Leadership Secrets of the #1 Toyota Dealer in the World
发布时间 2024-01-30 10:00:34 来源
摘要
In this episode, I'm speaking with Doug Eroh, President and GM of Longo Toyota This episode is brought to you by: Car ...
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中英文字稿 
What do Starbucks Subway and the DMV have in common? They can all be found inside the world's highest volume Toyota dealer. Today I'm speaking with Doug Iro, president and GM of Longo, Toyota, which serves over 100,000 customers annually in the country's most competitive Toyota market. And he's absolutely dominating. We discuss what it takes to sell 25,000 new and used cars per year. Toyota's long-term hybrid car strategy. Our lease returns heading off a cliff in mid 2024 and much more. Don't forget to click subscribe so you never miss an episode.
星巴克、地铁和车管所有什么共同之处？它们都可以在世界上销量最高的丰田经销商内找到。今天我将与隆吾丰田总裁兼总经理Doug Iro进行交谈。他每年为全国最具竞争力的丰田市场的超过10万名客户提供服务，而且他绝对是占据主导地位的。我们将讨论每年销售2.5万辆新车和二手车所需的条件，丰田的长期混合动力汽车战略，我们的租赁回收是否会在2024年中期暴跌等等。别忘了点击订阅，这样您就不会错过任何一集。
What's up everyone? This is car dealership guy. You're listening to the car dealership guy podcast, which is my effort to give you access to the most unbiased and transparent insights into the car market. But before we get into the show, people ask me all the time, C&G, can you help me fill an open role in my company? Well, now I can. I'm excited to announce my new industry job board. I've built this job board so that employers in the auto industry can take advantage of my network and distribution. Your company needs roles filled and I have access to talent. It's a win-win situation. This job board is for anyone in automotive vendors, dealers, lenders, manufacturers, auto tech, you get the point. The best part is that posting roles is 100% free. Over 50 companies have already posted open roles, including lithium motors, recurrent credit acceptance, cars commerce, shift digital and over 20 dealer groups. Add your open roles today by visiting my website at dealershipguy.com and clicking on industry job board or visit the link in the show notes below.
大家好，我是车行销售人员。你正在收听的是《车行销售人员》播客，我努力为你提供对汽车市场最公正透明的见解。在我们开始节目之前，大家经常问我，C&G，你能帮我填补公司的一个空缺职位吗？现在，我有办法了。我很高兴地宣布我新建立的行业招聘板块。我建立这个招聘板块是为了让汽车行业的雇主们可以利用我的人脉资源和传播渠道。你的公司需要填补职位，而我有人才资源。这是个双赢的局面。这个招聘板块适用于任何与汽车相关的供应商、经销商、贷款人、制造商、汽车技术等等，希望你能明白。最棒的是，发布职位是100%免费的。已经有超过50家公司发布了空缺职位，包括锂电动力汽车公司、循环信用接受公司、车辆商业公司、数字变革公司以及20多个经销商集团。立即访问我的网站dealershipguy.com，并点击行业招聘板块，或者点击下面的节目备注中的链接将你的空缺职位添加进来吧。
This episode is also brought to you by Volpath. Your dealership has an endless supply of data, but data is only as good as what you do with it. Volpath is Automotives premier customer data platform that unifies and cleans your data and then activates it using powerful AI and marketing automations. This gives you the ability to create exceptional shopping experiences for every customer at every point of the sales funnel. Volpath's CBP integrates every data source and play at your dealership. This lets you automate hyper-targeted search, social and display ads. It lets you create personalized lead nurture email campaigns so you can reach every shopper with the right messaging at the right time and win more business. The dealership of the future is already here. Fullpath gives dealers like you the opportunity to leverage the most powerful AI so you can put your data to work and compete on the level of global retail giants. To learn more about how you can propel your dealership into the future, visit fullpath.com or click the link in the show notes below.
本集的赞助商是Volpath。您的经销商拥有源源不断的数据，但数据的价值取决于您如何加以利用。Volpath是汽车行业顶尖的客户数据平台，它可以统一和清洗您的数据，并利用强大的人工智能和营销自动化加以运用。这使您有能力在销售漏斗的每个环节为每位顾客创造出色的购物体验。Volpath的CBP整合了经销商的每个数据源和操作。这使您可以自动化超级目标搜索、社交和展示广告。它还允许您创建个性化的潜在客户培养电子邮件活动，这样您就可以在正确的时间通过正确的信息接触到每个购物者，并赢得更多的业务。未来的经销商已经出现。Fullpath为像您这样的经销商提供了利用最强大人工智能的机会，让您能够利用自己的数据并与全球零售巨头竞争。要了解更多关于如何推动您的经销商走向未来的信息，请访问fullpath.com或点击下方节目说明中的链接。
Lastly, this episode is also brought to you by AutoFi. AutoFi helps progressive dealers like you sell smarter not harder on your dealership website and now in your showroom too. AutoFi solves the everyday problems dealers actually face like bottlenecks at the sales desk, customer distrust and decision overload. And their all new showroom solution includes deal estimation, desking, lender routing and an F&I menu. All of this in one powerful platform that bridges the gap between the CRM and the DMS. Dealerships with AutoFi can manage the floor more efficiently, fast track the yes and make better lender decisions, enabling them to sell cars faster with higher satisfaction and more profit. In fact, deals with AutoFi take an average of 28 minutes from customer check into loan approval and dealers are making $411 more backend PVR per deal. Go to autofi.com slash CDG to learn more. That's autofi.com slash CDG and start selling smarter today.
最后，本集节目也由AutoFi赞助。AutoFi帮助像您这样的进取型经销商在您的经销店网站以及展厅中更智能地销售，而不是更辛苦地销售。AutoFi致力于解决经销商实际面临的日常问题，比如销售柜台的瓶颈、客户的不信任和决策过载。他们的全新展厅解决方案包括成交估计、讨价还价、贷款发放路径和财务保险菜单。所有这些功能集成在一个强大的平台上，弥合了客户关系管理系统和经销商管理系统之间的差距。通过使用AutoFi，经销商可以更高效地管理现场、快速发展销售，并做出更好的贷款决策，从而实现更快速的车辆销售、更高的满意度和更多的利润。实际上，通过AutoFi进行的交易平均从客户审核到贷款批准只需28分钟，经销商每笔交易额外获得411美元的利润。访问autofi.com/CDG了解更多信息，开始更智能地销售吧！
From Northeastern Pennsylvania to managing the largest Toyota dealership in the world. Quite the headline. Kick us off. Yeah, for sure. Thanks for the opportunity. Great to be on here with you.
从宾夕法尼亚州的东北部到管理全球最大的丰田经销商。真是个耀眼的头条新闻。我们开始吧。是的，当然。感谢这个机会。很高兴与你在这里。
Yeah, just a quick story. My background, I grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the coal region, if you will, anthracite coal region. I had an opportunity to go to school at Penn State in the middle of Pennsylvania.
是的，只是一个简短的故事。我的背景是在宾夕法尼亚州东北部长大，那里是煤矿区，具体来说是无烟煤矿区。我有机会去宾夕法尼亚州中部的宾州州立大学上学。
Actually, I worked for a detailing company that actually detailed and washed cars for some of the dealers. I just worked on weekends on Saturdays. So what did you do during the week? I went to school and had a couple other odd jobs too. Mm-hmm. Actually, it got it. I just tell people I sold credit cards on the phone back when you could call people and do telemarketing when it was legal. So that's another story for another day. That's how I got exposed to the automotive business.
实际上，我曾在一家汽车清洁公司工作，负责给一些经销商的车辆做清洁和洗车工作。我只在周六的周末工作。那你平时是做什么的呢？我上学，还兼职了几份其他的工作。嗯。实际上，我明白了。我只是告诉人们，在打电话、做电话推销还是合法的时候，我曾在电话上销售信用卡。所以这是另一个故事，留待以后讲。这就是我如何接触到汽车业务的。
To make a long story short, I ended up getting a job with Toyota. I worked on the OEM side of the business for many years before jumping into retail. I had the opportunity to see all sides of it from financial services, to manufacturing, to distribution, the field organization. Worked in different markets. Worked in Boston. Worked in DC. Chicago ended up in Los Angeles. And I kind of never left. So I've been here for about 15 years. Worked as the regional manager, general manager for Toyota, for the Southern California market.
长话短说，我最终在丰田找到了一份工作。在进入零售业之前，我在原始设备制造商方面工作了很多年。在此期间，我有机会了解到金融服务、制造、分销以及现场组织的各个方面。我在不同的市场工作过，先是在波士顿，然后在华盛顿特区和芝加哥，最终在洛杉矶定居下来。而且，我几乎从未离开过洛杉矶。所以，我已经在这里工作了大约15年。我曾在丰田担任南加州市场的区域经理和总经理的职位。
In 2015, made the leap to retail, which has been a great experience. Tell me more about Toyota. I mean, is the LA market the largest market for Toyota in the country, in the world? It is the largest market by market share. And frankly, looking at a metro market, it's the largest market for volume as well. There's distributors that are bigger, like Southeast Toyota that has multiple states. But if you look at the actual Southern California market, which is Santa Barbara to the Mexico border, it's the largest market for Toyota. For sure, in the US, I would probably say the world for that matter.
2015年，我们开始进军零售业，这是一次很棒的经历。告诉我更多关于丰田的情况吧。我是说，洛杉矶市场是这个国家还是全球最大的丰田市场吗？它是根据市场份额来看最大的市场。实际上，从规模的角度来看，洛杉矶市场也是最大的市场。有一些分销商更大，比如东南丰田公司覆盖多个州。但是如果你看看实际的南加州市场，从圣塔巴巴拉到墨西哥边界，那就是丰田的最大市场。可以肯定的是，在美国来说，我可能会说也是全球最大的市场。
What is the market share? It's been as high as in the 20s, 20%. It's been 22%, 23%. It's hovering a little bit below that right now, given the last two years of the inventory situation that we've all encountered. So I just saw, I think November, the latest information I have is it was 19%. So getting close to back to 20.
市场份额是什么？曾经最高达到20%，也就是20%。有过22%、23%的情况。由于我们共同遭遇了过去两年的存货情况，目前略低于这个水平。所以我最新看到的是11月的数据，份额为19%。已经接近20%了。
So you spent almost two decades in the corporate side. What suddenly switched? What why go retail? What happened? You know, it's kind of where I grew up. And it's always was kind of in the back of my mind. I probably in my career on the OEM side probably was in 700 different dealerships across the country at one time or another. And it is always compelling to me to be in a place where you could have a little bit more hands-on decision-making, be in a place where the consumers in front of you, and so it's supposed to six degrees of separation, and really impact what's happening in the day to day.
所以你在公司方面度过了将近20年的时间。为什么突然改变？为什么去零售行业？发生了什么事？你知道，那是我长大的地方。而且这个想法一直在我脑海中存在。在我的职业生涯中，我在全国的700个不同经销商那里工作过。对我来说，能够参与决策、直接面对消费者并对日常事务产生真正影响力的地方总是很吸引人。这样可以缩小个人与事件之间的距离，对每天发生的事情产生真正的影响。
And there was a catalyst that happened that year where the company decided to relocate its headquarters to Texas. And my wife said, I'm not moving ever again. We've moved six times, and this is it. So thanks to her and her putting her foot down, I had to make a decision on staying in the industry that I truly enjoy and making a leap to the retail side. And had an opportunity to join the Penske organization, which is world-class. And frankly, having spent time working in other markets and seeing other groups, there's a lot of great operators in this business, I mean, phenomenal. And I felt like, hey, this is one of the best and why not give this an opportunity? And that's what I did.
那年发生了一个触发事件，公司决定将总部迁至德克萨斯州。我的妻子说，再也不搬家了。我们已经搬了六次家，这次就是最后一次。所以，多亏了她坚定不移的立场，我不得不决定是留在我真正喜欢的行业还是跳槽到零售领域。我有机会加入Penske组织，这是一个世界一流的公司。坦白说，我在其他市场工作过，见过其他团队，这个行业有很多优秀的运营者，简直是非常棒。我觉得，嗯，这是最好的之一，为什么不给自己一个机会呢？于是，我就这样做了。
So I've been doing it since 2015, not in this particular role. Came in in a different role. But since beginning of 2019, I've been running this store day to day. I also have some other responsibilities for our group. But this is my day job. I sit in my office in the showroom at Longoutoia, and I, you know, you get certainly a pulse of what's happened in the business real fast.
所以我从2015年开始做这个工作，不是在这个特定的角色里。我以不同的角色进来，但从2019年初开始，我一直在负责日常运营这家店铺。我还负责我们团队的其他一些职责。但这是我的工作。我坐在隆格图亚展厅的办公室里，你知道，你可以很快地了解到业务发展的情况。
So just a table standing here for our listeners, right? You're the president, a general manager of Longouto, the largest Toyota dealership in the world. You're the president of Penske Motor Group, which I want us to define the distinction there. And your office is in the showroom of the dealership in Los Angeles.
所以这只是一个供我们听众使用的桌子，对吗？您是隆古图公司（Longouto）的总裁，也是全球最大的丰田汽车经销商的总经理。您是彭斯克汽车集团（Penske Motor Group）的总裁，我希望我们能够明确这里的区别。您的办公室位于洛杉矶的经销商展厅内。
Yes, correct. And just the, yeah, it's a fun place, right? Talk about action and seeing what's happening in the world. You get a pulse of it, you know, we're right off the 10 freeway in a very busy part of Eastern Los Angeles County.
是的，没错。而且只是，是的，那是个有趣的地方，对吗？谈论行动，观察世界上正在发生的事情。你可以感受到脉搏，你知道，我们就在东洛杉矶县一个非常繁忙的地区，紧邻10号高速公路。
Give us some like really nitty gritty first day as GM of Longoutoia. What does that like for you? You just moved from the corporate side. Are you nervous? Like what's going through your mind that day?
给我们讲讲作为龙乌托亚总经理的第一天的具体细节吧。对于你来说，是怎样的感受？毕竟你刚从企业界转岗过来。你感到紧张吗？那天你脑子里都在想些什么？
Yeah, I think so just for clarity, I didn't come in as a GM. I came in in a different role with the organization. So I spent about two to three years working with the GMs and doing some different things before I jumped into this chair. So I had a little bit of runway. But you know what, I think when you come into anybody that's sort of like on the fringe, whether it's a vendor or OEM or somebody that is sort of on the fringes of the business, I feel like, I think you feel like you know what's going on and you really know, you know, I could do that. I could figure that out.
是的，我认为只是为了清晰起见，我没有作为总经理进来。我是以组织中的不同职位进来的。所以在跳入这个职位之前，我花了大约两到三年的时间与总经理们共事并做一些不同的事情。所以我有一点经验。但是你知道吗，当你进入任何在业务边缘的人，无论是供应商、原始设备制造商还是其他人，我觉得你会感觉自己知道发生了什么，你真的了解，你知道，我可以做到那个。我可以想办法解决那个问题。
And the reality is, you know, right? I thought I knew everything and I didn't. So I think it's a humbling experience. But my goal was to really learn everything I could. Yes, I know the business at a macro level, but I really want to learn at a micro level. I came in honestly, I spent the first few weeks. I spent on the service drive. I spent some time in our working with service advisors, working in the shop, you know, in the next technicians and understanding what the workflow is, our collision center, course sales.
事实是，你知道的，对吧？我以为我什么都知道，但实际上并不是。所以我觉得这是一次让人谦卑的经历。但我的目标是真正学到所有的东西。是的，我了解宏观层面的业务，但我真的想在微观层面学习。坦率地说，我在头几周花了时间去服务驾驶区。我和服务顾问一起工作，在修理厂里和技术人员一起工作，了解工作流程，还有我们的碰撞中心，当然也包括销售部门。
Did they respect you? Yeah, they probably like, who's this guy coming in? You know, he's a factory guy. But the fortunate thing, because it's this organization, they were my customer before I worked for them. So I had some relationships and people were like, okay, I think that guy might be okay, right? And so I think it's, I was in, I had a, I guess I had a favorable position coming in just because I know. If I think if I came out the street, they ever heard of this guy before, who's this guy coming in telling me what to do or thinking I know my business? So it wasn't as much of that simple as that. You've seen that too many times. I'd been here before.
他们尊重你吗？是的，他们可能会想，这个人是谁？他是一个工厂的人。但幸运的是，因为是这个组织，我在开始工作之前就是他们的客户了。所以我与一些人有些关系，人们认为，嗯，我想那个人可能没问题，对吧？所以我觉得，我加入时处于一个有利的位置，因为我懂行。如果我从街头上冒出来，他们也没听说过我，那这个人从哪冒出来告诉我该怎么做，或者以为他懂我的业务呢？所以事情不像那么简单。你也已经见过太多次了。我之前来过这里。
And yeah, of course. And you know what? And one thing I will tell you is I went and I was wide open because many have done that transition from wholesale to retail, if you will, and failed. I knew that was, this was not going to be easy, but it's something I really wanted to do, and I engaged fully with it. And you know, I've got a great team and great organization. We all work exceptionally well together.
是的，当然。你知道吗？我要告诉你的一件事是，我以非常开放的态度开始这个转变，因为很多人从批发转向零售，结果以失败告终。我知道这并不容易，但这是我真正想做的事情，我全心投入其中。而且，我有一个很棒的团队和组织，我们一起工作得非常出色。
So before we get to this, just the scale of your operation, what would you say was the biggest challenge for you throughout this transition from going from corporate to retail? It's just understanding, I don't know if it's a challenge, but it's, it's a, certainly a, something I learned is that, you know, people are motivated differently, right?
在我们进入这个话题之前，先谈谈你的经营规模，你会说在从企业转向零售业的过程中，你面临的最大挑战是什么呢？我认为最大的挑战就是理解不同的动机。虽然我不确定这是否算是一种挑战，但我肯定学到一件事，那就是人们的动机是不同的。
You know, how do you motivate people? How do you excite people? How do you incentivize people? You know, coming from the factory side, people, you know, tend to be motivated by their next job, right? What am I going to, how am I going to get promoted? What am I, what's my next opportunity to grow? And you know, there's some of that, for sure, but there's also people that want to, they're very happy staying in the job they have, right? So how do you motivate them on a day-to-day basis? Get them to raise their performance in their game by, you know, other means that maybe not the same.
你知道，如何激励人们？如何激发人们的热情？如何给人们以激励？你知道，来自工厂方面的人，通常受到他们下一个工作的激励，对吧？我下一步要做什么，如何晋升？我的下一个成长机会是什么？当然，这方面的因素确实存在，但也有人希望能一直满意于自己的工作，对吧？所以，如何在日常工作中激励他们？通过其他方式激发他们提高表现，而不仅仅是相同的方法。
So I think the whole business comes down to people. And that's really what the differentiator is, I think, with different organizations and how others, you know, how some perform better than others. And, you know, it's how you motivate and how do you lead those people. It's a little bit different.
我认为整个业务都归结为人。我认为这是不同组织间的区别，以及一些组织表现更好的原因。你知道，关键在于如何激励和领导这些人。这是有点不同的。
So I'd say that was, I wouldn't call it a challenge, but definitely a, something that was different that you had to adapt to. You know, when you're in a corporate environment, you know, you have, you have a, oh, this group does this and that group does this and it has so many silos. So many different pieces to it. When you're in retail, you know, my kind of thing is, you know, you got to decide, you know, what toilet paper you're going to use in the bathrooms, and you got to decide what your three-year business plan is and pretty much everything in between. And there's no, let me go talk to this group or this planning group, right? It's you, right? It's you and your team of, you know, a small group of managers that is doing this stuff every day.
所以我可以说那是一个不算挑战，但肯定是一个不同之处，你需要适应的东西。你知道，在公司环境中，你有这个组做这个，那个组做那个，有很多不同的领域。当你在零售业，你知道，你必须决定你要在洗手间使用什么样的卫生纸，你必须决定你的三年经营计划，以及在中间的大部分事情。没有什么，让我去和这个组或这个规划组谈谈，对吧？是你，对吧？是你和你的一个小团队经理每天都在做这些事情。
That might be my favorite line. So, so what type of toilet paper do you use how long ago to you? Hey, you know what? You got it. It's a fine line between comfort and, and cost, right? I really hope, I really hope it's not one ply.
那可能是我最喜欢的一句话。那么，你用什么类型的厕纸多久了？嘿，你知道吗？问题解决了。舒适和成本之间真的是一个微妙的平衡，对吧？我真的希望，我真的希望不是单层的。
You're trying to be a little bit more, you know, that's one of our secrets to success, right? Better customer experience. And it all flows down into even what, what goes on in the bathroom. So that's just such a good example of that attention to detail. And, you know, thinking about really about the customer experience. I've actually posted about that before, not, not specifically the toilet paper, but I've posted about, you know, you want to see a retail establishment, how it's, you know, managed, just go, go to the bathroom. How clean is it? Go look at, you know, exactly.
你试图更加注重顾客体验，这是我们成功的秘诀之一，对吧？更好的顾客体验从头到尾都贯穿其中，甚至包括洗手间的细节。这只是对细节关注的一个很好例子，同时也是对顾客体验的认真思考。我之前确实发过相关的帖子，不是具体指厕纸，而是关于如果想要了解一个零售场所的管理，只需去看看洗手间。看看它有多干净，你就能了解到了。
We have a lot of people, we've been able to kind of the hot thing during COVID was, oh, we're going to have people, you know, sanitize and clean. We do that, we do that for decades, right? We have that clean constantly. Our bathroom can clean every hour. So it's actually a thing that I think makes a difference. That's the insight everyone came here for.
在COVID期间，我们有很多人，我们能够成为一个热门的活动，就是要保持清洁和消毒。我们做了这么多年了，一直都有保持清洁。我们的卫生间每小时都会清洁一次。所以我认为这是一项有影响的事情。这就是大家来到这里获取的见解。
All right. So give us just a sense of your scale. Employee count, how many new and used you do per year per month? Go ahead. If you look at Longwood Toyota, so big organization been around since 1967. Mr. Longwood started this business and said he was going to be the number one Toyota dealer in the world. And he was his first year, sold 469 new cars. And, you know, we've been fortunate to be number one ever since. It's not something that's ever easy. You got to earn it every day, every week, every month, every year.
好的。那么请简单介绍一下你们的规模。员工数量，每年每月处理多少新车和二手车？请继续说。如果你看看朗伍德丰田，它是一个大型组织，成立于1967年。朗伍德先生创办了这个企业，并表示他要成为世界上第一家丰田经销商。在他的第一年，他卖出了469辆新车。而且，我们很幸运地一直保持第一的位置。这并不是一件容易的事情。你必须每天、每周、每月、每年都去努力争取。
To give you a sense of the current scale, last year we sold in an inventory short. It sold about 16,800 million used cars out of this location. We have a big service department. We talk about sales a lot with service. Now we serviced about 107,000 customer cars last year. And overall we have 550 team members who work here at Longwood Toyota. That includes our collision center. Our collision center does about 400 cars a month. It's a big, big operation in and of itself. There's about 85 employees in there. But overall total 550. We have a Lexus dealership that is on the same campus last year. They sold about about 8,000 new and used cars. And, you know, we have some shared services between the stores, but another big operation. So in total our place where we call our campus here, we have about 750 team members between the two stores.
为了让你了解当前的规模，去年我们销售了一个库存不足。从这个地点销售了大约1,680万辆二手车。我们有一个庞大的维修部门。我们常常谈论销售和维修。去年我们为大约107,000辆顾客车辆提供了维修服务。总体上，我们在Longwood Toyota拥有550名团队成员。其中包括我们的碰撞中心。我们的碰撞中心每月处理大约400辆车。它本身就是一个庞大的运营项目。那里大约有85名员工。但总体上是550人。我们在同一个校园内还有一家Lexus经销商。他们去年销售了大约8,000辆新车和二手车。我们之间有一些共享服务，但这也是一个庞大的运营项目。所以总体上，我们在这个被称为我们的校园的地方，在两家店铺之间，我们有大约750名团队成员。
So what is the difference from your role at GMO, a long-going and president of Penske Motor Group? Yeah. So we always like to wear a couple of different hats, right? Keep us busy and on our toes. But day to day I'm the general manager, run the store, have a great team that I work with. And then Penske Motor Group is a privately held company. We have four dealerships. Two here in El Monte and one in San Jose, Alexis Store in San Jose, California. And a new Toyota store, I say new, is six years old now. In Dallas, Texas. So that's our current scope for the private company. There's a larger Penske Motor Group that's publicly traded. That's a sister company, but this is the privately held side. I run that company as well. So we have GM's in those stores. They're great. They do a phenomenal job. And I work with them on different things as well. But oversee that group. You know, HR and some other pieces of it that are ancillary to the day to day business.
那么，在GMO工作以及担任Penske Motor Group总裁这长期以来的角色中，有什么区别呢？是的，我们总是喜欢身兼数职，对吧？这样才能让我们忙碌且保持警觉。但日常工作中，我是总经理，负责管理店铺，与一个很棒的团队合作。而Penske Motor Group是一家私人持有的公司，我们有四家经销店，在El Monte有两家，另外一家在加利福尼亚州的圣何塞，是一家Alexis店。还有一家新推出的丰田店，我说是新的，其实已经有六年历史了，位于得克萨斯州的达拉斯。这是我们目前这家私人公司的规模。还有一家更大的Penske Motor Group是上市公司，是我们母公司，但这家是我们持有的私人部门。我也负责管理这家公司。这些店铺都有经理，他们非常出色，做得非常出众，我也与他们在不同方面进行合作。但总体上，我负责监督整个集团，例如人力资源和其他与日常业务有关的辅助性工作。
Tell us about the structure of your store, right? 550 people, one dealership. I mean, this is an enterprise, right? Give us some, give us some of the behind the scenes, org structure or management layers. Like what are the nuances of operating such a big operation? It's a big boat. You know, we got to turn the boat. You know, you got to really be aligned. So we have about 15 director level positions that we meet weekly as a group that are, you know, I guess my direct reports, if you will. But we have three in the sales department. We have a general sales manager. We have a finance director actually handles multiple stores. We have a use car director, service director, parks director, collision center director, we got guest relations, marketing, controller, business office payroll, HR, you know, sort of those ancillary positions as well.
告诉我们一下你们店铺的结构，对吗？550人，一个经销商。我的意思是，这是一个企业，对吗？给我们一些，给我们一些幕后的组织结构或管理层次。像是经营这样一个大型运营有哪些微妙之处？这是一艘大船。你知道，我们必须调整这艘船。你知道，你必须真正地保持一致。所以我们有大约15个主管级别的职位，我们每周作为一个团队进行会议，他们可以说是我的直属汇报对象。但在销售部门我们有三个。我们有一个总销售经理。我们有一个财务主管，实际上负责多个门店。我们还有一个二手车主管、服务主管、停车场主管、碰撞中心主管，我们还有客户关系、市场营销、财务控制、业务办公室的工资处理、人力资源等等这些辅助职位。
But it's a big business. And you know, my job is to keep it moving forward because, you know, when things get bigger, they can kind of, you know, devour themselves, right? You can get stuck in the mud a little bit. So my job is to try and keep us agile, keep us focused on, you know, what's most important, because you get bogged down in bureaucracy.
但这是一个大生意。你知道，我的工作就是让它不断发展，因为，你知道的，当事情变得越来越大时，它们可能会陷入困境，对吧？有时会有点陷入泥潭。因此，我的工作就是试图让我们保持敏捷，专注于最重要的事情，因为你会被官僚主义所困扰。
And my thing is just, you know, trying to be smart, try to be lean. Don't let yourself, even though you're big, think small, you know, we always say, hey, we're, you know, be number one, but think and act like number two. Do big things, but act small, meaning, you know, give back to the community. Don't forget about every customer, one guest at a time, you know, every single person matters.
我的理念只是，你懂的，努力变得聪明、精简。即使你很重要，也不要心胸狭窄，我们总是说，嘿，我们是第一名，但是思考和行动要像第二名一样。做大事，但行事要谦虚，意味着回馈社区。不要忘记每一个顾客，一个客人一次，你懂的，每个人都很重要。
We've got this 10 foot rule. I mean, it's simple, right? But what's the 10 foot rule? Our 10 foot rule is, you know, we've got a big place here. It's 50 acres, right? People come in here and, uh, what do I do? Right? So it's confusing. It can be. And, you know, so everybody wears a lanyard in the back. It's got a list of, a list of our key values.
我们有个10英尺原则。我是说，它很简单，对吧？但是什么是10英尺原则呢？我们的10英尺原则是指，你知道，我们这里很大。有50英亩，对吧？人们来到这里，该干什么呢？对吧？所以很令人困惑。也许会是这样。你知道的，所以每个人都戴着背带，在背后挂着一张关键价值观的列表。
One of them is a 10 foot rule. And the 10 foot rule is pretty simple. It just means it doesn't matter what position you have, right? You could be a technician, you could be a valet, you could be a wash cars, you might be a receptionist, whatever the case may be. If you see a guest that is within 10 feet of you, you're going to greet them. You're going to welcome them along with Toyota. You're going to say, hope you're having a great day. Is there anything I can help you with? I don't care. Yeah. They might be here for sales. But if they're here for sales, fine. You're going to walk them over there. So that's the kind of culture that we're trying to always reinforce and make sure our people have because it keeps it small. People are like, oh, I feel okay. People are nice here. Not like, you know, the worst thing even in many stores, the worst thing I ever see is when somebody drives in like a service drive and they're looking around, like, you know, what do I do? And what, you know, who do I, nobody talks to them? And, you know, they just get mad. They're getting worried.
其中之一是10英尺规则。而且这个10英尺规则非常简单。它意味着不管你是什么职位，对吧？你可以是一个技术员，可以是一个代客泊车员，可以是洗车员，也可能是一个前台接待员，无论是什么情况。如果你看到一个客人在你10英尺内，你会向他们打招呼。你会和丰田一起欢迎他们。你会说，希望你今天过得愉快。有什么我可以帮助你的吗？我不在乎。是的。他们可能是来购买的。但如果他们是来购买的，没问题。你会带他们过去。所以我们一直在努力强化并确保我们的员工拥有这种文化，因为它使人感到亲切。不像，在许多商店中，我见过最糟糕的事情就是当有人开车进入服务区，他们四处张望，不知道该做什么，也不知道应该询问谁，没人和他们说话的时候。他们会生气，感到担心。
Same thing. People walking to the showroom. Yeah. The example usually on customers who walk into a showroom usually, right? But it's a big place. I mean, we have a AAA office for insurance. We have a DMV branch. We have Starbucks. You know, people enterprise rental cars. People come here for different reasons. And I'm here to buy a car, service cars. You are a destination.
同样的事情。人们走进展厅。是的。通常来说，常常在展厅里走进来的是顾客，不是吗？但这是一个很大的地方。我是说，我们有一个提供保险的AAA办公室。我们有一个DMV分部。我们有星巴克。你知道的，人们来这里租车。人们来这里的原因各不相同。而我来这里是要购买车辆，维修车辆。你们是一个目的地。
Yeah. I think I'm sure some people just listen to this and say, wait a minute, you have a Starbucks on premises. How did this come to be? The DMV, the Starbucks. Like, what's the background here? You know, our owner, Greg Penske, you know, I think has really great vision for being all, we always say, all things automotive are all the things that people need when they're, when they're having a need for, you know, and they have some need for the car. We want to be the resource, right? So that means, that means car insurance, right? That was 20 years ago, right? I mean, I know other people are getting into selling auto insurance in dealerships, but that was the thing a long time ago we got into partnership with AAA, great partners on the racing side of the business and other things. But, you know, they bring a DMV branch. I mean, who doesn't need to get with the traffic that we get from having a DMV branch? Because people just need, it's not licensed or driver's license, but it is, it's registration. So every single person has to get their car registered, you know, renewed every year. And I do it online, but what I've learned is not everybody does it online. And then when it comes somewhere, I talk to somebody and actually, you know, get comfortable with it. So that's, that's a big piece.
是的，我认为有些人听到这个会说，“等一下，你们在这里还有一家星巴克？这是怎么回事？车管所和星巴克。背景是什么？”你们知道，我们的老板Greg Penske 对汽车领域有着很好的远见。我们总是说，所有与汽车相关的事情，就是人们在需要车辆时所需要的一切。我们想成为他们的资源。所以这意味着，意味着车险，对吧？那是20年前的事了。我知道其他人现在也开始在车行销售车险了，但我们早在很久以前就与AAA合作了，在赛车业务和其他方面都是很好的合作伙伴。不过，你知道，他们也带来了一个车管所分部。谁不需要来一趟车管所呢？因为人们只是需要，不是驾照，而是车辆注册。所以每个人都必须每年都要注册他们的车辆。我是在线上办理的，但我了解到并不是每个人都这么做。当他们来到这里，我会与他们交谈，真正与他们打成一片。这是一个很重要的部分。
You know, of course you got to have, we got 750 employees, right? I don't want them to leave to go somewhere to have lunch. So we have a subway, we have Starbucks, and we have, you know, on certain days we have other food options for them. And of course for our customers. So I think it just came about as a customer convenience, right? You know, we have people that are waiting. We see 400 Toyota service guests a day. You know, half of them are waiting. You know, why not give them some amenity that they can spend their time with, be comfortable, feel like, hey, you know what, this is a nice place. I want to, I don't mind waiting, right? I don't mind sitting here. Of course we want to get them in and out as fast as possible. That's, that's what we do. But, you know, some people actually want to hang out.
你知道的，我们公司有750名员工，对吧？我不想让他们离开去外面吃午餐。所以我们公司里有地铁、星巴克，还有在某些日子里其他食物选择供他们选择。当然，也是为了我们的客户。我觉得这只是出于顾客方便考虑吧。你知道的，我们公司有等待的人。我们每天接待400位丰田车服务的客人，其中一半是在等待。那为什么不给他们提供一些便利设施，让他们度过等待的时间，感到舒适呢？让他们觉得，嘿，这是个不错的地方。我愿意待在这里等。当然，我们希望尽快地让他们进出。这是我们的工作。但是你知道的，有些人实际上是希望在这里逗留一会的。
Tell me about your, more about your team. You know, large stores, many of them have just high turnover, you know, intense schedule commitments. So how are you recruiting and retaining top people at your dealership?
告诉我更多关于你们团队的情况。你知道，很多大型商店的员工流动率很高，他们的工作时间紧张。那么在你们的销售点，你们是如何招聘和留住顶尖人才的呢？
Yeah, I think one of the things I'm really proud of and, you know, I can't, I won't take credit for it because it's long three days to me. We have a tremendous amount of 10 year team members, right? We actually did some math recently for a presentation we were doing and, if you look at the 550 long go Toyota team members, we have 260 of them that have been with us for more than 10 years. That's a huge, it's almost 50 percent, right?
是的，我认为我非常自豪的一件事情就是我们有许多十年以上的团队成员。这对我来说是很长的三天时间，我并不会因为这个而得到荣誉。最近我们为一个演示做了一些统计，如果你看看我们550位长工丰田团队成员中，有260位已经在我们这里工作超过了10年。这几乎占了一半，真的很巨大。
Have been here for more than 10 years and you start going up the increments. And I think we have 12 employees that are over 30 years and we have like eight that are over 35. So there's a tremendous amount of retention here. We always want to take great care of our team. We want them to stay with us. We call it hard to get in and hard to get out. So if you apply with us and you interview, it's going to take a while. You know, it's not like, hey, I need two guys on Saturday to sell cars because I need to fill the floor up, get them on board on Thursday and, you know, get them on board Friday and they're selling Saturday.
我已在这里工作了10多年，你开始获得递增加薪。我们有12名员工超过30岁，还有8名员工超过35岁。所以在这里有很高的员工保留率。我们始终确保我们的团队得到良好的照顾，希望他们留在我们这里。我们称之为“进去难，出来难”。所以如果你申请加入我们并进行面试，会花一些时间。不像是“嘿，我需要两个人星期六来卖车，因为我要填满销售场地，星期四上岗，星期五开始卖车“这样。
That's not what we do. There's a place for that maybe somewhere, but it's not our place. And we run short sometimes because of that. We don't want to, we'd rather have the right people than have the wrong people. So, you know, it takes a while. We're very thorough. I actually do the final interview for every single person we hire from Car Wash, ballet, it doesn't, BDC, it doesn't matter. I personally will interview every single person. So they got to wait until I'm accountable. There's a background check, of course, all those things, references. So it takes a while to get hired. So that's the hard to get in.
这不是我们的做法。也许有些地方会适合，但那不是我们的职责范围。正因为如此，有时我们会人手不足。我们不想这样，我们宁愿拥有正确的人，而不是错误的人。所以，你知道的，这需要一段时间。我们非常细致入微。实际上我会亲自面试每一个我们从在洗车行、芭蕾舞团还是贸易发展委员会等招聘的人员的最后一轮面试。因此，他们必须等到我有空才能面试。当然，这还会进行背景调查，需要提供参考资料等。所以入职需要一些时间，这也是困难的原因。
The hard to get out is we want people to stay with us. We want them to build a career. We don't want them hiring as a salesperson or as a service advisor. We want to hire them for, hey, what can they do in the future? Can they be a service drive supervisor? Can they be a manager? Can they manage the BDC? You know, what does their future growth look like? And we have a pretty good history and I'm personally very focused on how do we continue to grow people, move them up, give them new experiences, move them around. Maybe that came from being on the OEM side where that happens a little bit more often than in retail, but people get renewed, they get refreshed, they get reinvigorated when they get a new opportunity. So they got to be really good at what they do first.
我们的难题是我们希望人们能留在我们身边。我们希望他们能够建立一个职业。我们不希望他们只当销售人员或服务顾问，我们想雇佣他们做什么呢？他们将来能成为服务驱动监督员吗？能成为经理吗？能管理商务发展中心吗？我们很重视人员的成长，我个人非常专注于如何继续培养人员，使他们提升职位，获得新的经验，并进行岗位调动。也许这种思维方式来自于我在原设备制造商方面的经验，因为在零售业中这样的机会并不常见，但当人们获得新的机会时，他们会重新振奋起来、焕发活力。所以首先他们必须要做得非常好。
I think we do a good job retaining our team. I think the way we do business with integrity, you know, we don't hide anything. Everything's very transparent here. You know, I think people want to be in that environment. They don't want to have to hide something and like, oh, man, don't tell the customer this or that. And they don't want to get put in that situation and they don't want to be in that situation. You're saying we're not throwing keys on the roof anymore, huh? Yeah, it doesn't happen in a while. It's been a while. But yeah, it definitely is a little bit different. So we try to retain people.
我认为我们在留住团队方面做得很好。我认为我们做生意的方式是诚信的，你知道，我们没有隐藏任何事情。我们这里一切都非常透明。你知道，我觉得人们想要呆在这样的环境中。他们不想要隐藏什么，也不想要像“哦，不要告诉顾客这个或那个”的情况。他们不想要被置于那种境地，也不想要处于那种境地。你说我们不再把钥匙扔到屋顶上了，是吗？是的，这段时间没发生过了。已经有一段时间了。但是，确实有一点不同。所以我们尽量留住人才。
I'd say another big piece is really our training and development. So we actually invested in a full-time learning and development manager. And we have something called Penske College, which is basically our training center, both online and in person. And it's an investment. And I know that not everybody wants to make it. I understand that maybe there's third parties, but giving people some continuous training and feeding them and refreshing. We're doing phone skills training today. We every dealership, including ours, right? You can listen to 10 phone calls and you'll find 10 opportunities where you could be better, right? So we get number of phone calls we get here is mind-blowing between the sales department. We're between 7,000 to 8,000 calls a month in service. It's over 25,000. So it's not to get off on attention about phone skills, but anyway, training is a huge part of it. If you give people that opportunity to grow and develop themselves, they're going to want to stay with you and they're going to be better at your job. So that's a big part of our retention strategy as well.
我会说另一个很重要的方面是我们的培训和发展。所以我们真的投资了一个全职的学习和发展经理。我们有一个叫做彭斯科学院的东西，基本上是我们的培训中心，无论是在线还是面对面的。这是一项投资。我知道并非每个人都愿意这样做。我理解可能会有第三方，但是给予员工一些持续的培训，滋养和更新他们。今天我们正在进行电话技巧培训。我们的每个分销商，包括我们自己在内，对吧？你可以听到10个电话，你会发现有10个机会可以更好，对吧？所以我们这里接到的电话数量令人惊讶，销售部门每个月接到的电话在7,000到8,000之间，在服务部门超过25,000。这并不是为了引人注目的电话技巧，但无论如何，培训是其中的一个重要部分。如果你给予员工成长和发展的机会，他们会想要与你保持并且他们会更好地完成工作。所以这也是我们保留人才策略的一个重要组成部分。
You mentioned all those phone calls. Just out of curiosity, what's your tech stack like? Like what CRM are you using? DMS? Give us a seat.
你提到了那么多电话。只是出于好奇，你们的技术栈是怎样的？比如你们使用的是哪种客户关系管理系统？文档管理系统呢？给我们介绍一下吧。
So that. Yeah. So I'll start with maybe the DMS. We actually made a change in DMS two years ago this month, actually. I can't believe it was two years, but time flies. This is not to say anything good or bad about anyone we used previously, but we were on CDK for a while and we made a change to the tech on. I don't know if you're familiar with tech on it. It's a newer DMS. They've been around for some years. They probably have a thousand clients, but our goal with the DMS was really to improve two things. One, the customer experience, right? To make it more seamless on our service drive, mainly for service. I'm very focused on service with this because it could be, it was so clunky, right? We were printing repair orders, walking over to your desk. I mean, let me type it up for you. Let me print it out. Let me have you physically sign it. We got rid of all that. We went totally paperless two years ago. It's a much, much easier, much less stressful process for our team and for our guests. So our DMS has been a very positive change.
是的。所以我会从可能的DMS开始。实际上，我们在两年前的这个月份进行了DMS的改变。我不敢相信已经两年了，时间过得真快。这并不是对之前的任何人有好坏的评价，但我们曾经使用了CDK，然后我们改用了tech on。我不知道你是否熟悉tech on，它是一个较新的DMS。他们已经在市场上存在了几年。他们可能有一千个客户，但我们选择这个DMS的目标主要是为了改善两个方面。第一，客户体验，对吧？让我们的服务更加顺畅，主要是针对服务部门。我在这个方面非常专注，因为以前的系统非常笨重。我们需要打印修理单，走到你的桌子旁。让我为你输入。让我打印出来。让我让你亲自签字。我们摒弃了所有这些。我们在两年前完全实现了无纸化。对我们的团队和客人来说，这个过程要简单得多，压力也小得多。所以我们的DMS改变非常积极。
For CRM, we use Eleeds. Eleeds has been around for a while. We were probably one of their first clients. We have an opportunity, I think, to do a little better with how we manage our database. We've got a massive database. It's one of the things I'm focused on right now is how do we better leverage that? I listened to your podcast on AI and it got my wheels turning. We do use AI, by the way, in a couple of places, which I can talk about. And then from a digital retailing tool, we were one of Roadster's first clients when they launched. It was a great experience for us. That was probably five, six years ago. And we made a switch to Toyota. The OEM has a program called SmartPath. Obviously being their biggest dealer, that's something that we should be a part of. So we launched that about a year ago. That's sort of the general stack. There's a lot of ancillary products that support those. I could tell you all about any one of those, if you'd like.
对于CRM，我们使用Eleeds。Eleeds已经存在了一段时间。我们可能是他们最早的客户之一。我认为，我们有机会在如何管理我们的数据库方面做得更好一些。我们有一个庞大的数据库。我目前专注于如何更好地利用它。我听了你关于人工智能的播客，这让我有了一些思考。顺便说一下，我们在一些地方确实使用了人工智能，我可以谈谈这方面的情况。然后从数字零售工具方面，我们是Roadster推出时的第一批客户之一。这对我们来说是一次很好的经历。那可能是五六年前。后来我们转到了丰田。原始设备制造商有一个名为SmartPath的计划。显然作为他们最大的经销商，我们应该成为其中的一部分。所以我们大约一年前推出了这个计划。这就是大致的设置。还有很多支持这些的附属产品。如果你愿意，我可以告诉你其中任何一个的详细情况。
You mentioned AI. You said you're actually doing some cool stuff with that. What are you doing there? Yeah, I think we're scratching the surface with AI, honestly. We started about three or four years ago using a service. The way we look at AI, I don't think, oh my god, let's go get AI. It's the new hot thing, right? I just look at, hey, what are the problems we have that we need to solve? And can we use, is there technology that we can either buy or build? And we've built some of our own technology actually to solve it, right? So one of the problems we were having was just reaching out to our database. It's not, we have a service BDC that has about 18 team members and they support four stores. It's a shared service. But a lot of it's long with Toyota. We cannot scale big enough to make outbound calls to people who, by the way, aren't answering them anyway, right? Who's picking up the phone, right? I hate to say it, but if you don't have this for me, if your number is not in my phone, I'm probably not going to answer it because I get spammed all day, right? So how do we reach our guests and get them back for service? So we started using a system called Inversica, which basically allowed us to set up outbound campaigns to reach different segments of our database. Okay, you haven't been here in a year. Okay, you're going to get this message, right? Oh, you have ToyotaCare, but you've been laughing for your last two services. You're going to get this message, right? You were here and we offered you a, we offered you some service for your car and you didn't, you declined it or said, hey, I'll get it the next time you're getting this message, right? So we do that to the outbound campaigns. We do, it is AI. It's all via email right now. And, you know, we have a bot called her name is Tiffany and people engage with Tiffany. And people call and say, guys, speak to Tiffany, right? Oh my goodness. Which was great because we didn't actually have a Tiffany that worked here, but now we do. So it's become a little bit of a problem. We could change a name, but it's worked extremely well. The conversion from those, you know, the conversion from those outbound, the outreach from the AI assistant to the guest, converting to ROS is pretty remarkably high. The engagement is really, really good. So that's one place we're using it.
你提到了人工智能。你说你实际上正在用它做一些很酷的事情。你在做什么呢？是的，我认为我们只是初步接触到人工智能。实话实说，大约三到四年前我们开始使用了一个服务。我们对待人工智能的看法是，我并不觉得，“哦天哪，我们要去搞人工智能。”它只是一种新热点，对吧？我只是考虑，嘿，我们有哪些需要解决的问题？我们是否可以使用已经存在的技术，或者我们可以购买或构建的技术来解决这些问题？实际上，我们已经自己开发了一些技术来解决问题。其中一个问题是我们想要联系数据库中的客户。不过，我们有一个有18个团队成员支持四个门店的服务中心。它是一个共享服务。但是，很大一部分是关于丰田的。我们无法扩展到足够大的规模来对那些不回应电话的人进行外呼，对吧？谁会接电话呢？我不想说起，但如果你不是我手机里的联系人，我可能就不会接你的电话，因为我每天都会被骚扰电话轰炸。那么，我们如何联系我们的客户并让他们回来维修保养呢？因此，我们开始使用一个名为Inversica的系统，它基本上允许我们设置外呼活动来接触我们数据库中的不同客户群体。好吧，你已经一年没来了。好的，你将收到这个消息。哦，你有ToyotaCare，但你上次两次维修保养都没来。你将收到这个消息。你来过这里，我们为你的车提供了某项服务，但你拒绝了或者说，“嘿，下次再说吧。”你将收到这个消息。所以我们通过外呼活动进行这些操作。这就是人工智能。目前全部通过电子邮件完成。我们有一个名叫蒂凡尼的机器人，人们与蒂凡尼交互。人们打电话过来说，“请让我和蒂凡尼交谈。”天哪，这太好了，因为我们实际上没有一个名叫蒂凡尼在这里工作，但现在我们有了。所以这变成了一个小小的问题。我们可以换个名字，但这工作得非常好。从AI助手的外呼到客户的转化率非常高。参与度非常非常好。所以这是我们使用人工智能的一个地方。
The other problem we wanted to solve is in the same vein, if you look at inbound phone calls, you know, we have an abandoned rate for service phone calls about 5%, right? And 5% on it's 5%. When you have 30,000 calls that you get, 5% is a big number, right? That's, that's, I don't want to live with anybody, right? I don't want to have an experience where somebody calls and we can't answer the phone, right? So.
我们希望解决的另一个问题与此相似，如果您看看我们的来电情况，我们在客服电话方面有大约5%的放弃率，对吧？而5%对于这一点来说是相当大的数字。当你有30,000个电话时，5%就是一个大数字，对吧？这对我来说是无法容忍的，我不想让任何人有打电话而无人接听的经历，不是吗？所以。
Which is why averages are so dangerous. Exactly. Because you look at an average, you're leaving some new. Terrible. I don't, I don't lose, do you want to lose 1500 customers? You know, I don't.
这就是为什么平均值如此危险。确切地说，因为你只看平均值，会忽略一些新情况。这真糟糕。我不想失去，你想失去1500个客户吗？你知道的，我不想。
Basically, it's picking up those calls. It's offering guests a chance to text because everybody wants to text. It'll text them a service appointment link. They can schedule if that's why they called the other big one. And I feel like this is going to be our biggest upside is parks, right?
基本上，这是接听那些电话。它为客人提供了发送短信的机会，因为每个人都想发短信。它会发送给他们一个服务预约链接。如果他们之前是为了预约而打电话的话，他们可以安排时间。而且我觉得公园是我们最大的机会所在，对吗？
So the absolute worst phone call experience, and I will say this, and maybe I'm wrong, but at any dealership, it's calling a parks department. And that's no knock on parks managers or parks counter people. It's just that they get overwhelmed, right? And in a parks phone call, it's not, hey, let me make an appointment. Come in Wednesday too, right? Let me see. Let me see. That's the kind of mission with it. I think there's some parks that got this wreck car in my shop.
所以，绝对最糟糕的电话体验，我要说的是，在任何一家经销商那里，最糟糕的就是打电话给公园管理部门。这并不是对公园经理或柜台工作人员的贬低，只是因为他们压力太大。在打公园电话时，并不是说，“嗨，我想预约个时间。周三你们方便吗？”不是这样的，他们会说，“让我看看。让我看看。”这是一种任务吧。我认为我车库里有些公园的车辆出了事故。
You know, I don't know what's the tram, what's the parking? You know, those are long phone calls, right? And they require some expertise. So we just can't answer them all. So we've employed the same AI services, handling our service phone calls, actually handling parks phone calls. And they're doing just simple things like, okay, we're going to capture the phone number. We're going to text the guests now. Hey, you know, what kind of car do you have? Oh, you have a 2018 Tundra. Okay, great. What's the VIN number, right? Okay, now we have the VIN number in our system. So that when we actually get back to that guest, we have a much richer amount of information. We may even have what they be able to give them the solution right away. So we take that, what would have been like a 10 minute phone call, just gathering information. We'll let AI do a lot of that work for us and then reason our people to basically put the expertise where they need it. So that's working very well.
你知道的，我不知道什么是有轨电车，什么是停车？你知道的，那些是漫长的电话，对吧？而且它们需要一些专业知识。所以我们不能回答所有的电话。所以我们雇用了同样的AI服务来处理我们的服务电话，实际上也处理停车电话。它们只是做一些简单的事情，比如，我们要记录电话号码。我们现在要给客人发短信。嘿，你知道吗，你开什么车？哦，你开的是2018款塔科玛。好的，很好。VIN码是多少？好的，现在我们的系统有VIN码了。所以当我们实际上回复那个客人时，我们有更丰富的信息。我们甚至可能能够立即给他们解决方案。所以我们让AI做很多本来需要花费10分钟收集信息的工作，然后我们的员工可以把专业知识放在他们需要的地方。所以这个方法非常有效。
There's there's an opportunity on the sales side. We could talk all day about it and we don't we're not doing enough there, but those are some starting points where they are. So you just mentioned several different use cases for yourself. Let's now I want to talk about the bigger picture when you implement a new process at your dealership, given just the scale, the amount of people. What is that like for you, right? How is it changing a system changing a process? What does that like for you on a day to day basis?
在销售方面有一个机会。我们可以对此进行讨论并且我们没有在这方面做足够多的工作，但这是一些起点。所以你刚才提到了几种不同的应用案例。现在让我们谈谈你在经销商实施新流程时所面临的整体情况，考虑到规模和人员数量。对你来说，这意味着什么？改变系统、改变流程会给你带来怎样的影响？在日常工作中是什么情况？
Yeah, so changing a process or implementing a new initiative at Longotoyota is I refer to it as a military operation, right? It is a massive undertaking that requires everybody to be on board, right? And it is so easy to miss people. I forgot about this person or this person touches it over here. Anything that we change from their website, any kind of user experience thing that is is at the forefront inventory feeds, use cars, pricing. Everybody's got to be on board, right? You change anything here. It is it is it's ripe for problems, right? Because you're going to miss somebody. You're going to forget about something. You're going to have an upset guest. It's just we have so much traffic that if you make a mistake, it gets amplified very fast.
是的，所以在Longotoyota改变流程或实施新计划的时候，我会把它比作军事行动，对吧？这是一项庞大的任务，需要每个人都参与其中，对吧？而且很容易遗漏某些人。我可能会忘记这个人，或者这个人也会去改动某个地方。对于我们所做的任何改变，无论是网站上的任何用户体验方面的改变，还是与存货、二手车、定价有关的任何改动，都需要每个人都参与其中，对吧？你在这里改动任何东西，就很容易出现问题，对吧？因为你会遗漏某些人，忘记某些事情，会让客人感到不满。因为我们的交通量非常大，所以一旦犯错，问题就会迅速扩大。
So, you know, I just I'm always like, hey, all hands on deck. Everybody needs to hear this. Even if you don't think this applies to you, it probably does in some way, or you're going to need to know about it. So just kind of rallying that communication. Again, on our list, how do you actually do that? Do you I mean, do you just physically put everyone in one place? Email call like what's your actual? You know, we'll do we'll do we, you know, maybe the pandemic kind of forced it, but we do a lot more teams and like Zoom, like with our managers instead of like, hey, everybody get in a room. We'll do that too if we need to. But right now, we're under construction, which is the whole another story. We'll get a new one. We'll get a new one. Under construction, it's still operating. But you know, given that these tools like this, right, just virtually everybody gets get all the quick teams call. Let's go around and make sure everybody's clear on what needs to happen. Emails get lost. People don't read them. And I get I get some emails a day. I'm tired of email. I can't wait to find solution for it. But we're trying to use some other tools that are a little less, you know, arcade.
所以，你知道的，我总是像嘿，全体动员起来。每个人都需要听到这个信息。即使你认为这与你无关，它可能在某种程度上确实与你有关，或者你将需要了解它。因此，我们要集中精力进行沟通。再说一遍，在我们的清单上，你到底怎么做到这一点呢？我的意思是，你是不是只是把每个人都放在一个地方，通过电子邮件或电话？你的实际做法是什么？你知道，也许是疫情迫使我们这样做，但我们现在使用更多的团队和Zoom，与我们的经理进行沟通，而不是像“嘿，大家都进来一个房间”。如果需要的话，我们也会这样做。但目前，我们正在进行建设，这是另一个故事了，我们将获得一个新的。虽然仍在建设中，但运营仍在进行中。但是，鉴于这些工具，几乎每个人都可以通过快速团队电话了解发生了什么。电子邮件可能会丢失，人们可能不阅读它们。我一天可能收到很多封电子邮件。我厌倦了电子邮件，迫不及待地想找到解决方案。但我们正在尝试使用一些其他不那么过时的工具。
What metrics are you tracking on a daily basis? Like specifically, what are you looking at? What's your dashboard look like?
你每天跟踪哪些指标？具体来说，你在关注什么？你的仪表板是什么样子的？
Yeah. I mean, it's it's probably not unlike other operators out there. I mean, we, you know, first and foremost, we we got cell cars, right? At our volume, you know, we can't miss a day. So we have a business plan. We have a very deliberate process. We go through like in November every year, we build a business plan for the year. That business plan is then cascaded into every report we have.
是的。我的意思是，它可能不会与其他运营商不同。我的意思是，首先，我们拥有自有车辆，对吧？以我们的规模来看，我们不能错过一天。所以我们有一个商业计划。我们有一个非常谨慎的流程。每年11月，我们会制定一份年度商业计划。这个商业计划会被反复详细到我们的每一份报告中。
So day to day, we still run a doc. You know, we run a sales doc. We're on a service doc. You know, I'm looking at our our units. I'm looking at a gross or gross per unit, you know, basic stuff that, you know, probably most people are looking at looking at our service drive car counts. I always look at that as an index is that phone calls and leads are sort of to me, like leading indicators of what's coming. If we need to make some adjustments to, you know, get more traffic or do those things, we can we can do them by by looking at those daily. You know, of course, we look at our service gross and our parts and collision relative to our plan.
所以，日常工作中，我们仍然在进行文档记录。你知道，我们进行销售文档记录。我们也有服务文档记录。我在关注我们的业绩，包括整体业绩和每个部门的业绩，这些都是一些基本的东西，可能大多数人都在关注。我总是把服务车辆数量看作是一个指标，电话和潜在客户对我来说像是未来发展的先行指标。如果我们需要做一些调整，以增加流量或做其他事情，我们可以根据每天的情况来进行。当然，我们还会关注我们的服务收入以及配件和碰撞维修收入，与我们的计划相比较。
Resources, right? Making sure we have enough people in the right places. Things that come to mind are use car reconditioning. It's a big one, right? We're super focused on our cycle times because, you know, as you know, in the use car business, the way it's been so volatile for the last couple of years is it was super overheated. And then it, you know, pretty much has been on a downward trend. And in some of those downward, those little bubbles of drops have have been painful, right? You know, you go through 45, 60, 90 days of, well, where that index is, you know, wholesale market is dropping, you know, and you you wasted 10 or 15 days getting a car through recon. It's a problem. So I'm very focused on recon really trying to bring that cycle time down.
资源，对吧？确保我们有足够的人员到位。我脑海中浮现出使用汽车翻新。这是一个大问题，对吧？我们非常注重我们的周期时间，因为你知道，在二手车业务中，过去几年一直非常波动。它曾经非常火爆，但实际上一直处于下降趋势。在其中一些下降的小泡沫中，情况非常痛苦，你知道的。你可能经历了45、60、90天，在批发市场指数下降时，你浪费了10或15天时间去进行翻新。这是个问题。所以我非常关注翻新，真的在努力缩短这个周期时间。
What we're doing, we have a shared service between Toyota and Lexus. So we are we are reconditioning about 550 use cars a month. And there's a lot of pieces to it. Our cars are very, very well reconditioned. I'll say. And just so you do those at a separate facility. This is not your service facility. It's separate from that. It's on site. But we have two shops. We have a main shop that is dedicated to all our customer work. And then we have another shop that just does use car reconditioning. It's all they do. And we actually run a third shift in that shop overnight. So we have. Yeah. So we have. Yeah. Then it just handles two things.
我们正在进行的是，我们在丰田和雷克萨斯之间有一个共享服务。所以我们每个月正在整理大约550辆二手车。这其中涉及很多步骤。我们的车辆整修得非常非常好。我可以这么说。而且这些车辆是在一个单独的设施进行整理的，不是您的服务设施。它是独立的，并且位于现场。我们有两个车间。我们有一个主要的车间专门用于处理所有的客户工作。然后我们有另一个车间专门用于二手车整修。他们只做这个。而且我们实际上在那个车间运行了一个晚班。所以我们有。是的。我们有。是的。它只处理两个事情。
One, they do all the new car PDIs. So we only get new car deliveries at night. And they they do all that at night. For anyone that doesn't understand, can you just explain PDI? Sorry. Yeah. We're famous for our acronyms in this business. Obviously we're big vomit. We're selling 1200, 11, 1200 new cars a month in Toyota. You know, another $500 at Lexus. So you know, we get deliveries. We don't allow deliveries to come to us during the day because we're so busy with our operations. So we take new car deliveries from 8 p.m. until 4 a.m. Every night. So the loads come in. And we have a team that's here. And every new car has to go through a pre delivery inspection. Make sure, you know, there's no damage to the car that we, you know, we put in, we make sure that the errors crop, you know, correct. And the air pressure and the tires is correct. That, you know, there's different things you got to do with the head unit and the radio and things like that. So we have a team that does that process every night, fills them with gas. So the goal is by the morning, you know, those cars are our stage and ready to go. In the environment, we've been operating in for most of the past two and a half years. A lot of those cars are sold before they get here. Now, not quite as much today as we did. We had six months or a year ago, but. Still, a significant portion of our daily arrivals are our free salt, are ready to be contracted as soon as we can get the guests to make the car, which is a right start every day.
首先，他们负责所有新车的PDI（交车前检查）。所以我们只在晚上收到新车交付。他们都在晚上进行这些工作。如果有人不清楚，我可以解释一下PDI是什么。抱歉，我们在这个行业中以缩写词闻名。显然，我们在丰田销售每个月约1200辆新车，还有大约500辆雷克萨斯。所以我们会有交付。因为我们忙于运营，所以我们不允许在白天把交付车辆送给我们。所以我们从晚上8点到早上4点接收新车交付。每晚都有车辆到货。我们有一个团队在这里。每辆新车都必须进行交车前检查。确保车子没有损坏，我们检查并纠正错误，确保轮胎的气压正确，还要进行一些与主机单元和收音机有关的工作。所以我们的团队每晚都会进行这个过程，并加满汽油。目标是在早上的时候，这些车辆已经准备好出发了。在过去两年半多的经营环境中，很多车辆在到达之前就已经被销售了。尽管现在销量没有一年前那么多，但仍然有相当大一部分每天到达的车辆已经准备好被购买，只等客户来试驾确认，这是我们每天的起步工作。
But back to use cars. Yeah, it's a separate operation. We run that and we, one thing that's unique, and we, about 60% of our cars, we actually take the bumpers off. We send the bumpers, just people get, you know, sandblasting, you know, people hit scuffs, curbs, right? You name it. Bumpers get hammered on cars pretty quickly because they're so low to the ground. So we actually remove the bumpers. We stand them overnight. They go into our collision center. We bake them in the oven. And what cars are these, though? What cars are you referring to? You know, use cars. Usually typically passenger cars.
但回到用车方面。是的，这是一个独立的操作。我们经营这一业务，并且有一点是独特的，我们大约有60%的汽车，我们实际上会把保险杠卸下来。我们把保险杠送去冲击中心，让人们进行喷砂处理，因为人们常常会在碰撞、擦伤和撞到路边等情况下损坏保险杠。保险杠经常容易在车底部被损坏。所以我们实际上会将保险杠卸下来，晾上一晚，然后放入烤箱烘干。那些车是哪些车呢？你所指的是哪些车呢？你知道，通常是乘用车。
Oh, so you're saying you do the bumper on every use car? About 60%.
哦，所以你的意思是每辆二手车都会更换保险杠？大约有60%的情况。
About, we're running about 60% right now. So anything that has any kind of scratch on it, I mean, some cars, you're old, maybe not, but, you know, anything that's older.
关于这一点，我们目前的运行状况大约是60%左右。所以任何有任何划痕的东西，我的意思是，一些车，也许是旧的，也许不是，但是，你知道，任何比较老的东西都算。
So we're actually taking the bumpers off, we're refinishing them, we're painting them overnight, we're, you know, we're, we're, we're baking them in the paint booth and then we're bringing them back in the morning. So it's kind of a continuous operation. Kind of a saying here. I know all about the recon world. Yeah. We live that. So our thing is long, we never sleeps, right? So there's always somebody here doing something with a car.
所以实际上我们正在将保险杠拆下来，进行修补，然后在一夜之间把它们喷漆，把它们放入喷漆室进行烘烤，然后早上再拿回来。所以这是一个连续的操作。这里有一句话。我对修复工作非常了解。是的，我们就生活在其中。所以我们的工作从不停息，对吧？所以这里总是有人在做一些与汽车有关的事情。
So, you know, even with that, you know, we can, we can get bogged down and cycle time. And that's, that's one of my most important things.
所以，你知道的，即使有这个，你知道的，我们仍然可能因为循环时间而陷入困境。而这也是我最关注的事情之一。
I want to shift a bit more to financial and economic now. You know, a lot of things you mentioned Toyota, the inventory situation, we know affordability is the big challenge for the industry.
现在，我想稍微转向财务和经济方面的讨论。你知道，你提到了很多跟丰田、库存情况有关的事情，我们也知道可负担性是该行业面临的主要挑战。
Let's just kind of take these one by one. First things first is when you think about affordability, is that the biggest challenge for you? Like I speak to lots of dealers, you know, it's obviously a huge challenge for the industry. But for you, is that the biggest, one of the biggest, how are you tackling it? What are you doing about it?
让我们逐个来看一下这些问题。首先，当你考虑到经济实惠性时，这对你来说是最大的挑战吗？我与许多经销商交流过，显然这对整个行业来说是一个巨大的挑战。但对你来说，这是否是最大的挑战之一？你正在采取什么措施来解决它？
Yeah, affordability, I think is a real issue. I think it's a real issue for everybody in the industry. I look at, you know, the payments that people are walking out of here with on a new car. And I'm almost down to it, right? Because take yourself back and put yourself in 2019 and say, you know what? Every, I'm using an example, but you know, you have a tonneur that goes out of here. And most of the tonneurs that go out of here are 900,000, $1,100 payments. It's worrisome because you start running out of people that can make those payments, right?
是的，可负担性我认为是一个真正的问题。我认为这对行业中的每个人来说都是一个真正的问题。我看着人们购买新车后的付款情况。我已经接近该问题了，对吧？因为回头想想，让自己回到2019年并说，你知道吗？每个人，我用一个例子，但你知道，你有一个运输车从这里出去。这里出去的大部分运输车付款金额是90万至110万美元。这让人担忧，因为你会发现愿意支付这些款项的人越来越少了，对吧？
So our use car business is actually pretty strong right now. And I think one of the factors that's driving that is affordability, right? Because people are trying to find something that's inexpensive. I think fortunately Toyota as a brand has maintained the passenger cars in their lineup, right? So we have cameras and Corollas that are still, you know, maybe not as affordable as they used to be, but certainly affordable relative to other cars and other brands. But it's concerning, right? Interest rates are very, very high. You know, non-submitted rates are 7 or 8% for somebody with really good credit. So it's a real issue.
现在我们的二手汽车业务其实相当强劲。我认为推动这一趋势的其中一个因素是价格实惠，对吧？因为人们都在寻找价格便宜的车型。幸运的是，作为一个品牌，丰田保留了他们的乘用车系列，对吧？所以我们仍然有相机和卡罗拉等经济实惠的车型，尽管相比过去可能没那么便宜，但相对于其他车型和品牌来说还是实惠的。但问题在于利率非常高。即使是信用良好的人，无抵押贷款的利率也为7%或8%。所以这是一个真正的问题。
I think we've been very fortunate as an industry and even as a dealership to have a very, the low inventory, yes, maybe hurt some sales, but it also gave us sort of a some demand that we are now filling. But I do think when so that pent up demand or yeah, you're capturing still a lot of the demand here. Yeah, we're still we're still living that. And I think there's there's some more to be had, but there's going to come a day if we're where the the order bank and the demand sort of tips and it sort of runs out.
我认为我们作为一个行业，甚至作为一个经销商，非常幸运，因为我们有一个非常低的库存。是的，可能会影响一些销售，但同时也给我们带来了一些需求，我们现在正在满足这些需求。但我认为当这种被压抑的需求释放出来时，对，你仍然能够捕捉到大部分的需求。是的，我们还在继续这个过程。我认为还有更多的东西可以得到，但是有一天会有一个点，当订单和需求达到顶点后就会逐渐减少。
And at that time, When is that day? When is that day? That's a great question. I wish everybody wants to know and I wish I knew, but I would put it in the middle of 24 roughly because if the order bank runs out and interest rates are low, we don't really have a problem. But if the order bank runs out and interest rates are still very high, I think that represents a challenge for the industry.
那时候，那一天是什么时候？那一天是什么时候？这是一个优秀的问题。我希望每个人都想知道，我也希望我知道，但我会把它大致放在24号的中间位置，因为如果订单银行耗尽并且利率低，我们其实没有问题。但是如果订单银行耗尽而利率仍然非常高，我认为这对于行业来说是一个挑战。
So to me, one of the ways out of this is going to be leasing. Leasing kind of got away from everyone the last couple of years. But you know, we were 30% leasing at Toyota and last year we were, you know, 14. So it's half the year before it might have been lower, but we've got it for lots of reasons. We've got to get people back in the cycle of leasing. It's going to help our use cars. It's going to put people into the into the purchase funnel. I worry about. I worry about a lot of things, I guess, but two years from now, there's nobody coming back on leasing. There's no order bank, right? Interest rates are high. Those are the things that we got to be very cognizant of and try to make sure we're getting ready for in other ways. But to me, leasing is a huge piece of it.
对我来说，其中一种应对方法就是租赁。过去几年里，租赁有点离我们大家远去。但你知道的，我们的租赁比例在丰田之前是30%，去年变成了14%。所以它是前一年的一半，可能更低，但我们有很多原因。我们必须让人们重新进入租赁周期。这将有助于我们二手车的销售。它将把人们推入购车漏斗。我担心很多事情，我想，但从现在开始两年后，没有人会回到租赁上。没有订单库存了，对吧？利率很高。这些是我们必须非常警觉并努力做好准备的事情。但对我来说，租赁是其中一个重要的部分。
I don't see another solution to the current affordability crisis in sentence, which I think gives two more of this year. I don't think any OEM is necessarily going to be dropping prices anytime soon. Because their costs are higher, right? They've got materials costs. It's like we do labor costs and everything else.
我认为当前的经济压力危机没有其他解决方案，我认为这一点在接下来的两年中还会再次出现。我并不认为任何原始设备制造商(OEM)会很快降低价格。因为他们的成本很高，对吧？他们承担了材料成本，就像我们承担了劳动成本和其他费用一样。
How are you how are you dealing with the lease situation? We're now 2024, right? By 2021, 2020, we already had factors being shut down and fewer leases hitting the market. How are you dealing with that and just having fewer used cars in your supply?
你好，你如何应对租赁情况？现在已经是2024年了，对吗？从2021年、2020年开始，我们就已经看到一些因素被关闭，并且市场上的租赁数量减少。你是如何应对这一情况的，面对供应中的二手车减少？
Yeah, I'll give you two pieces to it. One is we haven't hit the bottom yet with respect to lease returns. We're going to hit it about middle of 24. We had a dip in. If you think about the last four years of answering, right? So 2020, the second half of 2020, there wasn't a ton of leasing. We were closed for COVID. There was all kinds of disruptions. 21, the market sort of took off, right? So the first half of 21, we had huge volume. We had our two biggest months and the last four years were in the spring of 21. Huge lease penetration. The OEMs were still spending money on incentives. It was gangbusters basically, the first half of 21. So we have an enormous bubble of leases coming there in the next six months, and then it just absolutely falls off a cliff. So we're still in kind of that mode of lease retention and getting people out and cycle them in. But as you know, number one problem is their payment just went up a lot, right? So getting them into something else. We're seeing people get out of leases. We're seeing a lot of lease buyouts, which has become a bigger part of our business. But we'd rather have them buy the lease out and stay with us and then have an opportunity, maybe in 24 months when that car still got great equity, you get them back into something new, and maybe the pricing and availability is better. So that's a big piece. But I see this becoming a bigger issue as we get into the second half of this year. And I'm hoping by then the OEMs are a little more strong on incentives and lease rates and residuals and things like that that'll help us make that profit-driven.
是的，我会给你两个方面。首先，我们尚未达到租赁返还的低点。预计我们将在2024年中期达到低点。如果你考虑过去四年的情况，你会发现2020年下半年租赁量并不多。因为COVID-19的原因，我们也暂时关闭了。市场发生了各种干扰。21年，市场开始起飞。21年上半年，我们的租赁量非常大。我们在过去四年中最大的两个月份都在21年的春季。租赁渗透率非常高。制造商仍在为激励措施花费资金。基本上，21年上半年非常火爆。所以，接下来的六个月内将有大量的租赁爆发。然后，租赁量将急剧下降。所以我们依然处于租赁保留和换车的模式中。但你知道，主要问题是他们的付款就大幅增加了，对吧？所以我们需要把他们转到其他车型上。我们看到有些人退出租赁。我们看到很多租赁买断，这已经成为我们业务的一个重要组成部分。但我们更愿意他们购买租赁并留在我们这里，然后在24个月后，当车子仍然具有良好的资产价值时，让他们换到新车型上，也许那个时候的定价和可用性都会更好。所以这是一个重要的方面。但我认为这将在今年下半年成为一个更大的问题。我希望到那时，制造商在激励措施、租赁利率和残值等方面更加强大，这将有助于我们实现利润驱动。
Do you think that Toyota is shooting itself in the foot by consistently being under supplied relative to other brands? I mean, they'll clearly, that gives dealers some more pricing power. And Toyota is known for its reputation, its reliability. So you're selling cars and business is good. But long term, is it hurting the brand that Toyota keeps losing market share? Look, I think if you ask Toyota, they want to build a car they can. Right? So there's some limitations. Obviously, I think they were hit a little bit harder by the chip crisis than others. There's some insular things that I do think they'll be back. We're already seeing it. When we started, you look at October November, registration's market share was up.
你觉得丰田相对其他品牌一直供应不足会不会给自己惹麻烦？我的意思是，这显然会让经销商获得更多的定价权。而丰田以其声誉和可靠性而闻名。所以你销售汽车时生意会做得不错。但从长远来看，丰田一直失去市场份额这是否会损害品牌？听着，如果你问丰田，他们想要制造一辆他们能制造的汽车。对吧？所以有一些限制。显然，我认为他们在芯片危机中受到的打击比其他人更严重。有一些内部因素，我认为他们会重新崛起。我们已经看到了。当我们开始时，看看十月和十一月，登记市场份额上升了。
Tesla is a huge factor in California. We can talk about that for a second. But Tesla, okay, so Tesla, if you look at where did that market share go? And I'm not looking at a nationwide picture, but I'm looking at what's happening in this market. And market share went to Tesla. It didn't really go anywhere else, right? Koreans maybe got a little bump, but then they've sort of leveled off. Honda has been up and down depending on their own availability. But if you look at the last three years, market share Tesla, the volume of Tesla in California, and I know some other states as well, is unbelievable. Right? So if you went back to May of this past year, so we'll call it the middle of 23, Tesla was within 2000 units of Toyota volume in California. And that's unheard of, right? Now that's changed. That number has, that gap is wide and its availability has come up. But Tesla has, even though the EV market is extremely soft, for basically the whole industry, Tesla has definitely bucked that trend. Some of it that's occurred over the last 12 months has been on the back of pricing. And they've basically brought that pricing down and they showed that they had some elasticity in that car and there's some more demand for that car if the price is lower. Now, where are they at now? I don't see that pricing. Maybe they'll go lower, but I think that bubble is behind us.
特斯拉在加利福尼亚是一个重要的因素。我们可以谈一下这个。但是特斯拉，好吧，说到特斯拉，如果你看看市场份额去了哪里？我不是在看全国范围，而是在看这个市场上发生的事情。市场份额流向了特斯拉，实际上并没有流向其他地方，对吧？韩国车可能有一点增长，但之后趋于稳定。本田的情况不断变化，取决于他们自身的供应情况。但是如果你看过去三年，在加利福尼亚，以及我知道一些其他州的情况，特斯拉的市场份额和销量是令人难以置信的。对吧？所以如果我们回顾去年5月，也就是2023年中期，特斯拉的销量在加利福尼亚只比丰田多了2000辆。这是闻所未闻的，对吧？这个情况已经改变了。这个差距扩大了，特斯拉的供应量也增加了。但是尽管整个电动车市场对整个行业来说都非常低迷，特斯拉却明显逆势而行。在过去12个月中，他们的市场份额增加部分是基于定价的。他们大幅降低了价格，证明了车辆的价格弹性，如果价格更低，就会有更多的需求。现在他们的定价在哪里？我没有看到降价，也许他们会下调，但我认为这个泡沫已经过去了。
So you're saying they pulled that lever already. They can't pull that one in yours. The lever is pulled and it was pulled hard, right? Yeah, it was big time, yeah. So I don't know. And for context for anyone listening, I mean, Tesla dropped its prices. In some cases, as much as 50% on certain vehicles. So it was very intense price drops over a period of several months or in some cases, several weeks. Certainly it bounced it up and down quite a bit. But the net effect was their cars are a lot cheaper than they were before, right? Which has a residual effect on people that have bought a car two or three years ago, trying to get those people out that are in massive negative equity positions is a real issue.
所以你是说他们已经拉动了那个杠杆。在你的情况下他们不能再这样做。那个杠杆已经被拉动过了，对吧？是的，非常大的变动。所以我不知道。对于听众来说，我是指特斯拉降低了价格。在某些情况下，某些车型的价格下降了高达50%。所以在几个月或几周的时间内价格下降非常剧烈。当然，价格上下波动了很多。但最终结果是他们的汽车比以前便宜很多，对吧？这对于两三年前购买车辆的人们产生了剩余的影响，解决那些负债巨大的人是一个真正的问题。
But they definitely stimulated the market. Now, where can they go from here? I don't know what their cost structure is. I don't know how much more aggressive they can go. But you saw those headlines in the middle of 23 that a Tesla Model 3 or a Tesla Model Y was the same price as a camera, right? From a transactional standpoint. So I'm not seeing those headlines anymore. The latest report I got on yesterday that had November data showed Tesla lost several points of market share in the fall. I never got to count them out, but given their product lineup, it's aged. They've pulled the pricing lever. What's left for them? We'll see. But I feel like that bubble has passed us.
但它们肯定刺激了市场。现在，他们还能往哪里走呢？我不知道他们的成本结构是什么样的，也不知道他们还能多么积极进取。但是你也看到了那些在23年中间的头条新闻，特斯拉Model 3或特斯拉Model Y的价格与相机相同，对吧？从交易角度来看。所以我在如今已经看不到那些头条新闻了。昨天我收到的最新报告显示，特斯拉在秋季失去了几个百分点的市场份额。我从来没有将他们淘汰出局，但考虑到他们的产品线，情况已经过时。他们已经拉动了定价杆。还有什么留给他们的呢？我们会看到的。但我感觉那个泡沫已经过去了。
But that's a competitor and certainly one that, we as a dealer, you feel like, hey, you missed out on all that volume, right? Tested on it, right? There's a customer that probably were our customers at some level. Everybody says, who does Tesla conquest? My answer is everybody.
但是这是一个竞争对手，而且肯定是一个我们作为经销商，你会觉得你错过了所有那么多的销量，对吗？测试了一下，对吗？这里有一位可能是我们的客户的客户。每个人都说，谁征服了特斯拉？我的答案是每个人。
But given what you just stated, and of course you're in California, so you're definitely not representative of every Toyota dealer in the country. Do you think that Toyota is making a mistake by not introducing EVs or by staying very, you know, staying very cool in that end and going strictly hybrid? Or do you think this is the smart long-term strategy? I think it's the right long-term strategy. I really do sort of believe that from the beginning. And I'll tell you why. And Tesla's an aberration for sure, right? Yes. I would love to have some of that volume, but unless we had that product, I don't see anyone else getting it, right? You look at EV for any other brand, no one is doing well. There's not a ton of demand for it. I look at where is our demand and our demand for the past, you know, two and a half years has been hybrids, right? More hybrids, more plug-ins, right?
鉴于你刚才的陈述，当然你在加利福尼亚，所以你肯定不代表全国所有的丰田经销商。你认为丰田不推出电动车或者坚持只做混合动力车是个错误吗？还是你认为这是明智的长期策略？我认为这是正确的长期策略。我一直从一开始就这么认为。我告诉你为什么。而且特斯拉显然是个例外，对吧？是的。我当然希望我们能有一部分那样的销量，但除非我们有那种产品，我不认为其他人能做到，对吧？看看其他品牌的电动车，没有哪个做得好。需求并不算大。我关注的是我们的需求，过去两年半来我们的需求一直是混合动力车。越来越多的混合动力车和插电式混合动力车。
During this inventory, we didn't really talk much about it, but during this inventory shortage, we've been taking orders for cars, right? And at the very peak of it, which was probably about a year ago right now, we had 13,000 orders for cars, okay? Today, we have about 6,000. So it's still good demand. Now, can I get those 6,000? No, they're a little harder to get, right? It's going to take some time, but 80%, if I went back when it was 13,000.
在这次盘点期间，我们没有真的谈论太多，但在这次库存短缺期间，我们一直在接受汽车订单，对吧？而在巅峰时刻，大概是一年前的这个时候，我们有13,000个汽车订单，好吗？而现在，我们只有大约6,000个订单。所以需求仍然很好。但是，我能得到这6,000个订单吗？不行，它们要难一些。会需要一些时间，但如果回到当初有13,000个订单的时候，大概80%的订单可以获取到。
And just I understand, are you saying orders, you have orders to the factory? Yes. So customers come in, now customers, I guess for clarity, we have 13,000, I'm sorry, today we have 6,000, but at the peak, we have 13,000 deposits.
所以，您的意思是，您要给工厂下订单吗？是的。所以顾客会进来，现在顾客，为了澄清一下，我们有13000个，不好意思，今天我们有6000个，但在高峰时期，我们有13000个订金。
Wow. People have made with us to buy. That's big. It's been huge. And by the way, it's been hard to manage because it's so much, right? I can't imagine. We just don't have the resources to follow up. And what was that like for like 2019? How many deposits did you have, if any? Or was everything sold? Hundreds, I mean less than 100, probably. Yeah, everything was sold on the demand. We had 1,500 cars in the lot, new cars in 2019. For the last two years, we've averaged under 200. In many cases, under 100 at the end of the month. So it's a totally different environment. It's evolving back, but even today, we sit here in under 10 days to buy cars. So we're still running lean. I don't want to go back to having 1,500 cars in stock, especially at today's floor plan rates.
哇，人们与我们一起购买了。太大了。真的很大。顺便说一句，管理起来很困难，因为数量太多了，对吧？我无法想象。我们只是没有足够的资源来跟进。那么，对于2019年来说，有多少订金呢？还是说所有车都已售出了？可能是几百辆，大概少于100辆。是的，根据需求一切都已售罄。在2019年，我们车场里有1,500辆新车。在过去两年里，我们的库存平均少于200辆。很多情况下，月底甚至不到100辆。所以环境完全不同了。虽然市场正在恢复，但即使到今天，我们仍然需要不到10天就能卖掉车。所以我们仍然保持运作精简。我不想回到库存1,500辆的时候，特别是以如今的按揭计划费率来看。
I'll look at what we're paying in interest today. Over the last couple of months versus what we paid in 2019, we're paying more in raw dollars because the cars have gotten more expensive. And of course, interest rates are exceptionally higher. So we got to be careful on the cost side of things. What are you paying, like roughly speaking, for context? Interest or floor plan? Floor plan costs right now. You know, last month, it was actually raw cost was over 100 grand. It just interest costs. And that's after credit. It's not Toyota. So, yeah, it's real money. And in that 100,000 was nothing. It's 100,000 a month is, you know, sudden it's a million dollars before you blink. And that's with not having a lot of it. Right? So if you actually had more inventory, it would be higher.
我会看一下今天我们所支付的利息。与2019年相比，过去几个月我们支付的利息更多，这是因为汽车变得更贵了。当然，利率也异常高。所以在成本方面我们必须小心一些。就语境而言，你大概支付了多少？是利息还是库存计划？目前库存计划的成本。你知道，上个月实际成本超过了10万美元，仅仅是利息成本。而且这是在信用扣除之后，不是丰田。所以，是真金白银。而且在那10万里面什么也不是，一个月10万美元，在你眨眼之间就变成了100万美元。而且这还是没有太多库存的情况下。是吧？所以如果实际上有更多库存，成本会更高。
So we need more cars. We need to fill the demand. What I was going to say is if you look at that order bank, whether it was the highest point of where it is today, 75 to 80% of the demand is for hybrids or plugins. So Toyota has built some phenomenal products. The new Prius is amazing. Some of the new vehicles like RAV4 and the new camera is coming, but also Corolla. There's core models that have hybrid application. They're sold out, right? There's tremendous demand for them. We have EVs on the lock. I drive an EV. Trust me, I know. My wife drives a Sienna hybrid. There you go. I didn't mention Sienna. I should have, but Sienna was lost in 2020. We're the biggest dealer in the world. And we've never had one in stock in four years. We've never had one, right? We've continuously had over a thousand orders. We get 30 to 50 of them a month. We fill them. And it's continued. It's another great model. There's nothing wrong with that. Great product. But that business model works pretty well, right? For everybody. There's no incentives. There's no, yeah.
所以我们需要更多的汽车。我们需要满足需求。我要说的是，如果你看一下订单库存，不管是现在的最高点还是75%到80%的需求都是混合动力或插电式汽车。丰田已经生产了一些非常出色的产品。新款Prius令人惊叹。一些新车型，比如RAV4和即将推出的新款卡罗拉，也有混合动力应用。它们已经售罄了，对吧？对它们需求巨大。我们有电动车。相信我，我知道。我妻子开的是Sienna混合动力车。就是这样。我没提到Sienna，我应该提到，但是Sienna在2020年销售不佳。我们是全球最大的经销商。在过去四年里，我们从未有过库存。我们持续接收超过一千个订单。每个月我们能拿到30到50辆。我们会交付这些订单。而且一直都是这样。这是另一款优秀的车型。没有任何问题，它是一款很棒的产品。这种商业模式对每个人来说都很有效。没有激励措施，也没有别的什么。
So funny enough, I actually purchased our Sienna from California. So I'm sure you know from who, but yeah, from Los Angeles, near you, I guess. I think it was somewhere up there. So yeah, it was a peak. It was a peak 21. And hopefully they didn't charge too much oversteer. No, it wasn't from long ago. I think it was. We don't charge over Mr. Pete. That's been, that's really helpful. No, or yeah, I think. But hopefully it's what we gave you deal. Yeah, I mean, I didn't go to California for no reason. I'm sure you did your homework. You mentioned, so given all this inventory stuff, I think the number one thing that goes for my mind is, do you have any concerns about your team, right? Like the last three years, people got conditioned to the good life, right? Do people come to you, especially Toyota deal shape? I can only imagine. It's like, you know, get in line, please. What, like where's your head out? You know, 12 months out, are there bad habits? Like, how do you deal with this?
很有趣的是，我们实际上是在加利福尼亚购买了我们的Sienna。我相信你知道是谁，对吧，是从洛杉矶附近买的，我猜是在那儿附近吧。我想应该就在那儿上面。所以对，这是一辆车峰，希望他们没有收取太多溢价。不，这不是太久之前的事情。我认为是的。我们不会对Pete先生收取额外费用。这真的很有帮助。不，或者是的，我想。但希望能给我们一个划算的交易。是的，我的意思是，我不会无缘无故去加利福尼亚的。我相信你已经做过功课。你提到了库存问题，所以我脑海中最关注的事情就是，你们团队有没有任何顾虑，对吧？过去三年，人们习惯了美好的生活，对吧？有人会找你，尤其是丰田的交易，我可以想象。就像，“排队，请”。那你对此有何想法？你知道，未来12个月会怎样？是否有不良习惯？你是如何处理的？
Yeah, no, it's real. I think anybody that's in the retail business has got to deal with the fact that we've been in a more customer's than car's situation for 30 months. And it's really easy to think that that's what it's going to always be, right? It's the way it always was. But I think the thing that helps us in our case, and it's not perfect. But the fact is, many of our sales consultants are very long, tenured employees, right? So they've been doing this a long time. They've seen lots of cycles. They've seen recessions. They've seen pandemics. They've seen way too much inventory. They've seen no inventory. So I think having that perspective now, sometimes you got to remind them, hey, remember what three years ago, you know, what it was like? And we've got to be way more effective and way more way faster with the way we respond the leads and the way we manage our database and all those things that we didn't really have to do because they're coming at us for the last two and a half, three years. So it's constant education on that. I feel like we've made that transition. We made it in roughly October. It was like, it was the car business again, right? It was no longer, you know, in order we're still getting orders. When, yeah, when used car prices took that day. Those cars took the hit, right? There's no gross there. All of a sudden we got new cars on the lot. Oh my God, we have new car. We have 400 cars guys. We've had, you know, this is about third of what we weren't used to being. So it's just making sure everybody has that perspective.
是的，没错，这是真实的。我认为任何从事零售业务的人都不得不应对一个事实，就是在过去30个月里，我们面对的顾客远多于汽车的数量。很容易认为这将永远如此，对吗？这是一直以来的情况。但是我认为在我们这种情况下，有一点帮助我们，虽然不完美。事实上，我们的销售顾问中有很多都是资历很深的员工，对吗？所以他们已经做了很长时间的这个工作。他们见过很多周期。他们见过经济衰退。他们见过大量库存和没有库存。因此，我认为现在有这种观点，有时候你得提醒他们，嘿，记得三年前的情况吗？我们必须要更有效和更快速地回应线索，处理我们的数据库，以及所有这些我们过去两年半、三年不需要做的事情。所以不断教育他们。我觉得我们已经完成了这个过渡。在大约十月份时，我们实现了这一点。又恢复到了汽车业务，对吗？不再只是接到订单。是的，当二手车的价格急剧下跌时，我们承受了损失，对吗？那些车没有销售利润了。突然间我们有了新车在车场上。天啊，我们有新车了。我们有400辆车。这差不多是我们以前的三分之一。所以只需确保每个人都有这种观点。
Interestingly today, we actually, the inventory is dipped again a little bit because we had such a huge December. But we have people that honestly, we don't, you know, we don't have a lot of turnover, but we've added, I don't know, probably under 10, maybe call it eight to 10 people in the last three years that don't have that same perspective. So it's been some education with them to help them understand how to talk to a consumer. How to negotiate, right? They never had to negotiate. It's MSRP, right? So there's definitely some education there. We're working with those people hand-to-hand day-to-day, making that transition. But it's a heart, it's definitely heart, right? Psychologically, this is a very emotional business, right? Cars, it's exciting. It's, you know, it's emotional, the highs and the lows, you know, just kind of managing our way through that is something we have to deal with every day, for sure. Does anything keep you up at night?
有趣的是，今天实际上我们的存货再次下降了一点，因为我们在12月份有了如此庞大的销售。但是我们现在有了一些员工，说实话，他们没有这种观念。在过去的三年里，我们新增了大约8到10个人，他们对如何与顾客交流以及如何进行谈判缺乏经验。他们从来没有谈判过，只知道建议零售价。所以，我们需要教育他们一些东西。我们正在与他们一起合作，每天手把手地进行过渡。但是这确实是一项艰巨任务，对吧？心理上，这是一项非常情感化的业务，对吧？汽车销售，令人兴奋。情感化的，有起有伏，我们必须每天管理这种情绪。有什么事让您夜不能寐吗？
Yeah, a lot of things. I think, you know, it's thinking about one of those things to keep you up at night. It's really the macro things that we can't control, the interest rates, the affordability, things that happen in the world that are beyond our control. Those are things that, you know, hey, what ifs, I have confidence though, I can go back to sleep now and hey, we're going to adapt, we're going to adjust, we're going to do whatever it takes, that's what we're good at, that's what we always do. But, you know, look, we always have to, when you're at the top, you know, unfortunately we're the number one for volume, but I come to work every day knowing that we can do so much better, right? We're just, we feel like we're scratching the surface in some areas and we can be even better. So that's what's exciting and that kind of keeps you coming back.
是的，有很多事情。我认为，你知道，有些事情会使人彻夜难眠。真正让我们无法控制的是宏观因素，比如利率、可负担性，以及发生在世界上的一些超出我们控制范围的事情。这些是那种让你充满疑虑的事情，但我有信心，我现在可以重新入睡，我们会适应、调整，不惜一切代价去做的，这正是我们擅长的，也是我们一直在做的。不过，你知道，我们总是需要在处于巅峰时刻时更上一层楼，不幸的是，我们目前是交易量第一，但我每天上班都知道我们可以做得更好，对吧？在某些领域，我们只是触及到了表面，我们可以做得更好。这就是令人兴奋的地方，也是让你不断回来的原因。
What are some of the opportunities that you think, you know, what are they? What areas? I look at our business and I think, you know what, with the number one thing for me is, is our database because it's so rich and I feel like we're just scratching the surface with how we leverage it. All that data. Using that data more intelligently, speaking the people in the language and the place they're in, when I say language, I don't mean their, you know, their language that they speak, but I'm talking about what's their mindset today, right? As a vehicle owner or someone that's in the market, right? How do we speak to them more intelligently? So that's something that we're working on. It's a priority for this year, but I feel like one of the problems, this is going to, you kind of laugh if I say this, but one of the problems we have is that we have too much traffic and I don't say that. I believe it. I say that humbly, right? Meaning, I'm grateful that we have a lot of traffic, but I feel like because of that, we could be better at how we manage that traffic than we are. So that's another thing that's really top of mind to me.
你认为有哪些机会，你知道的，它们是什么？在我看来，我们的业务有个最重要的机会就是我们的数据库，因为它非常丰富，我觉得我们只是在利用它的表面。所有的数据。更加智能地利用这些数据，根据人们当下的心态和境地与他们交流，当我说语言时，我不是指他们说的语言，而是指他们今天的心态，对于一个车主或市场参与者，我们如何更加智能地与他们交流？这是我们正在努力的一件事。这是今年的一个首要任务，但我感觉我们面临的一个问题是我们有太多的流量，我不是在夸耀。我是真的这么认为。我说这话并不是傲慢，我很感激我们拥有这么多的流量，但我觉得因为这个原因，我们可以更好地管理这个流量。所以这也是我非常关注的另一个问题。
In our service area, it's all about time. So we're really focused on trying to get the time down because again, with 400 cars a day, it's easy to get a car lost in the back and nobody picked it up and, you know, those kinds of things can happen. And we have a tremendous amount of great customer reviews. We have over 17,500 Google reviews, 4.7 rating, but every single day, I look at any one-star review we get, I read it, we get to the bottom of what happened and we stay focused on that because we won't always be better at it. So those are some things that are top of mind.
在我们的服务范围内，时间至关重要。因此，我们非常专注于缩短时间，因为每天有400辆车，很容易将一辆车遗忘在后方，没有人接收，你知道，这种事情可能会发生。我们拥有大量优秀的客户评价。我们有超过17,500条谷歌评价，评分为4.7，但每天我都会阅读我们收到的任何一条一星级评论，找出问题的根源，专心解决，因为我们不会总是做得更好。所以这些是我当前考虑的一些事情。
What's your subprime business like? But it's not in that business, really, really, really not. What do you mean by that? I mean, we don't, we don't, we don't chase subprime business because we're new car, you know, we sell about 11, 1200 new cars a month. 80 to 90% of our customers are tier one credit. You know, we're very fortunate to have very, very good paper. Our used car business is similar. So it's just not, you know, they have to get 90% is, is, um, tier one. More tier one plus. Yeah. Wow. And I look at our loss, we're really focused on it, right? The structural deal structure, I think having a lot of repeat business helps that.
你们的次贷业务怎么样？但实际上我们并不从事这个业务，真的真的真的不从事。你是什么意思？我的意思是，我们不追逐次贷业务，因为我们是销售新车的，每个月大约销售11,1200辆新车。80%到90%的客户都是一级信用。我们非常幸运拥有非常好的资料。我们的二手车业务类似。所以，他们必须要有90%以上是一级信用。更多的是一级信用加强级。哇哦。而且我认为我们非常关注我们的损失，结构化交易的结构，我认为有很多重复业务会有所帮助。
People come back for third, fourth, fifth, sixth. Sometimes I've heard people say 11 cars. I mean, it's just becomes a family kind of generational thing, but we're very fortunate to have very good paper. Look, we make some tough deals and I got to tell you, it's not, it's all perfect. It isn't. We sell in 400 used cars a month. You see some things that are, that are a little bit tougher. But we have a great partnership with, with the captive, with Toyota Financial, some other banks. And it's just, it's not, uh, not top of mine for us.
人们会第三次、第四次、第五次、第六次回来。有时候我听到人们说11辆车。我的意思是，它变成了一种家庭传承的事情，但我们非常幸运有非常好的纸张。你看，我们做一些棘手的交易，我得告诉你，并不是一切都完美。我们月销售400辆二手车。你会看到一些比较困难的事情。但我们与丰田金融和其他银行有着很好的合作关系。这对我们来说不是最重要的事情。
Fascinating, man. I want to just ask you about when you think about the next generation of hiring for your business, growing your team, right? Where are you attracting talent? Where are people coming from? You know, and your best talent specifically, that's what I want to hone in on.
太有意思了，伙计。我只想问问你关于你对未来一代企业招聘、团队壮大的想法。你从哪里吸引人才？人们是从哪里来的？你最优秀的人才，我想着重谈谈这个。
There's one thing I wanted to touch on that I have it. It's that's okay. And please, of course, you know, I think about differentiators and things that make it successful. One of the big things for us is diversity. LA is very diverse, um, as you know, and we have team members that collectively speak over 40 languages and dialects. It's like, I didn't know the word 40 languages. That's absurd. It is. They're like, do a lingo champions. And it's, yeah, it literally, and it's, it's real. So I think that, given the diversity of Los Angeles, over many, many years, decades for that matter, people want to transact. They'll have to go look at your website and shop and English. But when it comes time to talking money and transactions, they want to speak in the language they're most comfortable in. So having the people in our sales force, uh, service advisors that can do that, that do that, that speak the language is a huge, uh, is a huge, uh, asset for us. So. Yeah.
有一件事我想提一下，就是我们有这个。没关系。当然，并且，请你知道，我在考虑不同的因素和让它成功的东西。对我们来说，其中一个重要因素是多样性。正如你所知，洛杉矶非常丰富多样，我们的团队成员共同掌握40多种语言和方言。我都不知道有40种语言这个词，太不可思议了。确实如此。他们就像是语言冠军一样。是的，字面上就是这样，而且是真实存在的。所以我认为，考虑到洛杉矶的多样性，多年来，几十年来，人们想要进行交易。他们会去查看你的网站并用英语购物。但是当谈到金钱和交易时，他们想用自己最舒适的语言交流。所以我们销售团队和服务顾问会讲这种语言，这对我们来说是一个巨大的优势。所以。是的。
And I noticed that you, you have advertisements in Chinese and Spanish, which is again, I haven't seen that. I mean, I've seen Spanish advertising, but Chinese, well, that's the first one. Yeah. And we're in the San Gabriel Valley, which is sort of the crossroads of, you know, we have a significant Asian community. We have a significant Hispanic community. We need people that can speak all those languages. And, you know, we think about the Asian languages. You have Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, and then multiple, multiple, multiple dialogues, dialects off of that. So that's a big one.
我注意到你们在广告中使用了中文和西班牙语，这个我还没有见过。我是说，我看到过西班牙语的广告，但是中文，这是第一次。是的。我们就在圣加布里埃尔山谷，这里是亚洲社区和拉美裔社区的交汇点。我们需要会说所有这些语言的人。要考虑亚洲语言，我们有普通话、粤语、越南语、韩语，以及其他很多方言。这是个很重要的问题。
So maybe, um, you know, transitioning to, uh, you know, your question about hiring, um, we, we really like to hire people for guest service, right? So people that can, that maybe have experience, maybe they worked at Starbucks, maybe they worked at a restaurant, maybe they worked in a, in a retail store, but they're used to dealing with customers. We can teach them sales. We can teach them, you know, the, the fundamentals of the business or service, whatever it may be. That's sort of the, the mindset we're looking for.
也许，嗯，你知道的，转到你关于招聘的问题，我们真的喜欢雇佣擅长客户服务的人，对吧？说的是那些可能有经验，可能在星巴克工作过，可能在餐厅工作过，可能在零售店工作过的人，但他们习惯与顾客打交道。销售技巧我们可以教给他们。我们可以教他们业务或服务的基本原则，无论是什么。这就是我们所寻找的思维方式。
The one thing that probably may, may blow your mind, or maybe, maybe not, but we don't actually have a sales BDC. We want our salespeople to kind of do as much of the transactions as possible. And we've had them in the past and it became a crutch. Oh, I got the guy that takes the phone calls for me. Oh, I got the guy that does the follow up for me. I just got to, you know, so, so, so, so just understand you're saying that your sales team is the one that's making the calls, but also taking the customers as they arrive to the showroom as opposed to splitting that up with, you know, one department making the calls and one department only handling ups in the showroom. Exactly. Exactly. So I'm not telling you we have the right answer. I'm not ever going to tell you we have the right answer. All right. Just the answer we have today and it's working today. It's effective, but it does manage costs a little better. So you don't have all these multiple layers of, of comp, but also, you know, just having people that I want them to be good at everything. And honestly, if you have a BDC that can't talk price, then you're going to talk to somebody else. It's bad for a customer experience, right? They're bouncing people around.
有一件可能会让你惊讶的事情，或许也可能不会，但我们实际上没有销售BDC。我们希望我们的销售人员尽可能多地处理交易。过去我们有过这样的部门，但它成了一个累赘。哦，我找到了一个替我接电话的人。哦，我找到了一个替我追踪后续的人。你知道，所以理解一下，你的销售团队是在打电话的同时接待顾客，而不是把这个工作分给一个部门负责电话，另一个部门负责展厅接待顾客。完全正确。我并不是告诉你我们有答案。我永远不会告诉你我们有答案。好吧，它只是今天我们拥有的答案，并且今天它有效。这样做可以更好地控制成本。所以你不需要那么多的复杂层级，而且我希望员工能面面俱到。老实说，如果你的BDC无法谈论价格，那你就得找别人谈了。这对客户体验来说很糟糕，对吧？他们被不同的人反复转接。
So what we do have though is we have a sales development team. So we don't bring somebody in. I don't even care if they work somewhere else. We don't put them on the floor, right? We want them to kind of understand our culture. We want to understand our process. So we put them in this sales development team as a manager, where they learn how to, you know, structure a deal. They learn how to take a phone call. They're phone etiquette. They learn, you know, how to manage leads and how to manage the CRM. They learn the product. And that's something we started a couple of years ago. And that's where we start people, even if they come from a different dealership or a different department, they're going to do a minimum 90 days in there. And then they can graduate. Some of them will stay longer because they're, they're doing the business.
所以我们确实拥有一个销售发展团队。我们不会直接雇佣某人。我甚至不在乎他们之前是否在其他地方工作过。我们不会把他们放到实际营业的场地上，对吧？我们希望他们能够了解我们的企业文化。我们希望他们了解我们的工作流程。所以我们将他们放到销售发展团队里担任经理，让他们学会谈判协议，学会接听电话，学习电话礼仪，学会管理潜在客户和客户关系管理系统。他们还会学习产品知识。我们在几年前就开始这样做了。无论他们来自不同的经销商或不同的部门，他们都要在这个团队里至少待上90天，然后才能毕业。有些人可能会因为业务情况而继续留在这个团队更长时间。
And then the sales development team, are they actually working with customers? Or are they like just training? They will work with customers. So they'll take phone calls. They'll take that call as far as they can go with it. They'll, they'll take some leads as a, you know, as training, but they'll take that as far as they can go with it. The ones that are now feel like they can take the customer all the way, they're probably the ones that are ready to go to the next level. They also will, will shadow salespeople. So those spend a whole day, you know, rotating between different people, just so they get a feel for how people handle different situations, one of the objections that come up, those kinds of things. So it's been, it's been pretty effective. And that's been the answer about hiring. That's kind of what we're looking for. And then we bring them into a, a place where it's not like full pressure day one. And then not have to, you know, let's, let's, let's learn a little bit. So it's, it's been good.
然后销售开发团队，他们真的在与客户合作吗？还是只是在培训？他们将与客户合作。他们接听电话。他们会尽可能地处理电话。他们会接收一些潜在客户作为培训，但会尽可能多地努力开展业务。那些现在感觉可以全程跟进客户的人，可能是准备进入下一个阶段的人。他们还将跟随销售人员工作。所以他们整天在不同的人之间轮流，这样他们就能感觉到不同的人如何处理不同的情况，以及遇到的异议等等。所以这一切都很有效。这就是关于招聘的答案。这就是我们所寻求的。然后我们将他们引入一个不需要一开始就承担太大压力的环境。我们会先学一点东西。所以这一切都很好。
Well, my friend, you're on a, you're on a hell of a business. This was so interesting. I had a ton of fun. That's been fun. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it. And you know, like I said, always, always looking to be better at what we do. And we don't feel like we've solved everything yet.
嗯，我的朋友，你做得非常出色。这真的很有趣，我玩得非常开心。这真好玩。感谢给我机会谈论这个。如我所言，我们一直在努力变得更好，我们还觉得没有解决所有问题。
No, and I appreciate you tuning into the podcast. And if anyone wants to get in touch with you or long ago, how can they reach out? Yeah. Call to email. I'm pretty responsive. And we'll, we'll throw up your, we'll throw up your website link in the show notes below as well. If you give us permission, we'll put your email so that maybe we get you some, you know, some good candidates for recruiting. If you need, this was great, man. So thanks so much for coming on. I had a ton of fun. Best for having me. I appreciate it. It's been fun.
不,我很感激你收听播客。如果有人想与你联系或久远，他们该如何联系你呢？是的，打电话或发电子邮件。我会很积极地回复。我们还会在下面的节目注释中提供你的网站链接。如果你同意，我们还会公开你的电子邮件，这样也许能为你招聘到一些好候选人。这真棒，非常感谢你的参与。我玩得很开心。感谢邀请，很高兴能参加。
All right. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Please give the podcast a rating. Consider subscribing to the show and check the show notes for links to what we talked about. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you guys next time.
好吧，希望你喜欢这一集。请给这个播客评分。考虑订阅本节目，并检查节目备注中的链接，了解我们谈论的内容。感谢收听。下次再见。