FRIKINtech Car Dealership Guy says people with equity are trading down

@BillKVMotorCo I think I figured it out.
Spidey sense is saying that Nio account is a bot crawling this site to build an AI database of all the information here.

maybe it's the management? lol ...
He's been pushing a CRM system for a long time. Been a pain in the butt because we always have to remove his spam links.
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Digital Marketing Agencies Using AI to Write SEO & Social?

That's really not an ai issue in my view. I see that as not considering all the variables prior to designing the application. They are likely using other inputs from the crm to determine the best message to use. So they need to step back and look at how a lead status could be used in the mix.

I have always placed a lower weight on lead statuses in the crm as they are typically derived from a user at the dealership. I see it as the dealership's opinion of how they view the customer at that date and time. There are other variables that are less ambiguous also consider most of the statuses are not used correctly either.

If I was thinking about this from their perspective I would try to leverage variables that are devoid of human error as possible, recent, and most important - impact the end outcome the most. For example knowing the car they looked at was green is less important than they had a trade-in.

The other approach is to completely ignore all the prior data entirely and instead optimize on responses.

Announcing: LVL Up Auto - Vendor Management Platform

Big news: LVL Up Auto Vendor Search is now Public: LVL Up Auto | Dealership Vendor Management Platform

Although this took nearly a year to get here – this is day one everyone being able to access it. Only LVL Up dealers and early access vendors have seen it.

What's coming:
- There are 21 product categories, this will grow with time. A company can be in many. Products can be in up to a maximum of 2.
- As more vendors claim their pages the product detail pages will fill in with more content
- I am already planning to display the upcoming conferences in here, just like I did for NADA

What's here:
- Creating accounts for both dealers and vendors is complete free, this unlocks a lot of features to bring life to this data
- Demo Up: end to end demo support is now live. This impacts dealers and vendors best way to describe this is Bumble for dealerships.
- Sandbox Collections: allows you to create lists of vendors you are keeping on eye on.
- It has dark mode also ;)


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Uncle Joe's Makeover Diary 2.0

AI: The 4th Industrial Revolution
Bigger than the impact of the internet, AI will present many 100x opportunities and will vaporize millions of workers world wide.
• The chip fab boom is laying the groundwork for powerful AI hardware. Shortages of transformers is one example of the AI rollout.
• IMO, AI is a weapon of massive, scalable leverage, which means the AI rollout is tilted heavily in favor of mega cap companies.

If you want to look into the future, Dave Shapiro is a data scientist and an AI genius. In this video, he explores the possibility and likelihood and impact of an overnight launch of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).
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FYI: We are not building AI, it is being grown (i.e. it's alive, it's end state is unknown, it can grow in any direction)

Orphaned Owners

Another key element is that orphaned lists were created in the 90s to 00s before dealerships considered the difference between a marketing qualified lead and a sales qualified lead. So everyone was just considered a sales qualified lead and blasted.

As a prior customer they are in the middle so you can be personal but you can't just start selling a car or ask to come in the dealership without first giving them a reason why. From a sales person's perspective they want to talk to warm SQLs not cold MQLs. Alex already hit on tactics for this, audience based campaigns really shine here and after the customer identifies themselves they pass into SQL and the new sales person can roll.

Orphaned Owners

This whole process exists purely from nostalgia when sales people sent out physical mail and managed their customer lists. When I first joined the industry I remember seeing how everyone did this. I think it is from a fear the sales person would take the dealership's customers with them to their next store. So this got added to CRMs and the dealers would yell at managers to email customers before they went to _____ down the road.

The avg sales cycle time > avg employee retention time and no one is staying loyal because a FNG sent a sick intro email. A lot of these lists were invented just to keep sales people busy during slower times. Anyone that's actually called/emailed a ton of orphaned owners knows there are 50+ more productive things to spend time on.
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Orphaned Owners

Ha ha. I just hate that they get 0 after the sale follow-up after the salesperson leaves. We pride ourselves on service after the sale.
I hear ya. I'm partially joking. All I'm asking is to consider not thinking "Orphans" and start thinking "Long Term Customers." This mindset will help you think about everyone instead of a minor subset that was beaten into us because CRM systems suck.

Orphaned Owners

First off, DO NOT send an email to customers every time their salesperson changes. I get these from multiple dealerships, and I can say two things about it:

1) I don't give a shit that my subpar salesman left, and now you want to give me an even more subpar one
2) When it happens enough to be memorable, it leaves the impression you can't retain employees, and something is wrong

I think removing this practice alone would make your dealership superior to so many others.

Instead of having an orphaned process, I'd prefer to see a long-time ownership cycle process that works with the service department. I may or may not know of something that does help in that endeavor ;) ...with plans to get supremely enhanced.

But think of ditching all the orphan stuff in favor of something that provides relevant communication to customers who have been driving their cars for less than 18 months and have zero sales focus. People mostly like their new car for 18 months. After 18 months, you can begin soft-selling.
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FRIKINtech Return on Investment in 2023

What’s the best way to end a series on stats from 2023? ROI of course!

For dealers utilizing FRIKINtech’s automations to mine their service drive, mine their sold database, show payments on their website, respond to internet leads with payment quotes, and/or show matching payments in their marketing here’s how they did in 2023.

Average new leads per month generated: 75

Average closing ratio on those leads: 13%

Average sales per month per store: 10

Average ROI on FRIKINtech products: 38X

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NADA showed an average advertising cost per new car sale of $692. SERVICEiQ and EQUITYiQ incept the idea into people’s heads to buy a car. These people were not looking at other dealership ads because they usually weren’t in the market at that time. Dealers utilizing those products saw an overall $77.39 cost per sale for deals attributed back to FRIKINtech.

PR & News Tesla Cybertruck sells for $244,000 at used-car auction

Just rode in the Cybertruck yesterday. One of the dads at my kids school works for Tesla and has the first one in Chicago. I wouldn't pay $100k for one, but I've got to say product and engineering wise - it's really cool. The steer by wire is pretty cool, I didn't drive it, but seeing the truck do a 360 turn with the steering wheel only at 90 degrees was neat. All 4 wheels turn. Air suspension was really cool as the ride quality was very premium. The quality of the sound system really surprised me. Then the acceleration was the most surprising. We didn't have a ton of room but it's a torque monster. Quickest truck I've been in and I've been in some chipped turbo diesel's. I think the specs on it are 0-60 in 2.6s. I can't get over the different of how they look in real life vs behind a camera. Every person we drove by had their phone out. Don't really get that with any other brand. Well worth the hype. If I could afford it I'd order one!
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