunch, I might run down for dinner.

Okay.

So, yeah, that would be my last tip I would share is, you know, Luke and I will be there, come say hi to us. We're gonna hopefully get some interviews in with some vendors, with some dealers. Probably some mini interviews just down the community convention hall and in the hallways. We're gonna try to get a lot of good content for people who are there and also content for people who can't make it. You know, we know that. I'm pretty sure all the sessions are put online after the fact, so if you are a NIADA member, I don't know if there's a. How they work. If you can pay a fee to get.

I think you can pay a fee to get essentially the whole.

Recordings.

Yeah, all the recordings, I think. I'm not 100% sure on that, but I know. Pretty sure you can.

And definitely, I think the week after or the after, we'll give you guys a recap of the sessions we went to that are going to be the most valuable. So we'll put together a list of ones that if you can't make it, you definitely need to go back and watch the recordings, you know, for sure.

And I think maybe we'll post on the Facebook forum when we're going to try to do our record next week. We're gonna still try to do that, right? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, we'll definitely get something out next week. Probably either at the convention, recorded or live even. We might do a little Facebook Live while we're there, depending on.

Oh, yeah, I didn't think about that. So. Yeah, that might be. It might be a good idea to do a Facebook Live session with. With us, interviewing some folks. Man, I tell you, if you haven't decided to go, it might be too late. I don't know. If you're not far away, it's definitely not too late. But there's flights every day to Vegas, and if you can get out there for just a little bit, I really, really suggest you doing it. Guys and gals, it's. It's worth every dime of it.

Mm. If you need somewhere to stay, I'm only 90 minutes away. No, I did look at hotels today, and the Venetian is very expensive right now, but everything around it is very, very cheap. Yes, hotels stay scare you. Yeah. Get out there.

All right, Jeff.

All right, Luke. Hope everybody learned something. Hope you guys share this with your friends and and make sure you've subscribed to the podcast again. Can't thank you enough for the growth and look forward to seeing everyone next week.

All right, guys, see you next week.

Sam.