In Search Of... Data Leaks, Dealer Fatigue & the Education Void

Dan Barker0:00Welcome to In Search Of, I am Dan Barker, your host. Joining me today, as always, I've got Zach Billings, co-founder of Wikimotive. Zach, good morning.

Zach Billings0:21Thanks for having me, Dan. Good morning.

Dan Barker0:23Good morning, good afternoon, good night. You know, there is no time in the world we live in here. But today, we are very excited to have a man that needs no introduction, but I will give one anyway, one of the most prominent voices in all of automotive, and a long-time friend, Brian Pasch. Brian, thank you so much for joining us.

Brian Pasch0:44It is great to be here.

Dan Barker0:44Can't wait to uncover some of the new things that you're working on and thinking about. Given your prominence in the automotive space, Brian, what are your hot takes or hot topics? What do you see in the landscape?

Brian Pasch0:58Well, I'm very fascinated on how we've let automotive dealer websites get so cluttered and messy. So I offered a free course. It's a four-month program to help dealers uncover how many Google Tag Manager containers and scripts are loaded on their website. There are dealers with 20-plus GTM containers and 20-something advertising scripts. And it's just fascinating that I never picked up on this earlier, that all those scripts dragged down performance, but also they could still be siphoning data off the dealer's website from vendors that they've canceled. And this has been the case. So one of the things I'm fascinated about is when you educate dealers, they take action.

Brian Pasch1:55So we're seeing faster website performance. We're seeing less data leaks. And, you know, the next piece of that is improving conversion. So for the last few months, I've been laser focused on trying to figure out, is there a best website design, like CTA buttons? Is there a minimum tech stack that gives you best performance?

Zach Billings2:16That's kind of a thankless job, but someone has to do it. What's your, obviously, probably premature, but what's your first take on, like, CTA verbiage? Where are we at today?

Brian Pasch2:31Yeah, I think minimizing buttons on the SRP just makes sense. When you think of other retail environments where you're searching through a list of products, pants, shirts, they don't have all the purchasing buttons in the search results. So I think what we're seeing is simplifying that, especially for mobile, and then three to four CTA buttons max, get rid of duplicates, and get rid of things that take you off the website, anything that takes you off that VDP. There is no other industry in the world that has a CTA button when you're considering getting that consumer to engage that says, oh, I'm going to take you somewhere else today and distract you.

Zach Billings3:22Yeah, off-site, you know, digital retailing solutions from some OEMs that we won't name, not a very conducive user experience. What's your feeling on, like, full-page takeover digital retailing tools? Is that an off-site experience? Do you call that an on-site experience?

Brian Pasch3:40I would still say it's on-site because as soon as you X off, you were there. You know, you were, you know, back on the page. What I don't understand is it appears that no one's looking at their mobile devices. You know, chat bubbles that are covering two or three CTA buttons, a clear phone icon on the bottom of the phone, and adding another CTA button for call us. I mean, people know how to use a phone. Excuse me. So I'm a little confused. Is everyone designing websites on the desktop and forgetting that 75% of the traffic comes from mobile?

Zach Billings4:24There's definitely still a lot of that going on. And to your point, you can get CTA stacks where it's like, you know, e-price, and I'm interested, and schedule a test drive, and all of them just open up a lead form. And it's like we're trying to come up with every single verbiage that might speak to somebody, but then you just get decision paralysis.

Brian Pasch4:44Correct. And schedule a test drive is one of the worst performing buttons yet. It's still on dealer websites. Not really sure why. But the purpose of this work that I'm doing is to publish the formulas on how to calculate what I'm calling CCR, the CTA conversion rate of each button, and break it out by SRP and VDP. You know, for example, there was a GM dealer we were looking at, and he had scheduled test drive on the SRP and scheduled test drive on the VDP. And in an entire 30-day period, there was 22 clicks and one test drive. Like, complete waste of time. There's a phone number.

Brian Pasch5:29There's a chat bubble. Someone wants to schedule a test drive. That surely isn't a button that needs to be taking prominent real estate. But dealers didn't know how to measure it. Once they see the data, eyes open up, and they're like, yeah, that's stupid to put there.

Dan Barker5:46I was going to say, where's the breakdown here? I mean, how did we get to a point in automotive where we have 11 CTAs and we have 19 pop up? Like, how did we get here, and what do we do about it? Because we're asking an awful lot of dealers here to make all these calls, because certainly it all sounds good when you go to sign up for it.

Brian Pasch6:05Yeah, it's the end result of dealer choice. The fact is dealers pay very little for their base automotive website. You know, the website company has to do inventory and has to support OEM requirements. Every month, OEMs are requiring new development, and, you know, they're charging $1,500 or $1,200 a month. And then the dealer bolts on, you know, a DR tool, a chat tool, a trade tool, a credit tool, a service scheduler, and a pop-up coupon. And the dealer just says, edit, edit, edit, edit, and the website company has no choice but to edit. But if you're going to say, hey, website company, it's your job to tell me how to organize this mess for $1,200 a month.

Brian Pasch6:59So, you know, so some of the dealers have said to me, Brian, I wish my website companies would say, hey, for an extra $1,000 a month, I will review all your data and I'll help you optimize your website. And the dealer's saying, I'll pay that. But, you know, no one's offering that. So I think it's just become a mess. And then when dealers fire the vendors, they don't tell the website company to remove the containers. So what I've been trying to do in this past year is to get all the website companies to commit to logging GTMs and scripts and have a clear track record of what's running on the site and why.

Brian Pasch7:42And helping dealers realize that more isn't better. But I'm not going to set a standard for the United States. It's stupid because brand differences, price strategies, difference, geo differences. Let the dealers learn how to test how their websites are performing. And in an ideal world, you would say, well, wouldn't the website company do that? And it gets down to when the dealers are bolting on things that have never been tested, don't support the ASC spec. Don't play nice with others in the sandbox. Eh, guess what? The website companies say, not my problem.

Dan Barker8:19Great point there in terms of ASC. Where are we at in adoption? And where is ASC in the world of things at the moment?

Brian Pasch8:26Well, you know, I just published an article this month. And I shared it with the ASC council, encouraging everyone to repost it. I'm getting ready to post a snarky comment in our group chat. Hardly anybody reposted it. And I was thinking like, hey, isn't everyone like for the spec? Why wouldn't the members just take the article and repost it and say, hey, let's get behind? And here's what I figured out. Everyone's afraid of the big tech stack companies, the OEM program managers. And let me explain. In the recent article, I said, hey, Tekion DR that's being used by a few OEMs, not sending any events.

Brian Pasch9:17You know, CDK, service scheduler. We've been trying for three years, blank, nothing, just blocking dealer data. And I gave some examples. I'm thinking that someone on the council was like, well, I don't want to post that because I'll be complicit in calling out these companies. And I'm like, well, yeah, we should be calling them out because every agency loses. Wikimotive loses. PCG loses when we don't have the ability to record conversion from tools that are on dealer websites. So I think everyone's afraid of, well, if I support an article that tells people are not helping dealers, they might be mad at me and then I might lose some business.

Brian Pasch10:05And the bottom line is this is why our industry is so dysfunctional. No one really cares about the dealer. No one cares about full transparency if it may cost them some business. I'm just a little flabbergasted because the people who understand the ASC specs said this is the greatest thing that's happened to digital marketing, identity resolution, CDPs, reporting. But we're still missing a couple key players. So, you know, Dan, I'm just scratching my head. And it was like, is everyone really that timid? Is everyone so afraid? We're not asking for anything but supporting dealer transparency.

Dan Barker10:52Do you ever get any reasons from any of the sandbaggers, the, you know, the big, big tech stack agencies that are not cooperating? Do they give a reason why they don't do it? Is it just haven't gotten around to it?

Brian Pasch11:06Yeah. So, I think there's a couple cases. Number one, CDK with their service scheduler, complete stonewall. But CDK Roadster was compliant relatively quick. Separate development teams, separate management. Even the Roadster team couldn't convince the team developing the service scheduler to participate. Other things like Tekion, we're going to look at it. We're going to look at it. Obviously, not a high priority of them. They finally got their service scheduler partially supporting ASC spec. No updates yet. But I've been talking with the new product manager at Tekion, and they do want to be compliant. Others, and I know this sounds crazy, but their software developers have no experience with GA4.

Brian Pasch11:58They don't even know, you know, how to use a data layer or how to send events in the GA4. So, thankfully, folks like Dustin Lester and Ben Yee and others actually have raised their hand and volunteered, hey, if you have any questions on the technical implementations of ASC, and they've donated their time. So, just we don't want to think about it from we'll eventually get to it to we're completely lost. We need some help. And then I think some of the bigger problems is being half-baked is almost as bad as not being in at all. And so, I've been working with, like, even the folks at TradePending.

Brian Pasch12:43Like, they do, like, 85%, 90% right, and then there's a couple things that they're not doing right. And I finally had to record a video and ship it off to their executive team and say, guys, please fix these. They're, like, little things, but they're important things if you want to measure CCR. So, we have wide support. I just wish we could get more OEMs. And here's where I think the OEMs understand why it's good for dealers, why it's good for agencies, why it's good for co-op efficiency. If we could just get them to tell Shift Digital and J.D. Power and Unite, look, as part of the OEM vendor vetting, we want ASC-certified vendors on dealer websites.

Brian Pasch13:31If we could get that.

Zach Billings13:32Yeah. And it would only take a few to cause a cascade because, you know, if one of the major OEMs says you have to do this, then.

Brian Pasch13:44Yeah, they're going to do it for all, right? It's just a matter of – but it's kind of funny. Most software, and we know this from the early version of Google Analytics, they were throwing events just inconsistently. I think developers threw events so they could track some things, do some vendor performance data. We're not asking a lot. We're just asking, hey, if you're going to throw events, throw them, you know, with these names. You know, there's been some funny people like my karma gave people like a PDF on how to create triggers in a GTM container and sent it to dealers and say, look, we're only throwing our events.

Brian Pasch14:28So if you want your events, you have to map. And I'm like, under what universe does the product manager think it was a good idea to send dealers a PDF to build a GTM container with triggers?

Zach Billings14:43Yep. The ASC or lack of ASC event issue is near and dear at the moment because for MRC, for the presentation on AI search that I'm doing, we did a case study across 150 dealers. And we wanted to look at conversion rate effectively for AI traffic versus organic traffic and paid traffic. And wouldn't it be nice if when you put 150 dealers together, you could rely on the fact that one form submission is the same as another form submission is the same as another form submission. And no, it's not that consistent. So we would have actually had a larger cohort of dealers for the study if we could have normalized that information.

Zach Billings15:22And the fact that we couldn't do that just tells you there's a lot of non-adoption.

Brian Pasch15:27Yeah. And one of the things that I learned, I've learned, Zach, that I should have gotten in a different business. You know, I've always kind of wondered why these little pop-up $500 coupon, you know, $500 off. And I was like, man, I missed it. The people who came up with this, you know, let's just say lead gate idea, obviously, it's been done in other forms of retail, you know, get 10% off your purchase. Okay. But in automotive, since there's kind of a long sales cycle, these pop-ups generate leads early on, right? And so they're the first lead in the CRM. So when you do lead closing reports, they always dominate and they're like, oh, man, that pop-up tool is crushing it.

Brian Pasch16:24Because if you're the first in the CRM for that consumer, any other lead doesn't trigger in the lead closure report. I was just – it has nothing to do with really helping dealers sell more cars. It was more of how do I dominate the CRM? Well, a lot of these pop-up tools don't send any ASC events. And it actually is a problem because as I'm working with some of the OEM program managers and I look at their dashboards and how many leads they say the websites generate, they never match up with reality. And so I challenged the dashboard. I was like, you're way off. And here's the problem.

Brian Pasch17:05When dealers bolt things onto their website that are not ASC compliant, even a listener can't trap, you know, those conversions. So very interesting that if ASC was fully supported, the OEMs would benefit even the most because then their identity resolution graphs, their tier one through three marketing strategies would improve. I mean, there's a lot of things. I won't go into it. But you're right, Zach. Anytime I try to do an example, it's like, okay, dealer, raise your hand. Tell me – let's – if you think your Google Analytics is set up properly and still today, eight out of ten is not. It's just –

Dan Barker17:51That's an interesting point and as I sit here and listen to both of you, I can't help but think, aren't we asking a whole heck of a lot of our dealers in general of be an expert selling things, be an expert on cars, be an expert on people. Oh, by the way, be an expert on data, analytics, marketing. Like, where does the first-time GM in a smaller store or a smaller group – where the heck do you go? I mean, you know, think about the breadth that you guys just navigated within, you know, 15 minutes here. Where do you start?

Brian Pasch18:29And I – you have hit on the question I haven't been able to answer for 20 years. And let me explain why it just burns inside of me. I don't have an answer to it. But in other professions, you know, medical, doctors, dentists, you know, you have continuing education credits. You have to, you know, take classes. You have to stay up to date. Well, there's no such thing of that really in automotive at all. Yet, they're running billion-dollar enterprises, right? Large dealer groups are – you know, you have 20, 30 stores. You're billions of dollars in sales. So, no continuing education. And then you look at conferences.

Brian Pasch19:11And, you know, I do two a year. But you have NADA. And let's just say 15,000 dealers go out. And then you have Digital Dealer, which is a couple hundred. And ours is a couple hundred, right? And Esotokan, you know, a couple hundred. So, you'd say if you were generous, 20,000. Well, if you have 18,000 franchise dealers and you said, look, in every organization, you have a GM, a GSM, a marketing manager, a service director, maybe someone in finance. You could say six or seven key leaders that have to make decisions. Well, that would be 180,000 people that need education. And here's the answer. Ten percent are going out.

Brian Pasch19:59Now, yes, there's OEM events and other things. But we just have this laissez-faire attitude about technology and change. AI is even spinning my head. If it's spinning my head, holy cow. You know, like I'm overwhelmed with what I can do. But the time it takes to learn new things is quite overwhelming. So, you know, I try to put together conferences that are not talking about how to open an email and how to answer leads. And you should have a good reputation. I'm always trying to push the envelope, right? And every time Zach gets up there, people say, this is the best presentation on SEO we've ever seen.

Brian Pasch20:42Every year, he's pushing the bar. Why are so few people seeing it when it impacts everyone? And this, Dan, is the mystery. It's like I'm running a multimillion or billion-dollar organization, and I don't want to let a few key people a year go out a few days and immerse themselves, get away from distractions, talk to their peers, work shopping and taking notes. I don't get it, but I keep on doing it. It's a thankless job. Anybody who runs the conference knows it's really a thankless job because no matter who you line up, no matter how great the content is, they're like, yeah, my dealer won't let me go out.

Brian Pasch21:27And I'm like, something's got to change.

Zach Billings21:30Well, and then we end up going back and we talk about dealers from the beginning of our conversation here where you got 20-plus GTM containers. And you're like, well, geez, I wonder how we ended up here because no one even knows the questions to ask. Yeah, you'll get questions coming from dealers or even general managers. Why is my website so slow? You know, we need to find a new website vendor. The problem might just be that you've filled it with so much bloat that never got removed and you haven't gone and gotten the education to understand that problem and to be able to address it at its source rather than just, you know, whack-a-mole with hitting symptoms.

Brian Pasch22:08And, Zach, I'm sure this has happened to you, but one of the funniest things when, let's just say someone says, Brian, would you look at our website and give us some insight? And the general manager is on the Zoom call. And I go through the website. I said, well, let's look at your SRP and let's look at the VDP. And I'm like, why do you have two trade tools or why do you have two digital retailing tools? And do you know, like, your math block doesn't do that? And honestly, they look and it's like, who put that on the website? And I'm like, I don't know.

Brian Pasch22:41And then I said, wow, they're so busy with day-to-day. They don't even have the eyes of a consumer anymore to look at their website and see how broken it is. So I just believe they're so driven to that 30-day window. They're under so much pressure that they don't even have time to sit back, learn, observe, get better. And that's why I run the conferences, because there are people who appreciate it. And obviously, it's a business. And so I'm good at it after 20 years. But I just wish dealers had more margin in their thinking and budgeting to get people, keep people out to learn.

Dan Barker23:30You mentioned something that we often talk about here is the devil is that 30-day window. Because when you can't ever think past the sale you're in the middle of or the next one you have to get to close out that 30-day window, you don't have the ability to think strategically long-term. What does the next three months or 12 months look like? And when we talk about things like data or marketing or even hiring and firing within a dealership, you can't be so nearsighted to say, well, that's today's problem. Because that becomes next month and next year's problem when you can't ever see past that. Given the importance of education, where does the new GM that's just been handed the keys to a bright, shiny new dealership for the first time, what do?

Dan Barker24:19Where do they go? What do they do?

Brian Pasch24:21Yeah, you know, there is a gap, you know, you know, PCG has some online courses that, you know, we have developed over time, whether it's modern lead handling or like a digital marketing manager course. I'm doing this new course on website conversion optimization, but the problem is it's fragmented and, man, it's not going to be politically correct to say it, but I'm just going to say it. I think NADA has fallen down in being the owner of the best education, you know, for the dealers. And, you know, listen, I'm going to just say, I'm going to say it because I'm a little bitter about it.

Brian Pasch25:09But for the last three years, I've submitted that NADA to talk about CDPs, which I think is an important topic. And it's like, no, no, no. I'm the only one who's written a book on CDPs. I've done research report. I mean, it's not, I'm not even selling a CDP. And, you know, when I talk to some of my friends at NADA, like, Brian, they're just behind, they're just behind. And then somebody has a workshop. It's like, how to answer leads or, you know, how to smile in the service drive. And they're like, yes, we want smiles in the service drive. And to me, that's like, man, that's old news.

Brian Pasch25:51Like, we're not talking about data hygiene. We're not talking about AI. We're not talking about, how about this, hiring the right people for the tech that your business will need for the future. We're not talking about online compliance. We're not talking about the impact of how AI and multiple people communicating with their customers can either be a mess, a legal mess. Like, these are advanced topics. And so I don't know if it's the fact that the leadership at NADA is aged out and not thinking progressively, or the people who are designing the content workshops just are very comfortable with things that are comfortable. But I think our industry has to get uncomfortable.

Brian Pasch26:39Listen, there's varying opinions. Todd Smith's writing a lot about AI and data. And some of his positions I agree with. Other positions are kind of opposite of mine. But I don't care. We need to have multiple voices. Zach, listen, Tim and I, Tim Martell, founder of Wikimotive, you know, he was a client of mine. And then he said, I'm going to get into the business. I'm like, come on. It's like people say, well, isn't he a competitor PCG? I was like, no, we need more smart people. Was Tim's approach different than mine for SEO? Absolutely. But if we're not bringing in multiple voices, even conflicting voices so we can start a dialogue, so we can challenge each other, if NADA is safe, if NADA is the place for everyone to be safe, drink alcohol, go out to vendor parties, then we lose it.

Brian Pasch27:35So, you know, Dan, you could tell I'm passionate about it. NCM and NADA 20 groups are great for operational data, comparing, and some tactical things. They're not set up for education. They're not set up for training. They're not set up for skills development. So, until we solve it, I think the consultancy business will continually be quite profitable.

Zach Billings28:05Undoubtedly. You just brought something up that had been rattling around in my head as you were saying some of that. The 20 groups, NCM and NADA, great for getting, obviously, you know, a window into what your peers are doing. I find it's often mistaken for education. It's often an echo chamber or a comparison mistaken for education. What's your viewpoint on things like composite reports?

Brian Pasch28:34Yeah, so composite reports, in general, for KPIs that are business-oriented are somewhat interesting, right? Your average dollars bill per RO or capacity utilization. But when you get to marketing, you know, they have these weird KPIs that are so gameable, like, oh, what's your cost per click or what's your impression share? And so, composites are filled with data that, honestly, there's only a few KPIs anyone looks at, but they need to, you know, have these composites to feel good about the voluminous amount of information. I think 20 groups are more like business coaching sessions and not innovation sessions. That's why I created the CXO network for dealer groups with 10 or more stores, because our meetings don't talk about each other's data.

Brian Pasch29:40We talk about what each other's projects or insights, and then we bring new tech to the table. That, to me, is what I'm going to call, like, an innovation group, a discovery group, a peer inspiration group. I think we need more of those, right? And I intentionally tell dealers, look, if you just want to look at numbers and compare, you go there. But the people that you're entrusting to help you guide the future of your business, send them to CXO. So, I think that 20 groups have their purpose. But, Zach, right on board, listen, I used to love going to 20 groups. I would go in, talk about SEO, dealers weren't doing SEO, and three or four dealers would sign up for SEO.

Brian Pasch30:31And then I'd go and talk about social media, and, oh, man, we should be doing social media. Today, I really don't speak too much at 20 groups because dealers have become so cynical. Every dealer's doing SEO in their mind. Every dealer's doing social. Everybody's doing paid search. So, why are you even having me there? Like, if you really think, like, oh, you're the token vendor coming in. It's like, look, after 20 years, I'm helping dealer groups make moves of millions of dollars. I don't need to convince you that I know how to help dealers. But if you're going to look at me like I'm going to come into your 20 group and sell you digital marketing, like, you're mistaken.

Brian Pasch31:18But I will challenge you to think differently. Jeremy Noling from the Rohrman Group invited me into his 20 group, very advanced group, talk about CDPs. Now, that was a great conversation because they said we really want to know about – they wanted to learn and for that hour. And I don't sell CDPs, so I felt really good about it. And people said, hey, Brian, you really helped us, you know, wrap our heads around how to shop for one. That's more interesting to me. But I do think what we're doing, you know, with our events and with our CXO network is helping to fill gaps. But I think we're just scratching the surface.

Brian Pasch32:01I mean, I'm not reaching as many people as I would like to, and that's always been a frustration.

Zach Billings32:09Yeah, yeah, similar boat. 20 groups have had a similar experience with – you know, it's great to be able to go and present data, but it has to be a plugged-in group like the Rohrman group that you were just talking about. And that's always what I've gotten, you know, so much out of with presenting at MRC and DMSC because it's a group of people who have shown up because they want to learn. And so you can educate. Finding that outlet for getting education to a larger cohort of dealers like NADA if more education, more current and important education is being supported would be certainly helpful in that mission.

Brian Pasch32:49Yeah, and I think there's different educational formats. And the NADA, for the most part, is small theater or larger theater. You know, not everyone learns like that. And I understand that there's so many people there. But, you know, and again, I'm not creating work for NADA. But they do have reach. They do have support of the OEMs. And, you know, maybe it's regional events with smaller themes. You know, people go to NADA to get, like, their GM certification. And I think those programs are really good, right? You know, when they – the class of, you know, whatever. I think they do a good job in helping general managers.

Brian Pasch33:40But I'm not so sure in that GM certification that they're really doing the right job in understanding data, managing data, activating data, marketing. I'm not hearing too much about that, only because they're coming out of NADA Academy with a very cursory review of this. And yet their business is becoming more and more data-centric. I mean, if you look at platforms like Tekion, right, that are really innovating the interface of data, make it easier for people to activate their data. When you see what Reynolds and Brad Title are doing with Gubagoo and Curator, I mean, building audiences and activate sounds great if you know what you can do with it, right?

Brian Pasch34:32And I don't think we have even thought about how do we show general managers how to lead their business in a data-first mindset. We need that training.

Dan Barker34:45I think something you said at the beginning of that sparked, I guess, a passion point for me. And that's the idea of staying where it's comfortable. I guess I've adopted a bit of a mantra that you can wait for uncomfortable to come find you or you can aggressively search it out yourself. And personally, I'm on a mission to find as much uncomfortable as possible because that's where growth happens. And I think there's a lot of growth required in the spaces that we're talking about, especially when you look at a very uncomfortable topic like AI. Because everybody seems to have an answer, but nobody can articulate that answer.

Dan Barker35:36So I wonder what you see in the very uncomfortable, right-in-front-of-us future in the AI space, Brian.

Brian Pasch35:44Well, it's great timing because I have some ideas for automating some of the things that I do in a sense. How do I replicate what I do or my insights? And I was talking to a friend. He said, you should look at make.com. They really have a cool platform for automation of repetitive tasks like in GA4, for example. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to finally do it. I'm going to start building some workflows and some projects to do what I do at scale. And it's uncomfortable with all the things that I'm trying to do and improving my Italian and running a business and now learning AI workflows.

Brian Pasch36:28But, you know, I had to do this three years ago with CDPs. John Clavin Nasher came to me because he left cars.com, went to consumer packaged goods. And he said, Brian, everyone here is using CDPs. You've got it. And I kind of blew them off. And then God just told me, boom, get in here. And what I helped do over the last three years is guide dealers at least how to think about managing their data and activating it. And, of course, a lot of companies have come. Same thing. If I'm going to stay relevant in coaching dealers on their tech stack or how to improve, I have to be able to be more credible about it.

Brian Pasch37:11And I would say I am not the most credible person on AI, you know, tech. But I will tell you that there's a lot of smoke and mirrors. And, you know, Zach and Dan, I don't know what you've seen. But I'm just giving you an example we're doing for MRC, a market research on all the AI voice products. There's about 10 of them. And you know what? Some of the products, and you would say, Brian, it's impossible. Like we're talking to the CEOs of some of these companies, and we say, give us some happy dealer clients. And then they give us some dealer clients, and these clients aren't happy.

Brian Pasch37:49And then we say, these clients aren't happy. Can you send me more? And they're like, okay, let me see what I can find. So, you know, think about this. Everyone's put .ai after their company name or AI solutions. So, what we're going to do in a few weeks is publish a report, a market research report, not a product research. That would be really hard in a short period of time. But just to say, this is what dealers are saying what the product's good at. This is what dealers are saying the product's bad at. This is what the company says they're good at. And here's their tech stack.

Brian Pasch38:29Just as a shopping guide. Because, Dan, I think that AI will fill gaps in retail process. The question is, is how many AI systems can a dealer subscribe to without creating chaos in dealer customer communication? That's the bigger picture. You know, is it better to go with an Impel who's doing sales and service and push them to expand into other areas? Or is it best of breed for voice, best of breed for texting, best of breed for CRM lead follow-up? I don't have an answer on that, but dealers are going to have to – I want to say, AI will challenge dealers for the biggest amount of change in conversations at 20 groups, measurement, staffing, resourcing.

Brian Pasch39:25That anything that SEO, social media, paid search, mobile – any of those conversations that have transpired over 20 years, this AI conversation will be the most difficult. I know Zach wants to just throw me out of the way and just jump right in here. But I will say the dealers should buy the AI product that they've vetted, know, and fully understand why they need it. That's my opinion, and I'll duck out of the way so Zach can give a much better response.

Zach Billings39:58It's just so true. There is existing substance in AI, undoubtedly. You know, it's from just day-to-day, speeding up your own personal research in a business environment to products that really do work and increase workflow throughput rate, right, and be able to force multiply and not need quite as much load on human beings. There are real products today in automotive that work, there's also so much that doesn't, and we have this insane just echo chamber of FOMO where everyone feels this need to have everything AI or AI-ified, right, and very little vetting of which things work, which things don't. I'm fascinated to see the results of your initial study with this and what works, what doesn't, and it's a big part of, you know, from a different perspective, what I'm presenting on at MRC, which is what does the data say?

Zach Billings40:54What are the really current realities about what works and what doesn't in AI from the search perspective? You know, you're trying to ask a ChatGPT where you find the best Ford dealership or to shop for a Ford F-150. It's the realities are so different than what people are saying, mostly just because no one's testing. No one's testing, correlating information, and then saying, here's the one to actually go with based on empirical data.

Brian Pasch41:20Yeah. You know, Zach, one of the things I loved about the Wikimotive team, and I'm not sure how the culture, you know, developed, but you're a company that tests. And obviously, I love testing, and I publish research, but every year when you come to our conferences, it's well thought out. It's not a rushed PowerPoint. It's actually a thoughtful analysis based on data. And unfortunately, we don't see that all the time, or maybe we see it rarely, but it is refreshing. I know that search is changing and how people search. I think dealers are concerned about it. I'm going to easily say that, Zach, you have more insights in this specific area than I do, because I haven't been testing it.

Brian Pasch42:13And every time I dabble, I'm like, ooh, things are changing. Meaning, I've been around enough to know that the cheese has moved. Now, the question is, is how to get to the cheese is going to be, you know, I think somewhat muddy waters. But I'm hoping that dealers who are watching today's show understand there's a lot to learn, and that's a great reason to come out to the Modern Retailing Conference in November. It's at a beautiful location, Palm Beach. It's a great week to get away. It's the week before Thanksgiving, before you overfeed yourself. And you're going to see first-to-market research. I'm going to be releasing three first-to-market reports.

Brian Pasch42:57Zach's research is first-to-market. And there's a few other surprises coming at the show. So, not a lot of old stuff. Just a lot of valuable new insights to help dealers run their business. So, Zach, I can't wait to see what you have been working on. I'm very excited. It's great stuff.

Dan Barker43:19Well, with that, I know we're winding down on time. Brian, thank you so much for joining us. We'd love to do this again in the future with you. And can't wait to see in a few weeks for listeners that somehow may not know how to find you yet. Where's the best place to follow you or get in touch?

Brian Pasch43:35Yeah, I think for most everyone, LinkedIn is the best way. But my email address is so simple. It's just brian at brianpasch.com. And on LinkedIn, you can sign up for my newsletter, on my profile. I think that's important. And if you are interested in attending the Modern Retailing Conference or buying a virtual pass, so you can watch all the keynotes and panels, just go to modernretailingconference.com and get your tickets to attend or a virtual ticket.

Dan Barker44:08Awesome. Well, that wraps us for this episode of In Search Of. Thank you so much for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you all next time.