#246 - 3 Tips For Better Marketing w/ Ron Heider

Hey everybody, before we get into the episode, want to make sure that you guys have taken your safeguards training. You go to dealer educationportal.com Luke's done it. I'm in the process. You've got to get it done asap.

I'll tell you, the guys and girls over at tieda, the Texas Independent Dealer association really made this simple for us all. It's affordable. It, it outlines everything. There's materials you can download from there. You to put up your book to help train your staff. Your staff has to take it too. Super inexpensive dealereducationportal.com from Tieda will get you, get you ready for the December 9 deadline for safeguards and all the things you need to do with that.

Okay, and here's our episode.

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

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Independent Dealer Podcast brought to you by Buckeye dealership consultant. Today it's just me, Jeff. Jeff wigged out on us. So unfortunately, I don't know where he is. He, he may be in another country, he may be in Mexico. I don't know, Ron. But today we got a special guest, Ron Heider from Heider Marketing, Advertising and Marketing in Virginia. And Ron, I'm sure a lot of people have seen some of your, some of your sessions at convention. So introduce yourself and tell us what you do.

Sure. Well, first, appreciate the opportunity to be here on the podcast today. Been following you guys for a long time. You and I had the chance of meet. Wow. Years ago. Years ago, Ciada, one of those expos. So typically what I do, I've got a marketing management agency. I'm 100% focused in automotive. Made that shift probably about 12, 13 years ago and just really kind of dialing in helping dealers, you know, manage their marketing and advertising campaigns. I've had great. Yeah.

Sorry Ron, are you, are you, are you majority in the independent space? Is that really what you were?

Probably about 80% independent dealers right now.

That's great.

Yeah. Spent a long time with franchise dealers and just candidly, a lot of the factories and OEMs started doing my job and it's hard to compete with a factory when they offer it to their franchisees for free. I said, hey, I got to go find some new people to talk to and met a few independents that opened a few doors. Very active with our Viada. Got to meet you. Ciada went down to Georgia, Florida, recently, was in Texas, and just had the great privilege of speaking multiple times at niada, a lot of state conventions, the old nabd, like that. You were watching that, your conversation the other day, you guys were talking about this, like, wow, why did they change your name again? It's like they keep changing guys keep changing the names.

So, yeah, I might get in trouble. I might get in trouble if I talk about the name change again.

But Ron, you know, hey, we're gonna edit that out. No, we'll let it roll, Ron.

You know, one of the things I like, because you only work with independents, you know, you understand our budgets, right? And you understand what it means to be an independent. A lot of times you talk to these bigger ad firms or whatever, you know, the first thing they're gonna hit you with is $10,000 and you're like, oh my gosh, what's going on?

But.

But you aren't like that. And you give back so much to, to our community by speaking and doing it and doing things like that. We really appreciate it and glad to have you. Today we're gonna talk about three tips for a better marketing platform. Better marketing campaign, I guess. And again, people have seen you kind of speak to this. What the first question I have for you, what is the one thing that most dealers are doing wrong?

What we've seen most dealers do wrong? This is just for my outside. A lot of them try to act like a much bigger independent or even some of their franchise counterparts. Technology is great, the whole move into digital retailing, chat, all this technology. But at the end of the day, an independent has a great opportunity and I believe a great marketing platform to be human, right? And to make that human connection. And again, not forsaking technology, not forsaking all these tools that are available to us, but just embrace who you are, right? You're a family owned dealership. You don't have to look like the big publicly traded shop that might be five miles down the street. Be who you are. People still buy from people. We want to know you like you, trust you. And an independent has a superior advantage to deliver that message. Far above, again, your bigger dealers, the franchise guys, the OEMs, just really be human. Does that make sense?

It makes a lot of sense. And I'll actually throw in an antidote here. Probably 10 years ago, I decided that for some reason that saying that we were a buy here, pay here store was bad. It was a bad connotation. And I think there's been, there's been several. I've talked to several dealers about this that kind of started thinking that same way too. And we were trying to brand a different way. We're not, we're not about here, pay here, we, we own the finance company, you know, whatever you want to say. But in the end, and I waste a lot of money trying to figure that out and, but in the end I decided that, you know, what, what am I, who am I fooling? We are a small independent buy here, pay here dealership and we're family owned, family run. And I just have to embrace that. But until I, you know, ram that into my school, I, I was going down the wrong marketing camp, the wrong marketing, you know, slice. I was trying to do this, trying to do that, not being who we really are. And I agree, I mean dealers have, have that problem. And really no matter if you're retail, buy here, pay here, lease here, pay here, whatever, you can go down the wrong hole. And I see that with retail dealers, you know, trying to be volume leaders and this, that and other, and giving up profit and in the end it just doesn't work. You can't be Vroom, you can't be Carvana, but you can be you, right?

Oh yeah, totally. And yeah, just again, embracing who you are. I've often said it in other things, sort of like an automotive cliche, you know, pick your lane, right? Pick a lane. There's a lot of lanes we can choose from. And there are some independents that are pretty successful in that. More technology driven. They kind of want to feel more like that carbon, larger independence, the big franchise, you know, the big publicly traded companies, these are guys that tend to operate in bigger metropolitan areas. They're very digitally savvy themselves. That's also what they wanted the dealership to become. I venture to say again, I've had a chance to meet hundreds of you and your fellow dealerships. For the most part, it's second, third generation family owned families there. You're very visible in the dealership. We should just embrace that, you know, just. And really, you know, pick that lane. Say this is who we are. You know, we are, you know, a smaller, hands on. But I think consumers will really appreciate that. They get to talk to the owner, the owner's wife, they see the kids, they see you out in the restaurants. Right. It just becomes more of that family community. And again, we still want to be professional and we're not saying don't do that, but just, just embrace who you are. Just add that human connection.

For sure, the more you give out your community, more people see you doing. That definitely is, is the way to go there. I mean, We've been advertising in our local, local market, probably within, you know, about 90 miles for four, 10 years, 10 plus years on, on TV. And my daughter's now 10, and she's been with me the whole time. And what's funny is we will be out to dinner, we'll be out doing this, and they'll be like, I know y', all, and I don't know them, but they understand that we are family and it really goes a long way. Ron, so is that one of the first tips is to be who you are?

Oh, definitely. And I would just come right out of the gate. That would be the first thing that I would tell anybody with any kind of marketing campaign, decide who you are, be you, make that human connection and just push that concept with everything that you do. All your marketing pieces that will then help set the tone with whatever you're doing. Like you just mentioned, right? You, your daughter, whether you do it, tv, cable, streaming, radio, digital ads, social media, you know, that just becomes sort of the platform that you build that whole campaign off of. It's just, it's who you're going to become. And that really leads incredibly well into the whole social media phenomenon.

Okay, guys, to jump in real quick. Luke did a great job running this episode by himself. I mean, I don't know, he brought me in for these ad reads. But we're going to tell you about Buckeye because, you know, they're a great sponsor of the podcast. They stand behind the buy here, pay here dealer, and they stand behind all dealers, really. If you're going to get into reinsurance, they're the company to go with. Because one thing I've found, and, and in complete transparency, I don't use Buckeye right now.

I'm.

I'm still with my previous reinsurance company, who was a previous sponsor of the podcast. So I'm a loyal guy. But I am finding, and this is something I told them the other day in one of my reviews is Buckeye has a lot of innovative products. They are pushing the envelope of what is reinsurable. Right, Luke, you use some of those?

Yes, I use two reinsurance companies and Buckeye has the products that are a little outside the box, but they also have the original products as well. I use CPI through them, Vs after them, PSI through them. Anything we can find that's. And Buckeye that can find that's reinsurable in your dealership, they can do it, help you save money, not give money to other people that you would normally give it to. And that's what Matters.

One of the things that I did want to talk about, you know, at least bring up today, is, you know, it's not going away. Social media is here, Right? Right. But I believe a lot of dealers are doing it wrong. And I get the rub. And I'm probably going to be viewed as a little bit contrarian here, but I've spoken about this. You know, we all want to go in and do the product, right? We're talking about our car in the morning and posting our SUV at noon and hitting them with the truck at the end of the day. And we such a wrong way to do it. Oh, yeah. Then we come back, we're like, hey, nobody's engaging. I got all these followers, but nobody's engaging with us. Like, that's not what the platform was ever built for. You know, it's a social media platform.

It's so.

It's called social. It's called social media, not product media, right?

Yeah, exactly. And so we have seen huge increases with engagement and just people, you know, commenting with us and again, making that connection with people in the community. When we start showcasing our people, showcasing all the different players, people you might come in contact with, you know, just kind of make up, making up some names, you know, we did. You know, you could do a post and have a little picture or video, you know, Larry the lot boy, Tina the title girl, Bob the bookkeeper. Right. And just. Because if people make that connection, and that's what the social media platform was built for. Another area that we see dealers really falling down is tying into the local community. Again, we all want to try to be bigger. We're trying to have this Persona. But, man, talk about the local football game, talk about what's happening. We're coming into Halloween in a few weeks. We're coming into the holidays. Talk about, you know, the best place to go see, you know, the holiday lights and just all those. I mean, these are things that will rise your dealership way above. And you people will start engaging. We'll be like, I like those guys. Wow. I mean, going back a few years ago with COVID we actually spent more time with some of our dealers posting information on where people could file their unemployment, where they could get help with housing, whatever was going on in that window of time. And we had people commenting, coming back to us, saying, you guys are giving us better information than we're getting from local government. I can't buy enough ads to get that kind of community feedback and community engagement. So just, again, it just ties back to being, you Being human and using whatever platform that you're using. Right now, we're just kind of talking about social media in particular, using it for the strength that it is. And I think dealers have forgotten in our quest to sell cars. And it is a social media, it's a social platform first and foremost, and you need to attack it that way.

Yeah. You said something just a second ago that, that made me, that made me think. You know, typically when we think about social media, the first thing that comes to every dealer's mind I think is, is Facebook, and I think rightly so. Is this just something you do on, on Facebook or is it something that we do on Twitter, on Instagram, on whatever Facebook is out there, Snapchat or whatever. Is this, is it consistent across every platform? Is it every platform or should we really focus on one thing?

Well, I believe it's consistent across all the platforms. Now. We have seen a shift and just if I can kind of maybe understand your question right here, should you be engaged with every single platform? I don't believe so. I believe you should be engaged with the platforms, you know, understand and are going to be engaged with, but engage with it for the right reasons and understanding, you know, again, what that platform's for. I mean, within automotive today, Facebook works really well. It's tied to Instagram, very visual medium that works really well. Two years ago, if you would have asked me if TikTok was somewhere to be, I would have said no. But because of their adoption rate, if you're, if you're video inclined at the dealership, I would highly encourage you at least claim your, you know, claim your name, get the handle locked down. Because that is going to continue to grow unless we see a major political change a couple of years, you know, a couple of years from now where, you know, it might lose that option. But today that is the most wildly adopted platform that's out there. And, and just, but again, it's still, it's still making that human connection. You know, people are going to these platforms looking for, to connect with other people. People that they know, people they like, people they want to follow are people that they want to get to know. And so some of the dealerships that we see that are just crushing it on social media, it's all based on a human connection. It's the sales reps talking to people, they're talking to the customers, they're out in the community. You know, they're just living life and showing people like, hey, I'm a human being like you. Of course we Want to sell you a car. I want to sell you, you know, and, you know, help you with gap insurance and extended service contracts. I mean that, that's all part of it, but it doesn't have to be based on just. I'm just going to hammer you with product offer. Product offer, product offer. It's like we did, you know, we need to get to know them. Did that. Yeah, a little bit. But did that kind of answer your question?

100%. Now if we, if we decide that we do want to actually run ads, ad specific to social media, what, what should those ads look like?

Because.

Ads, you know, ads aren't necessarily about Bob the, the bookkeeper. They're about, they are about product. So how can we, how can we successfully run, you know, one of those type of campaigns? And what, what should it look like? Is it branding, is it product? I mean, what is it?

Well, I'll try to give you, maybe I can give you a specific example. So won't name names. Just want to protect the innocent out there. Right. But we work with a dealership. It's a family owned dealership, about 30 years under the belt. We started with more, but I would say institutional type video drone shots, shots of the dealership. And it was a solid message. Right, right. Better quality cars, great selection, fast and easy financing. And that would have worked well in a more what I would say polished. Bigger again, somebody we compete with. Right. A bigger name dealership. That campaign was not getting the success that we wanted to. We decided to take the three brothers who are in the dealership. One's in sales, one's in finance, one's back in the shop. But everybody knows these guys. We said, you know what, let's have you start and end the ad. Hi, I'm Ron. Hi, I'm so and so. Hi, I'm this guy. Welcome to our dealerships. Let's show you around and let's explain why we're the better choice when you go shopping for a better, nicer, newer car. And then we went through kind of that same content, you know, better quality cars, better reconditioning, better warranties, easy financing. We'll get you the payment plan you're looking for. Wrap it up with them, come in and see us. They made that same message, you know, which was a sales oriented message. We want to sell you a car, we want to sell your truck, want to sell you an suv. But we put, we used them to deliver the message and it completely transformed the campaign.

Yeah, we've seen that. Yeah, for sure. And that's the reason I said, yeah, that's how. That is how, how we shaped it. And it's, it's me and it's my daughter. We're, you know, we're introducing you, we're bringing you out. And that humanizes us, right?

Totally. Yeah. It makes you approachable. I may never see you in the dealership, but you know what, When I see you, you know, on tv, whether it's streaming across, you know, through a social media channel, but I see their content, I think I know you. Right? How many people think they know Jeff Bezos from Amazon? Nobody knows this guy, but they think they do because they see his picture. Elon Musk, same thing. These guys are very good at bringing their massive organizations down to the human level, where you think you know them, you know, oh yeah, for sure. But you don't. But we can do the same exact thing again, you know, you mentioned some of them, whether it's, you know, carvana, vroom, carmax. They're never going to humanize it because that's out of their model. But we have that, I think, competitive advantage, you know, to be able to do that with our dealership, you know, and just, and not now, if the dealer doesn't want to be there. I totally understand, you know, like, you know, they don't want to be the face of the dealership. Most independents I've met over the years are very comfortable with that because again, you're dealing with, you know, first, second, third generation, it's a family owned, people know you, you're well known in the community and that is just a great avenue. Again, just for lack of better terms, again, I kind of coined it, you know, to just pick that lane, pick that lane. And stiffly.

So guys interrupt the podcast Pastime GPS when we talk about, you know, marketing and getting our name out there. It's only as good as what you can collect, right? I mean, we need to make sure we're keeping our hands on the assets. Whether you're a buy here, pay here dealer or whether you are a retail dealer and you just don't want your car stolen off your lot. GPS is, it's just crucial. It's crucial these days.

It's, it's super crucial. I wish we could figure out which pastime, could figure out a way to GPS catalytic converters. That would be, that would be a money maker. We could catch some bad guys. But you know how many retail friends I have talk about, hey, we're putting these wireless devices, every single one of them. We don't Ever have to worry about where that car is in the, in the recon process? It got stolen last night. We don't know where it is. All these possibilities by using a simple device. Call pastime, check them out, they'll hook you up with a deal. Right, Jeff?

Yeah. That you get one free GPS when you order your first five. So if you're a new customer, they're going to give you one free when you order your first five. Maybe if you order 10, they'll give you two. I don't know, maybe if you tell Luke, he'll send you one, I don't know. But right now that's what they're doing. So great guys, great sponsors of us. So frequent them back to the podcast.

Yeah. And you know, I. And yes, and dealers have massive egos, so getting us in front of the camera is really not a hard thing.

Not a big issue most of the time.

Is, is YouTube a social media platform?

So YouTube would be a hybrid. And I've been, I've been preaching about the benefits of YouTube for years. Where, okay, obviously YouTube's owned by Google, biggest search engine on the planet. YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet. It's just a video based search engine. The vast majority of people go to YouTube looking for, how do I do this? How do I find that? How can, you know, how can I solve this issue when it comes to automotive. This is why I'm a huge fan of the platform. They've told us exactly what they want to see as far as content goes. Right. They want to see dealership introduction videos. They want to get to know you. Right. They kind of like, okay, I'm thinking of plunking down 15, 20, $25,000. Who are these guys, you know, and can I know them, like them, trust them? They're looking for walkarounds. You know, they kind of want to see what that vehicle looks like, which helps feed into the digital retailing, marketing your vehicles, putting that out there. One thing they'd really like to see are virtual test drives. You can have a lot of fun with these. Get the sales rep, get somebody driving the car. And just like you would take somebody for a test drive in the car, follow your circle, Do a test drive on that car. Just make it virtually. You can feed these to the website, feed these back to, you know, link it to the inventory page, put it on Google. I mean, and all that starts building traction, you know, for your marketing. What makes YouTube then a social media platform is there's a lot of influencers out There, there's a lot of comedies, there's a lot of sketches going on. And so it becomes what I believe the term marketers would call it. It's a blue ocean of opportunity. Right. So we've got, you know, if you look at the stats, you know, not to bury people with stats, but I've got about 82% of licensed adult aged drivers on the platform every week. That's a huge number. They spend just over 40 minutes every time they go online. Yet I've got 12% of independent dealers participate. I'm the marketer, I'm not a rocket scientist, but I can, I can run that number, say, wow, I got 80% of the customer base on the platform. They're there for 40 minutes every time they go online, but only 12% of my comp of my competition's on there. Maybe I should take a look at that platform.

And so is it just videos we produce here or should we be spending money on advertisements, pre roll ads and things like that on YouTube?

It could be both. So what I would encourage you to do because it doesn't have to be a super slick. YouTube's kind of weird in their platform, right? Because they're. Some people view it as a streaming platform and that is part of it, but it's still people looking to make a real connection. We found if we get too slick with the production, viewership drops off. But if it's too cheesy that nobody takes you seriously. So it's kind of finding that sweet spot in the middle. And we find, and if you got a decent iPhone and Android, you got a dslr, you're good to go, you know, get a, get a hand, you know, maybe get a gimbal if you really want to spend a lot of money. A gimbal is simply, it's a piece, it'll allow you to hold on to the iPhone and it stabilizes the shot. It makes a nice smooth shot. You can buy them a few hundred bucks used on Amazon and that'll make a really professional and again, just become who you are. Hey guys, this is Ron, ABC car dealership. Today I want to walk you through our finance program. Here's how fast and easy it is. We're going to get you in and out of here and you know, 30 minutes or less showcase the dealership, interview the people, you know, do different comparisons. Hey guys, this is Ron ABC car dealership. Today we're going to talk about the difference between the Silverado, the F150 and the Tundra. Talked a little Bit about that. This is content they told us they're looking for. And then you make this end it with the sales pitch. Guys, guess what? You're in luck. We don't play favorites. We know you love all of them. We've got all of them. Come on down and see me. Let's talk about it. And so you could turn it into a selling message while you were presenting the product.

Nice. I like that. And so. So we'll move on to your third tip. What is. What's one of the third. The third thing we should be doing as car.

Yes, the third thing. Most dealers have kind of come on board with this and that is getting active and staying active with their Google business profile. Okay. Google is working incredibly hard to make this the automotive shopping destination.

Right.

We have kids, dedicated Google reps. I go to the Google meetings, we hear what their plans are. And I can tell you what they're hoping to do is put those third party listing sites out of business.

I'm okay with that.

Yeah. And I think most dealers are right because it's a ton of money. So they've got these platforms built with live inventory updates, product updates, service updates. You can showcase your products. Everything is coming through that profile. They can map you, call you, message you look at the cars. Bdps come right up. You can stream video. I mean, this platform is so robust, we haven't even begun to really touch all of the features. And I personally think Google kind of saw that they sort of missed the boat with a lot of these third parties coming on. So then they started, started building out this platform and said, here it is. You know, they kind of act like a drug dealer. It's all free. And at the end of the day, they do want us to run ads on the platform because that's how they make their money. I'm fine with that.

Right.

But they built this platform for us. And I'd venture to guess any one of the dealers listening to this, you logged into your Google Analytics and you just said, where's my best traffic coming from? You're going to see that Google my business or the Google business profile profile listed. You are going to have people looking at more pages, viewing more cars, spending more time on your website than any other platform you're engaged with. And it's completely free to you.

All right, Jeff, guess what time it is, buddy.

It's text time.

Let that money flow, Luke. Just let it flow. Guys. Taxes are coming. We're desperate. Our customers are desperate. Everyone needs another handout from the government.

Yeah, we're getting about higher interest rates, but we'll digress.

Right. I will take that handout back from the government in the form of tax returns from my customers. So, guys, fourth quarter, you need to be calling Tax Max and getting set up with their program and learning how to take advantage of it in your dealership. It is the way to get your hands on the tax money before it is spent elsewhere, because it will be spent elsewhere.

It's just our money, Jeff. We paid it in. Let's get some of it back.

Right.

Tax Max. Tax Max, the best way to do it.

That's a good way to look at it. Yeah. Give them a call. Get set up.

Taxmax.com so if, if I'm a dealer and, and I know what Google my business is profile, but I've not claimed it or not set it up. How do you do that?

It's just so easy. Whether you're in search or Maps, if you haven't claimed it, it'll have a little button sitting right there. Claim this business. Yeah, Click the claim. It takes maybe 72 hours. You put in your information, Google verifies it, they send you the code. You own it now. You can go in, you can add people to help you manage it, maybe add your salespeople, add your general manager, your finance, whoever you want managing that page. And then from there, basically create a marketing plan and say, hey, every week we're going to put a post out about one of our vehicles. Maybe put something about our finance offers. We're going to load video, we're going to load images of our vehicles. The number one thing that people look for are pictures of the dealership and pictures of the products.

And so you can. So let me get it straight. You can go on there and you can do all this and you can upload pictures to make your Google my business profile look better. Right. And so people can understand what's going on. And that should, that should also imitate your marketing you're doing everywhere else. Correct?

Correct.

Yeah, I know a couple of years ago it was talked about that Google was going to be able to essentially load all your VDPs to your profile page. Has that happened yet or is it still going to happen?

That is, I'd say, 75% done. What I'd advise you to do, it's called the Cars for Sale tab. So what it is, you know, when you log into it, if you have a, what's called a products tab, then you haven't been upgraded yet. And what I would encourage you Know your listeners to do. And the other dealers out there get with your web provider, with your DMS and say, hey, we need to get this cars for sale tap up there because it's about 70% live across the board right now. And what that does, that takes in real time your live inventory right from, you know, right from your management system and populates it right to that Google product page, which then looks and acts like cars.com, auto trader. Pictures come up, that looks interesting. You click on it, you get the expanded view, you get the full vdp. Hey, I'm really interested in that. Click the button, you're on the website, they're booking a test drive, applying for credit, all those things. And again, it's absolutely free to use.

So yeah, I just pull, I just pulled mine up and I mean, it literally looks like a vdp.

Yeah.

Are they Google trying to get me to get rid of my website?

I don't know if they're going to try to get rid of the website or not, but what they want to become is a mini Amazon where you can do most everything you want to do without leaving the Google search environment.

And what, I mean, it gives me all these insights. It tells me this vehicle's listing price has not changed in 13 days. I mean, that's crazy. It's all right there.

It's right there. So, but again, a lot of dealers, they're not really paying attention to it. And everybody's, you know.

We'Re all on.

Those discussion groups and you're hearing people play, oh, you know, carfax just raised my rate and auto trader this. And these guys, like, well, you're not even paying attention to this platform right here. That's free right now. Yeah, that's free. And Google own search, it's like 84, 86% of automotive searches start within the Google search bar. Used car dealer near me, use trucks for sale near me, whatever those hundred top search terms are. And that's how you can be be part of that buyer's journey right out of the gate. And the ones that are participating with these platforms at Google my business, or Google his profile specifically, you know, they're winning these battles. I mean, we're, you know, doing the exit surveys, you know, having those conversations with customers. We're seeing a large percentage of customers that aren't even going to the website. They're making a decision off that page or saying, hey, reviews look good. I checked out their videos. I looked at 100 pictures. Everything looks great. I'm going there. And That's a huge win. That's a huge win.

That is. And something you just said, you know. Now let everybody know. If you claim that profile, you're going to start getting reviews, right?

You will, yeah. And.

And how do we manage those reviews, Ron?

We answer them. All of them, good and bad. Obviously, it's easy to answer the good ones, right, but you've got to answer the bad ones. Having a conversation with a family member last night talking about an automotive experience they had, and he was saying, I should have paid attention to the reviews because after the fact, those guys lived up to their reputation. But he also told me they never once responded to any of the bad reviews. And you don't have to claim ownership of something that went bad. What you want to do is let people know you're paying attention and you're trying to make it right. Hey, Luke, so sorry you're dear. You had a bad experience. We work hard at delivering great cars. Obviously it didn't happen with you. We want to know, you know, how can we make this right? Here's our number. Here's the email. You know, put that in the review. 99% of the time, they're not going to respond, but other customers are going to see, wow, these guys are on top of it. They are trying to make this situation right. And if it is a situation where you've got the detail, you know, you don't want to go so far to get potentially litigious. But you can answer the claim if somebody goes in and says, well, this happened, this happened, this happened, go back and say, hey, sorry, you know, we didn't live up to your expectation. But there's two sides every story. Here's our side. You know, there were only three wheels on when you brought the trade in, all the lights were going. There wasn't even a radiator. So it really wasn't, you know, we didn't take you to the cleaners as much so you can. Does that make sense?

It does. And there's no reason to get. You know, I see some people, sometimes they'll blame customers, which you should never do, you know, because we do make mistakes as business owners and as. As car dealers. Sometimes we screw up and. And sometimes you have to admit that you screwed up. Yep. I didn't handle that right. My bad. I was having a bad day. I can make it better now, right?

Yeah, totally. Yeah. That's it. That's all. Yeah. You know, future customers are looking to say, well, what if something goes wrong with my deal? Are these Guys going to try to make it right. That's what we want to see and that's all you've got to do.

Well Ron, we really appreciate having you today. I really appreciate it since Jeff just playing hooky somewhere. But Ron, if people wanted to get in touch with you, please give out your information and everybody. I've known this guy for 10 years and Ron is always able to answer dealers questions. He's always at convention. So personal recommendation, he's great. He doesn't do anything for me in my marketing yet, but the guy is the guy straight up. So Ron, how does everybody get in touch with you?

Well, my name is pretty much on every social media. Probably LinkedIn is the quickest one. Just hit Ronald A Hider. You'll find me. They can hit us up on the website 6 easy letters hmaads.com they can get all the information right there. But probably LinkedIn, super easy. Just Ronald A Heider on Facebook, on Instagram.

Great.

Or hit me up on the website hmaads.com and Luke, I gotta tell you, it's hard to compete with Alexa.

Yeah, yeah, she, she, she does handle the marketing side.

She handles the marketing. She's, she, she's a little better looking than I am. You know, just gotta throw that out. It's, it's hard for me to compete when you've got somebody in house like that. You guys been doing a great job. I've always loved what you do. I've always appreciated, you know, just having the opportunity to hear from you and talk with you. Just kind of get your perspective on things. So.

Well, thanks Ron.

Appreciate it. I am wishing all the independents, you know, my heart really is for the independents. There's a lot of crap out there. There's a lot of guys just saying, you know, spend money, spend money, spend money. And you can sell more cars by spending less money if you have a good solid strategic plan. And going back to the first thing we spoke about, man, just be you, pick your lane, be you.

That is, that is such valuable information, Ron. Thank you so much and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Great, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

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