Ep. 643 - The $100 Mistake Your Dealership Keeps Making, With Kyle Disher
In this episode, I sit down with Kyle Disher, CEO of RevDojo, to peel back the layers on one of the most overlooked, yet game-changing aspects of the automotive industry: hiring, training, and accountability.
Kyle's seen it all—over a decade of dealership mystery shops, thousands of hires, and countless training sessions. Together, we uncover what separates dealerships that thrive from those stuck in survival mode. And let me tell you, the difference often comes down to one thing: commitment to process and culture.
Here’s What We Dive Into:
The shocking data from 5,000+ mystery shops: Why some dealerships never even make a single follow-up call.
The true cost of poor onboarding and training—and how a few small changes can drive big results.
How to tell if your dealership's culture is a winning one (hint: you can feel it the second you walk in).
Why dealerships that rely solely on AI are setting themselves up for failure—and how to strike the perfect balance between tech and human connection.
Live call roleplays that demonstrate the power of scripts, processes, and positivity in converting leads to appointments.
Kyle doesn't hold back. From uncovering the real reasons behind high attrition rates to sharing the exact playbook for building a high-performing team, this episode is packed with actionable insights that will make you rethink how you approach dealership operations.
Episode Brought To You By AUTOFI
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Episode Transcript
MC: 0:00
(Episode Sponsor) This episode is brought to you by AutoFi.
Kyle: 0:04
(Hook) It's always management.It's how do they onboard, how do they train? What's the culture like? Because the people that do the most training keep the most people.
MC: 0:11
What's up auto industry. In this episode of the Dealer Playbook, I'm joined by Kyle Disher, the CEO of RevDojo. We're going to discuss dealership hiring and training and the insights that Kyle has gathered from thousands of mystery shops. I am so excited to dig into these mystery shops to see what they revealed.
(Podcast Intro)The car business is rapidly changing and modern car dealers are meeting the demand. I'm Michael Cirillo and together we'll explore the best strategies, ideas and tools to create a thriving life in and out of the business. This is The Dealer Playbook.
(Episode Start) Kyle, my man, thanks so much for joining me on the dealer playbook.
Kyle: 0:54
Thanks for having me. 10 years You've been doing this…
MC: 0:55
10 going into, I guess we're in year 11.
Kyle: 1:00
Now your LinkedIn says 10 years and 10 months, so I wasn't sure.
MC: 1:05
10 years, 10 months, can you believe that? Um, it feels like I started it at least 12 years ago sometimes, Where are you coming to us from right now?
Kyle: 1:16
Like right now. Right now, Medellin, Colombia.
MC: 1:19
Say it again, cause you said it so beautifully.
Kyle: 1:22
I don't, I don't say it right, Medellin, Colombia.
MC: 1:25
Dang. And so then, like, how often do people ask you about Pablo Escobar? Are there like monuments and stuff in in colombia?
Kyle: 1:38
a little bit. So there's a mixed bag like, like it feels like 70 ish percent of the local people hate him yeah like like 30 percent of the people love him because I guess he gave a lot of money away and stuff. There's a uh. His tomb is about 20 minutes from my house. I've been one time and it's got like a eternal flame thing going but nobody there.
MC: 1:59
I mean you walk right up to the thing that's like it's it's nuts to me and and like I feel like I watched it's probably a youtube video but that there's like people who still believe barrels of his cash are buried all over the countryside, that they that's like their full-time gig is like following hunches and like going and digging up and seeing if there's a barrel there is. That is that a thing like? Have you heard that?
Kyle: 2:24
yeah, it's thing. So I remodeled my house and the builder was all excited because he was like one day I'm going to find a wall full of cash. But he said he's never found anything. The problem is the cash would be like ruined by now. Right, have you seen that movie where they dig up a thing and the cash is all ruined because it's like 30 years old, 40 years old? Right, it would just be rotten. Yeah, it'd be rotten cash.
MC: 2:46
Isn't that interesting. Years ago, I lived in the Philippines for a couple of years and there was a guy there I don't know the full story, but I mean we're talking about cash, which I mean, like, who doesn't like talking about cash? Yeah, in the I want to say 60s or maybe 70s, an airplane carrying crates of US notes went down and there was something. Ok, this somebody is going to correct me, I just know there's some hater on YouTube is going to be like you're an idiot. This is not accurate at all, but this was the story I got. This plane goes down there's crates. It at all, but this was the story I got.
MC: 3:26
This plane goes down there's crates. They have to be opened in a certain way so as to not release, like some sort of toxic substance all over you. Um, anyways, crates full of hundreds, 50s, 20s, etc. Us notes. This guy that I met, who was contracted by a company, came from stateside, was there to follow leads to to, because people would claim that they had these crates and, of course, the, the Federal Reserve didn't want these outdated notes and circulation and yada, yada, yada and I I just remember being like that sounds like the coolest job and he's like we deal with a lot of Chinese gangs and I'm like, and you can do that job yeah, big money, especially money like that, there's going to be some big problems that follow it.
MC: 4:08
Isn't that crazy. There's always big problems that follow our industry, and it's probably because of how big the money can be in this industry, and it makes me think about what I want to just chat with you about today. Chat with you about today often could possibly be deemed as an unsexy topic, yet one that has the ability to pay the highest returns on anything else that we do in this space, which is finding and hiring and training people. So that you know the way I think about it and I want your thoughts on this. As we kick it off, we are. It's almost like I feel like we're afraid of this topic because we feel, maybe helpless around it, like, oh man, ever I've tried to hire so many people and it never turns out. And we know we have like huge attrition in the auto industry. From your vantage point kicking this off, kyle, what are some of the common challenges, mistakes that you see in a hiring process that causes the high turnover in our industry?
Kyle: 5:13
So we've hired thousands and thousands and thousands of people. I don't know if I have the right answer, I just have a answer. So it's funny. I do these career fairs and it's one of the ways that we hire. Someone says, hey, I need to hire 15 people, or open up a new point or whatever just happened. I get quality through quantity. I'll have 200, 300, 400 people show up and we'll do a day worth of interviewing. So, that being said, if the dealership hires 10 people, or I hire 10 people, the attrition rate is about the same. That's the only way that we've really tracked it. So there's people I've done a career fair for where we hired five, 10 people smaller store, two, three, four years ago. Most of those people are still there. There's people that I got to go in and I feel like I'm just throwing bodies at the problem. I hire 10, 20 people a month and they just continuously churn.
Kyle: 6:06
And it's not a sexy answer, but again, it's an answer. It's always management. It's how do they onboard, how do they train? What's the culture like? Because if you get hired somewhere and it's like, wow, congratulations, I was the new guy before you got here. How long have you been here? Four years. You know that's a place that's going to keep somebody right, so it's just. It has much more to do with with management and onboarding stuff than what I do on my end. We find that the stores that bring us in for training too. That doesn't change the turnover that much either, to be quite frank, because the stores that train are the stores that train. They would have had me in their training anyways.
MC: 6:48
So the stores that trade, they would have had me in their training anyways. So it's just, it's it's management training. The people that do the most training keep the most people, and this is something like you know, in this train of thought, I mean, this is something that we've tried to dissect so many times on the playbook, which is how to quantify um, culture. You brought up culture, um, it gets thrown around so often. Every conference we all go to, it's like somebody's going to bring up culture and employee experience and things of that nature. Now, here you are, almost from a different angle, actually from a different angle saying like, eh it like attrition is attrition, like companies that train are going to train. Is the? Is the aspect of healthy culture quantified in what you said, though, that there's going to be a, uh, an employee that sticks around a lot longer, or that there's bearing on productivity or efficiency, or and the people that train have a better culture.
Kyle: 7:40
So the the, the people that do the training, that that have the meetings, that have stuff organized, the 9 o'clock meeting everyone's in the room by 8.55. I can walk into a place just because I've walked into so many places and I can go. Oh, this place is a problem. You can just feel it when you walk in the stores that have the high turnover or the stores that don't.
MC: 7:59
How did you get into this?
Kyle: 8:01
So I was in high school, I was selling washer machines at montgomery wards. Remember montgomery wards? They have that in canada. He may be in canada back then, no, maybe they do, I don't know.
MC: 8:10
The audience will have to let us know. I have no idea competitors.
Kyle: 8:13
So, uh, they're out of business now, not because of me, but uh, I want to sell right. So do you want to know the real story? I don't know if I should tell this. I think the statute of limitations is up. Do you want to hear really how I got that? I've never told the story before. Do you want to hear it?
MC: 8:26
I do, I do. Should we check to see if the statute of limitations is up.
Kyle: 8:29
It's been a long time, it's been 25 years.
MC: 8:31
All right, you heard it here first, folks, he's going to spill the beans.
Kyle: 8:38
So allegedly you can back in the days and I've never done a drug in my entire life, Right, and so I was kind of known as the guy that's never done a drug, contrary to everyone, always thinks I'm on something but I'm not. And so this kid comes up to me and he's like, hey, I got a job at Montgomery Wards, Can you take my UA for me? And so I went and I made a fake allegedly maybe school ID at FedEx office Kinko's and I went and did the guy's UA. And then I was like Montgomery Wards is hiring, Let me go check this out. And then I went and talked to them and they were like, what do you want to do? And I was like I want to sell and make commission. Well, the sales role was in washer, dryers, refrigerators, TVs, camcorders, all that stuff. So I talked myself into the job. But the crazy thing is I had to walk back and take the UA at the same place. I just did it with another ID. And so I did the UA at the same place like two times in like you know, like a week or something. So I started selling washer machines and I loved it, Thought I was good at sales and there was a help wanted sign at the dealership right down the street from my high school.
Kyle: 9:45
I was in high school during all this and I was like man, I think I could sell cars. So I went in there and I ended up convincing them to let me sell cars part time because I was in high school and I had to close one, keeping my washer machine job because I was making huge money for I mean, I was making more than teachers selling appliances, and so they let me keep, uh, uh, they let me keep my job. You want to start for questions?
MC: 10:08
you want me to keep is this like late 90s, early 2000s? 1999 okay, okay, so you and I are the same age essentially. I think like when did you graduate high school?
MC: 10:19
graduated in 2000 oh yeah, okay, we're same age, the y2k generation, okay, got it. So this is funny. There's some similarities other than the the allegedly's that I would have to add to a sentence. But like I also sold appliances at before Best Buy bought, this company in Canada was called Future Shop and and so anyways, and I'm thinking I at that time, 17, 18 years old, was making more money than the teachers in my community. That's funny, anyways, okay so. So then you see the sign at the dealership that and that's your foray into car dealership. You're thinking, oh dang, if I can sell washers and dryers or what. What's the thought process for?
Kyle: 11:03
It was literally like right by my house. So I went in there and I said, hey, I want to sell cars, and they said, not a chance to come back and graduate high school. But I just kept going in. I went in I think three times to get my interview. The third time the guy's like all right, fine, We'll give you a shot and work there part time.
MC: 11:20
Okay, so you earlier mentioned something that I want I want to key in on and get your thoughts on this. You said you walk into many dealerships and just by walking in you can get a sense of like. Okay, a vibe is not as commonplace as we think. So in your journey from allegedly to being in the car business and to where you're at now, what is it about you? What are some things you would say people should be learning or thinking about in order to develop a greater sense of an environment like that?
Kyle: 12:12
Yeah, it's a commitment, because you could do nothing and have 60, 70, 80% of the production. The manufacturer is going to give you X amount of deals and you may watch that and get mad and be like, oh yes and all, but you're going to do okay in the right market. So it's the stores that are really striving for that extra and the stores that get that extra. They're just tight, they just run things the right way. Everybody knows the sales process. If I go up to a manager, the manager asks what step I'm in and they know exactly where I'm at If I take a phone call. If I make a phone call, I have a call guide that I use. There's a process for every single internet lead. It's just tight.
Kyle: 12:57
And if you go to a store and you go, hey, what's your sales process? And you ask two or three people and you get two or three different answers. That's a good takeaway on maybe this place isn't ran as tightly. You know. You just ask a few questions and you can find out hey, what's your desking policy? Well, we don't. We would the first time you're. You know there's a, there's a problem there.
MC: 13:19
Yeah, and, and I mean what you do is so fitting, because we see this all the time. I mean I I approach it from the marketing angle, obviously is what brings us to dealerships most often. But the what we found is that the difference between an OK opportunity and an amazing opportunity is the process with which it is handled, and some people don't like that. I've probably just pissed off half of my listenership because they're like oh great, another vendor pointing the finger at me. No, not, I'm not at all.
MC: 13:51
I'm saying there's multiple parties involved in making this dealership a success story, all of which need to take accountability and find alignment and and make sure that everybody is trained up. Like how did the lead originate? What source brought the lead? What was that? You know, where are they at? What kind of questions are they asking those sorts of things? And so I find it interesting from your perspective that essentially, what I'm hearing you say is there must be a period for everyone in a dealership with which they pass through the mechanics of how it must be done before they develop the you know what do you want to call it like? I have Latin Heritage. It's like they play guitar beautifully, but they don't know what they're playing like, they just know they're doing it. So, that sense of second nature, you have to pass through the mechanics first 100%.
Kyle: 14:47
It's funny you bring that up about leads. I could have 10 people in front of me, I could have way over 100 people in front of me and if I'm teaching Internet, for example, I'll say, all right, first Internet lead that comes in. I'm calling in front of the entire room and any source, any type. I get a few data points, a few of which you were talking about. I do research for about 10 seconds, then I call live and we set an appointment in the room way over 90% of the time. And the only reason I'm able to do that? I have the call guide. I know what to say. There's only going to be a few different variables and when the room sees that sometimes they go okay, well, of course you can set an appointment if you just do it like that, well, I do it like that. I never lie to anybody. I'm 100% honest and literally I'm closer to 100% than I am 90% appointment sets with Fresh Internet Leads, especially Just because I got the process.
MC: 15:39
Yeah, and you said commitment, I mean there's a differentiator between those people that are committed and not committed.
Kyle: 15:46
And you know you got to commit, that the customer's committed. You know how I tell if the internet buyers committed. They went to our website or a 30 third party website after spending 15 or 20 hours with the research. They gave their first name, their last name, their email address, their phone number and they went click, click. That's how I tell they're committed to buy a car. You can call the whole deal with a few wrong words at the start.
MC: 16:08
So you know, after making thousands of phone calls, it's just why are we and this isn't just our industry, I think it's it's just human nature, maybe why are we afraid to train ourselves? Like what comes up, like what, when you you're getting a sense of a dealership, I'm sure you're in these rooms and there's at least one or two dudes that are like yeah Well that's why I make a lot of calls.
Kyle: 16:37
That's why they can't do it after that. Most of the time.
MC: 16:39
So, as part of inspiring people to train, getting over their roadblock of like maybe they just don't understand it or they don't think it'll work, or I'm trying to get a sense of like. We love a good sports analogy in our industry, not realizing that all the great sports analogies are predicated upon a team that shows up every single day and trains all day to to get 15 minutes of play time during the game.
Kyle: 17:07
Yeah, it's so true, and most places just don't train. You want to do something for fun? Yeah, edit this out. Watch this. Give me any city in America.
MC: 17:17
Any city in America. Why is it so hard? There's so many. I'm trying to think of a hard one. A rural town, big city, little city, new York, kankakee, illinois, k? I don't know. I don't even know if it's a real. Uh, k a n. Hold on, let me, let's look it up. K? A n, k a, k e e. Oh, it is a real thing.
Kyle: 17:50
It is a real place.
MC: 17:52
I want to say it's a suburb of Chicago, Chicago.
Kyle: 17:55
Give me a brand, please. Any brand, any OEM.
MC: 18:00
Mitsu.
Kyle: 18:02
Well, we'll do something even easier. Give me something bigger Toyota, excellent choice. Give me a two or three year old non Toyota any car. Two or three year old non-toyota any car, two or three non-toyota.
MC: 18:12
Any two or three year old non-toyota car, a 2019 chevrolet cruise perfect hi, can I have a salesperson please? Sure, Can we just come out please?
Kyle: 18:30
Can you hear that? I should have set my mic on my big mic setup. We can hear it. It's the jam. I was thinking about the person that made that song.
MC: 18:41
Killer. They better get royalties, dude.
Kyle: 18:44
Oh, I guarantee they don't.
MC: 18:51
This is a first, by the way.
Kyle: 18:54
Oh, what's a voicemail? Let's call him back. So this is a little thing, man, I'm telling you, should a sales call have gone to voicemail.
MC: 19:04
No, never.
Kyle: 19:05
At a Toyota dealership.
MC: 19:07
Hi, can I have a sales dealership Toyota? My name's Carrie.
Kyle: 19:09
How can I help you? Hi, Can I have a salesperson please? Okay, give me just a second. Thank you, this is teeing me up for something I just experienced four days ago $100. Oh my gosh. Again, I hope they call one more time. We'll do $ Again. Please leave a message. One more time, we'll do $100 if they send an appointment.
MC: 19:36
If they don't nothing.
Kyle: 19:37
Hey, I'm sorry, I don't want to be a bother. Is there anybody?
MC: 19:42
available. They are.
Kyle: 19:44
I'm trying to actually send it to somebody, but it's not working. That's all right, no problem, we'll try one more time. Thank you, guys. So third call.
MC: 19:53
In a one-minute window. Dude In a one-minute window.
Kyle: 19:56
third call At a Toyota dealership. Oh hey, no problem, I don't see the car on the website anymore. I thought I saw a 2019 Chevy Cruze it was black the other day and I just want to see if you still have it, please. Yeah, of course, If I can hear you, let me check. Thank you.
MC: 20:19
Of course.
Kyle: 20:22
I'm so nervous. Yeah, no, so the only Chevy Cruze I've ever had was a 2012 Chevy, so it was a Blazer and a Silverado. Okay, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Of course. Anything else? No, that's all. Thank you, sir, have a good day, bye-bye. All right, so they don't have training, right? Let me get on my soapbox for a second. Why does somebody call on a 2019 Chevy Cruze? Is it because that's their dream car? They're going to pull up to the high school reunion in it? Why?
MC: 20:49
They need it.
Kyle: 20:50
They seem to be a cheap car right.
MC: 20:52
Yeah.
Kyle: 20:58
So 2019 Chevy Cruze, that's a great choice. I'll be more than happy to check on that vehicle for you. You definitely called the right place. Let me do this. Let me check on that 2019 Cruze for you. Do you happen to have the stock number? Yeah, the stock number is OU812. All right, fantastic. So let me do this. Let me check on that cruise and you know we have so many vehicles down here Toyota, of whatever. I could also check on other stuff like it too. Are you looking for just Chevy Cruises or just nice vehicles in that price range? What is 99% of the population going to say on a Chevy Cruise? Vehicles in that price range, okay. Cruise vehicles in that price range? Okay, perfect, awesome. I'll check out. And then, what are you driving now? So if I could expand the inventory and then find out what the person is driving now, I'm gonna have an appointment almost every single time, right?
MC: 21:39
what's that card on that guy? No, no.
Kyle: 21:42
What's my phone number? What's my email address? What am I driving now? Didn't even ask me for an appointment. If you did, I would have given them a, I think.
MC: 21:53
I'm like nervous.
Kyle: 21:54
I said I'm like nervous that the owner of that dealership's list but you see this, we should probably edit out the the the dealership's name. If you happen to see this, whoever dealer that was, I'll do a complimentary salesman arnold will take care of all that for us.
MC: 22:09
But um, but, but you're right, and what I love is the, the first of all there's. There's other things I break apart, aside from the script that you used.
MC: 22:19
I love your tone, your positivity, your, you know there's an excitement there and and I'm picking up on just a general maybe it's a psychological thing a general sense of what you said earlier it's not that they were just looking for a Chevy Cruze. Based on their best ability to find something in their price range, that's what they landed on. That does not necessarily mean that that is the only. So why don't, since they're already in searching shopping activity, why don't you, concierge-like, expand that for them? They don't. Is it because they're afraid? Maybe the stigma?
MC: 22:57
of those people, or what?
Kyle: 22:59
They don't have a call guide in front of them, they're just winging it. They don't have training. That's why Most people you throw them this much of an issue either on an internet opportunity or an inbound call. I take a lot of inbound calls live in class too, and I set an appointment almost every single time on those because the people are looking for a vehicle Now. My phone should be ringing right now. You know who should be calling me right now.
MC: 23:21
My guy.
Kyle: 23:22
Sales manager. So when we train, no matter what happens, you hang up the phone. If you have an appointment, you go to a sales manager so they can do a confirmation call for you, a welcome call. If you don't have an appointment, you go touch the desk. Hey, I just talked to this guy. I just wanted a Chevy Cruze. I didn't send an appointment. Can you help me? The desk literally should be calling me right now. I'm selling cars. Next week I'm going to work the desk and they bring me every single phone up. After they hang up, I'll be in Los Angeles.
MC: 23:50
So you're going back to the same place showing them how it's done.
Kyle: 23:55
Yeah, some dealers bring me into work leads.
MC: 23:59
When did you discover this of yourself though? Like, like, like, because there are few that have the commitment, the discipline, the desire to make a career out of car. It's just a J O B for hundreds of thousands. When is it like what's happening in your world that you're like no, I can do this, I can make something of this, I can think differently about this.
MC: 24:32
(Sponsor Ad Mid-roll) Hey, we'll hop back into this episode right after we thank today's sponsor, autofi. Despite mass adoption of technology by dealers, the car buying process is still time consuming and incredibly inefficient. In fact, it still takes nearly three hours to buy a car and the average salesperson only sells nine new vehicles per month. Nothing's changed over the last 30 years, but selling a car shouldn't be so hard, whether online or in the showroom. Autofi enables dealers to build trust and fast track the deal to F&I and Autofi dealers see an average of $765 incremental back-end PVR per deal Pretty impressive. Autofi will be at NADA 2025 in New Orleans. You can visit them at booth 4219 to check out their digital retail and showroom solutions, or you can go to autoficom forward slash NADA 2025 to pre-schedule a meeting with their team. All right, let's get back to the conversation.
Kyle: 25:25
I was hot garbage at selling cars. I was really bad at it. I sold maybe one or two cars my first month and then about halfway into my second month I worked for a little itty bitty used car dealership that was owned by the biggest or one of the biggest Toyota dealerships in Oregon. And then GSM got fired. He's been there like 20 years at this point and so they send the guy that's used to selling 300 plus cars a month to this little itty bitty car lot and we only had three salespeople and he walks in his first day he goes kid, you suck at selling cars, that's okay, cause daddy's here and daddy doesn't take that.
Kyle: 26:01
If you get it up, you come get me. You get a phone call, you come get me. You breathe on a customer, you come get me. This is over. And literally I got super good at just bringing everything to this guy who I still see all the time, by the way, still in the business, and I just started mimicking this guy and then he sent me to a Stuker training. You know Tom Stuker.
MC: 26:21
Yep.
Kyle: 26:21
And I just got all the Stuker call guides and I just studied them and then I went to Cardone and I've been to a ton of training and that's that's really how I did it. I just I just learned that you could do the same thing over and over again and be super successful. They put me on the desk when I was 19. And then, um, I went to go. I was the internet trainer for the largest group in Oregon and then I went to go work for Traver. You ever heard of Traver?
MC: 26:46
Oh yeah, I have, I have yeah.
Kyle: 26:48
Traver was the big phone company in like the 2000s. Then I was a head-on trainer for eight years and then I worked for Edmunds as the dealer trading manager. Then that had this thing. So at a very young age, 18 years old I learned you have a piece of paper in front of you. You'll learn exactly what to say. You're successful almost every single time. I was top sales every month. This sounds like a BS story, but I was selling about 30 cars a month, working part-time.
MC: 27:14
Why does it sound so easy? When I listen to you, you know what I mean. It's always like what's that saying? If it were that easy, everybody would be doing it.
Kyle: 27:23
Yeah, I don't know why.
MC: 27:25
How do you have a full head of hair from not scratching your hair out over this one?
Kyle: 27:32
I don't know. When I first got the training I was like everyone's going to do this as soon as they learn how to do it. I can train that guy on how to do that call. He'll do it for a few days. Then a week goes by and list manager stays in front of him. It just takes so much commitment for management to have everybody be tight and most people don't make the commitment.
MC: 27:50
I just think, though, man, what a, what a wormhole this could be. You know, I'm scra. I'm sitting here shocked listening to that phone call. I mean not shocked because we hear this, the same thing I'm, but, but now I'm. I just experienced a phone call from your lens. I usually experience it from where I sit, on the marketing side of things, marketing agents are, by the way, my best customer.
Kyle: 28:14
Who's that? Marketing agencies.
MC: 28:18
Oh well, he's not plugging to anybody but me right now.
Kyle: 28:22
Well, you know why, right.
MC: 28:24
Do I know why? You guys send them a pile of leads and then they don't know how to handle them.
Kyle: 28:29
We've been with you guys for four months. We're not selling any more cars.
MC: 28:47
You're like well, we be sending you a bunch more leads. And then they come to me higher qualified people, not the ones that are like oops, I accidentally clicked the wrong button on your facebook ad and, oops, I hate you because you made me fill out my information and I just wanted to look at cars on your website and they don't know how to handle all of that which ties into the training. Um, but it's for me. What's. What's standing out here, man, is, is this this idea of, like put the flipping script in front of you instead of looking everywhere else and I need? Do I need to spend more? No, you, most often, you don't need to spend more, you need a better process.
MC: 29:29
And how come we can never break 100 units a month? And it's like well, who's holding your team accountable? Well, that sounds awkward and I haven't done it for so long. When you go into a store and that's the environment. Perhaps a leader who knows what they need to do but hasn't given themselves permission to do it yet, which is often holding their team, is accountable and being involved. How do you recommend the turning of the new leaf Like, hey, just rip the bandaid off and get to it, cause I think. I don't know if you agree or not, but I feel like that's what holds most people back. This resistance to change and progress is the acknowledgement that maybe I wasn't doing it right to begin with. How do you overcome that?
Kyle: 30:11
Usually if I'm there, they've already kind of made that commitment. It's just it's hard to get managers to be committed. I can train salespeople to have blue in the face. You got to get the managers on board. If I can get the managers on board, I know I can fix it.
MC: 30:27
What often holds managers back.
Kyle: 30:30
They just don't want to do it. They just just they do it for a week or two and then they stop doing it. That's beautiful for our mystery shops not to do a backwards plug, but when we mystery shop we mystery shop a store every week yeah, you see immediate results because they just they have a meeting. Based on that, it becomes impossible to hide so, so these must be then summit.
MC: 30:50
So you're doing these mystery shops, you You've done thousands of them. Is this the common thread? No accountability, no training, no script.
Kyle: 30:58
For the non-training clients, for the training clients, every single Sunday the reports come out and they have a Monday morning meeting and they just analyze the game film. Here's how we did, and if you just look at one mystery shop a week and have a meeting about it, the team gets better quick.
MC: 31:15
It just makes sense to me If you want to be a winning team, do what winning teams do review the gameplay footage, talk about it, analyze it, discuss it, get clear on it. Everybody get aligned. I can only imagine, though, kind of going circle, circling back to the beginning, almost about attrition. You said that teams that train and teams that don't train.
Kyle: 31:34
The attrition tends to still kind of look no, no, no, sorry, teams that train have less attrition.
MC: 31:39
I thought I thought we had a flub in our uh I I said teams that train with me or train themselves the tricians about it okay, that and that makes way more sense to me, sorry, and it's, and it's because nobody wants to be on a losing team. Yeah, you can only stand. And so if I'm the general manager or I'm a senior leader and I'm the coach of a losing team, like how long before I replace myself, or I get replaced, like that's? That's where my mind would be going.
Kyle: 32:12
I don't, I don't know if I have better words to it's not that hard to sell somebody a car and, like I said, you know you're going to do 40, 50, 60%. Just by being there, just by having the lights on it's. It's getting that extra Cause. Most of the time that guy that I talked to, he gets a phone call. The car is there, it's on the website. So people are a little bit lazy. They're order takers, not salespeople, so they sell cars by accident.
MC: 32:39
Yeah, I sometimes say like, hey, that chair over there will sell six cars this month, just because it was like a place for somebody to sit in a lay down, like me.
Kyle: 32:50
And sorry to circle back to training attrition.
MC: 32:52
Yeah.
Kyle: 32:53
Say about the same if you train with us, your results will be better. It just but stores that, do stuff. Do stuff if that makes sense, like if I walk into somebody's house and it's filthy and I clean their house. That house is going to be dirty in another week. They got to change their habits. Yeah, people clean their house.
MC: 33:08
Clean their house you know, yep, which makes sense. I mean, it's one of the things I love about this industry is it's one that says, hey, you, you can come from any walk of life, essentially, and if you're willing to change your behavior and accept some healthy habits, there is no ceiling. There's no ceiling. There's also no floor, um, but you can go as high as you want to go, I think, which is really impressive. So now, for me, it's a bit of a full circle. Back to the hiring process, because I can only imagine I'd love your thoughts on this if I, as part of my hiring process, am vetting people, letting them know that we are big on training and expect people to train, like I'm already setting the stage. I feel like weed out people who have no ambition or desire.
Kyle: 34:01
It's hard to tell sometimes in the interviews. I can tell you how we do it in stuff. Our best stores. They bring on, let's say you need to hire 10 people. In reality they'll bring on about 15 or 20 because a few are going to fail the drug tests, a few are going to have a bad driver's license, whatever, and then they do a training class for about a week and then they keep people on a training pay for about a month and they slowly wean them on into the future. So that's usually what our best stores do. Our stores where I just throw bodies at them every single month are congratulations, you're hired, go take a customer.
MC: 34:37
And, by the way, you're a moron, quit doing it wrong. By the way, your your resume said you have great interpersonal and communication skills, and how come you're? You know well, actually, I want to. I want to talk to you about this Cause now I've just opened a Pandora's box for myself. How often you know like, when, when we hire in my companies, um, by the time they get to me, I'm usually the last step.
MC: 35:00
The word track hasn't changed for decades because we just find it works. Our family business has always adopted, you know, had something similar to this, which is essentially look, we hire based on compatibility with our core values and beliefs, before we do skill set, because we know that skills can be taught. But a fundamental compatibility with who we are and how we choose to behave is a much more difficult thing. They go oh, ok, so then we share our core values with them and we explain what they mean, and we go see, these are not like crazy. We're not like Google where we have to come up with some.
MC: 35:34
It's like strive for excellence, honesty, what do those things mean? There's always more to learn, etc, etc, um, I share things with them like I would rather have you fail gloriously, having given it your best shot than to have never tried anything at all, and I really mean that and I share examples of what that looks like. Um, that's helped retain people who are like oh I, this is something I want to be a part of, which I think maybe ties into the culture piece. But in that kyle here's, here's where I'm going with.
Kyle: 36:05
This is like you have a lot of turnover. We have almost no tone or turnover in our company like less than point zero, something percent like nothing we're pretty close. We have about 200 folks and we would have a lot of turnover not a lot of turnover, um, and the thing is.
MC: 36:23
The one thing I've learned, though and and I think sometimes organizations struggle with this fundamentally is I can take a capable person and with no onboarding they become incapable really quick. And I think a lot of times I'm curious your thoughts on this Organizations accept what the resume says or past experience, and they go oh, they're really capable and it's like, but then you did no expectation setting, you did no onboarding, and now you're wondering why they come across as dumb or incapable. It's the training, it's the onboarding. What's your thoughts?
Kyle: 37:00
100%. I mean, it really, really is. We have a culture where people come on and they just see the three, four, five, six people on their team crushing it, and I think that helps, because I don't want to say, when I say we almost almost nobody quits, we let people go. Our resignation rate, though, was almost nothing.
MC: 37:24
Nothing.
Kyle: 37:25
They want to work with us. And you know, we do a ton of training in the beginning and we just have a pretty good culture Boy training in the beginning and we just have a pretty good culture. Um boy, by the way, if somebody makes a mistake, we're like I, I say we work at a hospital, I go. You know what happens if we make a mistake somebody just died. Like if we send a bad mystery shop, you can't do that. But we also have a thing like we had a dumbest question contest yesterday. I'm like, guys, we're gonna, we're going to give away a prize Whoever could ask the dumbest question on this meeting. There's a question you've been dying to ask. What is it? I'm like this is the time to fail. Our internal stuff is way different than our external, external, we got to be perfect, but internally you could say dumb stuff. You can give your opinion, exactly, give your opinion.
MC: 38:10
You could exactly it's, that's just okay, last, last thought process here. I want to, I want to get your ideas and vantage point on. I mean, some so much talk about ai and now all these systems tying in ai and and this, and that I'm asking kind of tongue-in-cheek, putting on a bit of an act. I mean, I love technology, but what's your thoughts? I mean, now there's all these systems that are trying to replace the call agent by ai, and why and why doesn't it work?
Kyle: 38:46
so we have ai customers. Some of our biggest customers are ai companies and ai works really, really, really good. It's always about honesty, right? If I'm having an AI do something minimal and the consumer knows it's something minimal and it's just to help, works great. When you try and replace salespeople with AI, things usually break. So if you want to be successful with AI in your store service sales, whatever you're doing, you got to match AI with the human. You can't replace AI yet. I mean it's probably coming two, three, four years. I mean we may be talking to robots, but right now you got to have a team that uses AI to make them better. You know the problem is a lot of stores AI messes up their entire dealership in sales. You want to know why oh, ai's handling that?
Kyle: 39:37
we ai's doing all the lead responses. Yeah, lazy, throw their hands in the air, you gotta, you gotta, marry him. I think the ai companies would tell you that too.
MC: 39:47
I saw and here's an example I think to drive to drive that home. We were looking at a CRM and they had AI installed. This person, this customer, had volunteered that they were going through a divorce and yada, yada, yada and of course, the AI built a profile based on that and the follow up, like seven days later, was like hey, I hope everything's going well with your divorce. I was like what well with your divorce? I love it, man. This makes so much sense to me. I feel like I need access to all your scripts, just because I don't know why every dealership in our industry doesn't have them yet. Just super, super valuable stuff. How can those listening and watching it in touch with you?
Kyle: 40:36
Kyle at RevDojocom, the 800 numbers right on the website. Give us a call, email me. We give all the call guides away. You could spend zero dollars with us and I'll be more than happy to send you all the call guides. Oh, before we jump off, unless you got a hard stop, I had some data pulled up for you, ready, hit me. So before we jump off, unless you got a hard stop, I had some data pulled up for you, ready, hit me. So this is a little under 5,000 shops. I just had the team rule pull 5,000 shops. The top 10% national average for outbound phone calls in the United States of America. Do you want to guess how many times the bottom 10% call a customer in five days? I go to your website I say, hey, I want to buy a car. How many phone calls do I get?
MC: 41:21
I'm too scared to guess. What is it. It's like nothing.
Kyle: 41:26
It's less than one. I got one with the little like how many text messages do I get in a five day period?
MC: 41:34
I don't know Five two, two.
Kyle: 41:38
How many emails do I get to look at this? And this is real data. This is our data. It's from last month. How long does it take the bottom 10% of dealers to call an internet lead last month in the United States?
MC: 41:56
I'm too scared, dude, it's, it's. I was going to say 11 hours, 22 is even. I see I'm trying to be all optimistic.
Kyle: 42:02
Now listen to this what's the top 10% do? Two minutes. So the top 10% of performing dealers call a customer in two minutes. The bottom 10% 22 hours. Is that crazy?
MC: 42:15
two minutes. The bottom 10% 22 hours. Is that crazy 22 hours. It's like imagine walking up to somebody. Somebody asks you for help in person and you stare at them for 22 hours before you acknowledge their presence.
Kyle: 42:22
That'd be wild Wild.
MC: 42:24
Dude, I got one more piece of information.
Kyle: 42:27
Here we go, you ready, you commented on my hair up here.
MC: 42:29
You ready for this?
Kyle: 42:30
Yeah, you see a little bald spot there, maybe.
MC: 42:33
It's forming. It's forming $35.
Kyle: 42:36
I'm going to get platelet-rich plasma. After this I'm getting in the cab I could drive myself, but where they do this it's like $1,500 to do it. In America I'm getting it done for $35 right by my house.
MC: 42:54
Where they take your blood out and they spin it and they put in that centrifuge. Yeah, yeah, try and get some of my hair back. 35 bucks, why, why, what are we doing wrong, guys? This is unreal, dude. Thank you for sharing this with us. Thank you for your expertise, your passion and your excitement. Um, I know I enjoy it. I know the DPB gang enjoys it. Thanks so much for joining me on the dealer playbook appreciate training Mystery Shop.
Kyle: 43:15
We do the BDC for a bunch of stores hiring Hit me up.
MC: 43:19
(Outro)Hey, thanks for listening to the dealer playbook podcast. If you enjoyed tuning in, please subscribe, share and hit that like button. You can also join us and the DPB community on social media. Check back next week for a new dealer playbook episode. Thanks so much for joining.
