At this year’s NADA Show in San Francisco, CBT News caught up with Guy Super, vice president of sales at Outsell. Jim and Guy discussed the automated marketing strategies that your dealership needs.
For more coverage from the 2019 NADA Show, visit us here.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Jim Fitzpatrick: Talk to us about some of the things that you’re rolling out here at NADA.
Guy Super: So we’ve got a couple of new products that we’re releasing this year we’re really excited about. Conquest 3.0, and also just some updates to our machine learning predictive models that we’re seeing like an 80% better rate of conversions on the leads that we’re providing. So it’s really, really hot stuff.
Jim Fitzpatrick: 80%.
Guy Super: Yeah.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Wow, that’s phenomenal.
Guy Super: Really cool. Yeah. And we also released Outsell 5.0 our new UX, which we’ve been working on for years and it’s amazing.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Right, right. Talk to me about the average customer that you’ve got and the average dealer and how they use Outsell best.
Guy Super: Yeah. So we’re a marketing automation platform and essentially we let dealers go to sleep at night knowing that we’re communicating one to one with their consumers on a individualized basis, right. With relevant content that makes sense to where they’re at in their life cycle. So whether they’re top of funnel or all the way down and have a high propensity to purchase, we’re doing things like injecting VIN specific vehicle recommendations into service reminders, right.
‘Cause we know somebody is actually really close to buying a car, so we’re going to show them the vehicles that they’re interested in, right.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah. And what are some of the highlights for Outsell since last year’s NADA?
Guy Super: Yeah. So we know a couple of things. So profits are going to be squeezed in 2019 and conquesting is getting more difficult. We also know that retention is a really important factor for all these stores, right?
When we look across the board at consumers, we see 67% of consumers defecting from the original dealership where they purchased. So what Outsell wants to do is create a really unique … Think Amazon, think Netflix, think what people are really expecting now, those consumer expectations have really changed, right? So you can’t just be a generic vanilla, right?
So you’ve got to send them really compelling stuff that makes sense to where they’re at in their life cycle, and if you don’t, you’re going to get passed by.
Jim Fitzpatrick: You are.
Guy Super: And that’s what we do.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. Yeah. You do it for the dealers. I mean, so the dealer rest assured, that’s not an area that they have to worry about.
Guy Super: And the beauty of it is turnkey, right? ‘Cause what’s the biggest thing? The biggest problem in a dealership? Turnover, right. What did we see? There’s a new GM every six months, right? We have new salespeople and you can’t keep up with the training, right? So what do you want? You want a provider like Outsell that’s going to be working in the background with a turnkey solution, making sure that your customers have the best experience out there 24/7 and you can sleep at night knowing it’s happening.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s right. That’s right. And do you see that as the biggest challenges that you’re hearing from dealers? That it’s turnover?
Guy Super: I do, because well, it’s about the experience. Right? That’s what it is. I shop on Amazon Prime. Why? Because of the experience. Right? I love the recommendations when I buy something they say, “Hey, by the way, you might want this,” right?
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. That personalized touch.
Guy Super: If you don’t do that you are going to lose, especially when you consider like the millennials, right? So you have to get better and that’s-
Jim Fitzpatrick: The consumer demands it today.
Guy Super: Absolutely.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. It just can’t be business as usual in the auto industry. Is it? I mean, this approach has to be way more dialed in than what it’s been for dealers, right?
Guy Super: Absolutely. Yeah.
Jim Fitzpatrick: And it’s all about efficiencies.
Guy Super: Yeah.
Jim Fitzpatrick: So you guys run that without having the need for the apparatus back at the dealership.
Guy Super: We create the content, we deliver it, we individualize it. Right? And trying to do that and scale that from, whether it’s the 10,000 people you have in your DMS or the 200,000 people maybe in your PMA, good luck trying to do that. Go hire a hundred people, maybe you can do it or just buy us.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Sure. Buy us, right?
Guy Super: Sure.
Jim Fitzpatrick: And how does Outsell address all of these needs that dealers have right now that they’re looking at with regard to their marketing?
Guy Super: So we consume a lot of data, right? So whenever you’re working with AI, or machine learning or things like that, the more data you can consume the better the results and the [inaudible 00:04:36], right? So we consume DMS data, we consume CRM data, we consume online and offline click behavior. We look at if someone’s scrolling through a content carousel on a Toyota Camry and spending six minutes there, all those things feed into our predictive models and decide what type of content and copy that we’re going to send you. So that’s the level of you’ve got to be there. If you don’t do that, you are going to lose people and they are going to stop paying attention to the marketing that you send out. That’s where you have to be.
Jim Fitzpatrick: What are the key trends Outsell is keeping an eye on for 2019? I mean, you guys are on the forefront of this in this area.
Guy Super: Retention. In a downmarket where we know we’re not going to sell more cars, right. Everybody knows that. Just that’s the truth.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, probably going to sell less cars.
Guy Super: Right? Okay? So where are our biggest profit centers, right? Repeat customers and that comes whether that’s selling them another car, or getting them to come back in and service, those are the people. You’ve got to give them that experience so that they want to come back and when they think, “Hey look, I bought a BMW from Motorworks. I’m not going to go look for another car. I’m going to go to Motorworks,” right. Because of the experience. That’s why they come back.
But it’s not just about your fancy storefront, and your nice service drive, and the Starbucks coffee, and the free donuts. It’s also about that marketing experience and that’s really where people miss the boat. They send a generalized vanilla experience out to all these consumers and they lose, you know?
So you’ve got Starbucks, you’ve got a fancy building, you’ve spent a bunch of money on it, do the same thing with your marketing.
Jim Fitzpatrick: I know. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that amazing? And the average dealer’s spending upwards of $700 a car in their marketing and in a lot of cases they can’t even tell you where they’re spending it or what kind of results that they’re getting.
Guy Super: Absolutely.
Jim Fitzpatrick: You know? So I would imagine that when somebody comes on as an Outsell client, you appoint a team to them or somebody that they can-
Guy Super: Absolutely. So all of our customer facing reps are Google analytics certified. So we use them as a neutral referee. We also help our customers understand what the other vendors are doing for them as well, but that is our focus. We want to make sure that when … especially in a down market, spends, you got to keep an eye on that stuff, right Budgets, everybody’s cutting back. So make sure that what you’re spending is getting you the ROI that you deserve.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s right. Or stop spending it, right?
Guy Super: Or cut it.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yup. Here’s a company that can help you in a very big way, Outsell. They’re here at the 2019 convention, for the NADA convention rather, in San Francisco. Thank you so much Guy for spending some time with us.
Guy Super: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was great.
Jim Fitzpatrick: No, this has been great and for those dealers that haven’t been able to make it out to NADA and you’re watching this as well, get on their website and find out more about Outsell because they’ve got a great buzz here at the show. We hear a lot about them at CBT News and we appreciate you coming in because we wanted to [crosstalk 00:07:40].
Guy Super: My name’s easy to remember, it’s Guy Super. So we’ll see you there.
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