#232 - Tips For Training, Hiring & Recon

You are listening to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson.

Hello, and welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast, brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. This week, we are.

I don't know.

I am half on location and half not on location, Luke.

I feel like.

I feel like I'm. Like I'm nothing, man. I got booted.

Well, you know what? You had an opportunity to come to Texas, and you made a decision not to. And. And you can't imagine amount of people. I should have just put a sign on my chest that said, jeff is not here. He is still in Utah. Because half of my time here, I think, has been explaining why you're not here, and I really couldn't explain it other than that you're slack. Yeah.

Yeah. You know how to make a guy feel good, Luke.

Appreciate that.

You know, family first. I wanted to keep my marriage together, so I picked the family activities.

Well, you know, we got to do that every once in a while.

And.

Hey, we got a guest today. Look. Yeah, there's this guy.

Yeah. Oh, I'm introducing myself.

Well, I mean, you should. I mean, people should know who you are.

I know. I am the co. Co Host. Co. Co. Host.

Yeah.

We're 2.5 or 1.5 people representing the Tiada right now.

Yeah.

Yeah. Marshall. If. For those of you who are listening and can't see my face, it's Marshall Zerner, I'll do my own intro.

Marshall Zollner from Portland Freeman Motor Company.

Yep.

Yeah. So a lot of insight here today, Jeff, and we got a lot to talk about.

We've had some great episodes with Marshall, too. So go back into the archives and look those up. But you guys are down in Round Rock. You're at Tiada, and Marshall, you had a great session. I want to just jump right into this, because I know your session was on sales training, and I've heard it. I've been to it. I've listened to it on our podcast maybe two or three times. I don't do it. What is wrong with me? How have I not figured out how to sales train? Because here's my frustrations. I know they're doing it wrong because I hear them. And I'm up in my second location yesterday, and I'm sitting there doing some work, and my salesman is talking to somebody, and I'm like, where did you get this from? Like, where did these word tracks come from? Why are you saying this? Like, what's wrong, man?

You know what? The thing is, the best trained people like I have a really good trained staff. They still say things. I'm like, where did you learn that from? I didn't train you to say that. So. So if you don't do it often. Yeah. You're just. You're basically putting it up to luck.

Yeah. Marshall, one of the things you talked about in the session was consistency, and it's consistency on training, it's consistency on word track. If you don't train your salespeople what to say, they're going to say whatever they want to say or what comes naturally. And it's usually bad, right?

Well, even worse than that, they're going to train the other people that come. So your bad people are training your other people. So you have. If you open up a new store and you've got two people there, they're training each other on bad habits, and all they're doing is talking about bad habits. And the reason why I'm able to keep training, Jeff, is exactly what you alluded to. You don't do it. So when people go, oh, I've heard this before, but I want to hear it again. And even though it's a repeat, they're like, oh, it energizes me. Because they still don't practice it. You know, it's the act of actually putting it into place 100%.

We have a phrase that has.

It's like a.

It's like a. It's like a hereditary.

What is that?

It's like diabetes hereditary. I don't know. It gets passed down generation to generation or something. I don't know.

Multiple.

Something like that. It was started by a salesman probably five years ago, and diabetes was. He says, how much down are you working with? That's the phrase. So anyone says that, I slap them directly in the face. I hate it. And somehow it's like. It's like perpetual.

What are they supposed to say, Jeff? What are they supposed to say?

How much down are you working with? I'm not working with any.

What are they supposed to say at your dealership?

What do they say? Most people get Approved with around 10 to 20% down. How close to that can you come.

Yeah, that's a great one. I love that. That's what. Whenever you say exceed. Yeah. How close? It's awesome. So you wrote that down and that's what you're training your people there.

Or it's solidly written down somewhere in the archives of a Google Doc, somewhere on a computer.

And that's so important. There's a. There's a reason there's a reason we say everything. When it comes to salespeople, we're all salespeople sitting here. There's a reason we introduce ourselves a certain, certain way. And that's what Marshall's going on. There's a reason you stand a certain way when you're talking to someone. And you're right. What you just said. How much down are you working with? Do you know how many times I've heard that in South Carolina and you were in Utah, So this is 3,000 miles away. And you're telling me that that just migrated across the country? Nobody. Somebody started that. So, yeah, you have to untrain your salespeople and say, you know what? I don't ever want to hear that come out of your mouth. This is what should come out of your mouth again.

So what's more important, Marshall, what I want to talk to you about is we did it. We did a sales training. I did one once. And so why is it that, like, three days later, I hear my salesman on a sales call just completely not doing the thing we trained on a couple of days before that?

Yeah. I mean, there's a stat out there that people only retain 50% of an immediate conversation, like, immediately, right after, they only retain 50% of that. So if you know that to be true, then you go, okay, well, if I've only told them once and they've already lost half of it, how on earth would I expect them to remember it a day from now, two days from now, let alone a week from now?

That's the reason you have to keep training.

So. So give me the specifics, Marshall. How do you do it? How should I be doing it?

Okay. Specifically, you shouldn't be the only one doing it. That's going to be your number one issue. So the second you're unavailable, like, Luke is here in Texas and you're not, but if you were, then you would be unavailable. So then. Then they lose trust in it. Right. So you can't be the only one doing it. And even your own salespeople can do it. You can pick your top guy or somebody, maybe even that from the bottom who needs to work on it, say, hey, this is. I'm going to train you first, and you're going to be the guy to train us next week. But you've got to make it. You can't cancel training. That's where you start to not believe in it. And your people start to not believe in it. You go, hey, guys, we're doing it once a week. We're doing it once a month, and after you do it once or twice and then you don't do it, immediate trust is lost and you won't ever get back to it.

That's your recommendation? Once, at least once a week?

I, I believe in at least once a week, yes.

Okay. And I've been to Marshall Time.

It's a, it's very good and it's very consistent. And one thing he told me long time ago, that you started the certain time you said you're supposed to start. And that's another thing about consistency. If, if it's 8:30 on Friday morning, if not everybody's there, you still start. And when someone comes in, they get into where they are. You can't wait on everybody because next thing you know, nothing's, nothing's going to.

Go, no, then the training you planned is going to be shorter. And then you're like, well, we'll just wait for everybody to get here. And then it ends up being a shorter one, not what you intended. And then it kind of discredits itself.

So we got the who, which is me, my sales manager, my sales team. We got the when, which is every single week we're trying to do ours on Friday mornings, and then we got the what.

So just write it out. What I would do is I have my sales manager or my gsm, he submits a month's worth of training to me in advance and then we go, okay. And doesn't mean you can't change it. Like, oh my gosh, phone calls are awful. We need to switch this. We need to get this fixed right now. Well, then we're going to change it, but at least we have something to go off of. And so write that out. And then you guys kind of know, oh, this is what we're going to be training on. Because training outline is pretty easy. It's. Tell them what you're going to tell them. Tell them and then tell them what you told them. So, meaning you, you recap what you talked about last week. That takes up the first 15 minutes you train them on, because they already forgot. Trust me. You train them on something new and then you recap on what you just trained on. And then what happens when you recap? Every time you recap, you're, you're going, hey, Luke, what did you get out of training today? And then he, and then I know what he got and he's verbalizing it to me. And then it's, it's helping me fill in the gaps when I recap last week's Training. It helps allow for any of the late people coming in. I'm recapping. And then if they are a couple minutes late, not that I like that or want that, but at least they're not missing the new material.

Yeah. And it forces the recall.

Yes, a hundred percent.

And you like last week. Give me that.

Yep. So what you should do, Jeff, this week, because since we've already got your topic baseline, is that you should train on the down payment ask. I mean, that should be your topic for this week. And you can build a whole training session around that, correct?

Oh, yeah. I mean, we have 10 steps in our sale. I mean, part of it's the follow up and all that. But. But I'm. I had my GSM put together a training, and when you think the greeting is just one training, he's like, oh, my gosh. Actually, I parceled that into three trainings.

Yeah.

Wow. Yeah.

Well, you got a physical greeting, you got a phone greeting, you got an Internet greeting.

So when you think there's not enough material, you do, but you can repeat it too.

So, Marshall, now. Now that we got the who, the when, the how, or the why, tell me the how. And this is my biggest rubber sales training is not sales telling.

Yes. It's sales asking. Yes.

It's like, it's role play, and everyone hates the R word.

Just don't just say, I call it practice. So don't call it role play. Call it practice. And the more comfortable you get with that, you know, role playing and practicing.

In real life, you guys up there, it's role play is a little bit of a different connotation in the Northwest.

That's why we don't say it. So the more comfortable you get with it, though, the more comfortable you're gonna be outside of that. But really, if you have a good trainer, I. E. You or your salespeople, you want to have it together and outline. So I always say you need a minimum of three questions. Ask your team this rather than telling you're asking them, you know, rather than going, hey, guys, here is the greeting. You're going to say, what is the greeting? What do customers do when this happens? What do you say when they call? And don't just say, hey, do this. You have to ask them.

Don't over complicate this. This training process. Look at your. Look at your sales process. And it should be six or seven steps, and that could be six or seven weeks worth of training. It could be 12 weeks worth of training. And so, so start there. Get those dialed In. And then at the end of those 12 weeks, you can go back over the same thing again. If you need to, you can.

And if you're struggling, Jeff, I might even just pick one subject and say, you know what? Every week we're going to train on this for the next two months, and we're going to train on the same thing. We're going to train on the greeting and down payment, and we're going to get. We're going to train on it until we get it right.

Yep. And do you recommend, Like, I know with ours we have, you know, kind of specific word tracks. Like, this is what I want you to say when you greet the customer. Now, once you have that memorized and you've got the gist of it, then you can kind of start varying and adding some personality and some. Some little stuff in between. But until you get that down, like, don't go rogue.

Don't change it.

Yeah, correct.

Don't start asking them these other questions and don't think you can mess with it.

Like, yeah, everybody's like, hey, I want to make it my own. I want to make. And I said, don't. Don't make it your own. Mine is proven. We sell cars based off of my scripts. Once you get mine locked down, then you can change it and make it your own. Or do that.

Go open your own dealership.

Yeah, yeah.

So can we do this during the week, too? Like, that's the other thing. Is. Is sales training, should it be, like, formal, or do you think that it's appropriate if you hear a phone call or you hear an interaction to just kind of grab that salesman and be like, hey, man, here's what I saw. That was good. Here's that I didn't. Like, let's go over this real quick.

Yeah, of course. It's always great to do that. Just don't do that in place of your once a week formal training, because then you're going to get in the habit and you'll say, oh, I did our training. We sat with them. That's not the formal training. But, yeah, you should absolutely do that. I hate when salespeople, my. My pet peeve, when they. I tell them to go call a customer, I give them the kind of load their lips, and then they take their phone outside so I can't hear their conversation. I say, no, no, no, you're gonna make that phone call. You're gonna sit next to me and I'm gonna listen the whole time. They go. That makes me nervous. Good. I want you to do it right.

Oh, it's so true, Brad. That is a hundred percent.

Why do we allow that? Why would we allow that? Aside as an ownership of the, as the ownership of a company, why would we ever allow. It's. We're asking them to do something. We're going, okay, but we're going to trust that you do it. Yet you want to hide it from us. Why would we allow that?

And every conversation would happen out on the car lot and not in the cubicle.

And also we record, we record all the, all the phone calls. Right. So go back and listen to them that up today. Jeff, you can train on the, on the ask for the down payment. But if you don't go back and inspect what, what you trained on and you know, let's just say you, you worked on the down payment script for two, three weeks in training and you listened to a recorded phone call and the next thing you heard was, hey, how much down you working with? I mean, what are you going to do at this point? Then we need to start talking about whether we need to replace that, that salesperson.

Right. So, yeah, so while we're on this topic, just, I want to touch on this. Just two more seconds with Marshall on sales, guys, and maybe more because I struggle with. Do we have a standard right now? Given kind of the industry and the ability to sell cars and how hard or easy it is, do we have kind of a standard of how many cars each salesman should be selling?

Yeah, I mean, every dealership should have a standard of how many cars each. And what I think you have to do is you proved it probably right by working it. And so, you know, okay, well, I sold X amount of cars, so I know it's possible. Because what'll happen is if you don't, if you haven't done it for a while, then you're just going to buy into whatever they're giving you. You got to assume that they're going to be 80% invested of what you're capable of doing. They're not the owner of the company, so they're not going to do everything. They're not going to stay late. They're not going to, you know, they're not going to put their own money on the line, but they are going to, they're going to get put 80% of what you would.

So if you sell 20, they should sell 16.

Yeah, I was going to do simpler math. If you sell 10, they should sell eight. Yeah, that's good too. Wow.

You know, the thing is this. There's many things that go into how many they can sell. And it's, do I have the, you know, do I have the inventory, do I have the leads and do I have a salesperson capable of doing it? And you got to figure out if you have all those. But you have to set an expectation. And what do you think? I mean, a typical dealership, if you, if your salesperson is not hitting 12 to 15 cars a month, you need to train them or you need to get rid of them, right?

Well, I would look at it in relation to leads and ups. So I've had a couple of people that are not selling very much. They're very happy and content selling 11 cars a month. And I go, ah, we just, we don't like that as a dealership. But if he's taking a lower percentage of the leads, he's not aggressive with the ups. He's, his actually closing percentage is pretty high. Then I don't care, he can, he can bump along the road at 11 car sales because he's not blowing my customers out of the door. But if he's selling 11 cars and he's closing at a 11% ratio, you know, closing ratio from online leads and I'm going to go, no, you, that's unacceptable.

Yeah, so, but my question would then be this for you, Marshall. So in my last 20 group meeting we did kind of a time exercise and we said, okay, salesman has eight hours in the day. He's hopefully selling one car a day. That's going to take two hours start to finish. Right. He's hopefully taking two applications on top of that one sale. He should be taking about three apps a day or you know, two to three apps a day. Those are going to take half hour, maybe hour. So he's at four hours for his day. What's he doing with the other four hours?

Yeah, well, so we, we have a, we have an outline of what you do in the day. Right. And we have what's called a red light, green light system. If you do all your tasks in the day, you get a green light. If you don't, then you get a yellow light or a red light. And that basically can affect your, it can affect your payer, it can affect how you're put on leads. So in a day you need to make 30 phone calls and within a day you need to book X amount of appointments. So the things that get you exceptions to those rules. So if I don't have time to make my 30 lead phone calls and I don't have time to you know, book appointments. I have to go on X amount of test drives. Like, two test drives will negate one of my activities, because selling cars will negate some of those. Selling a car would negate some of those. Because I understand there's a busy day. Like, you could have a day where I didn't get to do any of my to dos. Cause I was just. I had this family come in. They wanted to test drive five cars. I sold. I sold them a car, and it was just a long process. Great. That's fine. You got behind. You didn't need to do. You didn't make any phone calls that day. The next day, though, you need to catch up. Yeah.

You need to do 60 next day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What's interesting to me is how much time there is. So if I think about your sales guy that's doing 11 cars a month, that's like, you know, one every third day. What's he doing with all his time? He, like, bugging other people? Is he distracting salesmen? Is he chatting up the receptionist hanging out at the water cooler? Like, that's what makes me nervous is it's like, okay, you got a lot of time, man.

Yeah, that's a good point. And we all do. We all have a lot of time, and unfortunately, we waste some of it. So you got to make sure that you have the things.

No, what actually happens is we don't have a lot of time because we allow all of our salespeople to be that way. So we cover all the stuff that they should be doing, and then we don't hold them accountable to it.

Yes.

My sales manager, Adrian's running around like a chicken with his head cut off, and the sales guys are just watching him. Just watch. Run around, do everything and gather the steps and get the checks and do all the approvals. I'll tell you who doesn't have time. And this is going to be my segue. My mechanics, they do not have time.

So that is a bear in everybody's side right now. Marshall, what we've heard from so many people, from 20 groups, from talking to people on the street, dealers, that is that their recon process is broken. It's taking them too long to get cars to line. Do you have any tips for what y' all do now? You're selling a little different car, and we would think, hey, it doesn't take as long to get it ready, but that's probably not the case.

I would argue mine takes longer.

So, Marshall, what are some key things y' all are Doing to get your cars ready faster. How long does it take you to.

Get a car ready?

Well, to get online or 24 hours.

To get on your website.

Yes.

But to actually get through the recon process.

Well, okay, so there's a couple of different philosophies there that I want to unpack with you. Uh, one, do you have customer pay and internal?

I do.

And do you run those together?

I do. Which creates problem.

Creates problem. Okay. So that's. That's probably the number one thing I hear from most people is they run their. They have a recon department and then they go, well, I do all this service. So when I don't have cars to service in the internal side, let's do customer pay. Well, then you get all these customer pay people coming in, and then you can't do the internal because you're like, I don't want to piss off the customers. Yeah, right. So. So then you have this weird. I don't know what to do. And unfortunately, you can't do both. You have to commit to one and then commit to the other separately. You can't do them together. So we have an a customer pay division and we have an internal division, and they do not. The only way they can bleed together is customer pay can do internal work, but internal work can't do customer pay. Smart. So I have enough technicians if you. It's really easy. You just add up your hours of your technicians or that they're working and then add up how much work you're doing and you'll figure out, I need 1.2 tax or 1.5 tax to get my cars to the recon process. We pay everybody flat rate, so it's easy for us to figure out. I need 1.2 at each store. Okay, well, then I'll just hire one tech. He's busy all the time. And then the. To supplement the point two, it goes to the customer pay side.

And that's a lot done pack. How long, how many hours does it take perfect internal car to get ready from recon for you?

So, like, on average, a car probably needs three and a half hours.

Mine needs 5.2 is what I've come up with.

Are you including body, shop and detail? Because I was just including mechanical.

Just mechanical.

Okay.

So you've got to know that number too, which is something that.

Because you might need two techs in your internal department.

Right. And you're selling 80 cars a month per store or thereabouts. And so if you got 1.2 techs doing that, they should be able to get ready three cars a day. Is that correct? Or about.

So the way our, our internal team has developed quite a bit differently. So what we'll do is they'll do an inspections on the. When our cars come off the truck, they get an inspection. That way we can work up an estimate. That way if the car sells, we know what to put it on. A wheel car's ready and within 24 hours then we'll order the parts and our internal tech will come and work the. He'll like on a Tuesday. He might not, he might only have three hours. So he won't come in on Tuesday, he'll come in on Wednesday and then knock everything out and work at 12 to 14 hour day because our, you know, our cars come in fluctuation. Yeah. So you might have no cars coming in on a Friday, but then all of a sudden on a Monday you have a lot. So we got to do all the inspections, get him done. He works a long day on Monday, maybe maybe Tuesday, maybe Wednesday or maybe he takes quite a few days off.

What was, what was interesting? Marshall just said maybe. Maybe I heard this wrong, but I want to verify. So what you're telling me is you do inspection first. We do that as well. The card comes in F1. But you said you'll sell that car after that inspection and put it on a wheel even if it hasn't had those things done. And I assume those are just minute things, not like an oil leak or something.

Well, I mean nothing that is dangerous to drive. Nothing dangerous to drive down the road. So if it needs, if the tires are bald or the brakes are metal to metal, I mean if it's got an oil leak. But it's not a bad thing. Yeah, it's just a valve cover gas. Sure, we'll put that on a wheel.

Okay. And that's an interesting process there and that enables you to get cars sold.

Customers want cars right now.

So I got a question. When that car goes out as a wheel, does it come back in as customer pay?

It comes back in at customer base. So here is the. This is where your, your manager comes in because he doesn't want that on a wheel. So he's, he's going to try to negotiate the work out of it. So our best option because we have, we're just inundated. Right. I'm sure all of your service departments are inundated. So if I can negotiate the work out of it. It needs a valve cover gasket. Let's say that's twelve hundred dollars. Well, I'll give you $600 off the price of the car if you want to take it the way it is. And that's an option the customer now has. And sometimes they take that. And then it never has to come back to me at that point in time because. And I'm inundated.

And you can really do that with body work. So let's say that. Let's say it's got a scuff on the right rear bumper. And you probably would have done it, but maybe not. And the customer wants it. And you can negotiate that $400, whatever you want to out of the price of the car. So it unbacks up your shop, right?

Correct. Because bodywork is a big, big bottle in there.

Big bottleneck.

Yeah, I don't mess with them. And for Marshall, you know, when you're selling, you know, cars to people that have the ability to go fix the car after the fact that it's a little. He's got a little bit different of a.

No, I mean, some people just don't hear. My son said it best because we have two dealerships at two locations. One of them's high end, and one of them's a little bit on the lower side. Higher, higher miles that. I actually have two techs that in the internal side on that side. I went to a dealership because my son was looking for a car, and I was like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe the bumper needs to be repainted. It's missing all four of its little hug caps. I go, I can't believe they're selling a car like this. And my son goes, dad, I appreciate that they're selling a car like this. So why? Just because they're giving me an opportunity to afford it. I go to your place, meaning where I sell cars. He goes, I can't afford anything there. So I like to have the ability to give people, hey, maybe this car is a little bit out of your budget. But if I can discount it rather than doing the work, it fits in their budget if they're willing to take it. You know, with. With non safety features. You know, obviously the safety features have to be taken care of. We don't allow that.

Yeah, that's the interesting process.

Marshall, do you sell like an aftermarket service contract that you own? I mean, does that affect that? Are you making like higher than normal claims because you're pushing some recon post sale?

Yeah, I mean, we do. We do have our own service contract. You're talking about reinsurance yeah. Yeah. We have our own reinsurance.

So it. But you think it pushes up that. The claim ratio if, you know.

Because those type of customers don't. I mean, you get. Yeah. A small percentage. They're like, I'll just claim that later. Those type of customers usually don't even care to make as many claims. We actually found that it's our higher end customers that make more claims. Yeah, the ones that cars come out perfect and they want the car to stay perfect and they're just snooty and they are. My. My higher mileage. Lower end customers don't really make claims.

So that's a good segue into talking about Buckeye dealership consultant Jeff.

Right.

What do you. What do you think about reinsurance? What does Marshall think about reinsurance?

I don't know what Marshall thinks, but I know what I think, and I think that you should do it. Yes. So obviously, guys, 100% Buckeye as far as reinsurance and all the products that they offer, their performance groups, their consulting, all these things that they're getting their little hands into. Talk to the guys there. Luke, just got back from a DPG group. Right.

I did. Service group. Yep. And hung out with Buckeye guys last night. And it's just amazing that the dealers who are just killing it in our industry are. They have reinsurance, they have every product. They're holding that money themselves. They're not giving it to these outside warranty companies. They're allowing Buckeye to help train them. They're doing the things that make us better. How long have you all had your reinsurance company? Marshall?

I want to say eight to ten years.

Eight to ten years. And Marshall was selling. What's your average price? 40, 50 grand?

Yeah, it was right now at our two locations. One's 52 and the other one's 22.

You know, it's. It's across the board. Doesn't matter what your cars calls Reinsurance. Makes sense for everybody. And I mean, some of your reinsurance contracts, I'm sure. Four or $5,000, right?

Ridiculous.

Yeah, ridiculous. But customers need this, and the best way to provide it for them is through Buckeye. And have your reinsurance coming.

Yeah. And Luke, I want to transition to another vendor that I pay a lot of money to. Indeed, one of us. Are they publicly traded? Because if not, we should all buy stock in. Indeed. Because I am spending a fortune on ads to try to hire people.

Well, Marshall came up with a really good idea that or found a vendor that's better than Indeed. And I hate to do free advertising.

Well, I don't have to. I don't have to mention who they are if you want to, but they're a company that basically. Because there's a few of them out there and you can look up your own. But they basically manage. Not just Indeed, but they'll manage all the hiring Monster Jubile, all those other ones.

25,000 sites.

Yeah, it's a bunch. And are you on it?

Yeah.

Oh yeah. And it's easy for your manager to just click publish or unpublish. And once you create that ad, it's created forever. So anytime I need a salesperson or a technician, I put it up and then I can take it down, put it up and it goes sold us.

So we who before. What's that you mean to say the name. It's called Work. Called Work Stream.

Work and Stream.

Work Stream.

So they're like a, they're like a. They're like a job listing syndicator. They send it out to all the.

Sites and it manages it. You can text through there. You can, you can basically put all your notes about your people who have applied through there. It's. It's hiring managing software really, that's very.

Inexpensive and so before we started using Workstream, we were getting no leads. We were spending 500 plus dollars a month on Indeed. It was garbage. Um, garbage. It was, I guess garbage us putting in and we were getting no garbage back out. So that, I mean it was horrible. And when we went. That was not the best way to describe it. But anyway, indeed. I just don't like it. So I feel your pain. We're spending $500 a month. We went to work stream spending 250amonth. I think it's what it costs thereabouts. And it syndicates to 25,000 job boards. Our like immediately the amount of resumes we got went up. I mean immediately we've hired every tech that we have now and everybody that we've hired lately using Workstream. And it's a product that I believe in. They're not paying us any money.

No.

And they are.

That's.

That's your alternative to indeed.

Okay, so let me ask these questions then. So it's, it's a service that I pay for monthly or by posting Monthly. Monthly. And do I have to spend additional in order to boost it inside of those other. Cause I know like indeed, I don't pay them a fortune to like boost.

You do, but you don't really want to pay. You don't Want to boost your ads? You don't need to boost your ads. So it just puts it on the free listings on all those sites.

It puts it on free listing.

Yeah, you can boost them. I just find that most of the time those, those applicants are not as good.

Yep. As the non boosted we don't spend any, any additional money beside our membership to Work Stream and it has changed the way we hire hire people. That's a free nugget out there.

And the interface is better than Indeed. Like hey, oh my God backside.

It's indeed. It's horrible backside. I mean you use workstream and I.

Love it because I can put my managers all on it. They can be in charge of posting their own ads. Yeah, I love it cause I don't have to reinvent every time I want to post one. The other thing I found though, if you're trying to find. If you're trying to hire in a certain position, I find posting it in a couple different ways helps. Like so for a technician for example I'll, I'll post entry level tech. I'll post technician, I'll post mechanic. I'll post them three different ways and then I'll, I'll cycle them. So I'll put it up so it's fresh and then just two days later I'll put another one up so it's fresh and then I'll take one down and then I so I kind of mess with that. So they're not getting stale out there.

The same basic one but just did. Done different ways.

Yep. Worded differently.

So I've kind of like rededicated myself and this is going to be interesting. I'm going to get into Work Stream but I'm trying to rededicate myself to be really to get a process for hiring because I have no process. And that's what frustrates me about it is every time it's like this willy nilly shotgun approach and I'm like okay, I'm on indeed, I may be on Facebook and and then like do I want a resume or do I want them to bring the resume in or do I want to just have like one day where I do all my interviews or do I want to just have them like give me a video interview or do I want to like go to their work and like stock them? Like I don't know how to hire like effectively. So I'm trying to create depends on.

What position you're you're hiring for. Right. If you're hiring a porter a lot guy or Whatever. I mean, that's you. You don't need a really deep process for that one. Just hopefully somebody that shows up to the interview. But if you're hiring somebody, you know, a little bit higher level, a salesperson or even a manager, you want to have. Yeah. You want to have a little bit more dialed in process where maybe you have, you know, a phone interview first or. I just like, personally, I like people to show up because I want to see them and I want to see how they interact with me. And then we have a. For all of my managers, we have an interview process that we go through.

It's a written process. You know, we all talk about written processes. And you even need it for hiring.

Which is for interviewing.

For interviewing.

Ask your people if they know how to interview. I have. My parts manager was interviewing. I said, have you ever interviewed before? He said, no, you're just going to interview people? Do you even know what you're saying? And you know what they say? A lot of times they give everything away. All right, well, let me tell you what I'm looking for, Luke. I'm looking for a hard worker, somebody who's dedicated, somebody who can close sales.

Are you that guy?

Yeah. So tell me about yourself.

I'm hardworking.

I'm really good at closing sales. You know, I'm dedicated, I'm loyal. And so I don't give. So my, my script that we have for people, I say, here's how the interview is going to go, Luke, because I want them to feel comfortable. I'm going to ask you a series of questions. I'm going to ask you about your jobs. I'm going to start from your first job that may not even be on your resume. We're going to go through that and I'll ask you a series of questions. And then at the end, I'm going to tell you a little bit about us and who we are. And then I'll leave time for questions for us. How does that sound? And they go, that sounds great. Relieves them. Then I start with their first job that's usually not listed because I want to know about McDonald's or KFC or wherever they work, their fast food job. And I want to know what they learn from there. And then at the end I tell them, Freeman Motor Company. Is this. How does that sound to you?

That is. That is so revolutionary and so simple. And we don't think about it that way, but it's employees has been. Been the hardest thing for me over the last year. And we interview and we try to do it the same way. But what you just thought about, this is what we're looking for. How many times are. It's in our description of our job. So they just come and regurgitate it. Yeah, that's.

I just have three questions. Do you have a car to get to work? Are you going to steal from me? And when can you start? Well, that's it. That's. That's my hiring process.

Yeah. I mean, it's come to a point where it is difficult. And you're like, I just need somebody to show up. I need a breathing body to show up to work. And. And that makes it difficult. So, you know, the other thing is, you've got to change your mentality. Always be hiring. You don't want to hire in a place of need. So you lose a salesperson. Now you're desperate, so you're like, yes, you breathe. Okay, great. You can go breathe on that person and ask them a few questions. But if you're constantly looking, somebody comes to you and you're like, wow, you're really good. You're like, but we're kind of full. I have a guy over here. I know he sucks, but, you know, we have him do that.

Marshall, have you done that? Have you. Have you. Have you fired someone because you found someone better just randomly?

Well, the beauty of sales, you don't have to fire somebody. They just work their way down the. I mean, if they're not. We.

We.

We're pretty strict on the way you get leads. If you're not closing at. You're going to. If you're not closing on a good ratio, your leads will go down. We will. We will decrease the amount of leads you get until your closing ratio gets up.

Yeah. And then if you're not making enough money, you have to go get another job somewhere else.

So they will just. They'll render themselves to going, this isn't working out for me. But yes, in the answer that I have let a few people go because I've had a better person. I had a really good advisor come to us, very talented. And I was like, yes, this other person is leading. Because if you're. If you're a coach of a team and you had somebody coming to you, and you were like, and I'll use somebody that everybody knows. I mean, you had Jerry Rice in his prime coming to you, and you're like, well, I have this other guy, and he's. He's just, okay. I mean, what would you do? You're like, but I like him and he's got a family and yes, you care and I get all that. And don't, hopefully. I don't sound too non sympathetic or empathetic, but it's. I have a business to run and you're costing me sales and I have somebody who's really good coming to me. Yes. I'm going to replace you.

And if you really like the guy and you believe that he was part of your company's culture, you could offer to move him to another position.

I've moved a lot of people around. Yes.

Yeah. So it's not a. It's not an either or. You don't have to fire somebody to replace them. If they're part, if they're good part of your culture and they're not good at their job, try to put them somewhere else.

I've moved a lot of people around.

And sometimes when you move them around, they realize that they didn't. They don't. Either they get better at that position or they may go find another job. And so you don't have to fire them at that point. Right.

Yeah.

And the good thing about Workstream, when they're not paying us, the good thing is you can always leave these things up because it's only. It's costing you $250 a month regardless, just, just keep these ads up. So if you see a resume that comes through, that's great. Interview him. Who cares? Reach out.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's a good idea. I think that's, you know, it's part of our Scott Miller podcast we did a couple weeks ago also. He said something about like always, you know, having enough talent that you're bringing in all these people and you're able to kind of like pick and choose, you know, over hire and then weed out the stuff.

I think, I think his, his quote was quantity will lead to quality. And it goes. Whether it's leads, whether it's people, whether it's ros in the service department, you know, if you get enough. Yeah, if you get it. If you get enough chances, you're going to win. Get enough shots in the basket, you'll win. Probably.

Yeah. That's how I approach my dating life and marriage.

You did all right. She didn't let you come here, but.

You go through an.

Fuck.

Okay, guys, to wrap this up, we do need to talk about Pastime, the other great sponsor of the podcast that's continuing with us. And we appreciate it. GPS devices, obviously crucial for buy here, pay here, also important for retail. We've talked to Marshall about that before.

Well, let's talk to him about it because he's been used it.

And I was turned onto it from Luke. I said I needed a GPS locating device. And they turned us off onto a really good one for us. It's just wireless and it goes in. We did it. And this is an interesting thing that you. Maybe you guys don't deal this as much, but I had 10 cars stolen last year from our dealership, and that all wasn't all at once. And so we said, hey, we want all of our cars tracked. So all of our cars, as soon as they come in, they get a GPS unit in there, and then we sell them in the F and I office. We mark them up a little bit. I don't always sell them, and I don't really care if I sell them or not, because I just want them in the car so I can track them. But they've been phenomenal.

And this is a retail dealer using this. And I know we have retail dealers that listen to. But everybody thinks GPS tracking is just for buy your pay here store.

It is not.

And Marshall is proof to that.

Yeah. Yeah. If my ACV was 50 grand and I couldn't physically, like, fit all the cars into my own garage at night or sleep in them somehow, I would definitely be putting a GPS in every single one of them, because I could not have peace of mind thinking that a $50,000 car could be swiped tonight. Or 10 of them, for that matter.

Yeah. They're also good to put in your shuttle van. They're good to put in your loaner cars.

Yeah. Everybody cost is so fractured. That's so minute. 100 and whatever bucks for a wireless GPS with pastime.

Well, well, Jeff, you about ready to wrap it?

Yeah. This has been a great conversation. It looks like you guys got an expo hall to go visit.

We do. And sorry if you heard a little bit, they're bringing some food out. But let me tell you, this Ciada, to me, is the premier convention anywhere. Jeff and I, we're doing the podcast for Tiada, and we got some more of those to come. It doesn't matter what state you're from. There's something to learn here. And so I just encourage people next year to come out where, you know, it's. It's a great show.

Very well organized, very well put together.

Yeah, for sure. So also, Jeff, people need to sign up for the newsletter, correct?

Yes. If you listen to us this long and made it to this point in the podcast, you probably already know, we have.

How do you sign up for the newsletter?

Yeah, how do we do it?

Just through our website. Yeah, the independentdealer.com independentdealer.com yeah.

And it comes out Sunday or Monday. I do a five minute or so video. Sometimes I make fun of myself. So it's, you know, a lot of fun. Anyway, we give some tips.

That cost me money.

Does not cost you money. It's free.

It's free to just sign up for.

Your newsletter and you could use it as training as well.

Yeah, the idea is that it's.

It's.

It's aimed towards owners and managers that you can read this newsletter, kind of absorb it on a Sunday and then bring it to your Monday morning meeting. You'll have a quote, you'll have some sort of inspirational action item and some sort of housekeeping tip for the week that you can talk to your team about and then use that throughout the week for your training, for your internal motivation. It's really meant to be tactical.

Great.

Sign up, please.

All right, well, guys, you guys have fun down there. Tell everyone I say hi and we'll talk to you next week.

All right, buddy?

All right.

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