Mets Kramer and Ron talk more on the Digital Dealership (1 of 4)

Exactly. So one of the things you start to realize is that in any business, you make certain assumptions about what your products are. And sometimes you get really kind of stuck on the idea that your product is the machine. Your product is the service department, which already starts to get people really thinking about what are my products really? What defines me? sending out a message about a machine, is that really the product that I need to place in front of that audience? Or is there a different product that I'm not even aware of? I learned this lesson doing one of those student painting companies during university. And it took me a long time to look back and realize that You know, I thought I was selling paint jobs. I was a pretty good painter first for years, and then I took over as manager. And I thought the reason that people hired me was because I was a good painter and we did a pretty good job.

And that was pretty naive, really, because the truth is, after many years, I realized that they weren't really hiring me to do a good painting job. They were hiring me because they liked the idea of helping put me through university. And I came to realize that when, you know, my first year I had like really nice people, university kids working with me who were nice and gregarious and customers love them. And then the next year I had more like technical people, people who are better painters, but customers weren't as happy. My sales didn't actually change. And so I think in the same way, a dealership needs to kind of think, you know, like, what's my product? What am I really selling? And I think that product then becomes even more important.

when you start considering who the message is coming in front of like which audience member is seeing it because there's where you differentiate right to for as an example and we'll get into it more later if you put the same machine in front of the people that know you and people who don't know you at all the person who doesn't know you at all only sees it Technically, they don't know. They don't understand the other value that you bring to whatever the price is and to buying it from you. Whereas your customer you have already understands that. And so you need to think about those things when you define like, what's my product? Maybe the product, most important product is your dealership. Nothing that it sells.

Yeah, like if your customer segment can be differentiated by the type of equipment they run, and then it changes the kind of product that becomes interesting to them.

I think it's important to put products in front of your audience members that matter to the audience member for the very important reason that the audience fatigues. And we can all think about this, like you sit in front of your computer and email keeps coming in. And if you start getting emails from a source that isn't interesting, it doesn't apply to what you are, then you stop looking. And so if you're constantly putting a message out to an audience segment that doesn't fit, they're not going to look. And they're just, when you do send them something that they should be interested in, they're not looking anymore. And that's, I think, the kind of thing where we have to look from our own perspective and what we're used to, you know, what our own activities and response is to these kinds of things and really think about, you know, is it really smart for me to... you know, send articulated trucks to all my little landscaping customers.

They're going to stop. They're going to start remembering that, you know, those notification emails from my company aren't that interesting to them, even when I do have something. So that's why I think it's really important.

No, I think you're starting to touch on understanding what audience is hanging out on each channel. How are they different? The person that walks in the front door is probably the same people that walk in the back door of the shop, but they're slightly different. There could be new people. The people walking in the back door, you know who they are. And so if you really think about that, that should help you define what is a product that is interesting to the people who are coming in each door.

I found like four C's, seven C's.

Everyone's got something, you know. If you're a marketing agency, you have to come up with your own so you can trademark it and not pay someone else.

Exactly.

is. It could be the sales rep, right? If you're doing it really well, we've talked a little bit. The idea of the trusted advisor as a sales rep and, you know, in an information driven dealership that you bring value every time you show up to a customer site. If you bring information that's a value that helps your customer run the business. So in a sense, you know, if you can develop that relationship, if you can bring value every time, then you could actually make the sales rep the product.

Yeah, that's taking information back that we learn. like the survey results, but even something as simple as like, you know, which kind of email blast gets more opens, right? Like when we say defining component of the digital dealership is that it uses the information, it analyzes the information, it uses it to define it, you know? And that's why I think sitting down as a dealership occasionally and redefining what your product is in detail and just going through that exercise is really valuable. Rather than saying, oh, well, you know, we did our business plan 25 years ago and the product is wheel loaders and excavators and parts. So we don't have to go back to the beginning like that. I think that's where you miss out, where you're missing what the message is that you're getting across. And I think it's useful to do a little workshop with your team occasionally and really just rethink what are my products? How are my products perceived?

Right.

Typically.

You probably heard the term like A and B testing. Yep. It's really big in the software world. Really, you're a victim of it. Every time you use a social platform, you don't even realize that you're looking at one version. of the platform and someone else is staring at the other version and they're measuring to see, you know, what the response is. You know, that's really the same kind of idea. If you put out two brochures and for the same product and whoever sees brochure A buys more than who says, who sees brochure B, then you're like, okay, A must have defined the product or connected with my audience better. I did a better job of understanding what the product was that the person was looking for in brochure A. And so I'm not going to use brochure A from now on. Give it a B.

It works for me. I think we'll get back to the rest later. Okay.